Entry 3: A Day in the Life of a Lolita Designer

I have this problem where I base my productivity on how many orders I ship, or how many dresses/garments I make in a given week.

But I shouldn't do that, because that's an incredibly skewed view as there's so much more to what I do than just bringing dresses to life. (But it does feel pretty damn good when I finish/ship several things in a week, not gonna lie.)

I spent a lot of last week continuing to order fabric and other things for the Eat Your Heart Out reservation madness. Surprisingly, the swiss dot fabric I used for the blouses turned into a nightmare hunt, as the source I'd purchased the fabric from to make the samples was out of stock in one of the colors, and completely discontinued the other (why would you ever discontinue black swiss dot? Some questions can never be answered. But of course black represented the majority of blouse orders, meaning it wasn't just like 1 blouse I'd have to refund/replace the fabric for). I spent the majority of one work day hunting the interwebs for this fabric. That's probably the most stressful thing - having to search and search and search, and thinking about what I'm gonna do when I can't find this fabric. Do I need to refund all these people? Should I backtrack and fulfill the orders, but just use a different fabric? I never want to do either (which is partially why I ended up discontinuing Melancholia - the lace fabric I used on those dresses up and left this planet), which is why I didn't give up my search. After several hours I eventually found some in the least likeliest of places, but hey. At least I got my hands on it and all blouses will be created as planned.

Back to the beginning of the week.
On Monday my bf and I'd planned on seeing Die Antwoord ❤︎ I found out they were playing in Columbus months ago, but kept forgetting/putting off buying the tickets. And then the show was moved to an outside venue, and then the weekend before I saw that it was supposed to rain. And since it's been raining like every single day here this summer (which is awesome imo and makes me want to move to like Washington or something where it rains a lot all the time), I knew there was a pretty good chance it actually would. We still hadn't purchased the tickets which turned out to be a good thing, as it stormed like the whole day on Monday. Since the bf already took the day off of work, I sorta did too and we ended up running a bunch of errands, going shopping (for him, not me), hunting down fabric (for me, not him), and finished the night with a late showing of Ant-Man -_- This movie looked dumb as hell, but the bf really wanted to see it so I gave in and had a really good time, surprisingly (oh gosh what I'd give to have a cute army of ants helping me sew XD). The day was also pleasant due to the rain + it being a Monday, which meant there weren't a lot of people out <3

In addition to hunting the interwebs looking for non-existent swiss dot and putting in a bunch of tiny orders for various materials for EYHO (a bunch of the oft forgotten/miscellaneous things like the strap adjusters for both the Apron & JSK, headbands, and the ribbon clamp things for the end of the waist ties, oh yeah, and the tights too!), I also did some sketches for a new commission, and successfully completed and shipped a dress order. Oh! And samples arrived as well (see previous entry here) - after not being able to sleep well due to the stress about these samples, finally receiving them and seeing that they printed even better than expected was an enormous relief.

Katsucon artist alley applications opened on Saturday, but I decided not to apply. I've never been to Katsu and I always hear good things about it, but my decision to not apply is based on my experience with Otakon and cons in general this year. I've decided to mainly just stick to localish anime cons - I learned with Otakon that I don't necessarily make more sales, and I just end up spending more on travel + parking. That, and when I do go to cons, I just end up neglecting emails/orders I already have in the weeks leading up to said con (panic & preparation), and the days afterwards (reorganization & recovery), so it's not really fair to my loyal customers.
But that doesn't mean I won't travel anymore...
Especially in the wake of Anime Matsuri (did I mention how I wasn't welcome to sell there?), and not doing exceptionally well at anime cons anyways, I'd much rather support community driven events and lolita cons/events. So I'm going to try super hard to actually, fully commit to getting to Rufflecon next year (this year I did apply and got a booth, but decided to back out because I'm paranoid as hell and convinced any lolita event will go as poorly as Frill did for me), and possibly Nightfall if that ends up being a thing again (I did get invited to participate last year but decided not to, given the AM drama we were caught up in). Speaking of lolita events, I've already committed to going to Dream Fantasy Theatre, so I'll definitely be there this year, and depending on how that goes, possibly next year as well.

On a lighter note, I also, finally, at last, dropped my scissors off to be sharpened and I'm so proud of myself! I think I should get a few Responsible Adult Points. I don't even want to talk about how long it's been since I've had them sharpened (never), as it's extremely embarrassing and unprofessional and lazy of me. Of course I didn't drop all of them off - only 3 pairs, as I still have 2 here I can use, and then once I get those back later this week I'll make the switch. I got into a bad habit of just buying new scissors when mine would go dull. Which is dumb, but seemed easier than tracking down a scissor sharpening place for whatever reason.

Welcome to my life.