Carving & Weaving with Whales & Dragons

Well the Summer hasn't been without excitement, so far the dishwasher has broken, the dryer has broken, and I have fought off not one but two seperate attempts of yellow jackets making a nest in the wall by my back door rendering that exit useless. But it hasn't been all bad. Thanks to Keto Ben seems to be so much better and I am feeling amazing. But I digress, that is not the point of this post, so let's get on with the show!

I stopped making my "Wild Weaver" band shuttles a couple of years ago when my life fell apart and no one wanted to buy them anymore, so I shut down my etsy shop and put away my carving tools and boxed up my remaining shuttles. There were a few random requests but overall people seemed to have lost interest and they are not all that easy to make, so I just didn't make any more.

Flash forward to last month, and I can't pay my bills, so I dug out the remaining shuttles and decided to take what I could get for them IF I could sell any at all and voila! I sold all but one! Now I find myself making more of them. I have 11 in the works but working time is pretty slow and I have had all these distractions plus the weather does not always cooperate with working outside but I am started on them now and will get back into the groove and start producing them a bit faster, hopefully.

All I have been able to make so far is a golden dragon and I am working on a blue sperm whale. I'd like to keep the whale but if someone wants it I can always make another one because I'd also like to keep the lights on, so if you ever wanted a whale or dragon or bunny or sheep shuttle you can find these listed for sale on my facebook page.  As I finish them I will put them into a sale album there and they will all be sold first come, first served. I need a better system to sell them but I don't have anything set up for that now so will we just have to manage as best as possible in the short term. 


If you like what I do and want to help me keep doing it buit don't need any artwork right now, please consider buying me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/ghosthorsestudios

A Doe, A Deer

I'm really trying to get myself together here and produce enough to pay my bills before they are late, but my art studio is still a disaster, so I have cleared out a small space and have set up a dedicated place to paint these shuttles. So far so good but it's already 4:30pm 😐

Anyway, I had just been taking a picture to share on my Instagram feed of my new little workspace when I looked outside the window and saw this little doe browsing past...

THIS - watching deer walk past my window unafraid - is the only thing I really love about this house... and why I am hesitant to move to the city in spite of how much easier it might be to find a job, have access to things and just generally get around in life.

This makes me want to sell my house here to some fat rich retiree and buy a nice old farm house in New England that's big enough to house some large looms, a real woodworking shop, an art studio and with enough land to have my own woods for wildlife watching and photography and pasture and a barn to raise a few animals and put in a geothermally heated solar lighted greenhouse to extend the growing season and I could have horses again, maybe even a sleigh... and take up snowshoeing and hiking again like I did in Montana...

But for today, I'll just enjoy the deer...

Just When Things Start To Go Better.... BOOM!

So, there I was, working away... multitasking... I was outside cutting some shuttles out and also I had just put a Boston Butt in the oven for several dinners this week (really cheap cut pork roast with lots of fat, great for keto and my tiny budget @ about $1/serving) I had put a load of laundry into my ancient washer and it was washing away...

so far so good... Then I came in to check on the roast and put the laundry into the dryer before going back out to start the carving and it would not start... it has had issues for a while now, but I guess my dryer has finally died... What's worse, it may have taken the wiring with it or at least the plug? I don't know. I just know that I am struggling to come up with enough money to just pay the bills this month and I can't replace the dryer, or the wiring, and Ben is not really up to dealing with it, and electrical things are above my pay grade. 😥 I don't even have a clothes line to hang my clothes on without driving into town and buying one, because the one I used to have got so moldy and gross from being outside here where it always rains that I took it down years ago. I guess I need to find an indoor clothes drying rack or something... but that's not in my budget this month either. What's a girl to do?

So now instead of working on shuttles today to hopefully sell enough to pay the bills I am trying to find places to hang our wet laundry and not to cry.

Maybe I should just pack all of my tools back inside and put everything away and go see if there is anything I can afford to buy at wal-mart? But that's 15 miles from my house so with evening traffic and lines and waiting, that's probably an hour and a half round trip and they may not have anything in the store I want or can afford (they often don't and you can't always check online) and I have a roast in the oven so I can't really leave the house! I guess I will just just hang things around in the house and see if I can buy a rack online that may be here by next week... But what about the dryer? Should I just take the dryer out (assuming I can even do that by myself) and set it on the road by my house with a sign that says "free" and just hope it disappears? I have no way to haul it off to the dump even if I could afford to do that but maybe someone else could fix it? I have no idea what to do... the dishwasher also died a while back too, so it also has to be taken out and I have to try to fix the floor where it leaked.

Honestly, I don't have any idea what I am doing... or what to do... If you want to help me get through this disaster and you are a weaver, please consider buying one of my shuttles when I get them finished and if you aren't a weaver or can't do that please consider buying me a coffee at https://ko-fi.com/ghosthorsestudios Fun fact: I would need to sell at least 20- 30 shuttles to pay my bills and replace the dryer with the cheapest one I can find online and get it delivered, and it would take at least 300+ 'coffees' to do the same (both after paypal fees )

So much for things going better for me... I hear Mercury is in retrograde 😞