Still busy!

I haven't had much crafty stuff to blog about recently because I've been working on an order of soap sweaters for Seattle Sundries. Anne makes this wonderful round soap, and I make little sweaters to go over the soap. The idea is that the sweater acts as a washcloth, and as the soap gets smaller over time, you can tighten the drawstring at the top, so that you are able to get the most life out of even the tiniest slivers of soap. Pretty awesome! :)

Assuming all goes well, I'll be finishing these up this weekend. Then I get to move on to my next big project, which is a super sekrit custom order. I won't be able to share what it is until April! All I can say is that I've gotten about 1/3 of the way done, and it looks AWESOME so far. The next step is going to be the most difficult one, so I'll be glad to figure that out and then get it out of the way, because finishing the rest will be smooth sailing after that!

Sorry for the vague teasers! I can only promise that if you're a fan of video games, you will love getting to see what I'm making!

The Wedding Shop Recap (cross-posted from Shop Etsy)

I got married on Saturday. During the wedding, several of our guests asked me about various items I was wearing or that were a part of the wedding. There was at least one person who I promised to E-mail with the Etsy seller information, but I promptly forgot both the question and the questioner. (I have an excuse. All of the crazy adrenaline had drained by that point, and I was a bit out of it.) So here's the list of everything that we bought from Etsy for the wedding, along with sellers. :)

After Jeremy bought me my engagement ring, I told him that I thought boys should get engagement presents as well. He happened to be in need of a new wallet, so I found a local seller, Moxie and Oliver, who makes handmade leather wallets and brands a message onto them. So I wrote a little lovey note to Jeremy for her to brand into his new wallet. Now he has a little reminder of my love that is always with him.

My necklace pendant (the "Something Old, Something New" bit in the shape of the TARDIS) came from Imagination Emporium (which I mentioned in late June). She had done a different, much longer, Doctor Who quote in that shape, which I thought was brilliant, and so I contacted her to see if she could work a shorter quote into the same shape. The reasoning behind this, by the way, is that the TARDIS itself is arguably old, new, borrowed, and blue. :)

My earrings (which were not bought for the wedding, but I got a lot of compliments on them) came from Frozen Fire. They're solid glass, with dichroic coloring. The smallest size he makes are 3mm (I think that's 6 gauge), so those of you with standard piercing sizes are out of luck.

My dress came from Kimmi. She is a local dressmaker who I had bought another dress from previously (which I wore to a wedding where I was a guest a couple of years ago). When I started thinking about dresses, I was looking at rockabilly style dresses, but I couldn't find anything I loved. So I went to Kimmi's site instead, and found the dress I wore straight away. I didn't think it would fit me, but she had me try it on anyway. Once I had it on, I was sold. I tried on two others, but then went back to the lovely crocheted dress. She made an alteration to the lining for me to help with the fit, and I crocheted the shoulder straps.

Our rings came from Marlo at I Make Cute Stuff. Marlo is one of my good friends from EtsyRain, and she was happy to work with the unusual shape of my engagement ring to make a ring that can be worn with it or without it. These rings are based on her Secret Promise Rings, which means they do, in fact, have messages inside of them.

The flower fans were a collaboration between me, my friend Kayce (Nue to Me and several other shops), and Patty at Full Blooms. I crocheted several blue roses, Kayce made hers out of scraps of T-shirts and buttons, and Patty made hers from silk. Patty also assembled them and attached them to the fans that Cindy and I carried. I took a few extras and bundled them together for the tossing bouquet.

The garter that Jeremy tossed came from Kizette. She makes pairs of lace and satin garters with d20s attached to them--one to keep and one to toss. Of course, the dice don't really roll any more, but that's okay!

The wedding favors, which I talked about last month, were made by Recycled Ideas. She makes handmade paper with flower seeds in the mix, so that the paper is plantable. I had a stamp made by TerBear Collectables, and stamped all of the flowers with a water soluble ink. The stamp (which was a little off on some of the favors) is of a pair of hands in the shape of a heart, with our names above and our wedding date below.

We also got gifts for some of the people who helped out with the wedding on Etsy. My best woman, Cindy got a necklace made by my friend Tricia, Pequest Designs. Andrew (the best man) and Kindred (the officiant and also a good friend of Jeremy's) got engraved flasks from Precision Engraving. And I had 4 My Angels make a custom apron for my Uncle Joe, who was our barbeque chef, that reflects the several names he's known by in our family.

37 days and counting

Yup, I've reached the point where I start counting down to the wedding. :) And no, I haven't done a whole lot since my last post. Well, I made some leaves for the roses. That's a good start. :)

But I did pick up the rings last night, and they are spectacular! :) Mine matches up with the odd shape of the bottom half of my engagement ring perfectly, and it also looks neat even if I decide not to wear my engagement ring with it. So win on both counts! :) Thank you, Marlo!

Okay, to do list time:

• Finish all of the flowers
  
• Finish the tossing bouquet
  
• Stamp all the favors
  
• Get the last wedding party gift
  
• Get Costco membership
  
• Send UJ the headcount
  
• Buy all the picnic stuff
  
• Get the marriage license
  
• Make appointment for nails
  
• Make appointment for pictures (after the wedding)
  

I think that's all. :)

Another Monday

Back in the office, after staying home sick on Friday. I was really miserable on Thursday, and Friday morning it seemed like it would be more of the same. Taking it easy was probably a very good idea, especially since I had a busy weekend planned.

Friday night was w00tstock, which was so much fun. Good music (mostly), geekery, and fun. Jeremy bought me two T-shirts and a CD (and got a T-shirt for himself), so I have MORE black T-shirts. :)

Saturday was the EtsyRain spring show, which went very well. The only downside for me is that when I got my whole table set up, and went to sit down in my camp chair, I couldn't see over the display. So I ended up standing for the majority of the show. I'm still a bit sore from that. I finally gave up and sat down toward the end, but I think I waited too long to do that.

I was going to go to the CakeSpy gallery opening afterwards, but by the time I had packed up my car, all I could think about was food that was not sugar-y, so I had to go get dinner and then unload the car, and then headed to D&D instead. I'll just have to get over to the gallery another time. :)

Sunday was my Vampire game, and since it was the day before Jeremy's birthday, I got him flowers and made him a cake. He took the remainder of the cake to work today, and I'm hoping he will bring home an empty pan tonight. :)

I think I get a bit of breathing room between shows this time--I can always use more arm warmers and Decapitated Dollies before Punk Rock Flea Market, but I have 4 whole weeks to work on them. :) The breathing room is good, because we have a busy week, and I'm trying to crank out a story by the end of the week and another by the end of the month!

Ack! It's been a while!

And I've been busy! :)

The weekend before this past one, I took a needle felting class with Moxie. I have had a needle felting kit for a while, but was generally getting frustrated every time I tried to use it. But after this little class, I feel a lot more like I can make the fiber bend to my whim. Moxie also mentioned that yes, it is possible to felt natural fibers to unnatural ones, which means I can felt dreadlocks onto Decapitated Dollies! w00t! (This has also led to GREAT amusement in our apartment, when I mentioned to Jeremy that a) I can felt with cat hairs, and b) I can felt them to his T-shirt. Okay, so I was amused. :) )

I also spent part of that weekend trying to come up with what I wanted to make for my swag for the EtsyRain spring show. I was mostly not coming up with anything, but I figured it out over the past week, and got it all done on Friday and Saturday. No details yet--if you want to know what I made, you'll have to get in line early on Saturday and get a swag bag! :) (I'll be in some of the swag bags, but not all.)

Jeremy and I spent most of the weekend watching season 4 of LOST (yeah, we're way behind) because we both have/had colds. (I'm mostly better now, though still sniffly. He is still pretty cold-ridden.) This meant I could get a lot of eyeball cat toys mostly done--our cats freak out if I actually get the catnip out, so I save that part for when I'm NOT at home. Next project is to get some fish bodies ready to stuff, so I'll have all the pieces I need when those two items start selling at the show on Saturday! :)

Handmade Comedy show

No, it's not a craft show. It's a comedy show. But it's a comedy show where the audience is encouraged to bring their craft projects that are quiet, don't smell, and can be worked on in dim lighting. If I could make it, heck yeah, I'd be crocheting. :)

But I can't go, and instead, I've sent a couple of items in for the silent auction to benefit Friends of the Orphans. In fact, a portion of the ticket sales go to that cause as well, but a bunch of EtsyRain members will be donating items for a silent auction to be held before the show. So if you've had your eye on either of the items in this post, find a way to be there to bid on the silent auctions! :)

Baby it's cold outside...

When I posted yesterday, I neglected to mention how my show on Saturday went. It went very well, and I think, in fact, it might have been my best PRFM yet. It was definitely better than the one where I sold a bunch of Jeremy's Cthulhu T-shirts and a bunch of pairs of old boots. :)

I was nearly out of arm warmers when I got done with the EtsyRain show two weeks ago, and I barely had time to restock them for PRFM. I think I managed to sell just about as many pairs as the new ones I had made, in fact. So I'm still low on arm warmers. I've also gotten three orders for stuff (none of which is needed until after the holidays, but I need to work on it now) and another request to let a friend know when my schedule lets up (so she can get her orders in), so the arm warmer stock will be remaining low for the time being. Ah well, only one more show before the end of the year. :)

I am glad, however, that I still have my non-striped arm warmers that I made quite some time ago, when I was first experimenting with the idea. After I sold the pair off my arms at the EtsyRain show, the prototype pair are the only ones that I own! And of course, I have decided that I like how they look with my winter coat so much that I might need a matching hat and scarf... as if I don't have 8 billion of those... :)

Suffice it to say, I think I'm going to be busy well into January... maybe February... :) So as much as I'd like it to warm up a wee bit, maybe it's a good thing that the weather in Seattle has turned cold. :)

Adventures in buses

This week has really been a bizarre one for bus riding for me. Monday morning, since Jeremy was off work, he drove me downtown, but I bused home. That was the only normal bus ride I've had this week.

Tuesday, I again got a ride to work since Jeremy had to zip to an appointment right after work. I caught a different bus than my usual one, since I was headed to my studio. I had to run to get on the bus, but was happy that I had caught an express bus. Unfortunately, what I didn't know is that the stop nearest to my studio is not an express stop. So rather than getting off the bus before that stop, I ended up riding to the next express stop, necessitating a LONG walk back to my studio.

Wednesday morning, the bus picked up a guy who started laughing about the time we got on the freeway in the U District, and continued laughing until the first stop downtown. This was not a "some guy who had heard a good joke" kind of continual laughing. It sort of ebbed and flowed, and was definitely laughter about something in this guy's head. I think, too, that the smell of alcohol diminished a bit when he got off the bus. Coincidence? I think not. The only good part of this portion of the tale is that I got an idea for a short story out of the incident, so now I just have to find time to write that. :)

Wednesday afternoon, Jeremy was reading and I was crocheting, when I finally discovered that our bus had not stopped in the U District, and was, in fact, still in the northbound express lanes. Our driver TOTALLY missed the exit he should have taken, and wasn't entirely sure how to get back on track. We took that as a sign that we should look into a different bus option, and when he stopped at the transit center (not on our route normally), the bus we needed was waiting in front of us. So we hopped on that bus instead, and then continued to read and crochet... :) Luckily, we did start paying attention before our stop, but it was a much longer walk home from that stop, and we arrived home a bit later than we normally do.

This morning, we discovered that it was below freezing before we headed out, so I got out my awesome pirate coat, only to discover that it's a bit more snug than I recalled. At the bus stop, I realized that I had forgotten our tickets to Twelfth Night, so I ran back to the apartment, since I have more leeway in my arrival time at work (and we leave so early that I get to work almost an hour early some days). I grabbed the tickets, switched coats, and discovered that the bathroom door had not latched shut, and my kitten had broken out of his confinement(*). Luckily, he comes running even when I call him Bit, which is not his actual name. :) So I finally made it back outside, to watch the next bus pass me by... *sigh*

Here's hoping that the bus curse can be lifted now that I've ranted...

(*) Black is still in solitary confinement (a.k.a. the bathroom) until he has a follow-up appointment with his vet on Saturday morning. I think he is getting thoroughly bored of not having the other cats to torment, as he had decided that my ankles are a good thing to torment. He prefers my ankles to Mr. Bunny (small stuffed bunny cat toy), apparently.

+++++

In other news, I've started posting on Shop Etsy again, with Christmas gift ideas from EtsyRain sellers. My goal is to get back in the habit of posting there daily. And then, maybe I can work on posting here daily, or at least weekday-ly. :)

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!

It's been a week...

And by that, I mean that it has been not a great awesome week, but also not a hugely crappy week. It's been some of both. Therefore, it's been a week.

1) Nearly ready for the EtsyRain Holiday Show tomorrow. Come out! Buy stuff! Get your Christmas shopping done! :)

2) I'm about 1,900 words shy of my personal goal for my NaNo word count. I managed to pound out 4,000 words on Wednesday, but then wasted about 45 minutes of potential writing time last night because I couldn't make myself write the next scene. I had ended the previous scene with this over the top, dramatic monologue, and I just couldn't help but think that whatever I wrote next would sound trite. I have to get to it, I know, but I needed the time to NOT have that monologue taunting me.

3) Cats seem to be doing well. *knock on wood* Gabe is eating again and seems a little less needy. He still hates us at pill time, and has not been enjoying his isolation chamber (a.k.a. the bathroom) during the day, but we want to be sure that he is, in fact, eating, drinking, and doing other things that cats ought to be doing.

4) We have plans to go to Forks, Neah Bay, Port Angeles, and Victoria (B.C.) next weekend. This will mark the first time that we get to use our passports. YAY! :) We are doing the totally dorky Twilight tourist crap, but staying in Neah Bay because I've been wanting to get out there for a while. It's going to entail a lot of driving, and I will. not. forget my camera. Mandatory!

Fun with crafting!

So my show on Saturday went very well--lots of sales, a really lovely environment, and fun people to share it with. It wore me out thoroughly enough that I didn't even take my crochet to D&D, and ended up falling asleep soundly on the couch, with my laptop still balanced on my knees. That's talent. :)

I tried to get a little crocheting done while we gamed on Sunday, but didn't really succeed. I ran out of the yarn I was using to make arm warmers, Gabe decided that he REALLY wanted some of the catnip I was using for catnip eyeballs, etc. But still, some work is better than none. I just need to find somewhere to work on the catnip stuff away from the cats... though finding time when that's possible makes this a difficult prospect.

And I'm gearing up for my next show, which is this coming Saturday and Sunday. The EtsyRain Holiday Show runs from 10-5 on Saturday, November 21st and Sunday, November 22nd, at the Intiman Theater (201 Mercer Street) at Seattle Center. I think there's something around 60 vendors, and the first 50 people in the door on each day get free swag bags! There is a suggested donation of either $1 or a new article of warm clothing for Treehouse.

I'll be there with arm warmers, cat toys, Decapitated Dollies, lavender cupcakes, ice cream cozies, and coffee cozies. And possibly more! :)

ZOMG busy...

Yeah, except busy barely describes it. I had to put "posting to my blog" on my to do list for the writer's group or it wasn't gonna happen today.

It doesn't help matters any that I spent 6 days only checking the internet with my phone, which meant E-mail and Facebook, and little else. But since I was in the midst of Ambercon US, I wasn't complaining too much, as I was having an utter blast. I haven't finished my write-up of the gaming yet, but when I do, I'll cross-post it over here, for all those people who are interested in gaming stuffs. :)

In crafty news, I've been getting some crocheting done finally, in preparation for a small show that I'm doing on May 7, at Comedy Underground, from 6-9 p.m. I'll mostly have Decapitated Dollies and other silly stuff that I make. There's a comedy show after the craft show, so you can stick around afterwards if you're interested. And there will be a few other local artists with amusing stuff selling there as well.

We've also got an EtsyRain show coming up on May 9, at SodoPop! This is the day before Mother's Day, so it's a great opportunity to pick up a last minute gift for your mom. We'll have about 30 EtsyRain artists selling at this event, so there are lots of options for gift giving.

Remember that chicken? Yup, still headless.

It's been one of those weeks where I'm barely in my actual office, let alone anywhere near the internet. Whee!

So the weekend was good, with an EtsyRain leadership meeting Friday, followed by gaming for the rest of it. Exalted was a short game, which worked out well since Jeremy was not feeling well, so I got him all comfortable on my couch while I worked on cleaning and such for a while. Sunday was the kids' game, and it ended up being the final game of that campaign. This means that we are now moving on to a game that I get to play in. YAY! :)

The new game will be Exalted also (oddly enough), though it will be Dragon Blooded, and it's going to be all sorts of fun. Many years ago, when Exalted was new, I wanted to play in a game where the PCs were young children, maybe 5 years old, who had already exalted as Dragon Blooded. I later found out that this didn't really work within the system. :) But the plan for Jeremy's game is for us to go through our childhood, adolescence, etc. and play out a few scenes from each. This works great with Dragon Blooded because he's going to set it up that a number of our characters are related to one another. :)

I've already worked out some of the details of my background, even though we'll probably play through some scenes that I may or may not have thought of. I suppose some of my thoughts are still subject to change, but I'm gonna have an airship and I'm gonna be a pirate. I wonder where that idea came from... :)

I've already had two research days this week, and I've got another tomorrow. It's like I have this office, but I'm never here. :) Ah well, at least I'm busy for the moment. :)

Oh (yes, I know this post is all over the place today), and we watched Muppet Treasure Island on Monday night, as I was told I needed to see Tim Curry as a "professional pirate." I approve. :) The song he sings is fabulous. :)

Awesome show!

Last night, some of the Ballard area EtsyRain sellers had a small show at Canal Station, where Dale lives. It was a very cool idea to begin with (wine, cheese, and craft sellers), and turned out to be a really awesome show. In fact, it was the most profitable show that I've done since moving to Washington! (And honestly, the only shows I did better at in Illinois were multi-day shows.)

I also got to get Jerome's salsa bowls from Laura, and he loves them. :) She doesn't have any in her shop right now, but keep your eyes open for them. They'd also work great for other dips or small portions of whatever you want to eat in a bowl. :)

The only downside to the show is that I'm low on inventory for a couple of my best selling items, which means I need to buckle down and get some work done. The top priorities are finishing off more soap socks for Anne, and then finishing Peter's Christmas present. Then I get to work on lots of inventory for my next show, which is Punk Rock Flea Market, on December 6th. (Luckily, that show draws inventory from both of my shops, and I always have PLENTY of bottle cap belts. :) )

And then, if I have time, I have more Christmas presents to work on (supplementary, not required), or replenishing my inventory again, before I Heart Rummage on December 21st. My shop is TOTALLY going to be closed either on or right after that day, and will stay closed through New Years. I suspect that between those two shows and online Christmas shopping, it'll be slim pickings until I'm able to crank out more stuff after the holidays. :)

Yeah, I've lost track of days again...

I seriously had to stop and think earlier what day it was, and what I had planned for the evening. I don't usually get to make much in the way of plans when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes things work out nicely so that I can.

Since we're in Lawrence now, I'm going to meet up with Krystof (formerly of Abney Park) tomorrow night. He moved here from Seattle pretty recently, so it was some cool happenstance that I ended up being in the town where he now lives for a few nights.

On Thursday night, EtsyRain has our first ever virtual trunk show, hosted by yours truly. You can find us in the treehouse of Etsy's virtual labs at 6 p.m. Pacific time (9 p.m. Etsy/Eastern time). And yeah, I totally planned it that way, because I just knew that as soon as we committed to a date and time for the show, I would get the word that I was traveling that week. Yes, I am good. :)

In the meantime, though, I plan to spend my evening lounging around my hotel room, after we go get some sushi for dinner in about an hour. Cuz it's Tuesday, and I kept my Tuesday open for NOT running around like a crazy person. :) Will be nice to sleep in the same bed for 3 nights, too. We spent our first two nights on the road in two different towns, but we're in Lawrence till Friday! w00t! :)

(Feeling marginally better today, too, just a bit fuzzy headed. I blame the 'Quil.)

Crafts? Yeah, I still do those...

I was going back through some old blog posts yesterday, and I realized I haven't really talked much about what crafty projects I've got going on lately. Part of this might be that I haven't had many crafty projects lately. :) I'm working on more soap sweaters for Seattle Sundries mostly, and not much for my own shop.

I am working on a few neat things for Christmas though. I decided to give all of the kids on my mom's side of the family crocheted things. Some of them were things I had worked on previously, though I am now faced with the need to figure out how to make a teapot to go with Darci-Anna's tea cups. I know what I'm doing for the basic shape and the handle, but the spout has got me all confused. Teapot spouts are really strange when you try to break them down into simple shapes!

I still have to work on Peter's gift, of course, but at least Sarah (my sister) told me just what he wanted, down to the colors it should be. I wonder if that's more of an attempt to match his room than his personal preferences, but I don't know a lot of almost 3 year olds, so who knows if he has a personal preference yet. :)

And whether the new baby (Sarah's due in early March) will have an afghan at Christmas or not is debateable. For the sake of my sanity, I may put that off until after Christmas. :)

As for my shop, I know what I WANT to be working on, when I have the time. I sold four Decapitated Dollies to one person, so that section of my shop is looking a little sad. All the historic ones are gone now, and all of the dark haired girls as well. Those blondes just won't sell!

I also bought a sweater that I'm going to take apart for the yarn, which will then become some hats. I think that one of them is going to be my entry for the Secret Serenity challenge of the Big Damn Crafters, and I think I just figured out how to make it work even better. Now whether anyone will actually want to buy and wear this hat is another matter entirely. Here's a hint for those who will get it: layer cake dress hat. :)

And in other news, I joined Twitter today, because people have been talking about it on the EtsyRain message board. You may find me here.

And it's Monday.

Yeah, it feels like a Monday, too. And I'm particularly annoyed because it's Columbus Day, which means no mail and no banks open. Pain in the butt, if you ask me.

Had an almost entirely lovely weekend. I went out on Friday to Plush You! with Shea (who has one of the coolest shop names ever!!), and then we went and had a drink, and then got some dinner. Great time!

Now I don't know if it's that I'm getting old or who knows what, but I was MISERABLE on Saturday morning. I had a beer after work (yay beer thirty!) and a cider at the bar, which is NOT much alcohol at all, but I felt like I had a ridiculously bad hangover on Saturday. More ridiculous than some of the hangovers had by drinking too much Boone's Farm, or Karac-strength amaretto sours, or anything else dumb that I did. (Not quite as bad as the nastiness after the last party EVER, which is the only time I've gotten sick from drinking.) But no rest for the wicked, as I had stuff to get done. I managed to get almost all of it done, and didn't get sick. I finally bought some Sprite, and that managed to settle my stomach down, which was good.

Game Saturday was great, and I love the looks of panic on the faces of players when you give them a prophecy and then the prophecy comes true. It's like they knew it was coming, but they weren't quite ready for it yet... :)

And then Sunday was our big EtsyRain show at Saint Edward State Park, which went very well. I didn't hand out many business cards, but I had a decent amount of sales, and a lot of lookers. Maybe my shop name is just so awesomely memorable that they'll all come shop online instead. :)

So yeah, I'm off to the archives for the rest of this week, and maybe some of next week. Got quite a bit to do, as I'm working on 3 projects there, so it may be a while before I see my oh-so-cozy office again. I'm sure my office-mate will be happy to have the place to herself for a while. :)

Random and assorted

1) I'm beginning to miss my office a little bit. I got to stop in there briefly yesterday, and I'll be there for a whopping 2 1/2 days next week (or maybe 1 1/2...), followed by a single day the week after that. I love working at the Archives all day, but I do occasionally miss the short commute from downtown as opposed to taking over an hour to get home in the afternoon. :(

2) My weekend is blissfully free of plans, aside from a post office run in the morning tomorrow. Between traveling and doing other fun stuff, I haven't had an EMPTY weekend in forever. My goal is to get a bunch of crafting done, some EtsyRain stuff done, and maybe even get crazy and do some housework... hahahaha... yeah right. :)

3) My new game will be starting up next weekend, and I've got plenty to do on that as well. I'm learning all about stuff that I had no idea about. But that's the nice thing about a quasi-historical game--at least it's set in the real world, and Wikipedia is my friend. :)

Nine Inch Nails and the rest of the weekend

So before anything else, Nine Inch Nails. Oh. My. God.

The opening band, Crystal Castles, ended up being a sad disappointment. Last Wednesday, we went to their MySpace, and they seemed like they would be a band I like. I made a comparison at one point that they kinda seemed like the twisted love child of Ladytron, Atari Teenage Riot, and Tatu. Now that's an interesting love child.

Sadly, they really weren't that good live. The lead singer seemed to believe that since she was playing a HUGE venue, she needed to scream into the mic to be heard. This was not the case. Mics are for amplification, you see. But when you scream into a mic, and it's being run through a synth, you end up sounding just completely unintelligible.

Now granted, I shouldn't be too harsh. This band obviously did something right to be opening for Nine Inch Nails. But I think this was their first performance in a really big space, and they're just not ready for it.

But NIN more than made up for the sucky opening band. I felt kind of out of it at first, because for whatever reason, I haven't listened to their newest albums as religiously as I should have. Aside from the singles, anything after With Teeth was sort of like "what is this?" But seeing as they played plenty of older songs, I was okay after a little bit. :)

However, I have discovered that I'm getting too old to headbang, and that makes me really sad. My neck is still bugging me this morning. :(

Oh, and having a xylophone (or two) at an industrial show? Frickin' awesome. :)

+++++

In other news, I spent a lovely day yesterday hanging out with some of the EtsyRain folks, visiting a show in Renton and LOTS of thrift stores. And a really big JoAnn's. And a Half-Price Books. And super yummy Japanese food. :) All in all, a great day. :)

Of course, I'm paying for it now, in that we have a TON to get done this week. But at least I'm in Seattle for a few weeks. Not sure when or where the next trip will be, but I'm really keeping my fingers crossed for Kansas at the end of August. I wanna see my nephew!

A fun collaboration

About a month or so back, Anne of Seattle Sundries contacted me to see about having some soap "sweaters" or "socks" crocheted to go around her soap. Of course, the interesting aspect of this request was that since her soap is round, she wanted something that could fit to the shape of the soap.

I'm always up for a good challenge, and by the time I had responded to her initial inquiry, I was already sketching out little ideas on paper. To my brain, the best way to figure out how to crochet something unusual is to break it down into its component shapes, figure out how you would crochet each shape separately, and then put it all back together. It's trial and error sometimes, but with these little soap sweaters, it didn't take me long at all to figure it out. Even better, I hadn't seen the size of Anne's bars of soap before I made my prototypes. But between a pretty good guess and the stretchiness of yarn, they fit perfectly.

And I have to HIGHLY recommend Anne's soap across the board. She gave me a sample bar to try out the soap sweaters on, and then she swapped me a bar of soap for something I had made. I picked out the Manly Man and Backwoods varieties, thinking that Jerome might like one or both. Well, I'm using the Backwoods in the shower, and it's great. It's fresh and clean smelling, without being overpowering in the slightest. And the lather, both in and out of the soap "sweater" is fabulous!