Alima, a Godsend.

she’s good. real good. Alima is her name and now two days a week she will be sewing those super straight lines of hers on OUR serviettes! her work is stunning. i am massively impressed. and she is just so sweet and adorable and kind. i really love having her on our team. so now i have SIX employees and still not sure how we are going to do this but believing.

since we will soon be sold in the Atlanta coffee shop, i wanted to create a line of products just for them. things coffee shop people buy. so we made these iPad sleeves and will make some in various sizes for other gadgets. i am also experimenting with clutches and cosmetic bags. interfacing is not something i can rely on getting locally, so i also want to experiment with other textiles to see what can work as a substitute. 

also, my visa expires Saturday so i went into town today to immigration to renew it. it was so easy! i just pulled my scooter right in front, handed them my paper work and voila! going to immigration is usually almost as bad as tribunal court. but this time, i bet i didn't sit in those ancient tweed covered sofas 5 minutes. it was such a breeze. and it was cheap! i thought it would be $100 but it was only $16. i’m not a tourist anymore and i am finally coming into my own in this, my scattered, dusty little town. i stopped into 556 for a very late lunch and ran into Ana and Ina, and got to have lunch with them. i love hanging out with them. i feel known and loved and understood. 

later today i met a couple from Austin, Texas who have a composting business. they just came over to look at the property where i live to scope out the place for composting and maybe getting chickens. i really, really want to have our own chickens. i just need to convince the community that we need them. eggs benedict anyone? composting is so easy and i don’t know why we don’t do it. 

*in the publishing of this message i got word that we are getting our own room! the sewing school. galeria dos sonhos will actually have a place of our very own. oh, how i will miss spending my morning's with jim and twyla, but not lugging stuff out from under the bed in her guest room. we now have our very own space! not outdoors! i can hardly wait. such great news. we can have proper tables and actual walls where the wind won't blow dirt all over us and the machines. right now we are sewing on plastic tables and our machines bounce up and down when you sew. ecstatic! this is such good news. this means we are now going to work another hour. the girls don't know this yet. but we really need to be working a bit longer. we've been leaving to get out of The Taylor's way and give them back their home for the afternoon. but now we will break for rice and beans and then, "Back to work!" 

Ramadan teaching Alima. i think this is going to be the other way around very soon.

beautiful, talented Alima

i thought the fact that someone etched the price of a DIRE into the counter at immigration was funny.  19,200? that must have been a very long time ago.

AND i bathed last night! with hot water. what is up with that? awful. i know!