Weekly Roundup: delays ahead! Also otters and octopi!
(Smol Panther says "I HALP!" but her halping is very bitey.)
If anybody knows who's responsible for it being almost the end of January ALREADY, please let me know because I would like to file a complaint. I am pretty sure it's actually only something like January 5th but my phone and watch and computer and Alexa all insist that it's the 20th and I don't know how this happened.
ANYWAY. The end-of-year-clearance sale was a gigantic success (thank you all so much!) and I hope you are all enjoying your shinies! If they haven't arrived by now and you live in the US, please let me know so I can yell at the post office. If you're not in the US, probably they'll get there eventually?
I'm also having a lot of fun with the Pretty Rocks Club, and if you didn't sign up for that you can still snag this month's black sunstone - I think there are 2 or 3 left. The charoite for next month should be en route to me today, which is good because I'm actually hoping to get all of February's subscriptions made up by the end of the month...
...because on February 3rd I'm having surgery and I honestly have no idea when I'll be back at work. Might be a week! Might be six weeks! (It had BETTER NOT be six weeks.) My surgeon thinks it should only be a week or two given what I do for a living, and I'm getting everything set up so I can work from bed once I have enough mobility in my arms to be able to hold a pair of pliers again because this definitely ain't my first rodeo when it comes to working while recovering from surgery.
(For once it's a quality of life surgery rather than "oh how exciting, my body has found a new and creative way to try to kill me!" surgery, and strictly speaking it's elective although I DID NOT ELECT TO LIVE WITH ALL THIS PAIN AND I WOULD LIKE IT GONE NOW PLEASE. But all is well, I promise, and hopefully I will soon be in a lot less pain on a daily basis which means more workbench time so everybody wins! Except possibly your bank account. Sorry about that.)
I plan to have all pending orders shipped out by Saturday February 1st, at which point I will formally be on medical leave and the ABSOLUTE SOONEST anything MIGHT get shipped again is February 8th, but it could be longer. So if there's anything you've been eyeing, or any presents you need to order between now and March, probably you should get your order in sooner rather than later...
(Earring club subscriptions will probably go out a little later than usual for all of February, and there's a possibility that Pretty Rocks Club could ship late as well. I'm planning to teach the Tiny Evil Genius to pack orders today, so hopefully she can take over on getting subscriptions in the mail if I'm not back on my feet as quickly as I hope.)
I'll be focusing on subscription prep and getting orders out over the next two weeks, but new shinies should still make it onto the website as well - I'll be focusing on one-of-a-kind items, mostly pendants and earrings that can be shipped immediately without needing additional workbench time.
...and with that I'm off to one of the many VERY FUN (oh wait no) pre-op appointments that I have this week, because apparently a lot of poking and prodding is needed to make sure I'm not an alien or something? I'll spare you the details and instead leave you with a links to fun things that I've made recently from a batch of handcrafted Peruvian ceramic beads that have been entertaining me a lot:
