Chimeric Chronicles: Life, Business, and Art in the Middle of a Leak

When people talk about “life happening,” they never quite prepare you for the version where your home, your studio, and the entire backbone of your creative work gets thrown into limbo over a leak you didn’t cause and couldn’t control. They don’t tell you how quickly an ordinary day can turn into weeks of displacement, uncertainty, and forced adaptability. They definitely don’t tell you how it feels to watch your carefully laid plans for photography, fiber art, and handcrafted skin care get pushed to the edge of chaos. So here’s the story, in order, because the order matters.

On October 11, R had an asthma attack—sudden, alarming, and absolutely out of the blue. At the time, it felt like a standalone crisis, something you deal with, recover from, and move on. But ten days later, it became the first breadcrumb in a trail I wish we never had to follow. On October 21, I noticed the leak. It wasn’t subtle, it wasn’t ignorable, and it wasn’t a “we’ll get to it later” kind of problem, even though that’s exactly how it ended up being treated.

By the time I found it, the damage was already there: moisture, warping, the kind of slow-growing issue that always turns into a bigger one if left alone. And in the back of my mind, I remembered R’s asthma attack and wondered if it was connected—potential mold exposure lingering in the walls, the floors, the air. From that moment forward, life split into two tracks: the version where I tried to advocate for a safe living environment, and the version where I kept running three different businesses from whatever corner of my world hadn’t been overtaken by chaos. And then, finally—if “finally” is even the right word—we were moved into a hotel on the night of November 14. That’s where this chapter of Chimeric Creations really begins.

My studio has always been the heart of my work. It’s where the sets are built, where the styled shoots come to life, and where props wait in organized (or semi-organized) chaos for the next model, the next concept, the next session. But once the leak took over, the entire space became off-limits, and sessions had to be rescheduled, relocated, or paused entirely. Everything designed for comfort, creativity, and intimacy—especially The Alchemy of Her—was suddenly trapped behind plastic barriers, fans, debris, or waiting for someone to decide what “remediation” actually meant. My props stayed locked inside the apartment.

The last frame build for Soul Sessions sits forlornly behind the TV in my hotel room, waiting to be decorated. Several bookings for The Alchemy of Her had to be canceled, to be rescheduled at a later date once I’m back in my apartment and studio space. Every concept is deeply thought out and intentionally crafted, and all of it was supposed to start across late fall and winter. Losing the space didn’t just interrupt a timeline; it paused an entire body of work that had already been in motion. I adapted where I could and planned around the uncertainty, but adaptation only goes so far when the tools, sets, and sacred workspace you rely on are all behind plastic and waiting on repair timelines that grow longer every week.

With the interior space gone, outdoor photography became the fallback—rain or shine, cold or colder. Pacific Northwest weather didn’t care about my deadlines, but I worked with what I had, turning parks and beaches into studios whether the wind agreed or not. Hotel rooms became makeshift editing stations and temporary gear storage, and the entire photography workflow shifted from controlled artistry to survival mode. Nothing replaces the studio, but I refused to stop creating.

I'm still not sure if any of my materials have been compromised since, when the leak first appeared, I was going through a crochet-mojo loss. I finally got it back, but not in time to check my material stock. Even with the uncertainty, there was one thing working in my favor: by some miracle, most of mine is stored upstairs in ziplock bags inside a zippered cloth bin under my bed, protected, sealed, and far from the dining room wall where the damage started. So far, everything seems okay, and that alone feels like a small mercy in the middle of a storm.

Even with most of my supplies intact, losing my workspace changed the way I could produce. Crochet requires rhythm, focus, and space—things that are hard to achieve in a hotel room where nothing is where it should be. Still, I kept going, and charity beanies for the holidays were completed in time. Orders stayed open, and custom work moved forward at the speed of “as possible,” not at the pace I had originally planned. Survival mode again. But fiber art is stubborn. And so am I.

Skincare work depends on surfaces, ventilation, space, and consistency. The leak took all of that away, leaving me with limited production ability and tighter-than-normal inventory. Packaging, batching, and labeling became miniature battles fought on hotel tables and makeshift setups, with storage limited, workspace nonexistent, and equipment needed to make more inaccessible anyway. But business doesn’t stop, so I worked around it. Magic Cataplasm was restocked at ACE Hardware in the Edmonds Bowl anyway—because the world keeps moving, even when mine feels like it’s stuck under drying fans and “pending quotes.” When customers depend on you, you find the gaps to keep moving, even if it means filling tins at midnight in a room with zero counter space.

People like to romanticize hotel living, but that’s not what this is. This is living out of bags, trying to run three businesses from a space the size of a walk-in closet, losing access to a full kitchen with an oven, and paying for more takeout than any human should. It’s relying on rideshares because I’m also carless right now, and trying to keep morale steady when nothing around me is steady. It’s the kind of experience that would be funny if it weren’t actually happening, the kind you know you’ll joke about later but are currently surviving one day at a time. Financial strain shows up everywhere: meals, transportation, buying replacements for things still trapped in the apartment, the sheer cost of displacement. It eats up both time and resources in ways people don’t see from the outside.

There’s a strange place between calm and chaos where I’ve been living for weeks now. Part of me is in full documentation mode, tracking details, keeping emails, and collecting every timeline note because one day, I may need all of this. The practical part of me is steady, organized, keeping score. The rest of me—the part that cares about aesthetics, creativity, ritual, magic—is very done. I’m exhausted, frustrated, and determined not to let this derail everything I’ve built. I’m doing my best to make the chaos look intentional, even when it feels anything but.

Some days, it feels like the universe hit pause on my plans just to see what I’d do. What I’ve done is exactly what I always do: keep creating, keep working, and keep insisting on beauty in the middle of a mess. Leaks happen, repairs happen, and displacement happens, but the ripple effect they cause—on mental health, on creativity, on business, and on day-to-day living—is rarely talked about. So here it is, the whole messy, inconvenient, exhausting truth of it.

I didn’t choose any of this. I didn’t ask for the disruption. I didn’t plan to rebuild timelines or fight for safe living conditions or invent an entire mobile workflow out of hotel furniture. But I did all of it anyway because Chimeric Creations isn’t just a business—it’s not just photography or yarn or handcrafted salves. It’s not just the Tokin’ Jewitch working through chaos with determination and caffeine. It’s survival. It’s transformation. It’s creativity refusing to die in the middle of inconvenience.

As long as I’m here, as long as these three brands exist under my hands, the work continues. Even from a hotel room. Even through leaks. Even through uncertainty. Even when everything feels like it’s held together with ziplock bags, crochet hooks, and sheer willpower. The story isn’t over. The studio will reopen. The sets will be rebuilt. The Alchemy of Her will move forward. And I’ll come out of this phase even more relentless than I went into it.

After all, a chimera is built from many parts. So am I. And nothing about this chapter changes what I create next.