Ok West Elm, I'm Impressed!

So earlier this week, I posted about this runner I got from West Elm a few weeks back that was pretty off kilter.

I'd been waffling about whether or not to return it, even though it's obviously flawed. Mostly because it seemed like too big of a pain to find an open UPS drop place. First world problems, I know, right? Well anyway, after a little encouragement, I finally just sent them an email inquiry to see if this was typical of all of these rugs, or if mine was indeed messed up. (I guess I thought that perhaps they would rely on the handstamped nature of the rug as a reason? Like handmade imperfection? Which, uh, as a handmade maker I really try to avoid myself, so that seems silly even to me.)

Anyway, I was just using their online form so there wasn't a way to attach this photo (and I certainly didn't direct them to my blog, because who the h*ll am I?), but I offered to send it if they wanted to follow up. So yesterday, I actually got a personal phone call assuring me that no, that was definitely NOT normal - no photo needed. And not only could I exchange this item, which is now on final sale, but she was going to arrange for UPS to pick it up at my house AND provide a mailing label! Which honestly was another reason I hadn't done the exchange earlier - I would either have to wrestle with my home printer which is always out of ink somehow, or remember to print it at work which is impossible. (Oh lord, how lazy can I be?!?!) Then they'll have a new one to me in about a week!

I have to say, this has been one of the most pleasant customer service experiences I've ever had!

Madness

Madness is certainly an apt description of life of late. Madness is also how I might describe the decision to do 3 craft shows, 2 weeks apart, with 2 weeks of initial prep. And shall we also add in entirely new products? And we can't forget that the Etsy shop is in full swing of the holiday rush! These are all not bad problems to have in the scope of things though, that's for sure. Every spare moment it seems has been spent with busy hands, knitting, sewing, crocheting, oh boy, is my house a mess and have we ever been eating a lot of delivery food! And as it happens, otherwise occupied hands make for a blog full of crickets. I'm quite sure that I actually took a bunch more photos with my good camera with all intentions of blogging about them, but as it turns out I can't seem to connect any time to blog with access to those photos, so a few phone shots to catch up it is!

So here we have 2 new items that haven't yet made it into the Etsy shop, but did do the rounds at 2 of 3 craft fairs so far. The mug cozy is something that I initially thought was just cute and would be quick to whip up several of them in order to actually have some stock to offer at these shows. But wouldn't you know it....they actually work!?! I have a habit of making myself a cup of tea at work, getting distracted, and remembering it's there only to take a sip and it's gross and cold. This little wrap though actually keeps it warm for about 45 minutes and drinkable and not gross for an hour! Holy cow. So I hope to have some more of these ready to go in the shop before x-mas, as I think they would make a cute stocking stuffer. I also took time during the shows to keep crafting, and came up with these sweet little flowers. I sold them as hair clips, but I would love to add them to some hats - I think it could really "girl" up something like the newsboy hat. (Also, shellac manicures DO last a really long time without chipping! They also give you some mad noticeable grow-out if you find yourself without the time to properly remove it, haha)

 

This is unrelated to anything, but I ordered this rug from West Elm....and it's totally crooked on one side. I haven't decided if it bugs me enough to return or exchange it. I ordered it before it went down to the final sale price on the website....so I think I could still exchange? It's not so bad laid out as is, with the crooked side toward the door. But I can't really rotate it (it's a runner) without that crooked part looking me in the eye, so I guess if I keep it, it just won't wear evenly. Which....for the $40 I spent....maybe that's ok? Maybe it's time to just get the rug pads out for it so it stops slipping all over the place and call it a day? And find a rug for the living room and stop living in musical rugs madness (that's a whole other story!).

 

 

One (of many) pairs of sweet little mittens going out the door. These have been crazy popular in the shop. I think I have 4 pairs to make in the next week!!

Oh boy. I shouldn't be sent to the store with no time limits.......

But I think it was worth it! I've started making these tote bags after discovering a miraculous source of those awesome, funky printed coffee sacks (and chocolate too! Those are coming!). I'm totally digging them. They are super roomy inside, big enough for a laptop, with all kinds of inside pockets for cords, and phone, and whatnot, with a magnetic clip on top to keep it all contained. The front and bottom are super durable burlap material, cut to include all the cool printing, and pre-washed and dried to soften them up. Then I made the back out of this soft fleece with some added interfacing for strength, tough cotton webbing for the straps, and contrasting lining fabric! So far these have been craft show exclusive, but after my last show on Dec. 7, I plan on listing anything left (and any more I'm able to make) in the shop as ready to ship items. Most of what I do knit-wise is made to order so that I can customize colors and sizes, but since these prints are unique, it's tough to do custom. Bright side though is that there's no lag time, so they would also make good x-mas gifts!

 

And finally, just some shots from this weekend that pretty much typify what I'm doing when I'm not here. Watching the rain, filling the house with fall scents (I love this "mountain lodge" candle from Yankee Candle - it is such a light scent that it smells like nothing in the sensory overload of the store, but is juuuust right when you get it home. I hate overpowering smells, even good ones!), and settling in with a hot cup of tea to work on more Etsy orders (that's a cottage slipper sock). At least until the end of naptime!

Happy Halloween!

I've been ridiculously busy these past few weeks, using every available minute to get ready for my first craft fair this weekend, as well as keeping on top of a few orders from my etsy shop. A good problem to have for sure, but it makes for busy hands!!

But in the spirit of Halloween, this crazy pumpkin pyramid appeared near my house, and I just had to get a picture of it all lit up. Pretty impressive!!

Of Late

Wow. How do those daily/multiple times per week bloggers do it!? I feel like I've been so busy with life in general that there simply isn't time to upload photos, have a thought, write a post....but I've definitely been up to some things, so here's a snapshot. Or two.

We took serious advantage of a "fill your car for just $28" special at a local farm, and Halloween'ed up the cottage. I think I'll have time to carve approximately zero of these pumpkins, but I'm still enjoying the way the pumpkins make the untrimmed planting beds look almost on purpose. However this might not look quite so cute in February....since I doubt we'll actually get them cleaned up before the snow falls!

 

We found an amazing deal on a place to stay through my friend's aunt's friend (got that?) in Manhattan, so we were NYC-bound for a long weekend to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary! We had the most ridiculously good weather for mid-October. It was nice enough to walk around without jackets most of the time! I've been there twice before, but I haven't done the really touristy stuff either time, either because I was "too cool" or too cheap. But this time we went to the top of several buildings as well as visiting the Statue of Liberty which re-opened during the government shutdown just in the nick of time.

 

Pretty much the entire results of my garden...all grown without any assistance from me. The herbs that I'm drying (holy cow, how domestic am I?!) are entirely self seeding, and the little pumpkins and gourds are kind of weeds. I guess my compost doesn't get hot enough, and squash sort of comes up willy nilly, but this year I actually got some little pumpkins! The potted herbs I've actually managed to keep alive indoors all summer, which is a small miracle. Turns out houseplants like water! Who knew!

Finally in the background, I've always thought that doing a craft fair might be fun. I rejoined the devil known as facebook, and saw that a friend was doing a couple. I asked if she might be interested in a booth buddy, and she said she was! So since then, I've been busily knitting and crocheting my fingers to the bone to try to build up some sort of inventory that I hope people will like. Because I'm not super bright and the first show is in less than two weeks!! Worse comes to worse, it will be a fun way to figure out if I want to do any more of these in the future and it will basically be a win if I can sell enough to cover my half of the booth fee. Plus if things don't sell I can always put them up as ready to ship items in my shop! (and omg I'm not actually going to be selling socks at these craft fairs - that's a book that one of my knitting group members generously lent me. I would love to be able to knit my own socks, but I think I'll have time for that in approximately 3 years.)

So! Whew! That really does feel like a lot going on lately!

Pumpkin Head Halloween Costume

In case you missed me over at Delightfully Noted for her Wicked Craft Week....here's a repost of my Halloween costume crafting.

Halloween is one of my favorite, favorite times of year. I looove the turning of the season, the chill in the air, sweaters, scarves, campfires, pumpkin....everything! While I'm a big fan of the pumpkin spice lattes, I'm actually here to talk about the pumpkin as the classic Halloween costume. It's pretty special to me as that FIRST Halloween costume for a couple of reasons. My mom made almost all of my Halloween costumes over the years, and I so love that memory. And the first costume of all of them was a pumpkin head! I could have actually used that same costume, but it's important to me to start that tradition all over again for my family. We can always use the original for playing dress up!

My mom taught me to sew in high school, and though I've been doing it for quite a while, I'm definitely no expert! This isn't necessarily a step-by-step how-to for that reason, but whenever I find myself stuck or having problems, I love looking to Make It & Love It for super clear and helpful tutorials.

When I'm sewing more than a hem or something simple like a rectangular pillow, I turn to patterns. I like the Simplicity brand because, well, they're pretty simple! They're good for beginners because they don't typically have a lot of complex steps or advanced stitches. I also tend to avoid things with buttons and zippers if I don't want to have a headache later! In this case I did some research ahead of my trip to the fabric store (I went to Joann's). Basically you just check the back of the pattern envelope and look at the options for your chosen pattern (they usually come with several related patterns per envelope - here I was following "D") and look under "Notions." Elastic and velcro are pretty easy, but I personally steer clear if buttons or zippers are listed! This envelope will also tell you how much fabric you need to buy. I like to buy a little extra to make sure that I don't come up short after pre-shrinking it in the wash - that's VERY annoying!

So gather up all of your materials.

The orange fleece doesn't matter so much because it doesn't fray, but the black cotton I wanted to use for the face will. It helps if you clip the corners on a diagonal before washing because it will help limit any fraying.

There's a white sheet of directions included along with tissue paper sheets that have all the pattern outlines. Here again you just look for the letter (D) of the pattern you are making, and it tells you which of the pattern outlines you'll want to cut out. It also gives you a layout that will help you maximize your fabric. The tissue sheets will also tell you what they are for specifically. I thought the hat looked pretty silly, and I had a different idea for underclothes other than the jumpsuit, so I opted not to make them. This means I didn't need to cut out the pieces associated with those parts of the costume. To me, this is part of the beauty of DIY-ing rather than just buying a whole outfit - it just seems easier to personalize it!

Gather up your materials. For me the most important things other than a work surface and sewing machine, etc. are the wine and junky shows streaming on Netflix. That's old school "Charmed" in the background! Way more seasons than I remember. :)

 

From here the pattern instructions will pretty much tell you what to do. Which, well, obviously.

This doesn't mean I don't deviate from time to time. I was supposed to use fusible interfacing for the, uh, face of the pumpkin. Basically you iron this sheet of paper onto the fabric that you want to turn into an applique, which is a fancy word for sticker as far as I can tell. Then you peel off the paper which exposes a sort of blue, and you iron them onto your fabric using a damp cloth. Why damp cloth, I have no idea, but since I don't usually use this stuff I went with it.

It looked super cute, but because I was trying to get the face to stick to the sort of nubby texture of the fleece, I didn't really trust the interfacing. The corners seemed a little loose to me, so I ended up stitching along the edges anyway. I suppose that's fine because the interfacing held it in place nicely while I sewed. If I had used just pins I'm sure it would have slipped all around, so in hindsight maybe that worked out well!

The one other thing I did a little differently was right at the end when you turn everything right side out, rather than just stitch it closed as they directed, I opted to add some stuffing. I wanted to make sure my little pumpkin was nice and round!

After the finishing touches, here is the finished product!

I found some cute striped leggings at the Carter's outlet that look just perfect, and I will top it off with a cute knit pumpkin head hat!

So that's my method for homemade costumes! It's definitely not perfect, but I hope that my little one will have the same great memories of wearing costumes made with love like I do.