300

This is my 300th post! I am super busy preparing for the craft fairs but I am planning a giveaway for early December, just in time to hopefully make it to the winner by Christmas. Christmas!! I don’t have time to think about that yet!

This weekend has made our heads spin and it is only half over. Today we did the final shopping for supplies for the craft fairs. Such a good feeling. We also visited the thrift store for the first time in at least 2 weeks, maybe even longer. The time gap since my last visit meant lots of new things and I left there a very happy camper.

A swag of amazing vintage craft sewing patterns for 20 cents each:

Plus bag handles for 40 cents a pair, a couple of books and two Golden Hands magazines. I got the whole lot for $5 and it was hard not to skip out of the store with my bag of swag.

We also picked up the dining table today:

When Dave saw it he said “I thought it would be in better condition”. Well, burst my bubble why don’t ya? For $40 you get a diamond in the rough and you have to do the hard work yourself. We were very lucky that Dave just happened to unexpectedly have the large work car and the table fitted in with no room to spare at all. It was of course pouring with rain the whole time we were trying to get it in and out of the car and as you can tell there is now no room in my house. Plus that window behind it is now blocked but look at it…. but imagine it sanded back and oiled and sitting in the dining room of our very own house in a few months. And in a few years my child wil be sitting there scribbling with crayons. That’s a happy table waiting for a lifetime of stories to be told. Sometimes I wish we had more money or a nicer house or newer stuff but when a dining table in a thrift store makes me this happy I’m glad to be me.

How to save a Very Bad Day

Buy stuff of course! It was a really bad day yesterday, one annoying thing after another. Just one of those days. But I often find that it’s on those days that Very Good Things tend to happen. So let’s focus on those shall we?

I found the dining table of my thrift store dreams. My conditions for my dream table were $50 max, real wood and no wobbles but I never thought we’d find one and find it on a day we had spare money. I found it on payday for $40 and when I sand it down and oil it I think it will look amazing. We pick it up tomorrow and then the fun part begins – trying to fit it in a too small house!

There was also some hobby horse hair buying along with felt, floss and thread:

Some ‘just because it’s soft’ buying. They are hopefully destined to become a felted crochet bowl or two when I master the perfect bowl shape.:

And some lovely mail, my giveaway prize from Kara at roses are blue:

You know, now I’m here looking back on only the good things of a very bad day I see that I was a wee bit wrong. There were some very annoying things for sure – like being about to go to the bank and being told I couldn’t because some *&*^&%% had just robbed it (so glad I was running late) but really, it was actually a Pretty Good Day.

Over ambitious

I have 3 craft fairs within 6 weeks starting October 24th. Oh my gosh. I’ve done lost my mind y’all. The last fair I did took me 3 full months of mostly hand stitching to get ready for. Oh and the biggest most likely to sell out fair is the first of the three. For full panic potential. And in between the fairs I have 3 infertility appointments and a trip to the annual Waldorf school fair. I guess one bonus is at least I’ll have more than $6 on hand at the Waldorf fair this year! Mmmmm wooden toys, I never need a reason to buy them! But oh my goodness, if I haven’t lost my mind yet I surely will before the rush is all over!

My mind is so full of product ideas and things to buy and ways to make my stall stand out (I am digging this stall, it’s all about the golden rule – think upwards) and worries too – worries that I will sell everything at the first fair and not be able to make enough stuff for the next two fairs. Worried that I’ll sell nothing. Worried I’ll forget something – price tags, scissors, part of my fancy stand, my hobby horses, my float money (again). So many ways to screw up. The 3am bedtime becomes more common the closer a fair gets and thank goodness for DVDs so I can watch and stitch.

Of course it always works out in the end. On the day I have fun arranging my stall just right, selling direct to customers, meeting other bloggers, getting more praise than I know what to do with and hanging with a whole building full of creative people. There’s never such a thing as a bad fair. And Dave gets dragged along to keep me company and we play “is that a man or a woman?” and he points out people he knows – customers, old workmates (golden shower Graham ahem). People giving me money for my creations is really just a bonus. And there’s so many babies, I am always in heaven at a fair!

This mad crazy rush has made me a bad blog commenter and email writer so to those who have sent buttons for the Moriah School Holocaust Memorial thank you all so much. The tally is over 1,000 so far! If you haven’t sent any but are going to please send them by the end of the week so I can get them to the kids by the end of the month. And to Jannelle who sent the wonderful vintage ‘soft embroidery‘ threads on the left (which are perfect for little pink crochet flowers) and Melissa who is blogless but very generously sent me a trillion buttons for the kids and the pile of floss with a very cool ‘Floss’Away’ bag system thing on the right of the photo for me thank you both so much! I feel like a kid in a candy store with floss to play with!

The fatty and the twig

Thank you all for your kind words about Poppy. I cannot wait until I have a shelf in our very own house where she can sit and wait for a baby to love her. My dietician appointment went well but really…if you want to be a dietician, if it’s your lifelong ambition then be a dietician but when you give me weight loss advice how am I supposed to take it seriously when you are a 12 year old twig?? She was a gangly twig of a girl which is NOT helpful. I don’t need to feel old as well as fat! And also not helpful? Her necklace. It looked like a string of Maltesers – for those who don’t know what they are Maltesers are yummy chocolate balls!! I didn’t have time for breakfast so I half wanted to eat her necklace and half wanted to sit on her and crush her into dust for being so naturally skinny and telling me how to be less fat. But she gave me some good advice which will give me a place to start as I change my eating habits and I resisted the temptation to buy a bag of Maltesers on the way home which is a very good sign!

1. 02-29-08-006, 2. Wool Roving from Solvang, Ca, 3. Fabric Crush, 4. 152/365 – Best Buddies, 5. spinning a rainbow, 6. hey psst!, 7. 085, 8. Yarn!, 9. Cookie Monster Cupcake 1, 10. hex-ufo4, 11. the love of flowers, 12. Travel Log : Day 2 – West Virginia, 13. Santa Lucia Dolls Under The Tree, 14. Enchantment of the Pixies patchwork Dress, 15. favorite colors…, 16. HASE

Poppy

Welcome to any new readers who found their way here from Attic24, I haven’t had so many views in a long time! I hope you’ll stay a while.

I had a pre-craft fair meltdown this weekend, the usual jitters where I convince myself that nobody will want to buy my stuff, I’m a talentless hack etc. Lots of listless lolling around and dramatic sighing. I had a total lack of ideas all of a sudden and eventually decided rather than lying there sighing and being generally a pain in the butt I would make something for myself. I picked something off my very long list of bookmarked tutorials and after a lot of swearing and some more dramatic sighing due to bad fabric choices (I had to make 7 appendages because they kept ripping) here she is:

Her name is Poppy and her legs are slightly different lengths, her arms are different heights and the closing seam on her head looks like a first year medical student had at her but she’s all mine and I love her. She really was a lot of fun to make  and when we buy a house she’ll go on my sewing room shelves and eventually the sewing room will become a nursery so really she’s for our future child. I have an appointment tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn with a dietician for fertility weight loss. Someone rang last night to remind me of the appointment which was nice considering I had never been told I had one! On Monday I rang a number to confirm I wanted an appointment and was told there was a waiting list and an appointment would be made for me. The man who rang to remind me of this appointment I didn’t know I had couldn’t tell me who it is with and wasn’t sure where in the hospital (one I have not been to since I was 9) it is so tomorrow morning sounds like it will be fun. Then I have to get a bus, train and another bus home. In the rain. I have a motto “It’s all for a baby” which gets me through things like this and makes it easier to forgo chocolate cake but sometimes it’s said through gritted teeth!

Neigh-bours

Officially the worst title ever. These are (I hope) not the worst hobby horses ever made though. I so want to see some little kids running around on them making horse sound effects. That would be a whole pile of cute. As usual I’m sitting here worrying that they aren’t cute enough or whatever but I think that once I am at the craft fair setting up my stall I’ll be jiggling up and down waiting for some little kids to walk past and go “Mummy, look! I want one!!”

Mo with the ‘fro

This is Mo. Short for Mohawk because when I was making his hair I thought it would trim down into a mohawk. Instead I am now considering changing his name to Afro…cos that’s the fluffiest mohawk I have ever seen.

I’ve just noticed a blurry streak in the top right of the photo. Cat whiskers:

Bunnyrama

Flaws just have this way of being magnified by 10x in a photo don’t they? The about-to-rain-yet-again light is bad, the backdrop needs an iron, the cream coloured tail looks terrible in the picture – I swear it looks way cuter in real life although I may have to find some white yarn to replace the tail. It’s a fiddly pattern and I was not sure if I could pull it off at first (and I hadn’t made a pompom in about 20 years) so I am extra happy that I managed it so well. The bunny pattern is from The Nature Corner by M. van Leeuwen and I was totally inspired by these cuties.

Better than Christmas

When we’re up to our eyeballs in stressful house things and this rental property is driving me loopy and it’s raining and etc etc etc it’s things like this that really help me get through.Yay for the little things!

I got the basket and the 8 bias tapes in it for $15- all I had on me. The basket was originally $20 but it had been there a while so they dropped the price to $12 as thats all I could spare. The floss in the basket? There was a street fair on and a lady was selling bundles of 20 DMC skeins for $3. I got 3 bundles for $8.50 – again all I had on me. A skein of DMC costs $1.60+ here so I got $96 of floss for $8.50! Does anyone know what happened to DMC 67, 91 and 93? They are all variegated blues and they aren’t on my checklist. Are they so old they got cancelled?

These crochet and embroidery cottons were from Dave’s mothers stuff that he bought home for me. They are beautiful but theres one problem. She was a very heavy smoker indoors so they stink. I have to put them in a bag of kitty litter to try draw out the smell. Hopefully the smell will fade because they are beautiful.

And this is my favourite. Dave’s childhood train set – or part of it. I wish he had found more, it’s adorable.

And still more: I received this from Lisa of Little Acorn today. I sent her a wool felt rattle ball for the little person she and her husband are adopting and she sent me the baby vest for our future baby. She also surprised me with the sweetest bib ever. Check out how perfectly straight that ric rac is! Thank you Lisa!

a rainbow of cute

Feeling a bit wordless today so I’ll keep it short. Are these cute or cute? They’re pretty fiddly to make but I think they are worth it. The colours are even more vibrant in real life too. I am a wool felt convert, I am never going back to acrylic. Ever. Wool mmmm.