Excuses and Alibis

I haven't blogged in a long time. It's nothing in particular that kept me away, but then lots of little things.

I was working on my first-ever wholesale order, so that took all my waking hours for quite some time.

I was scrambling to get new inventory made after that because I'd neglected my shop while I made the wholesale order.

I'm feeling spectacularly cruddy lately, so once I've done all the things I have to do, I don't have the time or energy left to blog.

Oh, and I rediscovered Bejeweled. My friends used to call it BeCracked, and they were right. It's very hard to tear oneself away from.

But I'm back now, and tomorrow I'll think of something to say.

For shame, Tony and Dale!

A few weeks ago I was watching an episode of SPEED Network's program "Unique Whips" in which a crew remodeled NASCAR driver Tony Stewart's hearse. Fancy seats, lights, a big new engine under the hood, all kinds of cool stuff. It was truly impressive. At the end of the show, Tony came to pick up his car. He got in, and that's when I got concerned. He drove out of the shop's parking lot, and that's when I got irked. A few more camera angles gave me a better view of Tony in the car, and that's when I got upset. Tony didn't have a seat belt on. (I should stipulate that the camera angles provided didn't show definitively whether he had a lap belt on, but it was very plain that there was no shoulder belt in use. I emailed the owner of the shop that worked on the car, Will of Unique Autosports, but have not yet received a response.)

Then tonight I was watching the Sprint All-Star Challenge. This was driver Dale Jarrett's final race, and in keeping with the "Race the Truck" ad campaigns they have been running for quite some time, UPS had Dale drive one lap around the Lowe's Motor Speedway in a big brown UPS truck. I loved the idea of this sendoff for one of the most famous NASCAR names. That is, until he took off with no seat belt on. Door open to the wind, and no seat belt.

I've got a lot of respect for both Tony and Dale, but it really upsets me to see them on TV cruising around with no seat belts on. I'm an adult who knows from experience just how crucial seat belts are. What about the millions of impressionable little kids (and bulletproof-feeling teens) out there who idolize these men and will draw the conclusion that if Tony and Dale don't have to wear a seat belt, then it must be perfectly okay and pretty darn cool to take off their own? Both of these drivers would no doubt agree that while they can't control what people do, there is a certain responsibility that comes with celebrity status to set a good example, especially for their youngest fans.

Now what?!

I went to to the doctor this past Tuesday, and they ran some bloodwork to check (again) for rheumatoid arthritis. I've had the more common test for it multiple times with a normal (negative) result, but I'm having some symptoms that are indicative of the disease, so I had an anti-CCP antibody test done. It's supposed to be more likely to catch the disease in the portion of people who get a false negative on the standard test.

This evening I walked past the answering machine and saw that I had a message. It was from the doctor's office, just asking me to call them back. It was, however, already far past their business hours (and Friday, to boot). I'm going to try calling tomorrow morning because I think they have limited office hours on Saturdays.

Knowing my doctor's office as I do, I know there are only two reasons that they would call me like this rather than leave the "all results normal" message on their Lab Phone system. First, it could be that there was a problem and they will have to redraw my blood. Second, the lab work returned something significant, and requires treatment or some other action. Now, tell me if I'm losing my mind here. I'm not dreading this, I'm actually kind of excited. In fact just yesterday I remarked that a part of me was hoping that the test would come back positive for RA, because with that illness at least there's an understanding of the disease and they know how to treat it. (I have fibromyalgia, and there really isn't much that can be done for me meaning I wind up having to just suffer through it.) Is that weird for me to feel that way? I mean, I know how serious and debilitating RA (And the treatments for it) can be. I know people who have the disease, one of them very severely so. But I just keep feeling like, "If I have that, then they can and will help me, and will actually believe that I'm sick! I won't have to try to prove myself every time I try to get help, and I won't have to literally cry and beg."

But then the practical part of my mind starts thinking, what about this business I just started? All of it relies on my ability to use my hands and to see what I'm doing (not to mention the heavy computer aspect, combining both). RA can destroy joints, and can also essentially blind you. I've already been diagnosed with an eye condition (episcleritis) that often occurs in people with RA. If I do have this, now I'm worried about what I'm going to do if at some point I can't continue working. I've already gone through the ordeal of applying for (and being denied) social security disability benefits, and I hope I never have to do that again. Maybe it would be different with a condition that I can prove exists, but still, it's a terrible mess and isn't guaranteed.

Hey, here's an idea...maybe I should go to bed so I actually wake up early enough to call the doctor and find out what the hell is going on!
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5/7/2008 ETA: I did get in touch with the doctor's office. The anti-ccp test was normal, but the more common test measuring my rheumatoid factor was slightly elevated. The doc doesn't think at this point that it's an indication of a rheumatoid condition, but will monitor the level closely in coming months. It's very early, I know, but at this point I'm fairly convinced that I do have RA. This wait-and-watch scenario is very familiar to me. A few years ago, I was tested repeatedly for thyroid disease. It runs in my family, and I was already having symptoms. However, my levels were within normal range when they first tested me and for about a year thereafter, although the levels were trending downward. Finally they dropped out of the normal range, and I began taking medication to treat it. I immediately felt better. I'm starting to see the same thing happening with this; it's only slightly elevated right now, but next time it will be a little higher, and on and on until it hits some magic number and they start treating me for what I've known I had from the beginning. Uff da.

I'm writing too many posts about health (or lack thereof) and not enough about Etsy and my business as I had intended to focus on here. I think I may need to set myself up with a new blog that's all business, and keep this one for everything else.

My plan backfired, but in a good way.

A couple weeks ago I started selling yarn that I'd hand dyed. Or more accurately, I began offering it for sale. No takers. I listed four skeins, and decided that I would not order any more yarn to dye until I had sold some of my current stock. I waited and waited, and still no takers.

So this afternoon I finaly said to hell with it, I'm ordering more yarn. Not two hours later, I finally sold a skein! And the kicker is that it's the green skein that I'd been secretly hoping would never sell so I could keep it for myself. Oh well, I can always make more for myself later!

Here's a picture of the skein that sold:

"Real jobs" give you a day off, so I'm taking one too.

From the beginning, I've tried to treat my Etsy shop as a real business. I've got a big file for all of my receipts, I track my sales, I registered my LLC, and am currently navigating the forms to get my Sales and Use Tax permits squared away.

But there is one aspect of "real jobs" that I have neglected. I've been working 7 days a week on this since November 2007, and have not taken a full day off for myself that entire time. Not even when I'm sick or hurting so bad from my fibromyalgia that I can barely move. Not even for the Daytona 500 (which is a high holy day in my house).

Today is the day. I'm not sick, I'm not hurting particularly bad, and i'm not ven particularly fed up or burned out on working on my shop. I do, however, want to prevent that from happening. So I'm going to do some laundry, maybe take a bubble bath with an Anne Rice book, and if I feel like it maybe I'll work on finishing my second sock. But I will not make items for my shop, I will not do a photo-shoot, and I will not spend half the day in the forums. Nor will I run up to check my email and shop counts every hour. In fact, I think once i've finished this post, I am going to turn my computer off for the rest of the day. I suppose I'll have to check for sales before I go to bed tonight, but that's okay.

So farewell for now, I'm off to make my toes pruney!

A New Venture

A while back I tried my hand at dyeing yarn. One skein and I was hooked. So, I ordered more yarn and bought more dye, and now I'm really addicted. I am, however, being at least partially rational and realizing that I have very little time to knit/crochet for myself right now, so I'd better sell this yarn, rather than keep it all. I listed one skein today, and more will be appearing in my shop in coming days, as soon as I get some good pictures taken.

I don't know how well I'm going to do with this. I've got this nagging suspicion that selling hand-dyed yarn on Etsy might be like selling jewelry; there's already a ton of more established, high-volume sellers, so it'll be hard for me to make the necessary splash and be seen. But then that questionably rational portion of my brain pipes up again and tells me that if I make a good effort and the yarns just don't sell, I can just let them quietly expire and put them into my own personal stash!

See? I made professional-type ball bands and everything! If you'd like to look, the listing is at http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=10809278.

Real business CAN be conducted in PJs.

All the other home based business people out there will know exactly what I'm talking about here. Just because I work from home and don't put on "real" clothes unless I have to leave the house does not mean I'm not working. It doesn't mean I'm watching soap operas and eating bonbons (to my knowledge I have never had a bonbon in my life). It doesn't mean you can call me to talk about absolutely nothing and then get pissy if I say I have to go because I'm working. And it most certainly does not mean you can be dismissive of my work, because it really is work. Here's a day in the life.

I wake up, put on my glasses so I don't trip and kill myself, take six steps across the room, and turn on my computer. I spend anywhere from 20 minutes to 3 hours responding to messages, tending to billing/payment tasks, and readying any overnight orders for shipping. Then, and only then do I go downstairs and have breakfast.

As soon as breakfast is over, I get to work knitting or crocheting. This work continues, at the fastest pace my hands will allow, straight on through until I'm ready for bed approximately 18 hours after I got up. The only breaks are brief ones to go to the bathroom, take photos of new items when the sun is in the right place, edit said photos, list new items, check email and process any orders that may come in, feed the cats and cater to their other needs, make dinner for my family, and bathe.

The last hour or so before I go to bed is the only time I don't have yarn in my hands. During that time I'm doing final checks of email and other messages, spending some time in the forums, and usually working on some new business cards or other promotional materials. That's also when I do my blogging (though as you can see I don't get to it consistently).

When I finally shut the computer off, it's because I'm exhausted and too crosseyed to continue anyway. I lay down, and then usually sit up and turn the light back on to write down ideas and to-do-tomorrow lists. After a half dozen or so notations, I finally pass out for good.

In three to six hours it will all start again. My hands and arms will still be aching, my shoulders will still be knotted, and I will still be tired. But I will get up and do it all over again. And I will still love my job, because everything I do is on my own terms, and because I'm the boss and I say pajamas are perfectly acceptable work attire.

Not what I'd imagined, but not half bad either.

A friend on the Etsy forums started a thread tonight asking people if they ever felt like the life they're living isn't the one they had in mind for themselves. That really got me thinking.

I started working retail jobs in high school, and that continued into my 20s because me and college just didn't really mesh. About 6 years ago, though, I started having some escalating health problems. It got harder and harder to work, and I wasn't getting a diagnosis (not to mention effective treatment). My parents and I finally came to the decision that I should stop working until the health issues had been identified and addressed.

I eventually was diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses, including fibromyalgia and severe migraines. I tried a few more regular jobs, even completed a correspondence course with the intention of starting a career as a medical office assistant, but even with treatment I still wasn't well enough to hold a regular job. I applied for social security disability, and didn't get it. Somewhere in there, I started knitting and crocheting, just as a hobby. Things looked pretty bleak, and I'd knit to keep myself from going nuts. I did a lot of knitting.

So then in 2007, I read an article in the paper about Etsy.com and mentioned a local craft fair coming up that was composed entirely of Etsy sellers. My mother and I thought it sounded interesting, so we went and checked it out. I'd done a little research on the Etsy concept beforehand, and then by then end of our lunch after the fair, we were making plans for my Etsy shop's grand opening! I hung around the forums for a while, and then started selling in December 2007. I've had more success than I had initially allowed myself to expect, and things are only getting better.

So I can say with great conviction that my life isn't the one I had envisioned. It's very different, but in many ways it's far better. I'm doing something I love, and I'm doing it on my own terms. I've got great support from my fellow Etsians, and there's nothing else I'd rather do.

I could just dye...

I just tried my hand at dyeing wool yarn with Wilton cake icing coloring (juniper green). So far I think it's going perfectly. I'll know for sure once it's cooled, rinsed, and dried.

It was so cool to watch the dye cook into the yarn! I could actually see the water turning clear. Next time I do this I may have to try to get pictures of that process in action.

ETA: It's the next day now, and the yarn is dry. It's gorgeous!

TIME Doesn't have any, it seems.

TIME Magazine and TIME.com don't seem to have time to check facts or state things clearly and accurately anymore.

I ran across their list of the top ten medical breakthroughs of 2007 on TIME.com just now, wherein they list the use of a drug called Lyrica to treat fibromyalgia as the #7 breakthrough of the year. (You can read all five sentences they posted on the topic at http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/top10/article/0,30583,1686204_1686252_1690389,00.html )

The statement that turned my stomach was "...the pain of fibromyalgia is unique and, therefore, unresponsive to conventional painkillers." I have fibromyalgia. I can tell you right now that this blanket statement is false and misleading. It's false because some of us do find varying degrees of relief from conventional pain medications, and it's misleading in its oversimplification of a very complex issue.

Fibromyalgia pain is unique. That's why Lyrica is such a breakthrough for so many people; it treats that pain in a different way, and that way works better for some people. But not everyone responds well to it, and not everyone can get it in the first place.

Conventional pain medications do have their place in the treatment of fibromyalgia. Some of us do get relief from them, but what often happens is that because fibromyalgia is a chronic disorder, over time the patient's body gets used to the medication, and it takes higher and higher doses to give the same pain relief. This is called tolerance. The problem facing fibromyalgia patients is that because the pain continues and therefore the need for increased doses continues, doctors and others start to become skeptical of the veracity of our claims of pain and need for medication. Simply, they start to think the patient is addicted to their pain meds and is just trying to get high. Even though it's been shown that chronic pain patients who are properly treated are unlikely to become addicted to their medication and abuse it, these patients are often unceremoniously dumped. They are given no more medication, and referred to detox programs or psychiatric treatment. But we're not addicts and we're not crazy or attention-seeking. We are in pain, real pain that does not go away, and only gets worse the longer we go without treatment.

I may have lost some people by now, You might be wondering how I got off on such a rant from that short, simple statement in TIME's article. The reason I'm so upset by that little statement is that fibromyalgia is already so misunderstood, both by doctors and laymen alike. There's so much talk about people who manipulate the medical system to get prescription drugs to abuse, and so much talk about narcotic pain medications being overprescribed. Sure, there are people who abuse medications and abuse the system to get them. But there are far more of us who really need those medications and are unable to convince caregivers that we need them, so we have to go without any treatment at all. Blanket statements like the one in TIME's article only further mislead people and feed the myth that fibromyalgia is a synonym for addiction.

Let me tell you, it is not! This disease is all too real. I am in pain every second of every day, and I do not remember a time in my life when this wasn't the case. I get exhausted by the slightest activity, but I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep. When I do sleep, it's fitful and I wake up more drained than before. I have trouble with concentration, and my memory is bad. I get confused easily. I have to be very careful about what I eat, and even then I have miserable digestive problems. There are too many components of this disease to list, and none of the doctors I've seen (and there have been many) can do anything for most of it. Back when I was prescribed pain medication, if I went to the doctor for help because it wasn't working, they would discontinue it instead of adjusting the dose. As for this new breakthrough, Lyrica, I asked about it when it was still in the process of gaining FDA approval; the doctor said we would have to look at the information when it was approved and became available. When I asked again, I was just told that it wasn't right for me. No explanation, and no alternatives offered.

The doctors our society hold in such high regard for their education and wisdom don't understand this disease and many don't seem to be interested in learning. The general public knows even less about it, and things like that article just make things worse for people like me. That's a very frustrating and frightening thing when it already seems like things can't get much worse.

Let there be lighting!

I did the best I could with the photos I originally took for my Etsy shop, but they weren't too good. For the hats, which make up most of my inventory right now, I didn't have anything to display them on (and I didn't like the way they looked on me) so I did what I always do if I need something I don't have and can't just run out and get... I made one. In this case, I crocheted myself a display head. It worked, but the look left a bit to be desired.

So a few days ago I received a box of heads in the mail... styrofoam heads, that is, the kind you're supposed to use for displays and photos (courtesy of my dad). He also gave me some tips on how to aim the big light he's letting me use, and adjusted the camera settings. I'm absolutely blown away at what a huge difference those changes made! My shots aren't perfect, but I'm quite proud.

My friend Jess also deserves some credit in this, because the card reader he gave me saves me lots of time and batteries in transferring files from the camera to the computer. Thanks, Jess!

Please have a look around my shop at http://jenhintz.etsy.com and let me know what you think of the new photos. I still have a few to replace in coming days, so stay tuned.

Grand Opening

So finally, on December 11 2007, I opened my shop at http://jenhintz.etsy.com, selling my handmade knit and crochet items. It took nine days before I made my first sale.
Then it took about 3 hours after than for me to make my second sale.
Then I made two more sales the next day.
Then two sales and a trade with another merchant the next day.

So in the space of a few days, I went from "gee, I hope I sell one or two things before the end of the year" to "sweet merciful crap, I'm gonna run out of inventory"! Someone posted a thread in the Etsy forum recently asking people if they were apprehensive about success. Apprehensive? Nah. Stunned with occasional maniacal laughter and waves of sheer panic? Absolutely, approximately every six minutes.

I can't complain, though. It's been a few years since I was able to work a regular job, so I've had no income and have had to depend on my parents for everything in the meantime... and with my medical bills, that's no small thing. This week of sales isn't enough to support me completely, but it's a huge improvement, and every little bit helps. I can't thank my customers and the other Etsians enough for giving me the chance to do what I love and actually make a buck at it here and there.

But to make those bucks, I need inventory! I've been trying to get things made, but this panic has got me starting a project, thinking about another one I could probably get whipped up and posted quick, and then once I'm working on that, having another idea. So I wound up with about three dozen balls of yarn and projects in various stages of progress heaped on the couch, and getting exactly nowhere. I finally got a few things finished today, and hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to get them photographed and listed for sale, and then knock out a few more projects. Being able to keep enough inventory on hand was one of my worries when I was getting ready to start selling on Etsy, and in a way I wasn't worried enough. But I'm pretty sure things are calming down a bit now with the holiday madness being over, and things will settle into a steady pace now. I ought to be able to keep up just fine as long as I don't panic. Maybe I should knit some pillows shaped like Valium...

Home Cooking for Cats

The following is a recipe for home-cooked cat food. After the recent rash of pet food recalls and my own cats' health concerns, my vet and I came up with this recipe. Never begin feeding your pet any home-cooked diet without consulting with a vet who is familiar both with your pets' particular needs and with veterinary nutrition.

"Turkey Stew for Cats"
16-20 oz ground turkey
1.5 cups frozen peas-and-carrots blend
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
approximately 10 vitamin tablets**

Crumble turkey in a saucepan and add water to almost cover it. Simmer until turkey is fully cooked. Add the vitamin tablets and stir for a minute until mostly dissolved. Add vegetables and simmer 5 minutes. Stir in oats and let simmer until liquid is reduced by two-thirds. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Puree in blender (or with wand-style blender) until well-combined and paste-like in texture, but not too smooth (cats seem not to like that). Just get all the bigger chunks broken up. Store in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator up to five days. Can also be frozen if it will not be used in 5 days; placing dollops of it in mini-muffin papers is a great way to make individual servings which can be stored in a sealed plastic bag in the freezer and defrosted as needed.

**Regarding vitamin tablets: I use Pet Gold brand Vita Tabs, and since one batch of this recipe lasts my two cats five days, I use ten tablets (one tablet per cat per day). These vitamin tablets are essential since the other ingredients do not supply taurine, a nutrient cats absolutely must have to maintain eye and heart health - lack of taurine can be fatal. Talk with a knowledgeable vet about which vitamin supplement is right for your cats and what amount you should use. No home-cooked diet should be started without the consultation of a vet who is knowledgeable about feline nutrition and your cats' particular needs.

Welcome

Please excuse the current lack of content; I'm creating a larger online presence for myself in preparation for opening an online store on etsy.com. I'll add more shortly. In the meantime, please check out the Etsy.com site. It's a great site for anyone who wants to buy or sell handmade or vintage goods. My store isn't up yet, but there's tons of others to browse.