Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Cobblestone Park is open for business!

Yesterday was another momentous day in my life! I opened up my clothing store on Etsy, Cobblestone Park. I had originally intended to wait until I had a few more goodies sewn up, but, well, I'm not the most patient person in the world.

Now that the first batch is up and running, I'm trying to figure out what to do next. I keep seeing gorgeous spring skirts on the German blogs and Flickr (Emily and Connor's version is an absolute favorite, but check out Sewing Room By Mynata's breathtaking work as well). Honestly, how can anybody look at these pictures and not drop everything and run to their sewing machines?

I would do exactly that except that I'm bone weary. The last couple of days have been really emotionally draining. You would think that slapping up an Etsy store isn't that big of a deal, but really, it is. To me, at least. All of these heavily embroidered items that I make represent an enormous amount of my energy. It's not just the actual sewing and embroidering time; it's the time I lay awake at night thinking of details to add. It's the time I spend laying out my fabrics and my trim and pouring through embroidery sites and blogs to come up with inspiration. I get pretty emotionally invested in everything I make, which sounds kind of silly now that I see it in writing, but it's true.

All of this sounds like drudgery, I suppose, but I don't mean it that way. If I didn't love it, I wouldn't do it.

But another reason I'm a bit drained today is that my five year old daughter had an eye appointment. Sounds pretty innocuous, right? A few weeks ago, we got a letter in the mail from the school district, saying that her routine eye exam showed her vision to be quite weak in one eye. I didn't think too much of it, but obediently scheduled an appointment with a pediatric opthamalogist. After the full eye exam, the doctor casually asked me if lazy eye runs in the family. What? Turns out that is what she has. If left untreated, her eye could very well start to wander. If she went for her driver's license today, she would fail the vision test. The way her eyes are now, no glasses or contacts or laser surgery could correct her vision.

The first step is to get glasses, of course. But that isn't all. She also has to wear a patch. That was the part that made my mouth run dry. My daughter is incredibly sweet and sensitive and kids, let's face it, can be cruel. But the doctor assured me she only has to wear the patch for a few hours a day - not during school hours. So, when we got home today, I went directly to Ortopad and bought some very girly, fairy-and-ladybug-bedecked eye patches. DD actually got a little excited about them when I described them to her!

She has definite misgivings about the glasses part, though, which I understand. I got glasses myself when I was just a few years older than her, and I steadfastly refused to wear them. AT ALL. For about six years. Until I was old enough for contact lenses. By which time, of course, my eyes had gotten so bad, I could barely see my schoolwork unless I held it right in front of my face.

So, anyway, quite the draining day. And with that, I'm off to collapse in bed.

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