I’m BACK BABY!

In case you tried to visit this site recently and were greeted with: a 404 error, a pile of gibberish, or another website, you may have noticed I’ve been going through it over here. But I believe I am 100% back now and there shouldn’t be any more problems. With the website. The rest of my life is a dumpster fire but we’ve got a website!!!!! The certificate error I am seeing may or may not be present on anyone else’s end, but I promise I have a valid SSL certificate in there and “whynopadlock” seems to think it’s probably just me at this point.

The brief explanation for all this is that I changed web hosts to a free host which was working shockingly well (don’t want to name drop, but feel free to message me and I’ll tell you) and everything was so great that I decided to move my side hustle website to them as well. That’s when the wheels fell off the wagon. I wasn’t able to keep my other site on their free plan as the cart plugin was too beefy for free hosting limits (understandably) so I moved it to their paid offering, as it was a great price. Then, for some reason, I noticed about a week later that this site was inexplicably redirecting me to the paid site. I contacted their support, they swore they fixed it, and then for the next week or two I just kept getting a 404 error when I tried to view this site. I have since learned that this “may” have just been for me, but I do not know. Something something DNS – I’m not an expert in this area obviously. So after trying to get it working for a week, I decided “enough with this” and found another free host. Unfortunately when I tried to restore my backup to that host, it kept failing, because it was hitting disk space limits I think, so I had to upgrade to a paid version anyway. However, we’re here, we’re live, and I can see it without a VPN, so I think I’m going to stop touching things now.

I was getting a lot of errors on the YouTube and Instagram embeds on the sidebar, so I have done away with them, but the links remain. (Not that I’ve posted there in 500 years.) Still not sure if I had to do that, but it also makes the page load way faster. If you notice anything else that’s being weird, please let me know. I will try and go through and make sure links are all working correctly but I might miss some things.

In the making realm, I’ve done almost zip, owing to a myriad of reasons from necessary downsizing, to work, to personal issues galore. And it’s not over yet! I’ve had to let go of my Brother kh260, my coverstitch machine, one embroidery machine, and my industrial straight stitch so far, along with the dress form, and will probably have to destash enough fabric and yarn to clothe all of the northern hemisphere before all is said and done. My treadle machine might go next, I don’t know that I have a need for it right now, although it is also a pretty and functional table. We’ll see. You will have to bury me with my vintage Kenmore machine and Superba knitting machine like a pharoah. Beyond that I’m a little more flexible, although the Brother kh940 is probably going to have to come too. You know what throw it on in there with me too, I don’t want Linda to have it, she was always trying to get that one from me. (Who is Linda? Is this a mental health break?)

It is what it is, as Dr. Phil once said. I am at a certain age where life changes have made it very necessary to look at myself in the mirror and figure out what parts of my personality are coming from within and what is coming from external sources, if that makes any sense. I need to figure out what parts of me are coming along for the future and what parts I need to let go of. And although I may have to scale back the scope for a while, or *Ross voice* PIVOT directions while I figure out exactly where I’m going in this life, I feel very strongly that there’s going to be some textile equipment coming along with me, among other things. The creating I’ve been doing here feels more genuinely connected to whatever we’re calling the self than most other things I have to do in a day, and I think there’s a certain beauty in being able to fart around with projects and see if I can copy them, or figure out how to do something on the cheap that I’ve been wanting to learn. So I hope you will stick with me on this journey, even though the road may have diverged into some weird territory and the car we’re in is made from cans and has a hole in the floor, and is now on fire, and so on.

But you know what? I’m driving the damn car and that’s all that matters.