New in the shop: Coffee Mug Cozies!

While lounging around watching the Lord of the Rings movies, I wanted a crochet project that would not require me to work on the pattern as I went. I needed something that I could work on without thinking too hard. So I decided that it was time to launch the coffee mug cozies!

The coffee mug cozies are similar to the coffee cozies I already made, except that they can be used on a mug that has a handle. There's a button on one end and a loop on the other. They still wouldn't work on a mug that has two handles, but since I haven't seen a lot of those, I think this is a versatile enough design. You can also use them on a disposable coffee cup from the coffee shop.

I'm making these in two different types of yarn. The acrylic ones are great if, like me, you work in an office that likes to make your hot beverage cold before you've really had a chance to enjoy it. They will help retain the heat of the liquid in your cup. The cotton ones (which I haven't listed any of yet) will insulate as well, but they're also absorbent. So if you slosh liquid out of the mug, the cotton coffee mug cozy will hopefully catch some of it! Perfect if you're a little messy. Now, I need to figure out how to combine the two so that I can have an all in one coffee mug cozy... :)

Coffee Cozy Give Away!

Just a quick note today: Go check out Rose Works Jewelry blog, where I'm the featured artist this week! I'm also giving away one of my organic cotton crocheted coffee cozies. Check out her blog post to see how you can be entered to win it! :)

Absolute success!

The EtsyRain Holiday Craft show was an absolute success for me. I was selling arm warmers so quickly on Saturday that I couldn't even keep them on my arms! Literally! A woman liked the pair that I was wearing (which I had originally made for myself), and asked if she could buy them, in addition to the other pairs she had picked out. Who am I to say no to such a request? I can always make myself another pair or two. :)

I also sold a LOT of my eyeball cat toys. People were really amused by my jar of eyeballs (I displayed them in plastic jar that once held Parmesan cheese and a baby food jar), and I think the price point for them was perfect. My jar was almost empty at the end of Saturday, so I restocked on Sunday in between making more arm warmers (including two custom orders for vendors nearby).

On top of all of my sales, my shop is looking a little thin in places this morning, since I sent my ice cream cozies, coffee cozies, and remaining cat toys to the Black Door Studio in Everett for their holiday open house on the 28th and 29th.

So I'll be spending my bus commutes for the foreseeable future working on items to restock my shop! I've still got two more shows to do this winter!

More geekiness

So we've been cruising through the Doctor Who DVDs, and as I was busily crocheting while watching last night, I had a fabulous idea strike me. I rummaged through my incredible stash of yarn, and discovered that said idea was almost 100% a go. Why is that I ALWAYS am missing one color of yarn that I NEED? (Anyone know if Jo Ann's is open on turkey day?)

A couple of years ago, my friend John commissioned me to make him a Doctor Who scarf. For those of you unfamiliar with this object, it is approximately 12 inches wide, 12 FEET long, and involves 7 colors of yarn. I made it for him. I cursed a lot. But I got it done. I sadly have no good pictures of this creation, as it was the money I made from this commission that went towards my new digital camera, and DEAR GOD did the one before that suck. Suffice it to say, it was quite the undertaking.

And I've occasionally pondered making another, and then I've remembered what I'd need to charge for it, and how much of my life it would consume, and then moved on. But my brain flash last night has made it possible to once again make something like that scarf, only a much quicker version.

I'm making Doctor Who ice cream and coffee scarves... :)

Technically, they're the same cozies I've been making, just in those specific 7 colors. I'm thinking of doing a Doctor Who fan pack, that involves a Dalek and one of each cozy, but that's getting a tiny bit ahead of myself. I still need to find the gold/yellow yarn in cotton, which is proving trickier than I'd hoped. But I will figure it out, one way or another, even if it involves doing one stripe in acrylic. :)

And yes, this absolutely proves nothing more than the fact that I'm a big geek. But I'm okay with that. :)

Happy Earth Day!

Interestingly enough, I remember celebrating Earth Day as a teenager, probably in the late 80s or early 90s, when Earth Day was just becoming popular again (or at least I was becoming more conscious of it). I distinctly remember making a recycling bin for paper for my bedroom when I was about 16 or so. I filled it up with paper, and then asked my parents where to take it to recycle it. They had no idea.

Now it's a whole lot easier to recycle. In fact, our apartment building has a single dumpster, but two large dumpsters and a smaller bin for recycling, and another small bin for yard waste (and leftover pizza, we've been told).

At any rate, in honor of Earth Day, I'm running a sale in my Etsy shop. All of the ice cream cozies and coffee cozies are buy one, get one half price! I read a statistic that says that if you drink coffee five days a week for the whole year, and use the cardboard sleeves that the coffee shops provide, that's approximately 6-7 POUNDS of garbage that goes into the landfill each year. (I suspect this is because most people don't remove their cardboard sleeves from their cups when they trash them.) With all the folks drinking coffee in Seattle, that's a LOT of garbage.

Text link now for when the mini changes

So if you've been eyeballing a couple of these, now is the time to buy! :)