Ah, to be an anxiety-ridden putz.  I got the idea for a new Dicken’s Christmas Bonnet from the YouTube, and thought it would make a nice birthday present for my sister.  That was in August.  It is November now, November 28th.  Mulling something over, but being afraid to just start the damned thing, for three months, is a drag.

I can claim some mitigating circumstances.  The late-year cat-sitting dates … aka studio time … were cut short, or canceled.  But I have remedied that by renting studio space, of a sort.  AceMakerSpace.Org.  They have rented spaces, three of them, in a concrete-block, light-industrial-type building a little southwest of Alcatraz.  For $200 a month I have, ostensibly, 24/7 access to the place.  The Ladies’ is lovely and clean.  But I have yet to settle in to steady work.

Two weeks ago, I went to the “Monthly Textile Meeting”, to get acquainted, and I was the only one to show up.  The week before last, I went to the “Sewcial” billed from 6 to 9, and besides the hosting member, who showed at 6:30, there was only me.  She put on some “Holiday Jazz”, and I irrevocably cut into the brim of the Christmas Bonnet … and got a little further even.  The back of the cut crown has initial binding on it.  A cloth cover of the crown has been fabricated, and may do.

Then I was supposed to spend the all four days of Thanksgiving off, at the space.  Well, Thursday, no.  I slept late.  I had aches and pains, physical and psychic.  I went to the office around noon.  I had chocolate and scones for lunch.  I knit.  And then I went back to bed.

But today, Friday, now I will commence … but not until after another late sleep.  I get there at noon-forty. 

It’s the “Co-Working / Textile” space.  The first floor of the building is about six-eight feet above the street.  And there are halls on the first floor, but not a long one the length of the building.  The halls are short and branch off here and there, I think because the building was originally designed to have several contained two-story spaces.  The Textile space is on the second floor.  A doorway on the first floor now leads up to two second-story spaces.  All the times I’ve been there before, the first-floor doorway was propped open.  Today, it was closed and locked.

I have a little blue fob on my keychain that will access the space at the top of the stairs, but nothing to deal with the locked door at the bottom.  After saying “fuck” once or twice, I go patrolling.  Hang a right, and a right again, and you come to the laser room.  The machine is running, so somebody’s in there.  I use my fob; the door opens (gratifying), and I make enquiries of the young woman making laser-cut something-or-others.  But she is not senior membership, and has no knowledge of any key to the Textile door.

So I must resort to “Slack”, which is a Sales Force product.  I loath Mr. Benioff, and all his works, but the Makers use Slack for membership communications … and it does seem to work.

First I put it out on the “Co-Working” category.  “The door’s locked … the door’s not supposed to be locked, what gives?”  I was more polite than that.  And I sat on the floor, reading Crampton Hodnet for the sixth or seventh time, for half an hour to see if there was a response.  Nadda.  So, just before hoisting my feeble self off the dirty floor, I put it out on the “General” category: “Would the space be unlocked tomorrow?”

Alas, I was already in the car and on my way back to knitting, when I did get a response:  There is a key behind the corkboard inside the door of the laser room.

The place works … and tomorrow, Saturday, so will I.