Another Really Sucky Month
| 1324 words
| 2025 | Personal | Daily Life | Projects
Happy (very late) New Year! I hope 2025 has been treating everyone well, even with the craziness going on in our world right now. Naturally this past month has sucked for me, but not for the reasons you'd think.
I've unfortunately had to recently cut off a long-term friendship over things that I'm not going to get into here, but that's what I've been dealing with the most and was given me the most amount of anguish in the past month. I'm doing much better now that I've fully cut this person out of my life, but it's still rather bittersweet knowing what would come to pass, considering all the good times we had together. I don't believe those good times excuse what this person has done though, and I really only do this when people have done things that are unforgivable.
That heavy topic aside into something that's still a bit heavy, but my physical health has also been difficult to cope with lately. If you don't know this about me, some of my chronic illnesses tend to flare up during the winter, and the weather since the start of January hasn't been too kind to me. I was especially feeling it last week, with me spending the entire time mostly in bed because of how agonizing my pain and fatigue were. I couldn't hold my body upright for very long from how exhausted my muscles felt, which meant that I needed the support of my pillows in my bed to even use my laptop. All this to say, I haven't been able to use my desktop computer very often where I do a lot of my coding from until today, where I still feel pretty painful, but I'm at least able to keep myself sitting upright now.
When my pain has allowed for it, I've been able to get quite a bit of work done on my fursuit premades! Unfortunately I'm limited to the amount of work I'm able to do until my furs and minky fabrics arrive from Howl by the beginning of March, but I was super lucky that they ended up restocking just before Canada implemented tariffs on American imports. I'm not sure if they also include things like fabric, but I didn't want to take the chance of hurting my wallet further and held out ordering anything until Howl restocked the fabrics that I needed, and I'm so glad they did!
But like I said earlier, there's not much else I can work on until the rest of my fabric arrives- I've sewn the lining together into bigger pieces so that, once I can finish the mouth lining, I can just sew it all together and have it all finished, but I still need the minky I'm using for the mouth to attach the lining all together and glue it in place. I mean, I could theoretically get away with sewing up and gluing all of the lining now, but I think that would make ladder stitching the mouth to the neoprene lining more difficult than it should be.
I'm also just realizing that this is the first time I'm making a fursuit premade update on here since I started the foam sculpts, so I want to take a minute to talk a bit about the features I'm implementing into the suits! For starters, the African Wild Dog is going to have magnetic removable ears for easy traveling, since otherwise they might get in the way and become pretty annoying! The AWD also has two magnets on each side of it's muzzle, and it will have two removeable magnetic tongues (long and short,) that can be used to change it's expressions! Speaking of expressions, both suits are going to have velcro eyelids, as well as removable eyes for easy cleaning! I do wish I could make them magnetic eyelids instead, but I'm not sure how I'd be able to do that while also making sure to keep the eyes themselves removable. Only way I could think of is if my eye blanks were to have small trenches in them to put the magnetics in, but unfortunately I don't print my own eye blanks (yet,) and I don't imagine my seller would be able to make custom ones for me for this purpose, or they would but would charge me a lot for them. I'm looking into 3D printers though, so I hope that's something I can do soon!
Other features I've included, or looking to include, are adjustable velcro headstraps wrapping the back of the heads, inner head lining pockets, finger escapes in the handpaws, and zippers in the tails for easy stuffing removal when it comes time to clean. My main goal for these suits is to make simple, cute designs that appeal to many people, while also having many features that make it easy to maintain for beginner suiters! It's also a good way for me to experiment with many different techniques, and I'm sure that I'll continue to experiment with my suit building with the next suits I make!
Other than being busy with fursuits, I've also been trying to get back into doing artwork consistently. I've realized that I've been starting to fall out of love with painting, mainly because it takes me a minimum of 8 hours to complete a piece, and sometimes I might not even be happy with that piece to begin with. As a result, I'm trying my hardest to cut down on the amount of time and detail I put into my pieces, not only to conserve my energy and sanity, but also to make it easier to relegate my time spent on painting into a more consistent schedule for when it comes time to open up my commissions. So far I think it's working, because I am starting to enjoy painting more often, and I'm actually liking having a messier, less polished style that shows you exactly where my paint strokes are- something I've admired in other artists' work for a long time. Of course that hyper-detailed, overly rendered style is nice in it's own respect, but it's a major pain in the ass to do, and it causes me a ton of pain to do! It's been hard to adjust to a new style when I've been known for having that hyper-detailed style, but I'm at a point where even putting that much detail into my work doesn't make me feel anymore accomplished than I feel from my other, more simplistic work.
With all that said, the new year started rather rough, and I've already had to reflect a lot about myself in multiple areas, but I hope that things will be smoother here on out. Next month is Furnal Equinox, which I'm super excited for since it'll be my first time going to FE, which has been a dream of mine since the con's inception, pretty much! It'll also be my first time traveling by train, which I'm rather curious about, especially since I'll have to travel with a mobility aid! I'm preparing as much as I can for the trip, but I still hope things work out in my favour for it.