venting. (to the whiners) [shortened considerably from its original concept.]

i had a more vitriolic post in mind when i was thinking of this entry. i was frustrated at a culmination of moments- and a specific type of frustrated too.
i've been party to many people who do things like what i do expressing dismay over a lack of progress, a lack of sales, etc, and asking the community- what's wrong with me? should i quit? i have only x number of progress points. and invariably, they've been at it less time than i and have made more, in various ways of looking at it, progress points.
note, i'm not talking about some rewards system, literal progress points, i'm just substituting that for number of sales, amount of income, etc, steps in the path of progress/success, however that individual defines such a goal for their own efforts. i'm not talking about stats, like in some rpg. (i think i could deal with this etsy experience if i viewed it more as a game part of me engages in, like a role playing game. STATS!)
[yelling "stats" is a shoutout to my husband, who nevertheless never reads this blog. that's okay, he has to live with me.]

anyway, to sum it all up it's discouraging. i am a competitive person, and so when i see the person who's publicly expressing their perceptions about their progress or lack thereof has more stats than i do, i get annoyed. i am trying to convince myself that i am annoyed because the person seems to be whining in a public forum, not that the person has more stats than me.
i think that the latter is a rather juvenile reaction, and the no whining thing is a bias of mine that makes the public a nicer place to be. but i'm being a bit judg-y and i try to be much more live and let live. in public anyhow. but the critic in my head still smokes cigarettes, and she still flicks the ashes from them rather sharply sometimes.
so what it amounts to, is that regardless of personal preference towards no whining, is that i do it anyway, on my blog, and that while i dislike it, i'll defend someone elses right to do it? eh, okay, not quite. but i will try to chill about it because everyone else's ideas about progress are different than mine, as are what feels like everyone else's production scale, budget, etc.
i think some of those etsy people out there have extra hours in their day. i'm suspecting that reality is just a little biased. (jokes! pointless accusations and jokes!)

and besides
i'd rather not dwell on that because i need more hours in my day. and because there's a lot to do.
and because
i had a Very Good Idea that i'd rather wallow in, instead.
a very very good one indeed.
who doesn't want a cape?
a goddess cape.
stay tuned. details at 11. or whenever.

never buying shampoo again?

i finally tried it. i finally tried the hippie-frugal-elementary school science project baking soda hair wash and vinegar rinse.
and i'm never buying shampoo again.
i'm a sucker for b&b products (bath and beauty, y'all). i got all my handmade soaps from alaska- strangely enough- the ones i'm using now are from gladheart acres (the rise and shine is probably my favorite; it's citrusy enough to wake me up in the morning) and a wonderful intro to the family/company from my m.i.l. i also have their solid lotion stick and love it.
i've got my eye on some more soaps from alaska, swanmountain's rose soap looks divine, and there's a guinness soap on there that would make my hub smell like, well, delicious beer. perhaps it's a good thing he doesn't drive, no?
and i love bath salts and bombs and bubbles, having been clued into the pleasure of a leisurely bath and cup of coffee/cup of tea/glass of wine and a paperback by my gran when i was quite young.

but the one thing that's never excited me is shampoo. sure, sometimes it smells good but a person who has a bee sting allergy is generally not crazy about her hair smelling like flowers. i dislike the plastic bottles that must be stood on their heads to get the last bits out with those farty-sounding squeezes. and then there's the markup. and crazy-long lists of ingredients. and the condescending "lather, rinse, repeat if you've been soaking your head in motor oil" nonsense.
sure, some shampoo makers have tried to liven things up for me by putting jokes or trivia or faux-biographical vignettes on the bottle. i'm an inveterate reader, the type that can't keep herself from reading when there's words. eventually those words get old.
so anyway. needless to say, i'm not a huge fan of shampoo, but i do like clean hair.

enter the baking soda/vinegar thing. read about it in bust a couple of years ago when i still thought bust was der poo. it's come up again a couple of times since then and every time i've seen it, i've thought, you know, i'd try that. when i came across this blog entry i was ready. i bought a giant jug of vinegar a couple of weeks ago thinking to start cleaning with it. and for cooking. so far it works great on the bathroom sink, with some baking soda, and not so great on the mirror.
if that same elementary school project doesn't fail me, baking soda's a base, and vinegar, of course, is acidic. i know from extensive at home wild hair coloring projects and fiber work that vinegar is used to neutralize ph and smooth hair shafts back out. armed with this knowledge and baking soda paste and diluted vinegar in an old water bottle with a cinnamon stick & orange essential oil in, i washed my hair.
no lather, plenty of rinse, zero need to repeat.
the fine, straight, tending towards limp and oily hair is quite happy. it smells faintly of orange and not of salad dressing, which is good. it was cheap. cheap enough to where i can't really estimate how cheap it was. maybe two tablespoons of baking soda?
and that's good because that means i can use my pennies for delicious handmade soap.
oh yes and more yarn.
noro niji is good to me, and therefore i return to yarn garden to extend this series.