A Quick Note

I’m sure you’ve noticed the lack of updates in the past two weeks.

I started 2019 still dealing with post-holiday stress, and that just got compounded as the year progressed. One of our cats (Vinnie), got very ill with pancreatitis and that became my only priority. He’s hale and hearty again now, thanks to the skills and efforts of our veterinary clinic, but I was justifiably distracted for quite a while. The arms I recently purchased for my mannequin don’t work as expected, and while I know I’m going to be able to fix them with a quick trip to the hardware store, it sort of killed my motivation. An obi I was incredibly excited to coordinate seems to have gotten lost in the mail. I had to deal with the unpleasant task of banning an incredibly rude and abrasive person from the Kimono Tsuki Facebook page (and subsequently my personal account). On top of all this, the weather here in Montreal has been absolute garbage recently and the available light for taking photos is nearly zero. Despite all this, I thought today I’d do a coordination to get my mojo back, and pretty much everything that could have gone wrong did, so I stepped away.

All together, these things have added up and my motivation has taken a huge hit. But I do definitely have some art and DIY projects in the works, and the mannequin’s arm issue is going to be fixed one way or another in the next few days. so I’ll be back in full force soon!  I’d like to apologise, and sincerely thank you for sticking around. I haven’t gone anywhere, I promise! In the meantime, I do still make sure to share interesting links, videos, and photos on my facebook page, so you can always come hang out there. And as a thank you for reading til the end of this silly post, enjoy this photo I took of a beautiful doll several years ago at the Montreal JCCC.

Renovation Time!

Just a quick note today as I’ve upgraded to WordPress 5! What does this mean for you? Ideally, in a perfect world, you shouldn’t notice anything, aside from maybe some quicker loading times. However, there’s always the chance some of my older posts or plugins might not work quite right. If you happen to notice anything that looks off or outright broken, please use the contact form and let me know. I’d greatly appreciate it!

New Year, New Look!

Things look a little different around here, don’t they?

As much as I loved the seasonal themes I’ve been rotating through the past few years, I felt like the lack of cohesion was getting distracting. There’s so much visual media on this blog that it was almost as if the themes and the actual content were competing with each other. Also, as I continue to expand my social media presence between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and now Patreon, it was taking more and more time and effort to update the seasonal theme across them all.

So I decided to create a more streamlined, straightforward, and sleek theme that will stay up year-round for now. This will save me a lot of time and allow me to focus on nothing but content from here on in. The basic layout and content are the same, it’s just the visual aspect of things that has changed. Well, that and my beloved koi pond, which wasn’t displaying properly. I’ll probably figure out what went wrong eventually, but it’s not a huge priority for me at the moment.

Originally, I’d been planning to switch over on January first to start the year with a bang, but with the holidays coming up I wanted to get it done while I still had some free time. Also, I typically change the theme on the Sunday closest to the season change date but it seemed quite silly to keep waiting and then put up the winter theme only to change it again in a week and a half. So now it’s all done, across all platforms, and I can go back to focusing on the fun side of things.

Kimono Tsuki is now on Patreon!

I have caved in and set up an account on Patreon, where you can pledge anywhere from $1 to $20 a month to help support this blog financially. Kimono collecting can be quite an expensive hobby, and once you factor in the cost of reference texts and web hosting, things can add up quickly. Due to my health problems I can only work part-time, and while I’m lucky enough to not have to worry about things like food or rent, it’s reaching a point where I’m not above opening up requests for help.

I will never put advertising in the blog, nor will I ever make content exclusive to people who support me financially. There will just be small incentives, like little digital images and early access to some contents. There’s also still always the option of making a one-time donation via PayPal or purchasing an item off one of my wishlists. If you’re ever looking for a way to help out but don’t want to commit to a regular patronage, please check out the Contribute & Support page.

Thanks for reading, and this is the only time I will plead publicly like this!

California Dreamin’

I’m flying out to southern California today, and will be there for a month. ✈️ I’ve got some entries drafted up and will have access to the internet but my free time will be reduced and I won’t have access to my kimono or the mannequin. Entries will be sparse for a while, but I’ll be back soon!

Thanks for your patience 🙂