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real life

A 3621-post collection

No business today

Chaos is due to seek help in Maroochydore again. And it's one heck of a long-ass trip there and back. The sooner that the nearer clinic has help for her, the better.

The metallic sharpies have a nib width that's too wide for legible printing, so Beloved and I went on an emergency run to Officeworks by way of Spotlight for something a little narrower. So now we won a double brace of metallic gel pens that are, quite frankly, made of awesome.

$500 3D printer + $5 gel pen + 50c zip tie == firkin genius.

We're still in the testing stage, and the bed needs straightening, but it is most definitely there.

Once it's all working, I can print fifty, bifircate them, punch holes in them, and have one hundred cards almost ready for shipping. We just need a rig to assist in the folding.

I want my first products to look as professional as if they'd come out of a factory, instead of off my kitchen table. This might bite me in the arse, later on... but I think looking professional will get me return business.

Meanwhile, once I'm done with today's story... I will be taking my lappy with me so I can work on something while I'm out. I'm putting together my nut notes for my upcoming WIP, Beauties and the Beastly. A steampunk adventure with werewolves, genderfluid heroes, gays that live, and assorted nonsense.

It's based [very loosely now] on that gifset that shows Victorian ladies how to escape werewolves with perfume and petticoats. I might yet have a scene like it in the book. Someone find it for me so I can link it tomorrow?

The struggle continues...

It takes longer to twist a piece of wire into being a pin than it does to measure the firkin thing. I have proof.

[Shown here: two rectangular takeout boxes, one with bits of cut wire in it, and the other with wires bent to serve as pins]

That's three hours' work. With extra swearing at the pliers I have because the spring is firkin dodgy. I have to press it back into place between pins or suffer the consequences.

The first

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Fears Allaid!

I was worried that the gold wire I have would be too weak to support the usual wear and tear on earrings. As it turns out, even though it's scary thin and scary flexible, it's also scary strong. It's not going to bend, warp or mutilate those beads off of itself in a hurry.

I am going to have to warn my customers that the strands may bend easily, and give them instructions on how to fix that if they're bothered.

Turning

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SNAFU

My plans have, once again, gang aft agley. The bronze pins are too thick for some of my seed beads, so unless I want to slow down and find the wide-bore ones, I'm going to have to make my own from the wire I have. Turns out the holes are too small for any kind of pin.

Good news: I don't have to go trawling for findings again.
Bad news: A majority of my time, today, is going to be spent on

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So close...

I really want to be able to start making earrings on Monday. I have a plausible workspace set up. I just need to sort all my beads, findings, and whatnot before tomorrow.

If I can put in a minimum of two hours' work a day on designs, then that means stock in abundance. I know that if I put in too many hours at jewellery, my body pays for it.

I'm in the last stretch of bead sorting. Which means that I've

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Beloved bought me Factorio!

So you know where the rest of my weekend is going. Lol.

But first, my usual nonse and a call to MeMum. Because family is important and all that.

And in the unlikely event that I get bored with Factorio (more likely to be waiting for my machines to accomplish a thing) I have beads to sort. Small beads. Which means that I finally busted out my Aldi's magnifying lamp. Huzzah.

Good stuff: No assembly required.

Bad stuff: I need the right

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Intense, repetative, and thankless

All efforts to translate Adapting into Markup by automated means have failed abominably. Which means that I am left with copy-pasting text and then editing in the italics.

And when I've had enough of doing that, I go to my unsorted beads and frelling sort some of those shits out.

The lovely spouted bowl MeMum found for me is not that great with small, faceted beads. Those little shits tend to clump, so pouring large volumes of them into wee baggies is

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Knuckle down, buckle down...

I'm doing my first edit on Adapting today. I might even convince myself to transfer the entire text into Markup, so that Beloved will have an easier time making it dance for me. The more work I do beforehand, the less time it takes for Beloved to have it ready for any beta readers.

I'm thinking of sending out a new appeal. I can rely on MeMum and a single Friendo, and if I am lucky and can get Beloved to get

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Beads, glorious beads!

I've got loads of the fuckers, and I'm planning to get some more. Turns out the local post office has a jewellery stand with some interesting pieces I could definitely use. Alas, I have to wait for next payday.

So if I am still going there to collect parcels, I might grab me some nice looking beads to fluff out my already huge collection of interesting shiny things.

MeMum managed to secure a good two kilos or so from her own sources.

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::Zombie Chewbacca noises::

Woke up at roughly 1:30 AM. Spotty, intermittent sleep until 5AM when my braid decided that, yes, going into slumber was a great idea.

And then, half an hour later, Rabbit started saying 'good morning' to everyone. 5:30 Am, after a rough night like that one, is the time that I least appreciate Steam Powered Giraffe. But I get over it quickly enough.

My gaseous plans to fetch batteries or shop around for cabochons on the cheap are currently shelved.

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Miss Chaos is 11 today!

Eleven years ago, my life was made infinitely more interesting by the arrival of a slightly strange little girl.

Yesterday, she got as much purple and sparkle as we could mutually supply. Sometimes in the same thing.

And she also got to run around like a mad thing at Calamvale district park for a majority of the day. Good news - I can do moderately stable braid crowns by doing additive braids all the way around and then weaving the ends through

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Party time!

I've done my math on the matter and I reckon we should take off for our party at the park long about 9. That gives us enough time to get there, fetch MeMum, and do any other setting up before everyone else gets there.

It's just immediate family. We had no time to invite friends. And it's probably for the best because Chaos gets overstimulated just thinking about parties. Having a host of folks, food, and presents there might make her vibrate

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It's raining findings!

There's a definite difference between buying in person and buying online. And it could be solved with ONE solution.

An adult human hand.

Not everyone understands centimetres. Not everyone expects centimetres to pop up on a findings site where your average measurement is in millimetres.

So I've wound up with nonse like this:

[Shown here, a "feather" finding that overflows my palm]

[Shown here, a "leaf" finding as long as my pinkie finger]

The human hand is a universal indicator of scale.

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Busy Times

The weather is changing and I can literally feel it. The usual low pressure system warning has clung to my head in a band formation. Meaning that I ache across both eye sockets, my teeth, and the nape of my neck.

The chill turn of the weather doesn't help, either.

Something else has come by my mailbox, but I have to go and collect it locally. Which implies that it was too big to jam into the mailbox. Which, in turn, has

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My calendar is full

Driving to and from Tullagawupwup. 3AM wake-up against my will. A dire need for coffee and a dire need for air.

And one of my nineteen parcels arrived, but it wasn't any of the ones that I can confirm as being in Sydney.

Evidently, Aus!Customs has no qualms about a quarter cup's worth of glass shrapnel seed beads. I kid, of course. I'm not going through all this shit just so some forensics mook can dig it out of the scenery.

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