It’s a write-a-blog-post kinda day for me today. From photo editing, to filling out forms, to deciding on the next colors of fabric to order for the fall, I’m doing everything I can to work from home and not have to leave my house. You see, here in DFW, Texas, the average high temp is about 105F. Last week, while taking orders from my workshop to the post office, I ended up with a touch of heat exhaustion that wore me out for the next day and a half. Yes, that was with my car’s AC going as cool as its poor little heart could churn out. Even after the sun sets, it’s in the 90s well into the night.
My typical June/July routine is to set up my dressform in my backyard, bring new product from the workshop to my home to photograph in front of the hedges, and spent at least a few weeks photographing as much as I can to list online before the Halloween rush hits. Unfortunately, it’s extremely dangerous to do that this year. In previous years, I’d attempted to make indoor photo studio sets that inconveniently blockaded the front door to our house, and then I hated how the pictures turned out anyway. And now, with our household having become a cat colony, I don’t feel comfortable bringing product into a cat-hair-heavy location. So indoor shoots at my home are out.
Which now leaves me with shooting at my workshop if I’m to stay indoors. There are very few good spots in my workshop to take pictures. When I say few, I mean one. I only take corset pictures in that spot. The lighting elsewhere in the place is bad, there’s not enough space to bring in my studio lights, and I’m still working toward having the front area of the workshop as a by-appointment-only shopping space. So I’d prefer not bringing anything extra into there, when I’m desperately trying to remove things that don’t need to be there any longer so I can organize better.
As such, my plans for having beautiful outdoor pictures of coordinated outfits to list here and on Etsy, or to post onto social media, have mostly come to a standstill. Additionally, I’m only making once or twice a week trips to the post office to ship orders out. (And taking an electrolyte drink mostly filled with ice along with me each time!) So while I would normally do up to four post office trips per week to ship your items out as quickly as I can, I now have to contend with my health in the heat. Orders are still being shipped in their 1-3 business day window, but I’m taking fewer trips overall.
So, for now, I’m making plans. Doing the things I can do from home. Redoing my former sewing room into a dedicated home office for me to have separation from my husband’s office space. Hoping the power grid doesn’t go down. So I leave you with a picture of one of our kittens, Little Miss Callie, napping in my computer chair.