A few Cool Features!

I've had several great promotional opportunities come my way the past few weeks. I am this week's Featured Artist on the very cool handmade site St. Louis Handmade. I've always been impressed with the site and I'm very excited to now be a part of it. I love their tag line, "living the creative life under the Arch". I'm honored to be featured with so many other creative and artistic people.

I was also recently featured in a cool video presentation of fiber artists by Nana's Gift Nook. You can find the video here and a PDF file of it with links to all the featured artists here.

I'm off to a good start with my fall promotions without even spending a dime. I'll be looking for other opportunities to promote my knitting in the next month to spread the word as my favorite time of year approaches.

Happy Birthday Ham

Today is my brother Hamilton's birthday. It's a family name that goes back to Scotland I believe. Above is a picture from earlier in the year with me and Ham and my older sister Angie. Ham currently lives in Miami. I see him often enough, about 4 or 5 times a year.

Ham has a genius intellect combined with the worst common sense in the history of the universe. He's a a scientist and a born salesman. He now sells chemicals to pharmaceutical companies and has traveled around the world with his work. He spends more time in airports than I do at the grocery store.

Ham and I are probably more alike than either of us would ever care to admit. This is why we drive each other as crazy as we do.

I remember my younger sister Karrie telling a story years ago. She was at Blockbuster in our hometown when the guy behind the counter asked if she was related to Paige Lenox. She said "yes, she's my sister." He asked if she was related to Ham Lenox, and she said "yes, he's my brother." The guy looked her up and down and said, "well, how did you turn out so normal?" I think that about sums it up.

My Shoe Issues

I love buying shoes. There I said it. The problem is I don't really like wearing shoes . The first thing I do upon entering my house is to deposit my shoes by the door. I have 2 overflowing large baskets full of shoes when if I if I were to be perfectly honest I have only about 3 or4 pair in active rotation. I have my brown Birkenstock sandals, my black Birkis, and a new Betula silver sandal I got this year. The black pair of sandals I'm wearing I actually spotted in a picture from my wedding shower recently. They were brand new in the picture but that means I've been wearing them for 5 years. I bought a new pair of black sandals this year but after one day of painful walking and blisters they have remained in the basket ever since.

Just this weekend I bought 2 pair of new fall shoes at GoodWill. The black pair is used and obviously old but I love the leather detailing and the character in them. I just added to my shame by buying 2 pair of shoes on-line. The site called Simple Shoes sells only eco-friendly shoes made from all recycled materials. They are having an amazing sale on top of free shipping so it would have been a crime to pass it by. I got the pair at the top which I love but they are probably too young for me. But they were only $9.90 so if I wear them more than a few times I'm okay since that is the price of a nice lunch. I also got this cute Hemp shoe for the same price. They have sandals, a few pair of men's shoes, and some kids shoes also on sale.

I know my shoe buying compulsion is hereditary as my Mom and sisters all share my affliction. My mother told me she recently snuck two big bags of shoes out of the house to give to a charity when Dad was gone. She made me swear to secrecy how many of them she had never worn and forgotten buying.

Happy Blogaversary to Me!

One year ago today I became the blogging feign you see today! I recently discovered the amazing artist/blogger Igor + Andre who celebrated his blogavesary by consolidating his unique blogger portrait series into the above print listed here on Etsy. Danny does the most creative portraits of fellow bloggers that he admires which I totally wish I could do. You can check out all of the portraits here.

I started very tentatively and was obviously scared to commit. I think in the past 6 months I've started to hit my blogging stride. I love the sense of community it provides and I've made some good friends through the year. I have opened myself up emotionally at times and blatantly pimped my knitting at other times. So Happy Blogaversary to me and here's my first little post that I'm sure you all missed on the first go round:


So, I've been reading blogs and talking about blogs, and telling other people how they need to start their own blogs for years, but I've not gotten my butt in gear and started my own blog. Until now. So here it is my very own little blog. I will pet it and feed it and call it my own. Until I get bored and abandon it. I'll try not to but there are no promises. The only way I could get myself to do it was to set no rules for myself. The first step was simply to lay claim to the name and then we shall see if I can maintain any momentum.

I have a hard time committing to much of anything and the thought of having an agenda for this kind of thing scares me. I will talk about my Etsy shop, knitting, all the cool crap I buy on Etsy, and maybe a little about my wild and crazy life will slip in. Anyone who knows me will laugh because my life basically consists of my Etsy shop, knitting, and all the cool crap I buy on Etsy. So that will probably be about the extent of it, except for the occasional whine about work/husband or a gratuitous shot of a niece or nephew, probably modeling a scarf or other knitted item. A knitting tip or Etsy selling or buying experience will probably round out the blogging agenda around here.

I used to keep a journal back in my single days and have around 10 filled somewhere with pathetic attempts at poetry and deep thoughts. Now that I am sufficiently medicated and placated with my domestic life I have found little to say. But we shall give this a try and see how it goes....

Booth Display Rough Draft

This weekend I got serious about my Fall craft show display. I've been thinking about it A LOT the past month but it was time to put some verbs in my sentences as Dr. Phil would say. First thing I did was stain my new display shelves. After they dried I decoupaged the center panels on the front side with some earthy colored paper that I think goes really well with my banner and feel of my shop. I cut out pieces and used decoupage glue on both sides and made a sticky mess but it was actually lots of fun. I then painted the back sides of the panels beige. I'm really happy with how it came out. If I ever get sick of it I can scrap the paper off and repaint it.

I should be able to put 3 rows of scarflettes on each row which means I should be able to display around 40 scarflettes on it at a time. That will definitely be an advantage over last year where my little rack displayed less than 20 at a time.

After setting up the rough draft of my display above and studying the picture I found several things I didn't like. First I don't like the green tablecloth that I picked up at GoodWill. I think I will look for a brown sheet instead. I also thought the gray hands stood out like a sour thumb or 1 thumb and 4 fingers, pun intended. I decided to paint them and do a little of the decoupage on them as well. Don't look too closely at the picture. They look a little splotchy as I had just touched up the paint job.

I definitely wouldn't be able to use the other display shelf as it wouldn't fit on my table. The tables they provide at Strange Folk are bigger than mine so I might bring it just to see if I can use it there. I've been keeping my eyes open for a quilt rack that will match my fold up one so that I will have more matching displays for my scarves but if I don't find one I'm okay with using the ones I have this year. Overall I'm happy with my progress and I think I am going to have a much more professional and pulled together display this year which hopefully will mean an increase in sales.

Good Advice about Life.

The above image is my husband's new wallpaper on his desktop. I came to his computer the other day to use his printer and saw it for the first time. I told Mike that he really should follow the advice. Everyone should be more like Prince. Whatever he is doing he does it passionately and to the fullest. He wears purple when he wants to and doesn't care what anyone thinks. And he looks damn sexy doing it! I think Mike chose this ironically but I hope some of the message sinks in. Do you agree that we could all use a little more Prince in our lives?

Beginning to Feel A lot Like Fall!

It's 75 degrees today and isn't supposed to get above 80 all weekend long here in St. Louis. For the end of August that is unheard of so I'm going to try and take advantage. I'm going to photograph as much inventory as possible on Saturday and paint my shelves and I've got plans with a girlfriend to hit the big Wentzville Flea Market on Sunday.

I'm going to start relisting some of my expired inventory as we move into September and start listing some more fashion scarves like the one above in my Etsy shop here. I've been thinking a lot about my inventory for the Fall Craft Shows lately too. I'm thinking that I'm going to focus on what I know sells best. I've been knitting lower end scarves almost entirely for the past few months. I think that I have plenty of scarflettes and higher end scarves. Those are what I like doing most so I have to force myself to switch gears and build up the lower end inventory.

I'm going to continue to make and bring wristcuffs to the shows, like this cashmere one in my shop here. The cuffs sold more than any of my other non-scarf items last year. I am not going to use the cumbersome rack that I used last year but just hang as many as I can on the display hands I bought a few months ago that I talked about in this post. I'm not going to bother to bring anything else since they just take away from my scarf/scarflette display room. I sold a few necklaces and headbands last year but not enough to make it worth it.

I'm totally phasing out the barrettes. Next week I'm going to have a big sale on them and try to clear out what I can as they didn't sell as well as I hoped. Stay tuned if your interested in getting a great deal on hair accessories like this one.