speaking the truth

[ The inside of a Dunkins Munchkin box, empty of donut holes. Instead it holds a bunch of creek glass in various colors, mostly white and green, but there’s also a blue and a pale purple. And some rocks ]

I don’t think anyone’s been mudlarking along Fountain Creek, cos I spent at least as much time wrangling Remy as I did actually looking for stuff, & I still found this much in maybe half an hour. I hadn’t thought to bring my mudlarking backpack, which has several pouches & a sash to hold them, so I just filled my pockets. I’m surprised my phone screen didn’t get scratched, cos I only had two pockets & one was not REMOTELY gonna be enough.

Plus, blue. & a relatively easy shape to wrap. Some great rocks in there — check out the red & white to lower left — & some pottery bits, a very good vertebra, a piece of PURPLE (rare, but I’ve found several there), & another piece that might be an even paler purple once I’ve scrubbed it.

They’re all sitting in a big jar full of water for a day or two, & then I’ll take them outside with an old toothbrush & clean them off. I’m pretty sure there’s a pair of dark green pieces close enough to make earrings out of, & I know there’s enough white for a faery home decor piece or two. I can always use more pendulums, & the blue is the perfect shape for the tip of one. I can’t wait to see what I make.

Found anything cool on the ground lately? (If not, I highly recommend mudlarking, especially if you can get to Fountain Creek …)

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originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!

[ Two paint chips, one a medium-pale blue green, the other a deep forest green, sit atop a paint can. The splotch of paint on the can is a light green that looks really good with the other two colors. ]

I nearly always check the oops paint when I’m in a hardware store, & I almost never get any, because the VAST majority of the colors available at any one time can best be considered ‘aggressively boring’: eleventy-GRILLION shades of white, off-white, vaguely tan, sort of gray, and not-really-describable-but-you-had-an-apartment-that-color-once.

… okay, look, if that’s the color you want your stuff to be, go ahead, have fun, I’m not gonna say anything. But I like COLOR, & fortunately for all of us, so does everyone else here.

Jasper was the one who saw the colonial era line of colors at the local Ace, & he happily grabbed a bunch of paint chips, & after a bunch of sorting, agreeing, disagreeing, chucking paint chips at each other (& the cats), & rescuing paint chips from the puppy, we settled on a pair of greens — one light enough to make the room brighter without being pastel, one dark enough for an accent wall.

Of course, when I went in to get them mixed up, I checked the oops paint. & right there was a pint of the LOVELIEST pale green, which I IMMEDIATELY grabbed. (Plus a whole bunch of ‘yes I _can_ see the difference between all those shades of white but why does it MATTER’, which I was glad to skip.) I love a nice hit of serendipity, so of course I snapped a pic to send to the household. There isn’t enough of it for a wall, but maybe it could go on the currently-white parts of the doors, or the doorframe, or maybe we’ll just use it to add viney details on the accent wall …

… my imprecations upon neutrals aside (I GUESS you could argue that in the comments if you like, but I’m just gonna remind you that we’re allowed to have different opinions about colors), serendipity really is a lovely thing. How’s serendipity showed up in your life lately? & is it a pretty color?

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originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!

[ A wooden table sits in the corner of a room. It has a set of shelves on the back half. The shelves are covered in a variety of boxes and baskets containing various shipping supplies; so is part of the table, but there’s a nice open space in the middle for actually doing stuff. ]

Ever since we finally moved into the house last November, all of the business workspaces, & a lot of the storage, has been upstairs in the house. Along with my bed & the very few personal things I could fit. In a 12×16 space, with slanted-in walls & a stove pipe.

It was PRETTY TIGHT up here, is what I’m saying.

I was hoping to start moving things downstairs in the spring, but what with one thing & another, by which I mean ‘we are all busted & also not very good at getting around to things’, I finally managed to move my setup for packing orders downstairs last week.

Y’all. It is AWESOME. (Yeah it looks like a bit of a mess but everything is organized now? I love it??)

Even though I’m using the same table that was up here, there’s more space, because half the table isn’t tucked under the slanty wall, which means I could add shelves. Plus I can roll the chair back a bit without having to worry about hitting the soap shelves & knocking them over! Again! That sucked a LOT!

I might get licked on the butt by a dog, but that’s a risk pretty often here anyway, I’ll take it.

There’s a LOT more to get done — I need to bring down the stock shelves, the folding table, & the cabinet I use to cure soap, & first I need to MAKE ROOM for all that, & it’s gonna be a complex process, because while I’m doing that I’m also going to be installing PROPER insulation up here, & putting plywood on top of that. I wish I could’ve worked on that over the summer, but with everything up here, there just wasn’t space …

… it’s gonna be a whole thing, & I honestly doubt I’m going to get through the entire insulation & plywood thing this winter. But we got through last winter with crappy insulation up here, so even a little bit is gonna be a HUGE improvement.

& having more SPACE for making soap & packing orders downstairs? Plus having Morgyn & Jasper being able to help without having to haul their way up the horrible stairs? That’s gonna help SO MUCH with Giftmas.

It’s gonna be AWESOME.

What projects have you got going that’ll make your life easier?

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originally posted on Patreon; support me over there to see posts a week early!

Not just for whacking into things!

*snrk* A bit humbling, that. But cool, too.

Medieval pits. Plus, trees.

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Somehow, even though scientists (and just regular folks) keep finding out new cool stuff, we never seem to run out of new cool stuff to find out, and it never gets old and boring to read about it, either...