Category: Sewing

Cold War

autoimmune, embroidery, fencing, Friendship, Health, SCA, Sewing

Estrella War is just a day away for me, and this is how my part of the desert is looking this morning:

Yes, that’s my land, just behind the house. It wasn’t much, but it snowed last night, and it’s supposed to be cold and rainy in Queen Creek for a good bit of Estrella.

We’ve got a new canvas tent (that’s supposed to be warmer than modern nylon tents). We’ve got a heater. We’ve got a wool coat for me and a reversible wool/cotton cloak for my husband. We’ve got thermal underwear for nighttime. We’ve got blankets and thirty-degree-graded sleeping bags. We’ve got throw rugs for the floor of the tent (because the floor is a tarp, not canvas, and that will be cold to step on in the middle of the night). We’ve got warm hats. We’ve got rain boots and fuzzy boots and thick socks. We’re set–right?

I sure hope so. Last year it got so cold that our silicone-gel-filled pillows literally froze. Rock solid. Not comfy. We had the heater then, but the nylon tent we had wasn’t very good at retaining the heat, so the heater was almost useless. Almost. I was sore and achy and miserable every morning because my arthritis did not appreciate the cold. So this year we’re packing extra heat-conserving methods.

Am I looking forward to Estrella? Sure. I mean, I’ll get to see people I haven’t seen in a long time, hang out with friends, teach some embroidery, and maybe get a little fighting in. (The last one I’m not 100% sure on, because I have the royal embroidery still to finish…so that’s going to take away some of my time.) But I am not looking forward to the cold.

Yes, I know, cold in the desert? It’s true. It can get biting cold, especially at night, and it’s not fun going to the port-a-priv at 3am to sit on a freezing-cold plastic seat. Sometimes when we’re camping and it’s cold in the morning I hold it for an hour or more just because I’m dreading the trip to the priv and the ensuing frozen butt.

I don’t know how much posting I’ll get done at the event. I usually have a few hours in the morning where I’m up and awake but not able to do anything like embroider because of the lack of light and the fact that the rest of the camp is asleep. However, if it’s cold enough, I might not want to sit up on the laptop or even lie down with my phone to post something. Regardless, I’ll try to get my weekly newsletter out. I think I can manage at least that.

One thing is certain: I’ll be glad to get back to my warm, warm house once War is over. Even though it snowed last night, I haven’t been cold inside at all, unlike the apartments we lived in. So there’s that.

Horse of a different color

#books, #design, #dystopian, #nerd, #publishing, Abnormal, Art, Celebrity, Crafting, embroidery, Fandom, Geek, Interview, Marketing, Novel, Q&A, SCA, Sci-fi, Sewing, Social Media, Writing

I started the end of my royal embroidery project today. Granted, the “end” means two full hems that need to be embroidered, but….eh, details.

On the bright side, due to me being unable to math at 0400 this morning, the horse head designs that I’m stitching will have to be spaced out more to make it even….thus making fewer heads to stitch and saving me time in the long run. That wasn’t my intent, but the hems will still look good once they’re finished. Lucky for me I realized my error quickly, before I got too far into the design to take out what I’d done.

Lesson learned: Measure twice, add/subtract/multiply/divide twice, then place the design on the fabric and put on the hoop.

So, instead of stitching two dozen 3.5″ x 4.5″ knotwork horse heads, I’m stitching 16 of them. Thank the Gods for the Tim Gunn method of design: “Make it work.” (At least I didn’t have to use the Bob Ross method and turn my mistakes into birds. Wrong monarchs.)

I should be packing. Or doing laundry. Or something else. I’m of a one-track mind right now, though, so embroidery it is. Writing and the like will have to wait until later.

Oh! Speaking of writing–I’m being interviewed by my publisher, RhetAskew Publishing, on Twitter this evening. They’ve been doing a series of interviews with their authors, but due to my work schedule this is my first time being able to participate. 8PM PST, on the RhetAskew Twitter feed! (Or follow me @AJMullican–I’ll be tagged of course in the interview.) It’s kind of weird getting interviewed when just a couple years ago I was doing the interviewing of people. Strange how things come full circle.

War is coming, but I’m not ready

#books, #design, #dystopian, #nerd, #publishing, Abnormal, Art, costuming, Crafting, embroidery, Exercise, fencing, Insomnia, Marketing, Novel, Promotion, SCA, Sci-fi, Sewing, Stress, Time, Work, Writing

Next week is Estrella War, the biggest SCA war in this area of the country, and I have a lot to do still before we leave on Wednesday.

I have to repair a couple pieces of garb. I have to keep working on the embroidery for the King and Queen. I have to mentally prepare for the embroidery classes I’m going to teach (the actual physical prep is pretty much done). I have to do laundry. I have to pack my garb and any mundane clothes I want to bring. I have to pick up the Viking coat that my fencing teacher made for me.

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all I can think of right now. So despite the fact that after today I’m off work until the War is over, I’m still going to be quite busy.

I’m hoping to get a good start on the hem embroidery for Their Majesties by the end of the weekend. It should go quicker than the cuffs did, despite the additional details. I’m hoping. Fingers crossed. Lol

Even with War going on, I’ll have the good ol’ laptop handy to tap-tap-tap away whenever I have some free time. I’m not going to let my early a.m. insomnia go to waste just because I’m at an event! No, I’m going to keep busy with writing and editing in the wee hours while there’s not enough light to embroider by. Y’all can’t get rid of me that easily. 😉

I’ve added a subscription option to this page, as well as a newsletter that will be going out on a semi-regular basis. I’ll have tidbits about the projects I’m working on, links to blog posts, and other fun stuff. Keeping up with that should prove interesting, but I think if I set myself reminders on my Google calendar or something I’ll be okay.

Well, off to do war-like stuff now. Or embroidery. Or loading the dishwasher. Whatever my happy little butt decides to do. Lol

Can’t afford to heal the pains

#bipolar, anxiety, autoimmune, Depression, embroidery, Health, Mental Health, Sewing, Stress, Work

Healthcare in the U.S. sucks donkey balls.

Here’s the thing: pharmaceutical companies are able to charge out the freakin’ nose for stuff that’s basically essential for physical and mental health. I called my insurance’s compounding pharmacy for a refill of the latest biologic my rheumatologist prescribed for me. They informed me it would be two thousand plus dollars per injection (a monthly injection). That’s almost twice my mortgage! Does the medicine work for the rheumatoid arthritis? Doesn’t matter. Can’t afford twice my mortgage every month, so I’m not getting it.

It’s crazy. Two. Thousand. Dollars. A month. Most people can’t afford that even without mortgage and credit card debt and utilities and gas to-and-from work and medical insurance and… point is, it’s excessive. It’s punitive. It’s the pharmaceutical company saying ,”Fuck you, if you can’t shell out more than minimum wage’s monthly salary, you’ll just have to be in pain.”

Add to that the fact that I need to at some point find a urologist and a nephrologist and see my psychiatrist and call my rheumatologist (do you get the “gist” of it?)…Yeah. Copay city. I could afford it if I tighten up some things, but it’s getting out of hand. Long story short, a person can’t afford to be sick in the U.S. these days unless they’re in the upper tax brackets.

It’s all just another series of stressors that are ripping my psyche apart these days. Work is stressful. SCA life is stressful (at least until my royal embroidery project is done). Work is stressful. I feel work needs an extra mention, because I’m so stressed at work that it’s causing me to burst into tears any time I stop. I mean, I go on break, and the slightest trigger has me crying. I leave work, and again, I’m sobbing. Basically, I’ve been operating at such high stress levels lately that as soon as I release any of it I’m a big ol’ ball of tears. I’m hoping that my upcoming week-long vacation from the office, combined with the surgeon’s upcoming week-long vacation next month, eases enough of the stress that I can get things done. If not, I’ll be back at the psychiatrist’s office before my scheduled follow-up…crying. Again.

I know I’ll get through it. I always do. But just knowing that it’s getting harder and harder to even afford to take care of myself is overwhelming. How am I supposed to get myself well enough to function if I can’t afford the things I need to get well?

This isn’t really a political post. I’m sure there are plenty enough of those out there that are better-informed than I am. This is just a rant, a scream into the nothingness to release that pent-up frustration and get it off my chest.

Every which way but where I was scheduled

anxiety, Depression, embroidery, Health, Mental Health, Sewing, Stress, Work

Not even a week after I was “counseled” by a nursing director and the office administrator about the stress I’ve been undergoing lately, I have once again been thrown into the pattern of being dragged all over the office to do my job, others’ jobs, and any job in between they can find for me.

It’s not all the fault of administration or any direct supervisors. It’s a whole crapload of unfortunate events and circumstances, some preventable, some not, that has turned this week into a hellhole.

I’d write more in depth about that, but not only will it not accomplish anything, it would be…hmm, not quite libel, because it’s all true, but not looking good for the place of business I work at should anyone read this who knows where I work. So I’ll just leave it at “it sucked and did nothing to reduce my work-related stressors.”

Home has been better, for the most part, but I must say that coming home–from a trip to the grocery store after a long day at work, mind you–to find out that my husband was headed to Tucson for the evening and I was on my own for dinner may have added to at best exasperation, at worst yet more stress. I can kinda cook when need be, but most of the dishes for the cooking I wanted to do were in the dishwasher, which was running, so I made a salad. At least we had salad makings in the house.

The writing front has been quiet–like, Western-movie, tumbleweeds-bouncing-down-the-road-in-the-wind, crickets-chirping quiet. I’ve just been too consumed with work and embroidery.

Okay, so some of the embroidery has been my own fault. I decided to give myself a new project when I still had an important unfinished one. I have been bouncing back and forth betwixt the two, but I need to buckle down and focus on the more pressing one. The one for me, which I would like to get done before Estrella, will probably end up being a sample piece for the embroidery classes I plan on teaching.

Oh yeah. Those. I have to get the handouts ready and figure out what images I’m going to print for my students to trace onto the water-soluble stabilizer so they can get started on their own projects. There’s that, too.

Some day soon, possibly after Estrella, things will calm down. I’ll be able to sit and relax and not worry about a million little things fluttering around the back of my brain that need to get done.

Right now, though? Right now, I will have to suck it up and soldier on, and I might have to have some more “counseling” before it’s all said and done. Not gonna lie, a few more, er, extreme methods of getting out of work came to mind last night. Nothing that I’m going to attempt, but yeah, the darker thoughts came to the surface, and the urge was strong.

I’m stronger though. I’m stronger than the darkness, and I’ll crawl out of it every time.

Sew obsessed (or, a weekend alone)

#bipolar, #books, #design, #nerd, #publishing, anxiety, Art, Crafting, embroidery, Friendship, Mental Health, Musings, Novel, SCA, Sewing, Stress, Work, Writing

I know, I know, I’ve been a bad blogger. A bad author, even. I took a whole weekend off to myself, and I spent absolutely none of it writing. No blog posts, no Twitter hashtag games, no new progress on my WIP. I basically spent the weekend embroidering, with bits of eating and napping thrown in. I was a lump.

Today I’m back to the “real” world, the world of work and deadlines and what have you. So I’m back, for good or bad, until the next rare weekend off. Today I plan on doing the #amwriting hashtags, I plan on getting ready for work and going in and doing my job. I plan on adulting.

Not much adulting was achieved this weekend. I took some of the trash over to my parents’ house, emptied the dishwasher, put away the laundry….all at the last minute. Oh, and I ate a salad. One salad.

On the plus side, I’ve hardly thought about work at all. This is a good thing, because work is one of the main stressors in my life, and one that I can only do so much about. It’s not like I can take time off of work just to decompress (like I have been with the SCA). I have to go. That’s just all there is to it. Which sucks, because the stress in my life is showing, and one supervisor and an administrator both took me aside at separate times Friday to discuss how stressed I’ve been and how they can help. Fuck. I hate when the bipolar seeps out to where it’s visible. That’s no good.

I did some reading this weekend as well. 1,4,3 by Alicia Sophia, a fellow Askew author. It’s good so far, but I think I’ve come close to figuring out the ending, which sucks because I’m only halfway in. But who knows? Maybe she wrote it that way on purpose as a ruse. I could be surprised after all once I finish.

Lots of rest did my soul good, but I need to put back on the jet pack and hit the ground running today. Gotta work, gotta come home and write or embroider, gotta work on a lesson plan for the embroidery classes I’m going to teach at Estrella, etc etc etc. Got a lot to do, and less and less time in which to do it. Why do I do this to myself again?

I’ve also got the embroidery for Their Royal Majesties to finish before Estrella is over. I kinda was working on my own stuff mostly this weekend. Bad me. Stupid flighty brain. But again, it did me some good. Focus on me, have some “me time” where I’m doing things for myself.

I hope I don’t seem as stressed at work today. I don’t need another supervisor taking me aside and chatting with me about how stressed/distracted I am.

Soon I’ll be back to writing. After Estrella, maybe. Get serious about cranking out Book 3 and that fun collaboration with my Askew author friend Angelique Jordonna. Her book, Dani (which I’ve had the pleasure of reading ahead of release), is amazing, and I know our book will be amazing as well. Just gotta get that first draft out. Lol

Oh! One more thing: I found out that a Laurel was looking at the embroidery I did on my husband’s Viking hood and, from what he says, she seemed impressed, enough so that she said she wanted to talk to me about it. That makes me feel good, because while I did slack a bit on the timing of finishing it, I worked hard on that hood. Plus, it’s a good ego boost when a Laurel is impressed with your work. Here’s a look:

Guess that’s all the update I have. Time to get ready for the ol’ day job. Shower, get dressed, put on some semblance of makeup to pretty-fy myself. That kind of thing.

Oh, wait! I did a live streaming interview/roundtable with some other authors! That was cool af! Here’s the link to the YouTube recording (it’s an hour long, but it’s a fun watch).

Until the morrow, good readers!

Every cloud

#bipolar, Depression, embroidery, Health, Mental Health, Movies, Sewing, Stress, Thoughts, Time

This weekend has been nice. Low-key, home alone, and best of all: not sick as fuck.

I made myself retrospect a little too much, though. I was cruising Netflix, looking for something to watch, when I found a good movie. Silver Linings Playbook. Excellent flick, great acting….and maybe a little too real.

Being bipolar, I feel this movie on a visceral level. No, I’m not quite like Pat. Or Tiffany. Not really. I’ve never been hospitalized for my emotional state, never been that far off. But yeah, I’ve missed work over my mental state before. I’ve obsessed over failed relationships, I’ve written nutball letters/texts/emails to my exes, I’ve been the “backup.” I’ve slept around because my depression had me down, or because my mania had me horny. I’ve quit taking my meds more than once. So maybe I’m bits of Pat and Tiffany. I’m Piffany.

I’ve been doing okay for a while now. Well, mostly okay. I mean, I get depressed sometimes. I get manic. I’ve been on an embroidery kick this weekend, and I’m pretty sure it’s not completely deadline-induced. I’m probably manic. I mean, I’m tearing through these embroidery projects, stopping briefly to eat or go to the bathroom or take a catnap. But mainly I’ve been embroidering. To the point of dry skin and calluses on my fingertips.

The whole Pat thing happened to my brother a few years ago. Not the beating-a-man-almost-to-death thing, but the bad ending to a bad relationship that ultimately resulted in him being committed. I won’t go into it too much here, because it’s his story not mine, but it was scary to watch.

It was even scarier knowing that our great-grandfather died of psychosis. “Exhaustion in the progression of psychosis”–that was the CoD on his death certificate. He was so fucking crazy it killed him.

Since I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder before my brother was, I always assumed that was my eventual fate. Then my brother got diagnosed, and combined with his substance abuse issues he’s way worse off than me. He had his psychotic break in his mid-40s….the same age good ol’ Great-Granddad was when he died.

My brother didn’t die. We’ve got better meds now, better tech, better treatments. But guess what? This year I turn 40. Now, like I said, I’m not as bad off as my brother. So I’m not necessarily on a timeline here. The past doesn’t have to repeat itself. Maybe my brother’s incident was the repetition, and I’ll be passed over. Like the Christian thing. I dunno–I’m not the religious type. But maybe I don’t have to dread my mid-40s. Maybe I don’t have to go go go, to push myself so much, to worry about whether or not I’ll make it long enough to do the things I want to get done.

I want to finish my sci-fi series. I want to finish the collaboration I’m working on. I want to learn more about making garb and clothes and embroidery and get good enough at researching it all to become a Laurel. I want to learn more rapier techniques and practice enough to be good at them. And I want to lose this weight I’ve gained. I want so many things, and I think the back of my brain is telling me “You’ve got a few years left. Five, six max. You need to hurry up. You need to get your shit together while you have the mental capacity to do it.”

I gotta get that out of the back of my head. I gotta tell myself that there’s no deadline to insanity, that it’s not written. It’s not predestined. I don’t have to go crazy. I can stay sane, stay mostly stable, stay me.

I also have a secret weapon: my husband. Even if I do go crazy, I have him to keep me alive, to keep me from going so far down the hole that I can’t crawl back up.

That’s it. That’s my silver lining. That’s my ace in the hole.

Five or six years. I pass that, and I win. I beat history.

Sicko’s Log: 24 Hours Alone

#design, #nerd, costuming, Crafting, embroidery, Food, Geek, Health, Home, Novel, Plus size, SCA, Sewing, Sleep, Thoughts, Time, Writing

It’s been about a day since I got home from the pharmacy after spending almost four hours at the doc-in-the-box. What has a day alone been like? Let’s see…

I slept off and on quite a bit. I got a lot of progress made on my royal embroidery project. I wrote a chapter in one book and tweaked another chapter in a different book. I ate–a LOT. (Apparently bronchitis is not having an adverse effect on my appetite.) I watched several movies on Netflix. I listened to music. Somewhere in there, I had brief human contact when a friend came by to pick up my car to take it to my husband, who is out of town. Oh, and I’ve nearly completed a new Viking tunic for myself to wear at Estrella War.

I’m kinda proud of myself for that last one. Eyeballed the whole thing (I know, there are garb makers out there cringing), and only really had to make one small adjustment… more for comfort than anything, really, as it still would have fit, just been really big on me. I plan on adding trim woven by my husband (hint, hint honey) later on, as well as some embroidery done by yours truly.

Sure, if I wasn’t manic with pent-up energy from being confined to the house for over 24 hours, I might have stopped and done the embroidery prior to assembling the tunic. But no, I had it in my head that I was going to make a tunic, and that’s just what I’m doing.

I’ve got color blocking and front and back facing and top stitching and a whole bunch of stuff that I’ve never done without a pattern before. That, of course, has not deterred me. I took the fabric I had, looked at what it could become, and went with it.

I’ve still got to stitch on the sleeves and side gores, but it’s almost done. All in all, not bad for twenty four hours of mind-numbing solitude.

I’ve got maybe another day or so before my husband gets home. I’ve got some cleaning up to do around the house, but I’m wondering if I can swing an underdress before he’s back…..

Follow me on Instagram to see how the tunic turned out!

Stir crazy

#publishing, Crafting, embroidery, Flash Fiction, Health, Holiday, Home, Insomnia, New Year, Novel, SCA, Sewing, Sleep, Television, Writing

It’s not even 24 hours since I got back from urgent care–hell, not even 12 hours–and I’m already going mad puttering around the house.

The first few hours were okay. I sat in the dark and coughed until my throat was raw. Then I coughed some more. I stayed up until my friend came to pick up the car to take to my husband in Tucson (he’d gotten a ride up there, and until the doc-in-the-box diagnosed me with the bronchitis I already knew I had, I was going to be his ride home), and then I slept for a few hours. Woke up at my usual nothing-in-the-morning, and surprisingly felt a lot better. Cough isn’t as prolific. Sinuses aren’t draining. I can breathe better. It’s amazing what a little antibiotic pill will do, given time to work.

Speaking of work, the next couple of months are going to suck. I’ve got to use all my PTO to fill up as much of the past two weeks as I can, so when Estrella War comes I won’t have as much available to use. It’s gonna be tight money-wise until I catch up from this mess. I missed two and a half days this week from sickness, and a full day from the holiday. Add in the fact that I had very few hours last week because of the holidays, and it equals a crap paycheck.

Even though I kind of feel a bit better now, I don’t want to risk making things worse by doing too much. There’s a lot of cleaning to do around the house, but I have to remind myself that I am still sick and I shouldn’t be overdoing things. Still, I’ll try to get the house straightened up as well as I can before my husband comes home.

I’d say that this is good for my writing, but I can’t focus very long at a time to be able to compose things. I’ve got a bit of attention deficit right now, whether brought on by the NyQuil or the sickness or who knows what. I’ll embroider for like twenty minutes, write for twenty or thirty, stare at the screen daydreaming for an hour, and repeat the cycle. Now I’m cruising Netflix in search of mindless fluff to watch. The first show I picked–Diabolo–was too full of cheese. I couldn’t finish even one episode, let alone binge a season. So I’m on to Coraline now. Never seen that one through to the end, and a movie’s easier on the attention span. Don’t have to remember what happened in the last episode.

I feel bad that I’m missing my husband’s second time being feast steward for an SCA event. I wanted to be there to support him, but I need this time at home to recoup.

Maybe later today I’ll have a story to give you. I might drudge up some prompt or other, either a stock photo or a Pinterest prompt to get the creative juices flowing.

Pan’s Labyrinth! That’s the ticket. I can listen to the Spanish while I do other stuff and let the visuals seep into my subconscious. Then, when I’m in the proper mindset, I can drum up some new writing.

The persistent plague

#books, #dystopian, #publishing, costuming, Crafting, Health, Home, Novel, SCA, Sci-fi, Sewing, Sleep, Writing

Took yesterday off work. Took today off too. I’m still pretty sick, and nothing seems to help for very long.

Our roommate finished the Persian garb for me, bless her heart, and she even adjusted my husband’s coat when it turned out that the one I made was too big. I’m really grateful… I need to think up something nice to do for her.

I’ll have most of the day to myself today. Hubby works a couple of hours, but then he and our roommate are going to Tucson for the weekend’s event. He’s organizing a huge Middle Eastern feast, so he’s got a lot to do. Me? I’m going to show up at the event and wear my garb and maybe make a last-minute scarf to cover my mouth when I’m not eating, because I don’t really want to get anyone else sick.

Normally right now I’m on the couch, writing or something, but this morning I’m back in bed after reading the most current chapter in the collaboration I’m working on. I’ll write my chapter later today. Now I rest.

The cough is dry yet not. I still can’t catch my breath, and my sinuses are a hot mess. I’ve got a vaporizer going above me on the headboard (courtesy of the roommate–I really need to get her something nice), and I’ve got NyQuil freshly on board.

Tomorrow I’ll be better. (I’m mostly trying to convince myself here.) The cough won’t give me a headache any more, and I’ll be able to breathe.

I’m not sure I’ve convinced myself yet. But one thing I know for sure: I’ll get my chapter done, plus some work on Book 3. Gotta keep working on at least one front, even if it’s not by-the-hour work.

I realize that I’m rambling. Sorry. Guess the NyQuil is taking effect. Good. More sleep. That’s what I need.