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.

Summer has arrived in Seattle!

This weekend was downright melty, meaning that I avoided going out pretty much all day yesterday, and slept poorly in the heat. The difficulty of being in a first floor apartment is that we don't like to leave any of our windows open while we're sleeping. Particularly as one of said windows has no SCREEN in it, I think that's probably the best way to go about it.

Saturday, however, was a fun day of helping out with the EtsyRain show in Ballard. Since I got home about 9:45 p.m. the night before, I knew I wasn't going to want to mess with getting all of my stuff ready for a show, so I decided not to have a table for this one. Instead, I helped with the set up and tear down, and sat around crocheting for the rest of the day. The funny thing was when the ladies from the senior center (where the show was held) watched me crochet, and asked if I would be willing to come and teach them to crochet. I said sure, if they will show me how to knit. :)

Someday, I'll learn to knit. I have a ton of people who have offered to teach me, but I've just never been able to block out the time to do it. And while I'm a little nervous about teaching crochet (particularly because I have my own unique method that everyone says is ODD), I think it could be a lot of fun. Of course, there did seem to be some concern amongst the ladies of who had a computer and thus could E-mail me, so we'll see if it pans out or not. :)


In the meantime, here's the latest of the Decapitated Dollies, this one inspired by Serenity. Mainly, however, I needed a good reason to make "brains are in terrible danger" action hair. That's just too much fun. :)

Oh, and in other news? This looks like the first week in a long time where my schedule is not hectic crazy. I've got no trips scheduled, AND I get a 3 day weekend. *happy dance*

Cuteness overload!

I do seem to have an obsession with making Firefly/Serenity related things lately. Part of this is probably related to the Big Damn Crafters monthly challenges, all of which are Firefly/Serenity related. Of course, I seem to be focusing on the characters that aren't related to the theme this month. :) The theme is Inara, and I'm making stuff based on the guys. I'm just having trouble thinking of something elegant enough for Inara that I could crochet. :)

Instead, I keep making cute things. Like this Jayne cupcake. Because I like making crocheted cupcakes, and I have this strange obsession with that hat of his. :) I thought about making cupcakes for other characters, but I think Kaylee might be the only other one who works, with two buns/cherries on top. :) Just can't see a Mal-cake or a Simon-cake. :) Seriously, how would you tell those apart, when rendered as a cupcake?!

More cute stuff (in the form of Decapitated Dollies) to appear in the near future. Only one of the cute things is actually kind of morbid. People finally talked me into a blood and guts version of a Decapitated Dollie. It's interesting. :)

Whee!

Day old chocolate cake = just about as good as fresh chocolate cake. Of course, I will also eat stale chocolate cake, as long as the icing hasn't gone too crispy. :)

So yes, my birthday yesterday was quite nice, and culminated with buying the collector's edition of "Serenity" and the regular version of "House of Flying Daggers." Now, when it comes to the latter, I really like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Hero" better, but all of them have such amazing cinematography and stunts that I wasn't gonna say no to completing the not-really-a-trilogy. :)

I think we're gonna be watching a whole lot more movies in the near future, since Lost is on a brief hiatus (not back on until April... *sob*). But I never mind watching more movies.

Speaking of, I just remembered that I wanted to post about this last week. I finally got to see "Marie Antoinette," which I had heard all sorts of bad things about (like it was horrible, not worth watching, etc.). Honestly? I liked it. I'm sure some people were deeply offended by the use of the 80s music throughout the movie, but that just made me happy... keeping in mind that I also LOVE Moulin Rouge. :) (And yet it bugged me that they were using modern music in "A Knight's Tale," though I think that is more in that they had characters reacting to said music.)

So yeah, not a bad movie. Kinda cute. Kinda funny. Loved the shoes, even if I would never wear most of them. :)

Ah, inspiration!

One of the things I think I like best about joining up with street teams on Etsy is the inspiration that other members provide me. In this case, the one I have to thank is Siarh, from the Big Damn Crafters street team. It's a very new street team for Browncoats (fans of Firefly/Serenity, for the uninformed), and we're mostly just a social street team, designed to have some fun. :)

Siarh asked me if I could make her a Jayne hat, but she wanted it to be a bun cover, for a large bun. I gladly agreed, thinking how cute this would be. I also decided that what might be even cuter would be a PAIR of miniature Jayne hats, designed for when you wear your hair in two buns. Siarh didn't want earflaps on her larger one, but I had to put them on the tiny ones. They're totally non-functional, but totally cute. :)

Of course, with how long my hair is getting, I'm not sure that I can even wear the pair that I made for myself. :) But I'll try it one of these days. In the meantime, the pictured pair are available in my shop. And if they sell out, don't despair... I'll be making more of these. They are just too cute to not make more! :)

This is too frickin' sweet.

As some of my faithful readers may know, I make hats similar to the one worn by Jayne Cobb in "The Message" episode of Firefly. Now, oddly enough, the majority of these hats have been sent to Arizona. I have a huge following there... or perhaps it's that my best saleswoman lives there, and convinces all of her friends to buy my hats. :)

Well, a few weeks ago, there was a convention called Dark Con in Arizona, probably the Phoenix area. It was a smaller convention, one where the stars and the fans mingled freely. So the chances of meeting a given star were pretty high.

One of the guests at the convention was Jewel Staite, who played Kaylee on Firefly. And one of the people who bought one of my hats was wearing his Jayne hat...



Voila! One of my hats is now in a picture with Kaylee. I am ecstatic!
.

Gotta post this one before I forget it. End of the Work Week Wisdom.

"I want to cut my hair, because it's getting kinda emo, but then I kinda hope that it will just cut itself."
--Jesi

I <3 my roommate. :)

In my lack of posting this week, I neglected to mention that I got my 2nd tattoo on Tuesday. This one is on the right hand side of my lower back, though it goes about halfway up my back, and is the Chinese characters for "serenity" in a reddish color. It looks very spiffy already, and will look even better when it finishes healing. Which I really wish it would do already, because I hate that whole feeling of dead skin just kinda sitting on my back, and then hurting every time I move. :(

But it's so worth it. :) And this one didn't even hurt as bad as the last one, despite being probably twice as big, and far more detailed. Still deciding if I'm going to get wings next, or just go with smaller things on my shoulders... :)
.