I swear the older I get, the faster time goes by. This year seems to be flying by, I blink and another month is gone. So, I know you all have been waiting on the edge of your seats waiting for a new post ( you’ll get used to my sarcastic humor eventually). I don’t talk about this often because just like having a chronic illness, people don’t really know what to say and I think it makes them more uncomfortable than it does me. This time of year (and Christmas) are hard for me. My oldest son would have turned 40 this year. He passed away in December of 2019 from metastatic cancer. It was initially colon cancer that they found because he had to have an emergency appendectomy. Things were looking good for a few years and then he started having really bad back pain. It had spread to his spine and bones. I can honestly say that was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to endure. I drew this picture about a year after he passed. While it is a pretty good likeness, I just couldn’t capture his eyes correctly. He had beautiful blue eyes. Eyes are always hard for me. That and hands.

I haven’t really done much art. I had a bit of cast-on-itis and wanted to make all the things but nothing held my interest very long. I powered through some new crochet placemats and a table runner, even though I still can’t sit at the kitchen table to eat lol. And I started this cardigan but haven’t worked on it for a few days, but I have a good excuse this time! There’s no pattern, I’m just kind of winging it but I finished one sleeve and plan on doing the other before finishing the body because I’m notorious for getting to sleeve island and putting it aside for months.

So now for the reasons why I have not been knitting this past week. Being down about my son and of course the chronic illness/pain and not being able to work, or pretty much get out of the house, I was doom scrolling and happened to come across an ad for a huge Mother’s Day giveaway from Avon. Now, once upon a time I was a fiend for Avon products (and some very expensive makeup. Looking at you Anastasia Beverly Hills, Tarte, Urban Decay and all your little friends!) Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, Avon, so I enter the giveaway and it was like the flashing lights of a Vegas slot machine when you hit the bonus round, I see the become an Ambassador. And like a moth to the flame, I did! I’ve sold Avon before but back then I used to buy more than I made but the discount was worth it alone 😂. I may not get many sales (so far only my daughter has ordered, she’s as bad as her momma when it comes to Avon), but it got me excited again. I’m sharing the giveaway link, there’s no purchase necessary and you do not have to opt in for the emails, just sharing the love.

And the next thing that happen that got me excited to get back to posting was a very generous donation from a wonderful fellow spoonie and art, crochet and craft lover, Angela Shupe so I could get paid hosting for a year! I about fell off the bed! I’ve been working on changing some things up a little and I still have some things to finish up but I was so excited I didn’t want to wait to post. I’m a complete techy, nerdy, love to get into the actual designing part of the blog and I was pretty limited on the free plan with what I could do. I even made a donate widget to embed so I won’t have to use KoFi and can keep everything here on the blog, like an actual coded widget so it bypasses a third (or technically forth) party and will go directly to my Stripe or PayPal account. I mean, Claude did the heavy lifting, I just told him what I wanted and did the copying and pasting but I did think of it all on my own lol. Not sure if it actually functions correctly but it looks pretty, 🤣

I still need to move the Freebies over and I’ll probably just keep them in my Google Drive with a shared link to keep file sizes down on this site. I’ve also been going through photos and changing them to WEBP files to cut down on loading time. It’s a process. Hopefully I’ll have more artsy things to post in the next edition. Until then, I hope you all have a great week!

Deanna