The Shoestring Just Snapped

I had a manicure for you on Monday.

I couldn't post it because both of my computers quit on me Sunday night. My desktop has a fried wireless card, and my laptop is so old that it freezes every time I open Firefox now.

This post is coming to you via a borrowed computer.

I don't know how many of you follow my Twitter, or my personal blog. For the most part I've tried to keep my personal problems off of the internet, but I have to ask for some help.

We are in dire straights. My roommate's hours have been cut so severely that we don't know if we'll be able to make rent. All of the household bills--electric, water, food, etc--have fallen to me, on top of my personal bills. On January 1, I came home and discovered the fuel tank that heats our home was empty--two weeks earlier than expected. The minimum order was $586. I also became ill this month and that required a doctor's visit and some very expensive medication. I'm better now, but not 100%. I am clinging to my last sick day, terrified to use it when I'm just not feeling well, for fear that I will not have it if I actually become ill again.

We have heat for this month, but we don't know about next. We don't qualify for heating assistance, because fuel oil is not run by the Public Utility Commission, but by private companies, none of which have a year-round payment plan. We don't qualify for food assistance, because on a yearly basis we make too much--which doesn't help for the four months of the year when Missouri makes almost nothing at all. I have a steady income, but it barely supports me; it cannot support us both.

We don't have much, but this link will take you to my blog sale. All prices include shipping anywhere in the continental US.

What you see for sale there is basically my entire polish collection. There are some books, too, an ipod, and a nook, as well as a few other items. Most of my yarn stash will be posted this weekend. Please have a look, and if something catches your eye, please email me at KnotMagickKnitter (at) yahoo (dot) com with "Blog Sale" in the subject. Even if you don't purchase anything, please spread the word.

Missouri and I are also published authors. Her bibliography can be found here, and mine is here.

I'm calling most of my student loan companies today to try and get a one or two month deferment.
If they aren't willing to work with me, then our next step is canceling the internet, which means that I won't have a connection at home or at work, and I do not have a smart phone.

I don't know what the fate of this blog is. If the polishes don't sell, then we lose our internet. If they do, then I'll be down to half a dozen of my favorite colors, none of which are particularly well suited to nail art.

Please, anything you can do would be a help.

I've got the blues.

Being sick for the past week has put a damper on my creativity. The fact that it's a respiratory problem and that the smell of nail polish aggravates it doesn't seem to help. At all. What's a girl to do?

I decided to break out the nail wraps. These are the Sally Hansen Sallon Effects that came out over the summer. I forgot I had them until we were packing to move.

The last time I used these, I had trouble getting them to stick, so I put topcoat on them. They didn't last very long.

This time, I decided to forego topcoat, even though it goes against all of my instincts.

I've still got a couple of spots that didn't stick so well, mainly on my right hand. The biggest problem with my left was that I had an attack of the static clingies as I was applying, and my ring finger and pinky both went on crooked as a result.

Just as before, I was able to get two nails done per strip, since I don't have tallons. I don't know that I'll be using the second packet that came in the kit, however, since I don't care for this pattern. I think the concept of denim nails is cool, but this just looks fake; I don't like the way the pattern was rendered, but I'm also a textile nerd. Just for the record, this pattern is called "Good Jeans."

I've been wearing these since last night, and took pictures this morning.

ETA: I have been to the doc and joy of joy, I have not just bronchitis, but a sinus infection to boot. I guess this means I won't be buying polish for a while. My meds+doctor visit cost almost as much as my rent this month.

Well, that didn't go as planned.

So you might have noticed I missed a couple of posts there. It wasn't intentional. I even had a couple of manicures in the vault so that I could post them even when it wasn't practical for me to be doing nail art. I failed to save the photos onto my computer, however, and in the move my camera ended up in the wrong box. Then the battery died, and the charger was in another, unknown box. And, well, that seems to be the story of this move. We didn't get a fridge until a week and a half after we started sleeping in the house. I say sleeping, because we are still missing at least three large pieces of furniture that have been in storage. Weather and schedules have conspired against us, so we're still mostly living out of boxes. I did, however, find my yarn, my camera, and my nailpolish--those are the most important things, right?

Speaking of things that didn't go as planned, here's the first manicure I did in the new house. This was a case where my topcoat worked against me, turning my careful designs into blurry lumps. (note to self: don't use SV on patterns with small details)

The lighting is dramatic, yes? Well, that's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it. This house actually has much better light than the last place, but I did this late at night (read: missing furniture=limited lamps) and I knew they would get messed up the next day (which they did) so I wanted to get photos taken before they flaked like a ditzy cheerleader at exam time.

 

This was inspired by the song "My Favorite Things" which for some reason has become a Christmas song. It doesn't say Christmas to me, but there you are. At any rate, I do love the song and used S•X•Y "Dreamy Cocoa" to create brown paper packages, and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri and Pure Ice "Siren" to tie them up with string. On my pinky, I had a smudge, which I covered up with a decorative bow--realizing after the fact that it would be upside down to everyone but me. 

This is why I am not Polish Insomniac. I shouldn't be allowed to do creative things after 10pm. I tend to get a little....too creative.

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I have been as active in the nail blogging community lately. It's not that I'm blogfadding or anything, but life has been happening and after a summer filled with nail art, everyone now seems to be focusing on swatches. And swatching primarily the same things. 

Boring. 

So while I may not post as often as some, I do promise that this blog will be swatch free (unless I find something that I'm SUPER excited about, and simply MUST share) and hopefully a little more interesting because of it. 

See you on Monday.

The Ghost of Wednesdays Past

Over the past couple of months, I've done a lot of thinking, and I've come to several realizations. Basically what they come down to, is that I will no longer be doing Wednesday posts on this blog.

I love blogging. I love nail art. But nails are just a hobby for me. They're something fun that I do when I need a creative break, and something that brightens my day when I'm at work. I don't do this professionally, and I probably never will.

What I do do professionally, I would like to change. And over the past six months it has become increasingly clear that if I'm every going to get out of my current job, it's going to be by going into business for myself. After five years in retail, no professional experience, and graduate work that is completely useless where I currently life, most potential employers just toss my resume aside as soon as it crosses their desk.

In order to work for myself (i.e. writing and designing full time), I need to be able to dedicate more of my time and energy to that. This means cutting back on several things, but the biggest one is time spent online in a non-professional/promotional/research capacity, since I could easily spend all day playing Threads of Mystery on Facebook or watching videos of kittens caught in hamster balls on YouTube.

This includes nail blogging. Trying to come up with 2-3 really cool nail art ideas and the time to execute them every week is a challenge, and when my nails are wet, I can't knit. I love doing it, but I don't want to have to force myself to do it every week, particularly when I have other things that need done.

In the past two years, I've accomplished a lot of things: I bought my first new car. I got a promotion. I moved out of my parent's house, and for the first time, some paid me for my writing and my patterns.

Over the next two years, I want to do bigger and better things. It is my goal to publish a novel (or two or three) and at least one knitting book. To that end, it is time that I turned my focus in that direction.

I will still be around on Mondays and Fridays, but my posts will probably be much shorter than they were over the summer. I won't be doing swatches, because, really, I don't like looking at post after post of swatches. I started this blog for nail art and bargins, and that is what I'm going to keep here. I may, in the future, have to go down to one post a week. We'll see. But for