And The Cobbler's Children Had No Shoes

clapotis 020710
Originally uploaded by magscrafts

I started the project pictured about a week ago. It called for 18 stitch markers. Now, in my lifetime, I have probably made at least 500 stitch markers, in two different styles, and infinite colors, which I usually sell in sets of 6. I sold a ton of these before I was ever even a knitter! I did not want to pull any out of my inventory, and I wanted to start this project NOW! So I grabbed my new box of pretty paperclips my husband gave me at Christmas (before you worry about HIM, you have to know that I was thrilled with these!) and started slipping them onto the needles. They marked my place, so they served the purpose, right?

Wrong! First of all, I got some serious laddering at each marker. For those non-knitting readers, laddering is when you get a space between the knitting stitches that shows the yarn between them like the rungs of a ladder. The ladders were caused by the fact that the paperclips are so large and cumbersome, and the yarn is very thin. In this case, I was thinking I would live with it, because the pattern called for me to drop those stitches anyway, so it would not show in the end product.

But then yesterday my friend Karen mentioned that she and her mom had gotten a chuckle out of the fact that I was using paperclips. Then I got a message from my knittting mentor, who also happens to be one of the owners of The Shops at Fabian House, where a nice assortment of my stitch markers are available for sale. I guess I was hoping she would not notice and I would just not take that project to the shop. Well, um, she noticed alright!

So this afternoon after I finished making some jewelry to fill orders, I made myself this large set of stitch markers. They are on sterling silver wire, and I made 8 each of three different shades of blue, which are also different shapes and sizes.

Joining the Challenge

cuff in progress
Originally uploaded by magscrafts

I have been reading Tara's posts lately, reading about her "use what you have" challenge. I admit that I have had little twinges of guilt, because first, I have been crafting, but stuff totally unrelated to business, and two, I have been spending way too much on supplies. I think my knitting and other leisurely crafts has been a help to my sanity, but it is time to buckle down and get back to business related work!

Anyway, I am taking on Tara's challenge, and I am adding for myself that not only will I use what I have on hand, but I will work on finishing some stuff that I had already started. I also want to make a little headway every day. So today I walked up to my sewing table, and dug around a little bit looking at what was in the heap, and found some pieced patchwork made by Karen of Chickadee Friends Studio. I had intended to make a quilted, beaded cuff, but had fizzled when Christmas approached. This morning I quilted the piece of fabric, fused it to a lovely green batik fabric backing, and finished off the edge. I hunted the button box for a great vintage button, made the buttonhole to fit. Now I need to sew on the buttons and add the beads, but all of the machine sewing is done!

Thanks for the inspiration, Tara!

I'm Knitting and I Can't Stop!

headband picture
Originally uploaded by magscrafts

Many moons ago, when I was a teenager in the 1980's, I taught myself how to knit from a book so that I could knit myself a pair of legwarmers. Unfortunately, knitting was the one craft where my usual teach myself from a book methods pretty much failed me. I managed to finish those legwarmers but all my stitches were twisty and it took me forever (that one pair of legwarmers took me a year- I'm very tall, but not THAT tall!)

Fast forward nearly 30 years, and I met my good friend Ruth, who is a knitter extraordinaire and offered to help me. So I went to her with yarn and needles and she tried to straighten out my bad habits. I practiced and practiced, but still somehow felt like I was so slow I would never finish anything. My stitches looked way better though.

Then a dear friend passed away at Thanksgiving time. I had lived at their house the summer after college graduation, and called she and her husband my "parents for a month". At her celebration, people commented about her knitting, and I had sort of forgotten that she was an amazing knitter. Back when I lived there, I was so amazed at the items she could crank out, with almost a zenlike peace involved in the process. As I remembered her, I regretted that I was too busy planning my wedding and hanging out with my fiance to sit down and get her to help me with my knitting that summer, but I felt a renewed resolve to become a knitter.

So I picked up my practice piece that I had been working on with Ruth, watched some online videos of knitters to help me remember what I was doing, and I was on my way.
Here is that practice piece knitted into a scarf! Then I knitted these cotton dishcloths:


Next, on New Year's Eve, I started the scarf below. I have 5 skeins total of this yarn, which I bought at a yard sale. I am not sure what it is even made of, the label is in Turkish. Anyway, to be sure I could get a hat and mitts out of the yarn on hand, I left the scarf after one skein and made a hat.







I switched gears over this weekend, and knitted the headband I am wearing in the photo above. It was supposed to be lacier, I modified the pattern because I was not used to the thin yarn or the small needles.

My current project is a pair of fingerless mitts. I am nearly done the first of the pair and I just started them today! Knitting is a nice craft to carry with me to work on while I wait for my son at school or church or whatever. I think this crazy knitting break will let me get back to my jewelry and sewing with a fresh positive attitude.

Tis Almost the Season!

Next week, the Christmas tree is going up in The Shops at Fabian House, so I need to have some ornaments ready to go. Obviously, I still have a lot of work to do! My partner in Chickadee Friends Studio, Karen, has been making a bunch of ornaments as well, I can't wait to see them all tomorrow.

I can't wait to see all of these on the tree!

Where Have I Been?

The other day I posted this picture on FLICKR:

It shows some sachets I made to sell at The Shops at Fabian House. Tara commented over there, "Take a moment and blog all your new crafty goings on will you? :)" Even the smiley face emoticon could not sooth the harsh reality that I have been a horrible bloggy partner! I popped over here today to post, and it took me three clicks on "older posts" to come to my last entry, posted exactly 2 months ago.

Holy Cow! I had no idea I was THAT bad! I knew I was living a little bit of a whirlwind life, but 2 months???? I feel as if I have been spiraling out of control, and I need to regroup and try to get back to normal! So I will post here a little summary of what has been going on and what I have worked on, and hopefully turn over a new leaf and get back to posting!

My younger son started high school this fall at a school which is a bit of a commute for us. (Translation: On the worst traffic days I have spent 4 hours in the car!) We have spent a ton of time together in the car. He is playing Freshman Football, which has really changed our family's routines since we got back from vacation in August. I should probably work on a feature about meals that fit into our crazy schedule. I'll have to get some pointers from Tara on food photography- her photos are so great when she blogs recipes. (Notice me kissing up to Tara in hopes she will forgive my blog neglect!)

Since last spring I have been selling my items from I corner I rent within The Shops at Fabian House. I also sell some of Tara's sea glass jewelry and some quilts and fiber art items from a partnership with my friend Karen, which we call Chickadee Friends Studio. I work at least one day a week in the shop, which works out well since it is near my son's school. The shop has a really cool mix of antiques, handcrafted items, and even a vegetarian cafe in the back! They serve a fabulous cup of coffee, and I am definitely addicted.




I am still most definitely making stuff nearly daily. I do not always take photos, especially if it is something that will go into the shop, and not online. Often I take quick photos on my keyboard or on the work table, just to post some photos to show Tara on FLICKR or others on Facebook. I will try to do better, maybe my next post needs to be about time management for football moms who taxi kids.

Enough Shopping Already, Get to Work!

Summer Shopping
Originally uploaded by magscrafts

Here you can see a little photo mosaic of supplies I have gotten in the last month or so. Not pictured is a large order of assorted silver chains that I bought online and a big bag of vintage jewelry given me by a dear friend to see what I can create.

We just got back from vacation, and I did get a little work done there, but now it is time to really get serious and get a bunch of stuff done! I need to restock my stores online and off as well as make some items to be donated to an auction for my son's school.

I spent yesterday catching up on emails, buying groceries and reopening all of my online stores. Today was dedicated to dental appointments, and back to school preparations. I think tonight I need to have a fabulous sew-orama with some of these new lovelies.

Annoying Purses and the Importance of Prototypes

Vacation season is coming up, and I tend to make a purse just for me to take on vacation. Often when I make a purse it goes onto my website or into a store, and I put a tag on them as soon as they are done, and wave goodbye. Sometimes that makes me feel a little meloncholy, as the last bit of a favorite fabric makes its way out of my life.

Tara and I many times talk about burnt toast- I think the saying comes from when the mom of the family eats the toast that got a little more done than anyone likes it to avoid wasting the food. I have a friend that used to always eat what she called "rescue fruit"- it was nearly rotten , with parts that needed to be cut off, but she ate the good parts to avoid the waste and leave the good stuff for her kids. Anyway, Tara and I use "burnt toast" to describe stuff we make that is ok and usable, but maybe not quite what we would want it to be if we were selling it.

I decided to make myself a new purse, this time using a fabric I love, and this one was not going to be burnt toast! As I was planning out the bag, I found a pair of handles that matched the fabric wonderfully, and decided to use them. Here is the bag I made, and I love it!Here's the catch: I should not have used little tabs to connect the handles! Those handles are now free to rotate and they are so annoying I want to scream! I was so sad, thinking, here I had these grand plans, and have made myself burnt toast! I have pretty much always kept the first bag made using every design I come up with (except where the design was for a custom, or someone saw the picture and wanted it badly!). I guess this experience showed me why that is a good idea- to make new designs and test them out myself before I send them out into the world. I would have hated for someone else to be as annoyed by this lovely purse as I am!

So this afternoon in my break between my son's football camp and his band camp, I am going to make a little sleeve that will be as long as that bottom part of the handle, and redo that part of the bag. Hopefully that will fix it, and I won't have to feel like I am eating that old burnt toast again.

Collage Mania Redux

Since Maggie didn't add a link to her own collages in her Fiber Art for a Cause post, I'm doing it for her:

Collage Mania Page 22

They look great, Mags! :)

Cherry Blossoms

Today we had our own mini Cherry Blossom festival. We wanted to avoid the crowds down in DC near the monuments, so we went to a neighborhood my friend knew about in Bethesda, MD that has a beautiful canopy of old cherry trees. We got there around 10am on a Sunday morning, and it was surprisingly crowded. The trees were fabulous!

I Want to be a Coffee Drinker

One day last week I was driving around, and it occured to me that I want to be a coffee drinker. It is a little odd, I seem to get most of my odd ideas while driving around. Anyway, I love the idea of being a coffee drinker, and I love the smell of coffee. Many years ago when I was in college, I tried to become a coffee drinker by chugging some of my roommate's instant International flavored coffee, and it tasted like something I accidently drank through a pipette in Chemistry lab and it made me feel sick to my stomach.

Fast forward about 25 years (God, I am old!) and in my mind there is a positive connotation to being a coffee drinker- there are so many nice social settings that revolve around coffee, shoppers look less harried when they are nursing a coffee as they shop, and the slug of caffeine wouldn't hurt either. People always talk about how they are no good until they have had their coffee- does that mean if I don't drink coffee I am never any good??

My husband got one of those one cup coffee brewers for Christmas, along with a coffee assortment, so I decided I would try that out. I found the varieties I tried the first 2 days a little bitter, in fact the 2nd day, I made my oldest son finish it for me. I went online and found something that was billed as a lighter roast, so I ordered that, and Tara told me I must get some creamer (good stuff- not skim milk!). Today I had all of the ingredients, so I tried a cup after dinner, and I was able to drink it all! I am on my way to being a coffee drinker! Now I need to get super productive in my studio to justify it!

New Year Focus #1

Since I let my household chores slip so horribly over the holidays, I started my new year refocusing efforts last week on my home and family. I started out by getting this great new calendar:


It is called
Mom's Plan-it 2009 Engagement Calendar: A 17 Month Engagement Calendar. It is great- there is a page for each week like a normal datebook, but then for each week there is a tear out grocery list and a place to make a menu. So, that is what I used for my menu planning that I started last Monday. I plan to make a list for the whole week each Monday, and shop on Monday for the whole week. This is a big deal for both time and money management!

Also I entered all the paydays for the whole year into this book, and I plan to take the time to pay the bills within a day or two of each payday. Any issues we have had with money management have been much more about disorganization, and I need to try to overcome that.

I would love to get better at finding great bargains, but I need to take babysteps, so I will hopefully get back to that later. In the meantime I have been reading some great blogs written by some fabulous bargain hunters!

I was not feeling up to par last week, but I did attempt a few cleaning sessions on my timer, and I plan to do a couple of those a day at least. This will help me get the household chores back on track.

New Year, New Resolve

Ok, in my last post I promised some semblance of a list of New Year's resolutions:

There it is, you can read it, right? Ha ha. Alright, this was just me scribbling a few thoughts, let me try to organize myself and translate for you.

Rather than make a list of firm resolutions, I decided to instead make a list of areas I want to focus on, and make a rough schedule for my weekly chunks of time to work on them. This post will be about my focus areas.

Family/Household needs- The first thing I will do to address these is to block out time daily for cleaning, and try to get back to a good baseline of cleanliness and then be able to maintain it. Rather than promising to "have a spotless house", I am going for cleaning for a certain amount of time daily. Secondly, I need to work on finishing up some painting/decorating projects. I will block out some time weekly for this. Finally, we need a new focus on saving money and paying down our debts. One way I will be working on this is by planning out weekly what dinners I will make for the week, so we can avoid eating out too much, or just grabbing something easy from the store. The part of meal prep I hate the most is that "what are we having for dinner?" moment.

Business needs- I started my year end inventory today, and that process made it clear to me that I have a lot of stuff made, but not currently listed for sale anywhere. That needs to be remedied as quickly as possible, so I am going to commit to listing something daily. Hopefully I can get on a roll and get it done quickly. I want to reaffirm my commitment to doing something daily to further my craft business. I need to concentrate on getting my sites marketed effectively so my items can sell. I will block out time twice a week to focus only on the marketing aspects.

Personal improvement goals- OK, like probably 80% of the adult population of the US, I need to get serious about my diet and exercise. I will start visiting both the Weight Watchers website and the gym with more regularity. (I am intimidated by the teens at the gym, so will wait until they return to school.) Also, I want to really stretch myself creatively, both in areas of fiber arts and metalsmithing. I plan to take a metalsmithing class in the spring, so the beginning of the year will have a fiber art focus. I need to figure out how much time, but I feel like some time weekly should be dedicated to working on techniques with no thought of selling.

I have grand intentions, but I wonder if I have bitten off more than I can chew??

Maggie's Cookie-o-rama

Tara and I were chatting yesterday about blogging, working on our gift lists (she's mostly making, I'm mostly buying) and baking. She encouraged me to post pictures and recipes for the cookies I was working on. She said it would be cool to feature bunch of cookies on our blog. I sort of agreed (typed "k", while thinking "no way"). But I knew she would not just let it go away- I would either have to do it or tell her I am a dork who couldn't do it!

I was whining to Tara -"My food photos stink!" but she was having none of that since she managed her fabulous pinwheel picture with no flash on her camera! So I decided to go ahead and blog about my cookie adventure of the day. If nothing else this will show how very different Tara and I are! Tara's cookies are works of art in every way, while mine are more utilitarian - meant only to feed my giant and perpetually starving teenagers.

Scroll down and you will see that Tara has taken a wonderful picture of her cookies on a lovely plate. Well, cookies at my house rarely touch a plate. I usually put them in ziplocks as they cool and then my family grabs them out of the bag. Only if I am taking some to a party or family event do they see a plate. I am pretty sure if I put them on a plate around here, no one would eat them because they would be afraid they were not meant for our family, but for some event! I took the portrait of my chocolate chip cookies on the wire cooling rack. Oh, and the recipe? You can find it on the Nestle chocolate chip bag just like I did! I actually have a recipe I usually use, but for some reason today just made the one on the bag.

A few weeks ago, I went looking for cookie recipes that would be good to mail, because I was making cookies to include in care packages that were to be mailed to the college students from our church. I found this nice site, Recipe4living, which had this great article about mailable foods. I made the Butter Pecan Bars , and they were super fast and really very good. My 13 year old was sad that all those cookies got baked and then immediately left the house, so I promised him I would remake some. I chose those Butter Pecan Bars and this batch was better than the first! (Oh and see, Tara, I told you my food photos stink!)

Second month of 365

Second month of 365
Originally uploaded by magscrafts

Wow! I noticed that I recently passed the 60 day mark on our 365 days of "ahteestic" endeavors. I blogged about hitting the 30 day mark, so figured it was time to celebrate again. Please indulge me and do not point out that the other blog article was on Sept 29, so it took me way more than 30 days to get 30 pictures. There were definitely days I did nothing the least bit artistic, as well as days I did stuff and took no pictures. I also found pictures I took, uploaded to FLICKR and then failed to number for the 365 project. I thought of going back and fixing the numbering, then said "Nah". I know Tara is having issues as well. I think she has fewer days where she does nothing artsy, but has had camera trouble, so more days with no pictures.

I think the important thing is that we continue to forge ahead and try to keep the project going. We started on this journey for a reason, and it is still valid, even when our lives might get in the way a little bit. If it takes us 2 years to get 365 days, so be it, we will still be better off than had we sat on our butts and not even attempted it.

I Can Do *Anything* For 20 Minutes

Confession time...I have let my housework slip and now I am in a pit! Not that it is ever perfect around here, but it has gotten particularly bad. So I need to catch up before the holidays.

I have had similar issues before. I don't know which comes first- the funky mood or the messy house, but they are definitely connected. Previous battles with this led me to find FlyLady.net, a site filled with advice for people like me. There is a treasure trove of information there for digging out from under your clutter and establishing routines.

One thing I found really useful before was to set my timer for doing tasks. For example, I look at my dining room table covered with piles o stuff, and if I just think "I have to clean off that table", I will become instantly overwhelmed at the thought and not even start. Somehow if I tell myself "work for 20 minutes on the table", I can make myself do it. I know the job is too huge to finish in 20 minutes, and often I get on a roll and just finish the job, but it is really nice to know I have an out in 20 minutes if I need it.

OH, and another confession before I go- I had to buy a new timer because my old one is under a pile here somewhere...

New Attitude?

I made a post on my Maggie's Crafting Adventures blog the other day about trying to strike a better, more realistic balance between work and home and being a mom and an artist/businesswoman. In that post, I talked about making my to do lists contain items from all aspects of my life and to make them more manageable.

Well, the following day I was getting ready for a road trip, so on day 2 of this new endeavor I left some stuff on my to do list undone. Then I went off and had a fabulous weekend with a friend, where we shopped crafty shops, saw a glass blowing demonstration, drove a piece of the Blue Ridge Parkway to enjoy the fabulous views, stayed at a lovely hotel and heard my firstborn sing in a concert. (Let's not mention the part where we got lost every time we got in the car in Roanoke!)
(This is an artsy photo I took of water plants and the sun reflected on Otter Lake, on the Blue Ridge parkway.)

My lesson learned? I left undone stuff on a to do list for the entire weekend, and nothing blew up. In fact, my son has the day off school today, and we are still here in our jammies at 1pm. We have had a super busy fall, and can both use some relaxation. I circled the undone stuff with my trusty pen, and added a few more things, and I am just going to dig in now and see how far I get.

As Ready As I'll Ever Be

Fabric Collection
Originally uploaded by magscrafts

I have been working for months to try to launch a line of bags that I would have available in multiple fabric choices. I started by ordering some fabrics in much larger quantities than I generally bought at a time. This was a bit scary as I wanted to order things I thought people would like, but try to avoid ordering fabrics that were being used everywhere. All this while considering that I could be left with the whole batch if I did not choose correctly, and that I wanted to be free to add new fabrics and discontinue old ones.

One thing I did not know before buying wholesale was that it sometimes takes a very long time for orders to arrive. For many of my supply sources I can get replenished in a week or less, but that is not true from the fabric wholesale houses.

Finally last week my last batch arrived! I have a whole list of bags I want to offer, but have only made a few so far in any of the fabric collection. I decided I need to just dive in with what I have, and add more items as I get samples made. If I wait until every last thing is ready, I will never move forward.

I am pretty excited to offer my laptop sleeves, which will be made to order based on customer supplied measurements. I also have eyeglass cases in the whole line of fabrics!

I made a new page on my website to show the available fabrics and styles, which I will be updating as new models are ready!

Kick My Butt Please and Get Me Out of This Funk!

I have been in a funk and I am not sure why that is or how to snap myself out of it. Perhaps I need a swift kick in the butt!


Some of it might be because of a generally super stressed out feeling I have had lately. (See my blog post about it here. )

Some of it I think is the work that it on the top of my pile to work on. I had a number of items to make where someone else had chosen the materials, and then I was told "no rush". So, since I had no sense of having a deadline, and the materials were not necessarily calling out to me, nothing spurred me to action. These were at the top of my list, so I got no joy when I worked on something else because these were sitting there making me feel guilty. Jobs #2 and #3 on the list were repairs of someone else's work, which were not calling out to me joyfully either.

I read this thread on etsy today, about being true to yourself, even if it means you might miss out on making a sale. The original poster was saying that she never made stuff in Fall colors because those colors do not inspire her. I can be inspired by almost any color. I have lately been accepting any work I can get just to keep some money coming in and with hopes of growing my business. At the moment, though I feel like I am not inspired by anything. I wonder, do I want my business to grow in directions that leave me feeling so deflated?

I know I can find joy in projects that are not of epoch proportions- I can make some earrings where the materials call out to me and I love the results, or even put together simple projects that make me smile for a minute, and hopefully these things will find a home where they can make someone else smile. So it is not necessary for my to make my business grow away from simple projects- more that I have to figure out what direction I need it to take.

OK, this blog was supposed to be about us being accountable, so here is my kick Maggie's butt plan:

1. I will finish projects 1,2 and 3 on my pile- o- stuff to do, so they stop mocking me and making me feel like crap. This will happen TODAY and they will go to the post office where I can't hear them anymore. UPDATE: I finished all three projects today (10/13), but when I went to drop them at the post office, the big bin for the APC was jammed shut! So they can mock me from their boxes for one more night.


2. I will clean my jewelry work area by Wednesday afternoon. I think less clutter will help my attitude immensely. I felt so much better sewing once I organized that are more.


3. I will solve my ink colorfastness problem for my Magsbags line and get at least one prototype bag made by Friday.
4. I will sneak in some work this week on something I have no intention of selling but I just want to make for the fun of it.

I will try to come back and add updates in the comments section...

The birth of a logo

MagsBags Logo Mosaic
Originally uploaded by mornindew2822

So it starts out with Maggie saying "Hey, can you draw?" Followed by a story about her reeling mind while she's driving home from the market- She's got all sorts of ideas, she's going to get moving on the reusable shopping bags she's wanted to make for a while now. Can I draw a logo for her?

Heck yes! I've got absolutely nothing crafty on deck today and it's a rare quiet moment in the house. She wanted something with the earth and/or the symbol for recycling- I got an idea instantly. I showed her my initial concept and she said it was just what she was picturing! The photo mosaic above depicts the evolution of the MagsBags (great name btw, Maggie!) logo from concept to 2 of her 3 final options.

Posted below is the winning logo design. I think it is clean and crisp and represents her products well- cute and practical reusable shopping bags that are environmentally responsible!*

*I think her grand plan may include other products down the line which will offer us some green boutique style. Made -at least in part- with either vintage fabrics or sustainable/renewable resources and are recyclable/reusable.

Keep your eye out for what comes next!

It All Started with Grocery Shopping

I did a massive grocery shopping this morning, and as I drove home with my purchases, I got depressed about the fact that they were packed in way too many plastic bags. For reasons I cannot comprehend, my local grocery clerks seem to pack only about 2 items per bag, unless it is canned goods, then they cram in so many the bag splits and the cans roll away across the parking lot!

Anyway, for months I have had plans in the works to make some shopping bags, but today's experienced made me resolve to do it and do it as soon as possible! By the time I got home, my mind was swimming with ideas for this new line of environmentally friendly bags. Ideas include bags meant to replace disposable items like grocery bags, and also bags made with recycled or sustainable materials. My mind is still reeling with the possibilities!