Okay, let’s not pretend this has been a weekly thingy lately.

Tannhäuser is open, which means I am done working stupid hours and killing my hands, which means that after a few days of doing no sewing at all I can cautiously pick up my embroidery again.

However, the brain squirrels want what they want, so of course I instead spent my time today making more dumb hairpins that I, a 46 year old woman, will absolutely wear all the damn time.

There’s still some wet glue on the berry pins but if I wait for it to dry I won’t get around to posting today and it’s been long enough already.

BTW, when I say stupid hours spent hand sewing I mean it – I’m very much out of practice on industrial machines and can’t hope to match the speed of the full time stitchers since I don’t spend all day every day machine sewing anymore. But between growing up without access to a sewing machine 90% of the time and still wanting to make stuff, and spending a lot of my free time embroidering, my hand sewing is super fast and clean, so when we get down to the wire in the shop I get pulled in as a finisher doing closures, hems, beading, all that fun stuff. I also have the hang of sewing snaps on with the machine, so my hands do get a brief break from time to time when the lower snap can be machined on. Still, it means 10 1/2 to 11 hour days solidly sewing except for a couple of brief breaks, and that is too much. Even when I’m hyper focused on my embroidery and don’t want to stop I do make myself take long breaks pretty often so those long days of solidly hand sewing are HARD. But yay, it’s done, one more giant freaking Wagner show is on the stage.

Places to buy stuff!

• The Gamecrafter: your home for the new and slightly improved Neurotic Owl Tarot. AND Neurotic Owl’s Faerytale Tarot! https://tgc.link/Faerytaletarot
• TEEPUBLIC: mostly t-shirts, a few other products.  Watch for sales, when shirts drop from $20 to $14!
• REDBUBBLE: Just, I don’t know, a ton of different stuff.  T-shirts are more expensive than Teepublic, but there are a lot more options.
• AMAZON: Home of the Geeky Gals Coloring Book!  Daydreams and Whimsies!  AND NOW, The Neurotic Owl Compendium!
• https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/naralesser
• ETSY: paper dolls, a knitting bag pattern, and a bunch of vintage dolls of various sorts from my collection

Did I miss something?  I think that’s everything.

What’s making me happy this week:

We saw Waitress at TUTS last night and a. the cast was outstanding and it was such a joy, and b. their accessibility volunteers are SO GREAT, big shout out to Carmen who wheeled Mom everywhere she needed to be and made sure we were totally taken care of. If you have limited mobility and you’re going to the Hobby Center in Houston, call ahead and they will make sure you’re all set for a great night.