Crafty Wonderland Super Colossal Sale

Beautiful old building used by Norse people in Portland. I'm part Norwegian. Somehow I think I'm just not Norse enough to hang out there socially.

This line of people looks innocuous enough until you walk around the corner of the building and observe that the line extends all the way down one whole city block. There was a perpetual line of people waiting to get in for over five hours. As though it was some crazy hip night club and not a craft show.

Four feet is kind of short for a person, it's breathlessly inadequate for a booth size for two crafters (Lisa E. and I shared a booth) let alone one. The lone crafter next to us was feeling claustrophobic too.

A non stop sea of people all day long. I have never been to a craft fair, as a vendor or as a shopper, that was this packed. The word sardines comes to mind. Luckily, most of the people at the show were not stinky.

Some highlights of our craft show experience:

• It was insanely packed in Norse Hall all day long. Next year, either the venue needs to be twice the size it was this year (but not with twice the vendors), or there need to be half the vendors so that the vendors can actually breath. It was unhealthy packed in there. Which is great for business to a certain degree except that when I took a break to look around, I gave up trying to look at crafts after about ten minutes because being jostled by way-too-cool citizens is not my idea of a nice shopping experience.

• The music was mostly good with some Clash, some Johnny Cash, and some music I'm not nearly hip enough to have recognized. But the Christmas music that was played periodically was obnoxious. Most notably queasy making was the awful rendition of "All I want for Christmas" which I always loath in the best of circumstances...this version went on forever with more missing tooth noises than any other version I've ever been forced to endure. Why anyone thinks it's cute is a mystery to me.

• The quality of the vendors present was really high, from what little I was actually able to observe. The ladies that put on the show really know how to pick interesting and different work.

• Portlanders have an endless amount of money to spend on really bad haircuts and jewelry, but not so much money to spend on other things. I'm glad my friends have repeatedly talked me out of cutting myself some short bangs. There were so many super short bangs present and 99% of the people sporting them looked dreadful with them. If you have a really long narrow face it is an especially unfortunate look. It was either uber-short bangs or the crazy shag cut that predominated the floor.

• There were some gorgeous coats there. Also, there were some of the most gorgeous and stylish plus-size ladies I've ever seen and they shamed me, yes they did. I am a fat old hag with a frumpy wardrobe while these specimens of gorgeousness were like amazonian queens who refuse to be put down by the barbies in the world. I am humbled. I now know that there is no reason why I should not wear a cape or a fabulous classic tweed coat, so long as I wear some make up with it and carry myself like I am dynamite.

• There was one lady present who was so glaringly out of place I couldn't stop staring at her. She looked like Donatella Versace with less collagen in her lips (Donatella's lips may have no collagen in them, but they look like they do), she looked so completely Southern California. I knew, in a vague way, that there is a huge difference between Portland style and LA style, but never was it made so clear. I vastly prefer the Portland style, short bangs and all. (The lady in question didn't deserve to be stared at by me, by the way, she flashed me a very sweet smile on more than one occasion which I returned in kind.)

• People LOVED the bath bombs. I brought forty eight of them and sold at least 36 of them. The grapefruit-ginger were completely sold out. One particularly nice (very bearded) man returned to our booth to smell them a couple of times, bought one, then returned a half an hour later to buy another one.

• People also LOVED the pot holders. I almost immediately sold out of the pin-up ones. I sold a lot of pot holders. No one bought any aprons. No one bought any of Lisa's gorgeous felted purses. But apparently Portland has been short of pot holders until I came along.

• My humor just might be too edgy for everyone besides prison inmates. Philip finally printed my "needle junkie" knitting needle t-shirts and I sold only one. One lady commented that she thought it was too real looking, too "real life" for Portland. This reminds me of the fact that when I was a teenager living in Ashland (southern Oregon) I only knew Portland as the great big heroine capital of the state. Other teens would visit and tell tales of all the drug using going on up there, especially the heroine. I have been thinking that Portland would be the perfect place for my t-shirts, but now I'm not sure if any place is the best place for them. Now I'm wondering if me and my humor should be canned.

• Everyone, everywhere are having babies. Babies are EVERYWHERE. I can see how overpopulating the earth may just be a real issue. It isn't just the Catholics. It isn't just the poor uneducated people in third world countries- in Oregon it's EVERYONE. No judgments here people, just an observation. I've never seen so many kids and babies at a single craft fair.*

I cannot count on my fingers how many people have told me that Portland is the best place for my products. That on 23rd street I would sell out! That on Mississippi street I would totally ROCK! That anywhere in Portland my stuff would sell like crazy. All the time I had my store people would tell me that. (not just you, Angela, LOTS of people). I have been thinking that that must be true. People will get me in Portland...in my mind I kept thinking that if only I could do a craft fair in Portland I would do really well. Dustpan Alley would just take off... I no longer believe that. I had the edgiest crowd of what I thought would be my target customers, hundreds of them, and I didn't sell a single apron and only one edgy knitting shirt. There is only one place my aprons have ever sold so well that it was uncomfortable keeping up with the demand: my own store in my own little uncool town. You know what's weird? People would visit from Portland and buy them, but when I take them to the people in Portland, they don't buy them. ?????

But it doesn't matter anyway. None of that matters. Because I am not going to pursue a life of crafting for a living. I will make some stuff, I will hopefully sell some stuff but it is so amazingly clear that the life of a professional crafter is not for me. I hate doing craft fairs. I hate staying up until two am to sew things that people don't actually want to buy. Hell, I don't like staying up until two am to sew things that people do want to buy.

I may have made enough money this month to avoid having to get a job next month, which is great since no one is hiring in January anyway. So I'm amazingly thankful for the money people have spent on my stuff this month. I'm not at all ungrateful. But I've also never been so damn tired in my life. Except for when Max was eighteen months old and doing the dishes felt like running a marathon.

Which leads me to the other realization I've had this week which I've mentioned in passing: I am in the middle of a low level persistent depression and I can now tell for sure that my medication isn't working how it should be. Every minute I haven't been sewing this month I have spent lying on my bed willing myself to get up and go to the craft room to make something, or to do the dishes, or some laundry, or SOMETHING other than laying on the bed looking at the ceiling feeling listless and bone tired. Returning phone calls requires a half an hour pep talk first, then another half an hour to recover my energy after it has been sapped by talking to another human being. I can't bring myself to sit down and sort through the bills which means that everything will be late this month.

I am not feeling sad though. Depression does not always mean feeling sad. One of the hallmarks of depression is listlessness and a lack of energy. Sometimes when depressed people talk about not being able to get out of bed in the morning, they don't mean "because I am so sad" but "because my body feels like a carcass full of lead."

Anyway, I promise myself to address this just as soon as this week is over and I'm looking at Christmas and the Holiday Market from behind me. To my friends and family: there will probably be a great shortage of cards and packages this year. So sorry. I will let them know by e-mail just as soon as I can work up the energy to do it...



*In California it isn't nearly so unusual to have just one kid, but now that I think about it, I don't know a single other family here in Oregon with just one kid who isn't planning on having more. In fact, here in Oregon, it's even kind of weird to just have two kids. In this state it seems that most people have, or are planning to have, or would have if they could have, at least three children or more. I have met more people here who have three or more children than I've met in all my years in California. I'm not saying it's better or worse or bad or good, just interesting how different it is here. In California, the people who had more than two kids were kind of viewed as freaks. Here in Oregon, I'm the freak.**

**Let's be honest, I'm the freak everywhere I go.

Dog Eared

Remember when the mail used to arrive in the mailbox instead of being shoved through a hole in the door where the dog turns into a vicious rabid beast and tries to rip fingers off of the postman? Back when there was no dog to haul favorite publications into "secret" corners where she drags all forbidden treats to maul them in private? Ah, those were good times. Philip isn't a magazine whore like I am, but there are three publications he looks forward to: The Rivendell Reader, Dirt Rag, and Bicycle Quarterly. This last treasure was hauled off to the "secret" corner and was violated by my dog's teeth.

Indeed, they can look so beseechingly up at you and you wonder how the heck such a compact package of muscle, teeth, claws, and dense black fur could bring upon one house such mayhem, such disorder, such complete destruction of personal property.

No I don't. I don't wonder at all. The only thing I wonder about is how I fell under her spell in the first place. It's the irony of the black dog.* The irony being that in twenty five years of being terrified of dogs, I was always most terrified of black labs. And now I have one. And I love her.

I can feel that this post is going to wander all over the place. I want to report that Max has had two temper tantrums and neither one brought about a blood bath. One of them was a spectacular show of screams and wails and hyperventilating, a show which only last week would have brought on the side show. So that's promising. Hopefully not misleading.

I have been so happy canning food and picking produce at the farm, riding my scooter on the back roads in the countryside, and watching my jars fill up. This is the kind of thing I love to do the most. I was bound to crash from that high. It's inevitable. I started thinking about how I have to look for part time work. I checked Craig's list for jobs. Then I checked the local newspaper listings. And then I got really depressed and panicky at the same time. My favorite emotional cocktail. I don't want to work outside my home. It's not because I think I'm some kind of princess. It's not that I don't want to help Philip keep us afloat.

I started thinking that here I have this company, I have stuff to sell, I have this business that I've painstakingly built into a multi-dollar institution. I realized that what I ought to do is go get some wholesale accounts. There are lots of cool stores in Portland. Then I was thinking about how I want to produce my apron patterns to sell to quilt shops. So I actually did what I've been meaning to do for all eternity and went to a couple of local print shops to find out how much it would cost to print one. The answer is: they will happily take your left breast for one large printed page. It has become immediately apparent that I can't produce them commercially to sell wholesale. It's too expensive. I don't know where other people get them printed and how many they have to print to make it affordable, but they aren't doing it through my local copy shops.

So my bright idea plummeted and my mood went south with it. I got to feeling like every which way I turn, I am no longer capable of earning a living. Even if I want to. I could work at a mushroom farm for $8.00 an hour and put Max in daycare. That sounds like fun. (Actually I keep thinking about it. Unfortunately I don't think we could afford daycare with a salary like that.) I'm not qualified for most jobs now. It's the classic risk of staying home to be with your child for any length of time. You lose your spot in the professional world.

I would much prefer working on my business. I would like to find out how to promote my web-store, how to bring customers to my shop directly rather than shoot myself in the foot trying to make it doing wholesale. I would like to have my company do well enough that I don't have to work for someone else. First of all, to do that requires time and energy. Two things I won't have any of if I work outside the home even part time.

Secondly, I have not regained my confidence. Remember how I'm the HUMAN MONEY REPELLENT? Is my company worth working on? I've been doing it for three years and it's gone almost nowhere. They say a business takes a long time to establish, but how do I know if it's headed in the right direction? How do I know if it's worth giving CPR to it? This used to be the kind of stuff my gut would help me with. I have no inner compass anymore when it comes to business. The only thing my gut is telling me is that I SUCK AT BUSINESS.

Which reminds me: I found out yesterday that I can take a seminar on running my small business and making it more profitable for the small class price of $595. Doesn't it seem like anyone (like myself) who really needs a class like this is probably not in a position to hand over what amounts to their life savings? It seems to me that a good business decision would be to keep my $595 in my pocket.

Anyway...Philip thinks I should work on my business. Since the refinance went through we have a little leeway before the other shoe drops on our life as poor people. His saying I should work on my business shows a level of confidence in me that I don't think is much deserved. I'm scared to make the wrong decisions. I'm worried that I've already been given the message to stop trying to make money with my own designs and get myself to the mushroom farm where I'll at least get exercise. Is there any reason I should believe that if I do some more work on my company that it'll start picking up?

I started writing mental letters (a favorite past time) to Moda:

"To whom it may concern at Moda,

I think it would be a big mistake not to hire me to come up with great ideas for your "Sliced Bread" line.

Sincerely,
The Human Money Repellent"

I do have lots of great ideas. My head is full of them. (Even as I write this I am wondering if that's actually true.) If I can't use them, wouldn't they be a great asset to someone else?

I really don't know what to do. I don't know what's the smart choice. I know I can't do everything. I know a direction has to be chosen. I think this not knowing what to do is payback for all the times I have been exacerbated by other people not being able to decide what to do. Here's me: with their shoes on.

Why oh why did Max's Magic Eight-ball kick the bucket??!!!!

Philip has basically decided for me. He wants me to work on my company. So we agreed that I would spend the next week finishing up my canning projects, then clean and begin the torturous process of cleaning up and organizing the garage, and then I will hunker down and start to clean up and organize my business (which requires that the garage be cleaned and organized since it's filled with my business and store things). I just hope I'm not wasting more time and energy on a horse with a broken leg.

I need an expert to step in and advise. If any of you are experts, please step in and advise. Otherwise, just watch and see what happens like I'm going to be doing.

In other news, it is a gorgeous day out there. Fall is here. I feel it in the air and fall is a great time to not be depressed. I love the cold as it creeps into the sunshine. I love how it grabs at your bones and fills them with crisp energy. I'm going to go pick more tomatoes and enjoy my last few days of "care free" homesteading fun. Doing the things I'm best at doing. And listening to the first four songs on the Wilco album that features Billy Bragg and is nothing but Woody Guthrie songs and poems made into songs. The same four songs...OVER...AND...OVER.

The poor neighbors.

*I really think this should be the title of a book. Since I'm not writing any books but keep coming up with great titles for them, I wonder if I could come up with a career based on selling book titles to authors?

Update: I have had a chat with a good friend who has helped me begin to clear away all the extraneous crap that stands between me and doing what I want to be doing. What I need to be doing. I can tell you that I am already breathing more deeply. She's going to help me come up with an ORGANIZED plan. This is why we have friends. I will report more on this at a later time when I am not in need of blasting music before the kid comes home from school. I don't know if there's an end to this tunnel, but I do know there's some light somewhere ahead of me in it. I hope it's not "white" and filled with Jesus.

Tell me when I stop falling

(Sincere Apologies to my mother and Angeleen.)

I have just finished sewing a cobbler apron for myself. That's not entirely true, I finished everything but the pockets because by then I had tried it on three times and each time I saw myself in it my heart beat just a little faster and my blood pressure was either rising or dropping, I'm not actually sure, but it feels lighter in my head right now. And not because I've junked all the crap that hangs out in there. I didn't finish the pockets because, well, why bother? I sure as hell am not going to get caught dead wearing that garment. Another five hours of my time completely wasted in the effort to spruce myself up.

An effort that has been making me feel increasingly worse about myself. I can't do it anymore. I can't dress the part of my own store because I don't FUCKING FIT IN A GOD DAMNED THING. Oh, and it isn't just a question of how I look in them, because how vain would that be? Anyone who's been seriously overweight knows what I mean when I say that nothing feels right. Nothing is comfortable.

I don't know how to come back down this road. The one that got me in this awful physical place. My doctor would like me to return to therapy, and I want to. I do. I need to, because right now I have no retreat. Every effort I make to help myself feel better about how I look endlessly rebounds on me, makes me want more beer, more cookies, more cheese, more potatoes. Which makes me fatter. And fatter.

Oh my god. This path is going to turn me into a six hundred pound woman unable to get through her own front door.

You know, when I weighed 155 pounds and was trying to get used to the fact that that was twenty pounds more than I was used to carrying around on my body, I didn't know I could feel this much worse about myself. Back then I just made myself new clothes and because my body was still an average size, I was able to change my clothes and that was it. I felt so much better. I didn't know a person could hate their own body as much as I do right now. I don't even have the words to tell you how much I hate it because the words are so ugly I almost made myself retch just thinking them in my own head.

It isn't that being heavy is so unattractive, because I don't actually see it that way. I see other women who have the same body that I do and none of the same thoughts come to me. I only see all the things that make them attractive. Except for in myself.

It's impossible for me to love my own body when it has so deeply disappointed me. It let me down first by breaking in a stupid fluke of a fall that shouldn't have even bruised anything, let alone fractured my hip socket in five places. It's been down hill ever since. Now it disappoints me every time I try to rectify the damage I did to my body while lying around in bed unable to walk. All that cheese. All that beer. All that sugar. I try to get back into the exercise routines and my body fails me. My joints hurt. My back goes out. My feet hurt.

I am so angry at myself for having let things get this far that I just want to punish myself. So instead of treating my body like some kind of fruity temple, I just keep trashing it. But now it's totally out of control. I can't seem to get the reins back into my hands. It's like the Devil is driving this truck of a body and all I can do is watch this long slow motion wreck careen itself off of a cliff.

How much farther do I need to fall before I hit the bottom of this personal quarry?

I am supposed to be dressing the part of my June Cleaver dream. But I can't. I just bought more fabric and patterns yesterday to sew some new clothes, so that I will look cuter. More vintage or retro inspired. I was depressed choosing my patterns because I knew what waited for me on the other end of the project: disappointment. But I went ahead and started with a cobbler apron in hopes that it would be more comfortable and attractive on me than the cocktail aprons that either have to be tied just under my boobs or completely underneath my belly because they won't stay tied where they should be tied around my "waist".

I just can't do it. It's killing me inside. I need to wear black, I need to wear indistinct clothing that I couldn't care a rat's ass about because if I try to go ahead and wear the kind of clothes I actually like then I will constantly be reminded of my disappointment, my anger, and my shame that I used to actually look good in these same styles.

I was a plus size twenty pounds ago. I was a plus size forty pounds ago. So it's not like I'm a size 8 person freaking out because I'm almost a size 10. Throughout my life people have always been surprised to find out what size I am; no matter what size I am people always think I couldn't possibly be that size. The reason for this interesting phenomenon is (in my opinion) that I don't dress in things I know I can't pull off at whatever size I am. Style is something I have been avidly interested in for my whole life. The fit of clothes, how they look best on people is something I know a lot about. As subject to personal taste as style is, there are general rules to follow if you want to look nice and I know what they are.

There are only two things I can pull off right now and neither of them look cute, stylish, cool, retro, or remotely memorable.

I'm not saying this to be mean to myself. This is just the way it is. Anything else would just be an attempt to massage a very bruised ego. This is useless because inevitably I run into a reflective window or a mirror and it speaks very plainly.

Measurements don't lie.

I suppose it would shock everyone to know that the life I'm leading is quite unhealthy for me. It's much to busy. Much too stressful. I have an entrepreneurial spirit but a rather unstable nervous system, the two do not coexist easily. I've worked so hard to build what I'm building and it has reminded me of how much better my life was as a housewife/stay at home mom. My kid has suffered. My spouse has suffered. And I am suffering from the constant attention our business requires. Attention that is taken away from our home, our quality of life, and our well being.

Having a store is not the reason I'm fat. It's just the reason I feel incapable of doing anything about it. I have no time to plan for exercise, to have quiet reflective moments in which to calm my nerves, to bake bread, to fold my laundry, and to cook nutritious food. The best years of my entire life (so far) were the ones I spent staying home. I never once felt trapped by staying home. I didn't have time. I was just as busy as I am now, it's just that all my busyness added so much to our quality of life. I got a sense of deep satisfaction from it.

Unfortunately I can't stop what I'm doing because it's not as though there's any other income options on the horizon. We can't pay the bills on nothing. We already know that.

I will go make a couple of head scarves and I promise to wear them every day to work. I will keep on wearing make up and trying to look nice for my store. But I am not going to keep trying to figure out a way to wear stylish clothes a la June Cleaver, because I am now deeply depressed over it and I don't think digging myself a deeper hole is a good idea.

I'm so sorry mom and Angeleen.