glittergoods

show & tell: Swank

Yesterday marks the end of my whirlwind April 06 show tour, although I'm not sure I can call it whirlwind when the drive up to the Phinney Ridge community center was about 5 minutes, & this was after almost a week of sitting around wondering if I really needed to make anything new, or if I could just by with not unpacking my BazBiz boxes (answer:  mostly, though I did whip up a batch of "sugar beet" shirts) .  Whirlbreeze, maybe.

At any rate, yesterday was the Swank show, which was pretty slow (it was my first time doing Swank, but I hear that slowness is very unusual, since it's a known shopping destination that draws a good crowd, & based on the vendors there yesterday, I can definitely see why), but slow in a way that I don't mind -- enough sold to cover fees + a little profit, which I promptly turned around & spent (+ more!) on stuff from other vendors.

I didn't take any pictures of my table (I meant to, just to illustrate the difference between setting up for a 10x10 tent & a 6x5 "booth", but I was both lazy & distracted), but I have snaps of my loot to show off:

This amazing paper flower is from Mommy Makes Roses

She forms the blooms & then handpaints each one with watercolors.  I picked this big creamy rose for a Mother's Day present, but she also does these amazing orange ones that I might just have to pick up for myself the next time we meet.

Here's my fantastic felted flower brooch from Creme, & I have to tell you that the complete genius of the thing (besides being generally irresistable, I love smushy fiber roses & just look at those two little rhinestones at the top!) is that she uses those tiny magnets as fasteners, so no pinholes!  It's sitting on top of this vast mumu/caftan sort of thing that I fished out of her tub of vintage clothes (apparently it was quite the scene, a whole bunch of us vendors descending on the box once we realized she'd kindly brought a box of thrifting to the show) & can't wait to use as fabric.  Creme's on hiatus for a while (she's about to have a baby at any moment), but will be back in the fall, & she's definitely someone to keep an eye on.

(In between shopping, I started work on the Wool & Hoop kit that I picked up at BazBiz last weekend.  I've got her gorgeous book, but haven't had time to look for the right kind of linen/wool, so figured that a kit was a good, portable way to go.  I'm enjoying it, although it's hard for me to just let go of the lengths of wool when they get too stressed out to use (I am one of those that saves all the little bits & pieces of embroidery floss, yes).)

This is my new tote from Mish Mash -- I was not even a little bit in the market for a new bag, since I live my life out of my beloved Queen Bee star bag, but I have a really hard time resisting the sparkly siren call of glitter vinyl.  Really hard.  Glitter + polka dots is a double whammy, & suddenly I was envisioning packing this bag up with the cute new lunch containers I got for the kids the other day, some sunscreen, a little craft project or two, & heading out to the playground.  Plus, look at the cute little pouch it comes with!

A not very glamorous shot of my beautiful new Estrella soaps -- ginger-orange & the one I am the very most excited about, unscented shea butter, which is already out next to the downstairs sink where I scrub up after screenprinting.  I love the star stamped into each one, & especially love that they only use essential oils as fragrance.  O, shea butter soap, my dry hands & I look forward to getting to know you!

I am now realizing that there are a couple more things I failed to photograph (beautiful Fernworks necklace & the great sock monsters from Smartypants that my kids conned their grandmother into getting for them), but I think that's enough for one day.  Plus, it's crafting time!  The dorky Buzz Lightyear doll I'm making is not going to sew on its own head!

show & tell: BazBiz SF

We got home from San Francisco (well, San Mateo, really, but we flew out of SFO) at about two this morning, then had to sneak downstairs to sleep on the foldout couch (my parents had come to stay with the kids & were in our bed), which is actually fairly comfortable, especially if you are already at the stage of exhaustion that you sleep soundly even with a cat on your head, which I was, & yes, she did.

Bazaar Bizarre SF in the middle of Maker Faire  was probably the most fun I've ever had doing a big show.  There were about 50 of us on a little grassy lawn in the middle of the San Mateo Expo Center, & all around us were buildings filled with cool stuff like gigantic robotic giraffes & elaborate lego train sets & recycled fashion shows & crafty workshops & places where kids could make paper rockets &, well, we spent a lot of time lamenting the fact that we were unable to bring the kids with us.

I'm not sure that the craft show part of the fair(e) was well-known in advance, but one of the organizers of the Make event told me that she thought there were about 10,000 people there on Saturday, & plenty of them wandered through our little corner of things.  The crowd was really fun, largely composed of people who seemed to have a general appreciation for making stuff, & who were delightedly surprised to stumble upon all the craftiness.

Here's Kate, working hard as my knit gift enclosure spokesmodel.  I didn't use her the first day because I'd left the prop knit card in the one suitcase that stayed in the hotel room, & I definitely sold more knit card sets the second day when she was there perking up the display.  She's a natural!  Also, it's a good thing I had her zip tied to the shelves, because there were probably half a dozen little kids who came into the booth all "forget the shirts, give me that kitty!"  Possibly the best part about having her in my booth, though, was having funny little craft-geek moments with the half-dozen or so women who came into my booth specifically because they'd made one too/knew someone who made one/knew about a craftster thread about the pattern/had the pattern on their to-do list when they finally learned to knit.  I kept hoping that I'd run into someone who'd made it to the Jess Hutch workshop, but alas.

Felt + glitter wristbands & tiny card sets on their pegboard displays, which I love but which I fear make the bracelets look a little too good, since people seem much more likely to touch & examine when they're just jumbled up into bowls.  Display is a strange & delicate science.

One of the best things about outdoor shows is that you get a whole 10x10 tent for booth space, which means plenty of room to spread out & do things like hang tees along the sides of the booth, cleverly distracting people from the hideous mess of sloppily folded tees on the tee table, which is pretty much impossible to keep on top of when the booth is busy.  The robot design ("clank") in the middle was the hit of my booth -- not so surprising for this show, really.

The whole weekend was just great -- great weather, really friendly & excited crowd, good location (plus close to other cool vendors, like my illustrator/crafter friend Susie of boygirlparty  & the super-nice guys from Social Studies who had amazing vintagey screenprinted totes & tees (vintagey but original art, I should say, which makes it even cooler), lots of people needing glitter tees for their kids & themselves.  Worth the trip!   

Plus, while I was there, I ran into Kristin from Sydney Designs here in Seattle (met her at the Paper Doll show down in Portland in March -- which, speaking of, was a tiny little show that I thought was really nicely put together.  I'm looking forward to the next one, coming up sometime this summer), & turns out she'd been trying to track me down to see if I wanted a spot in her show, Swank, which is one that I've heard really great things about, & so of course I jumped at the chance (briefly considered ditching my daughter's third birthday party for it until I realized that her birthday is not in fact this coming weekend, phew), & so, before I get any further bogged down in parenthetical asides, the gist is that I'm doing another show this upcoming Saturday, ha.

At least I don't have to fly anywhere for it.

toot, toot

Today I got a great little writeup in a newish blog -- one of those "fabulous finds" ones, called Cool Mom Picks, in which the writer says flattering things about my glitter shirts -- & totally gets the fine line I'm trying to walk with the sparkle, here.  Which is cool, because, hey, press is cool, plus the other stuff they feature is cool which makes my stuff even cooler by association, plus I am up to my eyeballs in shirts + glitter today, so it's nice to get a little ego boost in between glittering more freaking charming eggplant shirts (no, really, I do think that the eggplant is one of the best looking pieces of produce out there, also I have special love for the particular shade of purple I mixed for it.  Way more exciting than the carrot or the tomato shirt, though I suspect it would come in second to the artichoke shirt, if I could ever figure out a way to glitter an artichoke that didn't take six zillion hours per piece.).  I'm almost done with those, then I get to move on to the stack of hammer shirts ("bang") that I am saving as a treat for myself, since I think they're so funny.

I'm making one of these for myself, definitely.

the great rhinestone debate

[ring, ring]

Hugely patient husband who is busy trying to solve enormous problem at work but who nevertheless takes time to have this conversation with me:  Hello?

Me:  Hi.  If I glue pink rhinestones on the outside of her birthday party invitations, because they match the glitter on the wand inside & also because otherwise the paper I'm using* is daintier than I'd like, is that the kind of thing that makes the other moms hate me?

Him:  What?  I don't think the rhinestones will stay on in the mail.

Me:  No, no, I'll be putting them in the folders at school, & I have to do it today, but it turns out that I don't have any pink paper that's good for these & so I'm using this silver-speckled white stuff under some silver vellum, but it's not rowdy enough, so I thought the rhinestones.  Plus, I have this whole excellent box of rhinestones that I never get to use.

Him: ...

Me:  Is it too much?  It's too much.

Him:  No, it's great.  She will love it.  Also, if the other moms don't know how you are already, they're going to find out when they come to the actual party, so why worry about it?

Me:  Yeah, ok.  Plus, it's cute!  Too much, but cute!  Ok, go back to work, good luck with that problem thingy.  Bye.

Him: [Brief silence in which he ponders how he married me because I'm like this, not in spite of it.]  Bye.

*in the spirit of Use What You Have, of course.

so many eggplants

Today, in the middle of me slacking around reading the family issue of Real Simple with my son (which translates into me trying to read skim the articles while he's bugging me to turn the page so he can look for interesting pictures, also, since it was right before snacktime, providing meaningful color commentary (mmmm, that looks good) for all the food pictures (handy that the picture of diced pork looked a lot like one of our tofu favorites) -- &, ok, RS family special issue is no MS Kids, it's true, but I was having a weak & melancholy moment about MS Kids when I was passing the magazine rack at the grocery store!) a package from YesAsia.com arrived, bringing me three excellent crafty books* that promptly went to join the pile of excellent crafty stuff that I can't even look at right now because I am busy with things like this:

followed closely by things like this:

although when I say "things" I am making it sound like I have managed to make lots of eggplant shirts, when really, the amount of shirts I haven't made -- given that I leave Friday for SF -- is way more impressive (especially since these shirts are actually all on their way to Canada at the moment.)

*The three excellent crafty books being:  Machine Made Patchworks (the apple-spoon one), From Quilter's Studio, & House, & I can definitely see why these are old standards around the blogs.  I think I'm most in love with House, just for the sheer magnitude of 100 house quilt block patterns.  I can't wait until I've got some time on my hands!

in which I resist an awful Toy Story pun for this entry's title

Between seasonal allergies & taxes, I didn't get much done this weekend that's post-worthy, although I do feel both reasonably accomplished & generally blurry.  Oh, Schedule C, I really think we should talk about seeing other people, ok?

I did manage to finish my daughter's jacket (the one that was briefly admired & then handed back to me with the directive now do the other side), thus:

Given that 1.  it was a largely freehand project (some parts drawn as I went but blue marking pencil on blue denim does not make the most obvious of pattern lines) & 2. my original concept was single-sided, so I would have laid it out differently if I'd known from the start I was doing the whole "yoke," I'm happy with the way it turned out.  Here's a detail of the side I just finished that shows off the sequins a little (but not much, I see, ha) better.

The instant my son saw that my daughter had accepted the jacket as wearably girly, he said "Now you can start working on my Buzz Lightyear doll!"  Alright.  Despite the fact that he keeps reassuring me that it's ok if it doesn't really look like Buzz (which does nothing but make me determined to not disappoint my five year-old, right?), I have some pretty significant performance anxiety about this project.  I am not a seamstress, I am not a soft toy maker, & I turn out to not be a natural at needle-turned applique, which is the skill I'm thinking might save me from a lot of complicated piecing.  But, really, after I'd been putting off the request for what was probably months, the child came to me with a well-thumbed copy of Martha Stewart Kids (this was before the news of the mag folding; I have since fished all issues out of the kids' bookcase)

& excitedly told me that not only had he found a pattern for me to use for his doll, but that he'd drawn me a picture so I could see what Buzz was supposed to look like (although I was generously excused from having to make the laser, which is that yellow & red part on the right side, his excellent attempt at perspective).

& so, really, how was I supposed to refuse?  So, yeah, in between show prep over the next couple weeks, here comes my attempt at Buzz Lightyear in the form of a small, waldorfian doll.  Watch out!

yes, I'd rather be sewing

I'm a couple of days behind on the color fun, but here are white, black, and brown all showing up in a little Laura Zeck print on our dining room wall.  Her tiny etchings are fantastic.

The past few days have been all about...well, maybe not exactly prepping for the upcoming show, but certainly thinking about it.

I've been doing glittery kid shirts for a while now, & am finally going to roll out a few designs printed on adult shirts at the show, which means that a couple days ago this (appropriately color-themed) box arrived.  Yeah, that's a lot of shirts.

I've been kind of stuck on what designs to put on the adult shirts, but then last week I realized that I wanted to do a few craft-themed tees (particularly to take to the Maker's Faire/Baz Biz SF), & from there it was easy.

The new ink I was testing out was stinky & horrible to work with (although I actually personally like the worn-out look of a faded print,), so the art is good but I need to go back to my old ink for some nice crisp black prints.  I love the sparkly thread, though, & am also going to use it on some little sewing care + content gift cards.

(Can you tell that I'd rather be working on my next quilt?)

In sneaky crafty moments here & there, I've finished up my little knitted spokesmodel Kate (first knitting project in probably over a year, first knitted toy ever).  I think she'll be sweet on my table, particularly since I unpicked her head stitches & addressed the stuffing issue, so she's less pointy now (seriously, she was like the wooly little kitten star of Nosferatu). 

In retrospect, I think that I probably should have changed to smaller needles for the orange parts, which were Lamb's Pride Superwash instead of LP Worsted, & that one ear has a definite Max Schreckian quality, but she's done!

(Now, let us celebrate with a picture of the happiest cardboard box on earth.  I discovered this drawing when I was breaking down the shirt box for recycling.  The shirt factory is a place of joy?  My UPS guy is an artist in his other life?  Who knows?)

stripey arm, sleepless night

As of today, the count around here stands at Time Change, 2; My Sleepy Family, 0.  Is it usually this hard? For my part, at least, here's the stripey little culprit:

which is, perhaps obviously, one of Kate's arms, which is the reason I was up way too late last night.  I mean, strictly speaking, I was already up too late finishing Kate's second ear & then sewing it on to see if it was elongated & batlike as the first one (yes), & then I thought I'd just give one little arm a try & suddenly it was way too late.  After a little bit of a shaky start remembering how to get double-pointed needles up & running, I'm having a good time with this pattern, even though I think I've accidentally given my kitty a pointy head by being stingy with the stuffing (& by subbing Lamb's Pride Superwash for Lamb's Pride Worsted on the orange parts.  Use what you have, right?).  Still, she will be cute!  Maybe I'll be able to talk my husband into manning the table at BazBiz so I can make it to the Jess Hutch workshop!

I didn't really get a chance to take blue pictures today (I tried to get a snap of the excellent thick swath of naturalizing grape hyacinths in the front of my house, but there was a fundamental spatial relationship between my body, the sun, & my flowers in complete shadow, that I wasn't quite grasping.  Spatial relationships are sometimes difficult for me, like when I recently spent about a week thinking that the cheap hotel painted a new shade of Violent Barn right near where I get on 99 for my daily preschool commute must be forming a small new hotel chain with the identically-painted Violent Barn cheap hotel right near where I get off 99 on my way home.  (For my kindred spirits out there, yes, they were the same cheap ugly freshly painted hotel.)  Never mind spinning me in a circle, just rotate me 180 degrees & I am plenty confused!  I'm a cheap date!), but I have been thinking about showing off these great hand-printed napkins, & the ink is aqua, so it counts, kind of?

These are by Appetite (Designs?  This is not a postmodern parenthetical part of the name, I can't remember if it's Designs or not.)  I'm pretty sure that her site is www.appetitesite.com, but it's not up yet.  At any rate, I bought these, along with an amazing pillow (that I could not photograph well today) from the designer at the Paper Doll Show down in Portland last month.  I have a set of four, & since I can't bring myself to use them as actual napkins, I'm just unfolding & admiring them now & then until I can figure out what I want to do with them. 

Oh, wait, I forgot I snapped this blue-ish picture as well:  it's the little comforter cover I sewed for my boy about three years ago, out of flannel & corduroy.

I've always loved the big uneven stripe pattern on that thing. Ok, I think I'll start on Arm 2 a little earlier tonight!  Time Change, I will defeat you yet!

now that's what I call a princess!

Oh, time change, I do not love you!  You have turned a plenty-of-time Sunday into a missing-that-crucial-hour Sunday, & I don't have any less to do!

My last post got me thinking about the logistics of working BazBiz SF (none too soon, since hello April!), & since display is a huge part of working a show, I tried out an idea that I had for my yarn.  It's no good for the show, but I still think it's pretty (& also a reminder to myself that I need to get back to spinning before suddenly it's summer & I can't stand to work with wool).

That's an old frybasket insert that I've had knocking around for years, one of these things that I just really love but can't quite find the perfect use for it (most recently, it was a fruit basket until we were finally forced to accept that the holes do not make for gentle fruit storage in the same way that the holes would not make for gentle wool storage).  Ah, well, it's nice to have challenges. 

I have been testing the light in different parts of my house for blog photos, & while I'm pretty happy with the shots I'm getting in the back hallway, I fear that it might be the best spot exactly because it's the only part of the upstairs that we haven't repainted from the dingy off-white with tan trim (This was the color scheme throughout, except for our bedroom, which was mustardy tan with MUD trim), & since I've got this big plan of putting some color back there this summer, it may be a photography tradeoff!  I'm a tiny bit sad about this, but since I've only been blogging for six days thus far & have been wanting to finish the hallway for, oh, three years now, I'm pretty sure I'll get over it.

One of the places I tried taking some pictures was the kids' coloring table, which failed to make my yarn glamorous but reminded me that I've been meaning to memorialize this:

which is my daughter's response to me handing her a set of princess accessories stickers that didn't include the actual princess.  I love it, although I'm already a little nostalgic that she seems to be on her way out of that excellent two year-old drawing phase where everything is giant circle heads with giant circle eyes & then little stick legs, no body.  I'm actually a little nostalgic over all of the excellent two year-old things she'll be leaving behind soon, but on the other hand, I get to plan a sparkle party for her birthday next month (Her request!  Chocolate cupcakes with pink + sparkles!  Fancy sparkly everywhere!, she says.) & the whole idea just thrills me -- although, frankly, the very fact that it's not a princess party is pretty thrilling all on its own.