glittergoods

a little spring cleaning

I love the Northwest, really.  I'm one of those people who doesn't mind the drizzle, someone who thinks that our endless gray days are a fair tradeoff for our other beautiful seasons, etc.  But, MAN, my mood is approximately one thousand times better the past couple days than it has been for weeks, & I'm pretty sure it's just because I've seen a little bit of sun for two days in a row (never mind that as I was leaving dinner with friends last night, we were debating whether it was rain or snow we were seeing.  Rain, I say, rain!).

Since I'm feeling like an actual person who makes actual stuff again, I thought maybe I'd poke around & see what's hanging around the studio that would be better off hanging around other people's houses, to wit:

The last two pillows from my "fall collection,"

& a whole bunch of rings.  The pillows are already up on etsy, the rings will be following a few at a time once I sort out some good photo light for them.

Of course, I have to offset the moving out of things with the moving in of other things, though I am trying hard to make sure they are smallish, & nice to look at.

Like this:

I am obligated to love this because my son made it (in "art club," no less), but I would love it anyway.  See that flying saucer up in the corner, there?  This is tissue + other paper decoupaged onto a scrap piece of wood, & guess whether this idea is going in my boring-days-of-summer toolkit?

I am not obligated to love this, but I do, so much.  It's from theantibride at etsy:  the chair is screened onto muslin, surrounded by lovely meticulous hand-stitching.

It will fit right in.

hey, cowgirl!

After a false start or two (excellent false starts which will eventually end up in my shop, but still), I finished the pillow that accompanies the Reading Rocks bench.

First I was thinking about how I will try not to over-commit myself to auction junk next year, but then I was thinking about how this particular pillow was the tipping point that finally sent me out to buy that serger I've been wanting, so maybe I should go ahead & over-commit next year but just do it in some interesting new area that will require similar sort-of justifiable purchase of expensive equipment.

Anyway, then I had time to turn my attention to a birthday present for my girl's best friend, which was specifically & jealously requested by the friend when my kid showed up at her house in full cowgirl regalia last week.

(Note the totally unnecessary serging around the hem.)

So we were in the cowgirl mood & all, but had no idea there would be real live ponies.  Ever since we saw her brother's elementary school production of Midsummer Night's Dream, we've been planning a fairy birthday party around here, but now there's some small, hopeful talk about whether fairies have ponies.  Fairies with bigger backyards, maybe, I said.

December in the rear-view mirror

Wow, a low-grade, all-encompassing seasonal illness plus the secret + scary quilting of a very important project plus the usual holiday mayhem sure takes the will to blog right out of a girl.  Looking back over my shoulder, it doesn't seem like it was SO bad, which is probably the same sort of naturally-occurring blind spot that results in second children.

I made cookies:

{Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies from Martha.  So, so good.}

We made cookies:

{Thumbs up to Perfect Vegan Sugar Cookies, which are indeed quite perfect, definitely the best of the vegan recipes I've tried.  Thumbs, sadly, down to those cute little squeezy bottles I got for easy & fun cookie decorating with the kids.  There's a reason that pastry bags are tried & true, & that reason, my friends, is air bubbles.  I think I'm going to look into one of those icing caulk gun situations for next year.}

I finished the house pillow:

{For my father, who is a collector of house-shaped things, & I have only not capitalized "collector" because there are no caps LARGE ENOUGH to describe how much of a collector he is, so the pillow was well-received.  I made the house up as I went along, with about a 50% success rate in my attempt to be intuitive about necessary seam allowance additions, but in the end it turned out more or less as I'd planned.  I have some things to learn about piecing triangles, though.}

I also finished, on December 23, the wedding quilt for my sister & brother-in-law, then spent all day December 24 in mild fits about whether it was going to 1. survive the wash, 2. emerge from the wash without any remaining chalk lines, & 3. be dry in time for Christmas presentation.

{The answer is yes on all three counts, I am very proud of myself (also:  phew), but no finished project pictures here because I think I am going to give it a whole post of its own.}

The kids put together an ode to Santa, poster-style (complete with short song at the bottom):

{And Santa did not disappoint.}

Yeah, it wasn't SO bad. 

I'm hoping to whip out a couple pairs of New Year's pajama pants before bedtime tomorrow night, but a certain almost-seven someone who had plenty of time to cool his heels & ogle the wares at craft shows this month has some sort of stuffed monster animal project in mind for tomorrow, so we'll see what gets done.  Either way sounds like a pretty good way to spend tomorrow.  2007 is all but done!  Bring it on, 2008!

long weekend in pictures

Leftovers,

family time on the couch,

more fingerless gloves, size small,

playing with colors,

a pair of new pillows ("inside out" & "what the outside would look like").

Miscellaneous:  in the mood for new music & having finally fixed the problem with my computer speakers, I have re-discovered the KEXP song of the day podcast, which led me to download the Laura Veirs album Saltbreakers (it's much folksier than I usually like, but I dig her matter-of-fact singing), which led me to discover that iTunes finally has liner notes.  Finally.

I didn't want to cook tonight anyway

Being interviewed by my friend Megan for design*sponge's guest blog is definitely the internet highlight of the day (the bunny-in-a-cup photo randomly pasted into chat about dinner plans by husband comes in second, so that tells you what kind of internet day I've had).  Her whole series of interviews with crafty businesswomen is really interesting, so check them out if you haven't already.

I was thinking about the materials-sourcing question Megan asked me while looking at the case of pillow forms in my kitchen today.  The box had been hanging out there for a couple of days, unopened, because I was pretty sure that once I cut the strapping tape, any hope of reasonable pillow containment was out the window.  Also, you would be right to point out that "reasonable" might not be the exact word to describe my storage system of keeping the box in the middle of the kitchen, taking up half the floor space (to be fair, the kitchen is small.  But still.).

I finally went for it yesterday, knowing that I needed to get the last few pillows of show prep finished & out of the way in order to move on to other things.  The pillows were vacuum-packed, which, you know, yay for packaging efficiency, but is pretty daunting when the pillows that are already filling up half your kitchen are promising to double in size.  And never fit back in their box again.

I like to think that I have, over the years, adjusted to the idea that wholesale pricing means bulk purchasing, which means bulk storing, which means lots of trips to Ikea & no hope of spare elegant minimalism ever in our little house.  However, most of the things that I have stored, up to this point, have been individually smallish &/or flattish.  Not so when it comes to the bag of condensed pillows that starts off, before reinflation, larger than my four year old.  Ordering wholesale supplies is already a little bit of a leap of faith, where you have to believe enough in your product to think that you will actually need 50 pillow forms or 6 dozen shirts or 40 belt buckles, that putting the money up front is worth it, that you won't burn out on the idea, that you won't discover a better product at a better price the minute you've pushed the order button; it doesn't seem fair that it should be so physically awkward, too.

I mean, it's not like they won't fit in the garage (I think), but it's also not something that people warn you about when you go into business, that one day, there you'll be, in your best pair of work-clothes pajama pants (I totally confessed to this in the interview), wading through a sea of blank pillow forms just to get to the coffee pot.

slow Monday

Saturday, muddy.

Sunday, pillows.  I love these two.

Also yesterday, we (kind of reluctantly, oh, Ikea, where has the magic gone??) went to Ikea in search of a pillow display.  I love these shelves because they are airy, plain, (cheap,) & will tuck nicely into my booth space; my husband loves these shelves because they give him an excuse to get a new power screwdriver.  Also, this is a great case study for mocking up your display before a show, because as much as I wholeheartedly embrace the color gray, seeing the pillows all together sent me directly to the brighter end of my fabric stash spectrum.  Well, as bright as I get, anyway.

I also want to talk about this package of marzipan, which I unearthed while sorting out my baking cupboard on Friday (in service of cupcakes that would turn out to be both disappointing & boring).  Its expiration date is 10/31, which means that I have discovered it just in the nick of time, phew.  I was just admiring those gold-plated marzipan pumpkins in the latest Martha -- & those pumpkin & apple cupcakes are tempting, too.  Then there's one of my all-time favorite Martha cakes, the garden one (though it's more delightfully Peter Rabbitty in my memory than on her website).  And, yes, this is a true fact about me:  given the excuse, during the busy run-up to my busiest season, I will spend a lot of time thinking about things like spending a lot of time making tiny tiny vegetables, just because it's possible that I could.

huff, puff

It got a little bit windy here today, enough to blow part of our maple tree down onto our neighbor's garage roof.  No real harm done, plus the tree probably needed some pruning anyway, but it's still sort of visually shocking to see the pure fresh inside of the tree like that.

It looks more vulnerable than just plain old wood, doesn't it?

On the upside, the wind managed to blow away a few of the clouds long enough to let some light into the house.

Though all this orange provides a glow of its own.

Red & I aren't quite done yet either.

In between pillows, & assorted glitter projects, I've finally got the webpage for the Queen Anne Artists Trunk Show up & running.  I'll be there on November 10, with a bunch of my pillows (plus plenty of sparkle) & a bunch of great artists.  We're planning a bake sale table, so I'm hoping there will be cupcakes, too.

weekend

I really should be sorting these out into their three-packs, but I do love how they look all piled up together.  (This is only about half the batch I'm making for show season.)

Ink & glitter swatches for a new client.

Yesterday we had an impromptu date (both kids at playdates, at other people's houses, at the same time) & though the search for a decent vegetarian sandwich in a Fremont restaurant was a big disappointing bust (I swear, if I were ever to open a restaurant it would be a vegetarian luncheonette), I was soothed by the discovery of these super excellent sticky notes at Burnt Sugar.  (I may have to go back & get the labels, too.)  I love these, though I feel like I should practice my penmanship before using them.

Today I put the red pillow together.  It started out as a design challenge to myself, but has ended up being one of my favorites thus far.  And not just because I put glitter snaps on the back.

That's right, glitter snaps.

One day, I'm going to figure out how to put glitter on EVERYTHING.  Watch out.

and now back to our regular obsessive progamming

It feels like fall around here these days, which means a variety of things, like leaf mold & the first worthwhile apples of the season; don't mess with my delicately orchestrated tivo setup, dear husband, & I'd better hurry up & find a winter coat for the girl, & wait, HOW soon do shows start?  It's got me thinking -- unusually for me -- about warm colors & I even bought a little bit of orange fabric.  Orange is consistently one of those colors that I can truly, deeply admire when I see it on or around other people, & I have a lot of respect for the particular quality of its...orangeness, I guess, but I always have to kind force myself to use it.  So I'm starting with red instead.

It suddenly struck me, late yesterday afternoon, that I'd really like to try quilting this one with red thread, only my husband wasn't going to be back from his business trip until after the fabric stores closed & I didn't feel like dragging the princess & the soccer hooligan out on a thread quest, but then, lo!  Turns out that way in the back of the drawer where I keep my quilting thread was a big spool of red thread purchased for no specific project that I can think of, which just goes to show that sometimes you really DO need to buy random supplies because they're pretty just in case.

I like the way the red thread adds another tonal layer to the front, but I really especially like the way the back of this one looks.  I'm having a little bit of a conceptual moment about colored quilting thread right now.  Up until this point, I had considered myself to be completely devoted, no muss-no fuss, to the school of "natural-colored" cotton quilting thread, but I like the red enough that this afternoon I went & bought a handful of other colors. Including orange.  Just in case.

the pillow channel

I'm kind of obsessed.

This is the one I was working on last week.  I sent the pillow top through the machine before assembling the pillow cover, & I like the wrinkly quilt effect, though it does make the loopiness a little less obvious.

I've started taping pillow tops to the dining room wall, for perspective.  The kids think this is so funny, for reasons I can't quite follow.

These are all coming to shows with me.  There will be glitter there, too, I swear.

I'll get right on it.