Getting Healthy

My loving friends and fans,

I am finally on the right track to getting healthy. As you may have noticed I took a small break from blogging and facebooking. This unintentional pause was due to some issues I've been dealing with since I was a teenager. Without getting too dramatic and too detailed, I've struggled with hormone based depression for many years now and it's finally caught up with me to the point where I have to get it figured out once and for all. I've been taking different birth control pills once the symptoms really started causing major problems. Well, the problems have gotten to a point now where I really have to get to the bottom of what's going on in my body.

I hope this doesn't sound melodramatic  I guess I feel like if I'm open and honest about it, I'll start to feel less ashamed and embarrassed from it. For a long time, I thought that I was a lazy person and didn't have the self discipline to really be ambitious, I now know that (most of the time) it was from depression and hormonal levels that would keep me exhausted.

I'm looking forward to working through these problems and finding a solution.

What this means for Threaded City and my other creative outlets is that I'm allowing myself to do what I can and not stress over what I can't while I'm getting healthy. I hope that the market will be somewhat understanding and give me a little grace while my start isn't as strong as I would like. Patty and I will still be doing farmers markets and plotting and planning for the future.

Thank you to those of you who understand and are willing to hang in there with me.

Andrea

Official!

I HAVE A WEBSITE...

... YEAHHHHHH

Ok, I'm kinda done with the yelling, I'll probably do more yelling on my own, but that's enough for you to read.

It is far from being finished but you're welcome to check out what we have so far... zero content. It's exciting for me to share.

www.threadedcity.com



In other news, the second Craft Night went off without a hitch! The community has supported it and we're plowing ahead and making a few "regular" scheduling practices for the event. More TBA.

There were 15 people that were proving their skills at being artsy. Here are a few of the things being done:
Origami
Drawing
Knitting
Re-making vintage purses
Card Making
Just to name a few :)

Upcoming Events

February 16th and 17th:  Winter Garrison

http://www.facebook.com/events/528162527226569/

Ever wanted to see what life was like 200 years ago? Fort Wayne has a wonderful way to experience 18th century life. Come visit the Fort Wayne Historic Fort for a free event with next to no crowds. Enjoy a few cozy fires and people excited to talk history for days on end. 

No Cost, Donations Welcome

Threaded City is happy to donate time and materials to better Fort Wayne's historic downtown experience!

Public is welcome to attend the day scheduled events on Saturday the 16th and Sunday the 17th.

February 25th: Craft Night (#2)
http://www.facebook.com/events/512858895415098/

A time for us crafters, art-dabblers, and all around DIY’s to get together and have a community while creating! Bring your own supplies, a creative spirit, and a snack/drink to share. Craft Night will be held on the last Monday of the month from 6-9 pm.

March 16th: Get Green Fest 2013
http://fortwaynegetgreen.com/main/

SAINT PATRICK'S DAY will arrive before we know it! Fort Wayne is gearing up for another great celebration of all things green. Along with them, Threaded City will be out and about in a green tutu selling beads and other great swag to raise money and awareness for Habitat for Humanity! Come on downtown for an exciting day.
Exact Swag to raise money for Habitat for Humanity TBA (green throw beads, st.p's silly bands, mini top hats, bow ties, fairy wings)

9:30 – 10:30 a.m.	5-Kilt Run/Walk	Begin & end at Calhoun Street cul-de-sac
10:30 – 11:45 a.m.	Parade and River Greening	Begin at Calhoun Street cul-de-sac River Greening: Old Wells Street Bridge
9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.	Strongman Competition	Wells Street Corridor
10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.	Music, Food and Fun	Wells Street Corridor
1:00 p.m	Gold Coin Hunt	Wells Street Corridor
2:00 p.m.	Lucky Charms Eating Contest	Wells Street Corridor
6:00 p.m. – 1:00 a.m.	Live Music, Food and Fun (18 and older) Live music by Urban Legends Drinks by Mad Anthony Brewing Company	Wells Street Corridor
8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.	Vendor Booths	Wells Street Corridor

April 6th: Fort Wayne Farmers Market

http://www.facebook.com/fwfarmers?fref=ts

More info coming soon!

May 4th: Fort Wayne Farmers Market
May 18th: Fort Wayne Farmers Market

Bleck: Sick with Deadlines

Dear friendlies, what do you do when you're sick but still have deadlines you have to meet?

I'm still trying to figure this out, so let me know your thoughts. When I get sick, I'm one of the biggest babies out there. I find that I prefer sleeping to most medications, maybe because a lot of medicine doesn't really take away my side effects as well as I would like. As much as I like sleep, a good portion of the time, I have things that HAVE to get done. Like this week, I do a decent amount of production work for some decent size companies. 2 of them are have rush seasons at the same time. With a can-do attitude, I thought that this wouldn't be a problem, sure it would be busy, a little stressful, but at least I knew what I was getting myself into. Right?

Wrong. While working a lot harder on my company and trying to juggle a personal life, production sewing, and my 3 businesses, I found that I'm not as good at time management as my day planner might  lead you to believe. Gasp! I know, hard to think of. However, it's true. A few of the steps that I've been trying to learn and use are...

1. Write it down! If I have something to do in a week, I write it down in my day planner. Pen and Paper works best for me, I find that I get far more annoyed at my phone or laptop when I don't want to work. Part of writing it down means that I can add subcategories with something so I recognize that simply doing something might not be as simple as I'm realizing. I find that when I write it down there is less of a chance that I'll forget about a conflicting event and I can quickly adjust or alert a potential client that the deadline will not work. Wich leads me to my next point...
   
2. Keep Your Word! "Hello Potential Client that I really want to work with, yes, the day that we scheduled to meet, yes today in less than an hour, sorry, I can't make it because I didn't get a first grade education of how I can't be in two places at once. Can we reschedule?" I haven't had too many unfortunate instances like this, only a couple. Some of those gut-wrenching calls were made after I missed the meeting! I have burned some bridges that took a long time to rebuild. Please don't let this be you. Accidents happen, and sometimes when you think you have a clear schedule you do, but I am learning to always check. If you're like me and have enough running around in your head, remembering a meeting just might slip through the cracks. Fortunately there are a lot of nice people out there that are willing to give you a second chance, at least I found a few. BUT, let's just make it a rule to not have to back out of a silly instance like this because of poor management skills. Ok? Ok. I am doing my absolute best to keep up with my schedule write it down and give the people that I want to meet with the respect of keeping my word and meeting time or deadline.
   
3. Plan for Interruptions! I'm not suggesting to plan to have distractions, but we all know they are going to happen. I am trying to get into the habit of giving myself an extra 10 minutes for every hour of project to complete. This may be a little backwards from some suggested time management lists, however this seems to best way for me to be realistic with my time. As an example, my next deadline is Monday. I'll need to have the sewing complete and ready to be shipped out by 6pm. Based off of my previous experiences with this product, I can get the amount of work I have done in 30 hours. If I add 10 minutes on to every hour I end up with an additional 5 hours. Now this may seem like a lot and I ultimately should get better at time management, but for now while I'm working on it I'm assigning 35 hours to this task. The idea is to get faster and less distracted, if I am able to accomplish these, I will have extra time set aside for this deadline and either get ahead on next weeks deadlines or use this time in another way.
   
   This leads me to my particular interruption this week. Being Sick. BLECK! There are some great blogs out there to give your more advise and how to consider going about letting clients know about being sick and if you can meet deadlines. 

Today I got a nasty little stomach bug that's just not going away. So I made sure to take extra naps and work where I can. This may or may not be do-able depending on it is what you do. If you're able to be proactive and just work on what you can when you can, it will help move things along and help you feel like you're accomplishing something while you're having to rearrange your day. 

On a less dreary note, here's what I'll be working on next with Commuty: 

A Beautiful Mess

Success, Patty, and Time

Success! Craft Night Recap:
I could not have asked for a better event! Threaded City hosted it's first Craft Night making sure to start the new year with a bang! I posted earlier about what Craft Night is all about and my expectations for the evening. Out of 36 "going's" on the facebook event, we ended up with an average of 20 through the 3 hours. Most people were there the entire time, some came late/left early. I am so thankful for everyone who came out and made sure to craft their hearts out. We had a great mix of simple to complex, age, gender, and conversation. Here's a list of a few of the different things that were going on, spinning yarn, complex jewelry making from wool and copper thread, paper art, tape sculptures, fabric flowers, book binding, knitting, and macramé bracelets. I can't tank everyone enough for coming out, and being a part of what Threaded City is all about, community and supporting each other!

Patty Eykholt, Partner In All Things Crafty:
My dear cousin Patty is in the works of becoming my partner with Threaded City. I've been thinking for a while now, especially after getting back into one of my favorite blogs (A Beautiful Mess), that I really just don't want to do this alone. I don't want help for the bad times necessarily, but to celebrate the good. I work so much better when I have another to bounce ideas off of and to collaborate, that I've really had to consider this again. I mentioned this to Patty, not expecting any more than her and another friend to think about it, or to let me know of anyone they ran into. Of course Patty sat straight up in her chair and said "ME, ME!" I'm really looking forward to working with Patty more, she has her degree in Photography and is such a go-getter and all around motivated person, that I can't think of anyone better!  I'm really looking forward to all you getting to get to know her better.

Time and Management and... 
Another week has flown by and it feels like I just went to bed from last Wednesday. I have been cranking out a lot and been able to really attack my time differently than last year. I always like to see some tips and tricks on how to manage my time, recently I read this article. Although it doesn't say much I didn't know before, it does remind me of how people get things done. It also reminds me of how I often to have a realistic view of how long things take. I've been really bad about that lately, thinking something will take 1 hour and it takes 3! GAH!

Craft Night Numero Uno

Toon Pool

Craft Night has been initiated! All systems go! I've been talking about getting this going for an entire year now, and it's finally happening. Check out and sign up for the event on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/events/512858895415098/

What is Craft Night? 
A time for us crafters, art-dabblers, and all around DIY’s to get together and have a community while creating! 

What Should I Bring?
Bring your own supplies, a creative spirit, and a snack/drink to share.

When?Craft Night will be held on the last Monday of the month from 6-9 pm. 

mandipidy

Where?
This one on January 28, 2013 will be held at Founders
We're planning on continuing to have this event at Founders, but are up for discussing locations.

Itinerary:
- Greeting and Thanking of Sponsors (Founders, Threaded City, and Cupcakes and Company)
- Describe Brief Preplanned Crafts (Valentines Card and Wire Business Card Holder)
- START THE CRAFTING
- Melissa from Allen County Public Library Shares
- April Reinhard of Natril Gear Shares
- Clean (yes we have to pick up our projects)

Now that I've gone into the informative aspect of Craft Night, I hope you'll join! In the future I hope to have some recordings of it and what people are working on, and/or a webcam set up. I would really like to keep an event that is totally about what you want to bring, and just working in a group setting. However, I would like to have more focused groups on particular crafts, ie sewing, knitting, paper folding.

What are your thoughts? Timing? Place? Occurrence?

Oh and here's a list of what I will be bringing:

Sewing Machine and Thread

Glues

Scissors

Yarn

Pliers

Envelopes
...and...

NAME TAGS!

Good Article 

Wowza: When Things Line Up and Make Sense

The past couple of days have been a little on the odd side... to say the least. Things and thoughts have been lining up and reminding me so tremendously that I just have to get it out. A few shout outs are due to Red Velvet, Anita Homco, and Dan Miller.

The 5 points that seem to be so much in line:

     1. Give Your House/Space Flowers

• Give yourself/your space flowers! I am doing the January Cure from apartment therapy. At first when I saw that they suggested to give your home flowers, I thought what a waste of money! Little did I know that I would soon fall in love with this concept. Last Friday I bought my house a dozen roses, I separated them, spruced them up, and placed 5 in a medium sized vase, 3 in a small vase, the other 4 in single's vases, I placed these around the house, in areas that i spend the most time in. The more I saw them, the more I would smile when I'd see them. At the time I was in the middle of "The Secret Garden" by ___ and the visualization of the roses and what they represent in the book brought the magic into the house. I stared to move the flowers depending on where I needed to be (office-working, kitchen-cleaning). It worked! It improved my mood when I needed to work on soemthing that I didn't want to do. I love this way of making your space even better and more enjoyable when you bring in fresh flowers.

     2. "Why" Ted Talk

• Quick refresh from a previous post from the ted talk "why" watch the video. I found this was the easiest way for me to work on a mission statement. Why do you do what you do? The purpose of Threaded City is to encourage and help other artists and crafters reach the success that they want. This got me thinking about how much I absolutely want Threaded City to be all I hope for. Which leads me to my next thought process.

     3. What Would You Do if Money Wasn't a Concern

• "What would you do if money wasn't a concern?" Anita Homco. Getting together with Anita for brunch was great! Of course just catching up with one of Fort Wayne's greatest entrepreneurs but really thinking through some thoughts that I often don't let myself think about. So what would I do if money wasn't a concern? I jokingly told Anita that I could never really think through this, I would find something else I thought was cool and run off and stop doing what I'm working on now. Sometimes I think I'm more ADD than what my mind can handle. The more I thought about it, the more I thought that I really should think through what I would do. Of course travel, being rich, and some other random normal thoughts of what success looks like ran through my head... but... as I sat sewing (where I do some decent thinking) I began to get serious with myself and really really think. I kept seeing myself (I am extremely visual in my thought process) at my dream of what Threaded City will be. Including (but not limited to) an old brick downtown industrial building being filled with creativity, the first floor would have a retail type store front, small bike shop in the back, and a coffee shop/eatery to the side. The second floor would be filled with sewing machines of all kinds, work space, and collaborative space. Third floor would be my personal office and home, and the floors above would be rented. Of course there would be a roof top garden and patio. So this is the look, the feel and the sounds would be filled with a constant sense of energy and optimism. While incubating other artists and crafters a comradery of local collaboration and tenacity towards a common goal of making their venture succeed and adding to the development of skills and ideas.  Hearing the bells chime as someone new walks in the door and a little sigh as they see how cute and inspiring everything looks to the humming of sewing and things being made. A quick clank of some bike tools and a quick giggle makes the entire scene feel like there is something about to happen that just wants you to stay to see it. If you could spend the night you would in eagerness waiting for the next great thing to be celebrated. This is just a portion of what I want Threaded City to be. I am planning to work on my about me section and mission statement that will help elaborate the idea behind the scene as well. So I figured out with my dreaming that if money wasn't a concern I would be on the same path I am now, it just would be here sooner!
  

     4. Do as the Rich Do

• I'm not sure where this comes from, I think it's out of the book How Rich People Think by Ste Siebold (DON'T Quote me) but that generally the middle class is concerned with saving where the higher class is concerned with earning money. All of this is important to have balance... but I have decided to start viewing financial gain with this mindset. Micah and I have a pretty tight budget while I am starting and growing Threaded City, and he is in school full time, and still pay the bills and have a little fun too. Onward to a higher income, onward to bringing in more money and working more efficiently to do so. 

     5. Dream Bigger

• I can't remember where exactly I heard this quote, we'll just say it came from Steve Jobs (he actually did talk about it in Forbes). "Dream Bigger" to me means taking whatever you thought possible and pushing it farther. The bigger you dream, the higher you set your goals the more chance you have of reaching them. If you don't set high goals or big dreams, you won't reach them. I know we've all heard the idea that the bigger you dream the harder you fall. Yes, that is possible, but that is a fear based statement, and a self defeating one at that. If you want the dream, you have to believe it. I think, I'm finally starting to believe in my own dreams again and am gaining the courage to make those a reality. Earlier, I told you about what I want Threaded City to be, but to make it even bigger... I want to have my own clothing line succeeding and making women and men everywhere more excited about the way they look while being active individuals (see more about this in Commuty). I want to have multiple locations for Threaded City and be on the pulse of artists and crafters in major cities. 

These thoughts are still a little jumbled, but they are being thought, and that is the important part for me.