Triage

The fuzzy camera phone quality and unnatural lighting of this photo make me cringe, but worse yet is the broken down sewing machine it captures. Despite being a workhorse, "The Beast" (as I so lovingly refer to my machine), is currently undergoing some pricey repairs after a belt came loose out of the blue a bit ago. Once the folks at the repair shop got it out of me that the ole girl had never even had a tune-up, they looked at me like I was pretty much the biggest dolt who'd ever operated a sewing machine. It's very possible that I am since, apparently, the belt was just the tip of the iceberg. I got her new in 2008 and have used her every single week since, so I really should have had her gone over a year ago at least, but it honestly hadn't occurred to me to do much as long as she was working just fine. Serves me right I suppose!

I've been without her for a week now and hope she'll be back in fighting shape soon, but can I just say, I feel a little weird...ok surprised and a lot weird...about how much I have missed her? I have to laugh about it, but I am going through some serious withdrawal symptoms and got a little panicked when I actually had to walk out of the store without her and figure out what I was going to do with myself in the meantime.

I've cut fabric for several projects so I'll be all ready to go once I can pick her back up and am also working on some large non-etsy projects for friend's weddings. Considering all this, and the fact that I've got a lot of "real job" stuff to get through before grad school starts back up in a few weeks, I've decided to put the etsy shop in vacation mode until then so I can start the semester off completely caught up and...well, sane. At least that is the ideal that I am striving for  :) It's so good to have goals, big and small!