Abuela

My favorite orders are always the custom ones.  I love seeing what people come up with -- the thing they could never find, or a recreation of a long-lost toy.  Recently I was contacted on Etsy by someone who wanted a specific doll for her daughter.  A doll that isn't made.

Her daughter is in love with the grandmother character of a cartoon show that I've never even heard of.  There are dolls of the major characters, but Abuela didn't get a doll.  And that's who her five year old daughter wanted for Christmas.  When Christmas came, she was disappointed.  And then her mom thought to try Etsy, to see if anyone could make one.

The mom sent me a photo of the character -- which I'm not going to put up because it's licensed and I'm not and it's not an exact replica anyway, just an "inspired by," but still -- and I got to work.  The only fabric I didn't have on hand was light gray for the hair, but luckily the thrift store down the street had a pale gray men's shirt on the dollar rack.  I used the lower portion of the sleeve, so I still have a whole large shirt left for other projects.

I'm really loving my machine embroidered faces.  The hand embroidered ones had a different feel, but even when I was really moving, I couldn't do ten faces in a day -- and in busy season, that sometimes is what needs to be done.

All the other fabrics I had on hand -- the bright pink was the pocket from a skirt, the paisley was the back half of a vintage skirt that I'd cut up ages ago, the lace was two separate bundles of hem lace that probably arrived in a cookie tin from one or another elderly female relative.

She went to the post office on Tuesday, in time to arrive for a special birthday party this Saturday.

I've Still got Class

6 girls, 16 weeks, 18 pieces

At the mid-point of every semester, I decide I'm not going to teach the next time around.

Three times now I've made this decision, and three times now I've changed my mind.  They're little monsters, but they're starting to be my little monsters.

When the fall semester started, I panicked.  Sixteen weeks seemed like an eternity, and then I got an idea -- I would "suggest" to them that they do a service project, making stuffed toys to donate to our local Red Cross House.  I wasn't sure how the idea would fly, charity without a choice, but the other idea, a half dozen 10-12 year old girls all wanting to make different things, would drive me over the edge.  Not only that, it would make supply-gathering much more difficult.

Surprisingly, they were all for it.  Every so often there'd be grumbling about keeping a piece, but they were always shamed out of it by one of the other girls.  Eventually, with the holidays approaching, I instituted the "make three, keep one" rule.  Whenever a piece was finished, I bagged it and took it home so there would be no problems.

The Tuesday before Christmas was the final class, and, like the Grinch, I brought everything back.  We set it up in the main room for the parents to see when they came to pick the girls up, and at the end, only two pieces ended up going home, and those had been made deliberately as Christmas presents.

Class starts again on January 10th.  I know I've got at least 4 of the same girls again, and probably all 6.  I asked for suggestions as to what they would like to make this semester, and two of them asked if they could learn to quilt.  Part of me wilted at the suggestion, but then I thought of the 3 large bags of scraps in the class cupboard, and agreed.  My supply order this time was enough batting to make 8 crib-size quilts, a little more polyfill for a few remaining stuffed animals (I know they're not totally over that) and a few random supplies that were running low.

It's been lovely having a break, but I'm actually almost ready to go back and face my little monsters again.

Resolutions. Sort of. Maybe.

City Hall - 2 weeks before Christmas.
Philly rarely looks this good.

I'm not big on making resolutions, mostly because it seems that the biggest challenge is getting them to last until my birthday at the end of the month.  If there's something I want to change, I start in when it occurs to me.

But here are a few general directions I want to go this year.  They aren't resolutions as such.  As follows, and in no particular order:

Be kind, but take no shit.  My biggest flaw is impatience, so I'm going to try to cut the world (and therefore myself) a break and not expect them to do my bidding -- or read my mind -- straight off the bat.  On the other hand, I have never suffered fools gladly and I'm going to call people on their crap a lot sooner, for all our sakes.

Be more of a pain in the ass.  This follows close on Be kind, but take no shit.  Because of temping and being busy with my business for the holidays, I haven't been able to be as involved as I'd like.  As of this week, I'll be joining in "Tuesdays with Toomey", which is a group of community members who visits our senator's office each week, attempting (in vain, thus far) to actually get the senator to meet with us, or even listen.  This is a man who has asked that federal funds be withheld from Philadelphia -- from his own constituents! -- because he doesn't like our status as a sanctuary city.  I may not have voted for you, dude, but you're still my senator, and you have to at least listen to me.

Keep focused on my business.  Things went well this year.  I'm doing end of year numbers and while my income didn't really increase much from 2015, I feel like I've gotten things more streamlined and under control, and now that I have a better idea of what works and what doesn't, it will be easier for me in the future to improve that.  The blog coverage this year that got me a lot of custom sales was a fluke, a lucky one, but it's taught me that pushing custom items in the shop is really the way to go.  I'll need a lot of ready-made inventory for shows, but custom work is also something that gets a lot of discussion in person, so I need to be ready.

Tech less, smile more.  I never wanted a smartphone, but I had to get one for craft shows so I could take credit cards.  It's also useful for monitoring Etsy when I'm not near my computer, answering questions from potential customers, and posting to Facebook and Instagram.  But enough already.  I make fun of the zombie apocalypse type all the time, and I don't want to become one of them.  Phone time will be of necessity and not for recreation.  If I have people around me, I'll talk to them.  If I don't, I'll do what my mom used to tell me to do when I was bored, "Shut up and make something."  She wasn't always right, but that's always been good advice.

Move.  The exercise resolution.  It doesn't have to be any one thing, and it probably shouldn't be, because if I get bored, I won't do it.  I'm not looking to suddenly have the body I never had as a 20 year old, but sitting at either a desk or a sewing machine is wreaking havoc on my ass (and also my back).  Since I run to the post office 2-3 times per week, and my local post office is near the cemetery, every post office run will now include 2 circuits around the cemetery.  I live in a house with a lot of stairs, and even though I try to be efficient and do as few trips up and down as possible, I may just stop being so efficient if the tradeoff is being more active.

More quality time with Mario.  Certainly  not end of the list, but least well-defined.  We spend time together, but the quality varies.  Less TV, less technology, more outdoor time, more joint projects.  If we both decided at a relatively late age that we wanted to get married and be together, we should actually do more together things.  For anyone reading anything into this, don't.  Things are fine, we're happy, our anniversary is coming up mid-month, but marriage, or any relationship, is always a work in progress and we're always in the process of figuring out how to make good better.

Assembly Line

Some things I make one at a time, but most of the things I make these days, I try to organize myself so that I can do them assembly-line style, knocking out as many as I can at one shot.

My recycled sweater owls were a big seller last year, and every time I've used a sweater to make a larger project I've thrown the scraps into a bag.  Post-Christmas I finally dug into that full-sized trash bag and cut up all those scraps into various owl parts.  Well, not that many parts -- fronts and backs and two wings.  The eyes, beak and feet are all made from felt, because (a) my sanity and (b) I ran out of the one good yellow sweater that I ever found.

There are still more wings left in ziploc bags, but this mess here on my dining room table constitutes all the bodies I cut, with matching (or clashing) wings pinned on.  After this was taken, they were sorted into piles by what color thread I will use to attach the wings (there are now about 5 smaller piles) and today I'll start stitching.  Once the wings are on, I can do the detail work.  I can't sew backs to fronts until my new tags arrive, but that, and stuffing, are the least of the work here.

This is 60 owls.  Since I still need to make many more larger sweater animals, I'm hoping to get at least another 40 completed before craft show season starts again in the spring.

Merry Merry

I've shared it before.  I'll share it again.

Christmas, 1968.  This was the year that, while I was listing every Barbie in the Sears Wishbook that needed to come home with me, I also managed to twist my mitten in Santa's beard, so that when I got up, his beard came with me.

There is no photographic evidence of my crime against the holiday, because my mom fell down laughing and nearly wet her pants. (I nearly wet mine, too, but it was fear of getting in trouble -- should have known better with my mom).

And I knew it wasn't Santa.  Mom enlightened me early that the real Santa didn't leave the North Pole until Christmas Eve; all the Santas I saw on street corners and in stores were actually his helpers, who were hired because they looked like him and could talk to children and then report back.

Mom was good, I'll give her that. She even hung bells up outside the house one year and pulled a string through the window so that I would hear him fly over after I'd gone to bed.

Still Here

The roses weren't expecting winter

As of Sunday, craft show season has officially ended.

I'm finishing up a couple of custom orders -- from customers who thankfully understand that ordering on 12/19 does not guarantee delivery by Christmas -- and then I'm going to take a break.

Which, conversely, means I'll probably get back to blogging, because I realized today when I turned on the computer that I haven't actually sat at my desk in the living room for well over a week.  Any Facebook posts or Etsy updates have been done from my phone, or quickly from the desk at my temp job.  Neither of which is how I like to work.

I miss sitting at my desk.  I miss sitting on my couch, next to Mario, with a cat on my lap.  (Probably Annie, who is unexpectedly recovering from a repeat of last year's tumor removal surgery -- it went well, she's almost back to normal, but it was, as these things always are, unexpected).

Right now, all I want for Christmas -- or for any holiday, for that matter -- is the uninterrupted time to go in and reorganize my workroom, which looks like a hurricane, a tornado and a tsunami all hit it at once.  Busy is good; busy and throwing everything to one side to get to the next project, not so good.

Happy whatever-holiday-you-celebrate to you all, and I hope to be back here more regularly in the near future.

Kindness is Everything

Our new yard sign

This is a rough patch.  Still processing the aftermath of the election, including a few things that have happened to people I know.  Also heading full tilt into custom order / craft show / temping season, so if I have time to breathe, turn around and stumble toward the keyboard, I'll be back soon.