In less than a week now we’ll (hopefully) be on a big giant boat off the coast of California. My biggest fear? Forgetting my underpants. We forgot a suitcase when we went on our honeymoon to New Orleans in 99 and of course fate being the big mean jealous auntie that she is I needed underpants while we were there. I’m packing some in all the bags and even carryon this time. Dammit.

We’re also bringing every medication (and female necessity doodad) we might possibly ever need because my other fear? Running out of money and having to spend thirty dollars on a bottle of Pepto Bismol because Cody decided to eat his weight in Crab legs and I won’t be able to buy all the goodies I want to get when we drag Jocelyn to ArtFibers in San Francisco.

The pets are all up to date on their shots and they have their pet hotel reservations. We have a person set up to check on the house. Everyone has been paid. I even went to the yarn store and purchased extra needles for the classes I’ll be taking on board. Now we just have to do laundry and figure out what all to take.

Cody is under some insane delusion to get the house clean before we leave. Stop laughing! Oh wait, that was me.

I’ve been dyeing yarn and roving like a madwoman the last few weeks and spent several hours taking about 300 photos of all the yarn and roving last night. I’ve been editing them today. Etsy hasn’t been working properly since late last night so I can’t list them. I have mixed feelings about Etsy and have for a long time. But for the most part I enjoy the built in audience and am damned glad I don’t have to manage the software so I’m going to keep rationalizing it for a while.

I uploaded photos to Flickr and made a mosaic of yarn to sell. Hopefully I can list them on Etsy soon or if you see one you like just contact me and I can send you a paypal bill.

Everything has a 2.00 shipping price for First Class Mail within the US and another 1.00 for each additional item. Let me know if you want Priority mail for 4.05 instead.

Running from top left to right.

1. Her Secret Garden $36 325 yds / 1/2 pound 55% Mohair / 45% Wool
2. Itsa Samba $28
3. Harvest Gold $22 223 yds light worsted / aran weight handdyed merino wool
4. Dark Forest $22 223 yds light worsted / aran weight handdyed merino wool
5. Sun Dappled Forest $22 223 yds light worsted / aran weight handdyed merino wool
6. Rusty Nail $22 223 yds light worsted / aran weight handdyed merino wool
7. Spring Bonnet $22 223 yds light worsted / aran weight handdyed merino wool
8. Five Kinds of Blues $22 223 yds light worsted / aran weight handdyed merino wool
9. Scanner Darkly $22 223 yds light worsted / aran weight handdyed merino wool
10. Mossy Terracotta $22 223 yds light worsted / aran weight handdyed merino wool
11. Turquoise and Carnelian $22 223 yds light worsted / aran weight handdyed merino wool
12. Lonesome Cactus $12 4 ounces unbelievably soft Australian Merino roving
13. Tea Roses $12 4 ounces unbelievably soft Australian Merino roving
14. Tiger Lilly $10 3.5 ounces unbelievably soft Australian Merino roving
15. Neon Bird of Paradise $26 4 oz thick and thin handdyed then handspun
16. Sedona $24 thick and thin handspun then handdyed
17. Bandelier $26 4 oz thick and thin handdyed then handspun
18. Tulpen $24 thick and thin handspun then handdyed
19. Sabado Gigante $24 thick and thin handspun then handdyed
20. Hazy Jane $24 4 oz thick and thin handdyed then handspun
21. Rio Grande $22 223 yds handdyed light worsted / aran weight merino wool
22. Jam on Toast $26 400 yds merino tencel fingering weight sock yarn
23. Seven Cities of Gold $26 400 yds merino tencel fingering weight sock yarn
24. Electric Blue $26 400 yds merino tencel fingering weight sock yarn

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

Sorry I’ve been so slack about blogging lately. A lot of good things have been going on in real life. Hopefully I can blog about them soon. And I’ll try logging in from the boat to update with photos and stuff too.

We paid the remaining balance for the cruise - which included extra excursions and train trips and stuff. It hurt a little financially. But I keep reminding myself how much fun we’re going to have.

And Cody’s passport is even in the mail. Now we just have to wait for mine, which might take a tad longer since I reported my old one lost (technically it is..somewhere in our house, it was expired anyway) and had a name change with the marriage stuff. It was more than a little unnerving sending original documents like our marriage license but I figure (in my naive way) that the guv’ment would pay for a replacement if they lose it. Haha right. But we paid a small freakin fortune to get these processed and mailed faster so I’m not worried about it.

So now all we have to worry about is getting the pets’ shots and into the fancy pet hotel, which is always shockingly expensive, but hey they take good care of the babies so it’s worth it.

Speaking of worrying about the babies, just in case you’re wondering: yes I have checked their food about the food recall. The kitties do eat Iams wet food so I checked the codes on the bottom of the can and while some cans did come from the same factory where there have been problems the dates were not in the bad range. My biggest concern is the 18 year old, Kurry, since her immune system would be the weakest but I’ve kept a close eye on her and she’s doing fine. In fact they’ve been a bit feistier than usual. Phunq was busy chasing his tail in the bathtub this morning and Kurry climbed up onto the windowsill in the office. Not bad for elderly kitties.

I put some stuff up in the etsy shop this weekend and had some good sales. It won’t sell unless you put it up there, I keep forgetting that part. haha no I just keep putting off taking photos. I love love that lightbox I can take photos any time day or night now.

Painted Desert
I had just finished navajo plying this one when I took some photos on Friday night and it’s already in the mail today. This is from spunky eclectic’s fiber of the month club. I can never remember what her colors are called so I just make my own names up.

Beachy Keen
This one’s already sold too. I dyed the roving a few months ago and spun it up a few weeks back. It has 400 plus yards.

Spring Rain
Another Spunky Eclectic club selection, this one hasn’t sold yet. It’s so soft. So so so soft.

I’ve been spinning such traditional stuff lately. I spun some thick and thin this morning with the latest Spunky roving. I think I’m going to ply it with some contrasting dark blue thread. Then I can be back in practice for the crazy spun stuff again - so I can make the milagro yarn I’ve been wanting to spin. Yes, Ramona, that milagro yarn!

Oh, and today is our 8th wedding anniversary but he has to work tonight so we won’t really celebrate it until the weekend. Really, we’re considering the cruise and the extra days in Vancouver and Seattle both of our anniversary and birthday presents this year. It’s the first (non-family oriented) vacation we’ve had together since our honeymoon in New Orleans so we’re really looking forward to it.

I bought Ashley’s lightbox Friday night. She didn’t want it anymore because it really didn’t give her any better photographic light than what she can get in her bedroom anyway. My house, on the other hand, tends to be dark and cavelike. Which is good for Mr. Daysleeper / Nightworker but a bitch for taking photos of pretty crafty things. Now that my usual photo spot on the back porch has been besmirched I decided the best course of action was to finally break down and make or buy a lightbox.

Quite handy Ms. Ashley’s didn’t work out for her, no? So I’ve been taking photos like a crazy woman all weekend and putting stuff up for sale in my etsy shop. Some of this stuff goes back to leftovers from the Zia show just to give you a good idea of how lazy with the photography I’ve really been. I’ve also got Cody working on a cool way to show the rss feed from my Etsy listings on my sidebar. He’s becoming an xml genius at work these days donchaknow.

I’m only going to post one photo of each thing but there are many many more on Flickr.

Yarn

Exploradora - 182 yds superbulky handpainted yarn

Franny - 182 yds superbulky handpainted yarn

Blue w/ Suede too Gypsy Scarf Kit

Babykins Gypsy Scarf Kit

I’ve been making spindles for spinning kits too

Handknits

Felted Sparkly Stripes Handbag

Purple Felted Handspun Bag

Red Pencil Roving Neckwarmer w/ Custom Pin

Jewelry Stuff

Glass beads w/ Silver Bracelet

Handpainted Ceramic Pendant on Silk Cord

Adjustable Vaguely Ethnic Necklace

Spiral Stitchmarkers - fit up to US 15 needles

Ceramics

I’ve been painting ceramic eggs with a sort of, um ‘fertile’ theme. Sort of a Georgia O’Keefe Ostara kind of thing.

I wanted a sort of Lady of Guadalupe feel to this one

These are more abstract ones my four year-old friend, Zoe, helped me paint.

Purple

Pink

I painted a few other eggs on Friday and I’ve been making some more jewelry and stitchmarkers over the weekend. I have several skeins of sock yarn from the last few months and I have some handspun too. Now just to go get photos of those.

Should I eat some of Amy’s Organic Frozen Samosas or some Hatch Canned Green Chile Stew? Hmmm. Despite their prepackagedness they’re both actually quite good. Really.

See, I don’t cook unless it’s a third full moon or something. I just reheat. Cody cooks sometimes. He enjoys it. I just want it over with so I can eat. My oven is for frozen pizzas and dyeing wool, I admit it.

Things are good. The Isleta show wasn’t as fiscally successful as the Zia show but it was much more fun to do. There was live music, free food, free drinks. And, oh yeah, NO BOMBS. There was also a loverly dress up party on Friday night and we actually had waitresses come to our booths and take drink orders. On Saturday we listened to a singer/musician who did great Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson songs. He did a decent Willie voice, which was unbelievable. Bob’s always pretty easy to do. So even though I didn’t sell a whole lot of stuff it was fun. And Beth sold a respectable amount of stuff. It was her turn, that’s all.

Here’s a photo of us from the fancy schmancy dress up party. I’m the one on the left. I felt a lot sassier than I looked that night. God I hate the way I look in photos. But I got to wear a really cute skirt I bought in a 50% off clearance sale at Torrid several months ago. I bought it online and was really surprised with how cute it was when it came in the mail. I thought it would be fun but it was so cute. It’s a very swishy twirly dancing skirt. Our nerdcore husbands were cleaned up and looking handsome as well.

While I’m stealing photos from other flickr accounts here’s a photo of Erin’s little Fuzzy Peach Bug baby girl on the pinwheel blanket I knit for her Isn’t she a cutie? She’s wearing the matching bolero and hat made by another knitter using the same yarn (Blue Sky Alpaca Organic Undyed Cotton). It was just by chance, I love that.

Some of my stuff will be for sale at the Craft Mafia table in the small craft show going on in the corridor between the downtown Hyatt Regency and the Bank of America building on Friday from 9 to 6.

I’m also in the process of putting the gypsy scarf kits that are left up for sale in the Etsy shop and I’ve put some of my Xmasy postcards up as well.

I can drag this joke out for weeks I’m sure.

GOOD NEWS!!! As my sister reported in her comment to the last post, a state policeman found my bag last night right after the evacuation and called this morning. I was at the show by 8:30 am so I didn’t have a chance to find out if Barry was still in it (Cody was to embarassed to ask LOL) but he had checked that there was still cash and id so I assumed Barry would be too.

I spoke with the officer tonight and yes Barry is in the bag! He even got a free ride to Soccorro and back with a policeman. What other stuffed animal can say that? (Remind me to tell you about Agnes Gooch the bear someday she’s been all over the place.) Anyway, I just wish we’d gotten pictures.

Today went much better all around actually. When I got the the show early this morning one of the vendors in a booth next to us was packing to leave. They weren’t pleased with the sales, the lack of advertising, and especially not pleased with the bomb experience. They had shows coming up in Las Vegas so they were packing to go. One of them suggested that we use his space and combine it with ours! Ours was pretty cramped and was like a little cave inside between two corner booths. He even helped me move the tables and suggested how I arrange them. They were so nice. In fact, I met a lot of great vendors this weekend.

The customers? Well, some of them were nice anyway. Some were just rude and cheap. But that’s direct sales for ya. Seeing the scrunched noses when they saw something too funky or the rolled eyes when they saw our pricetags made me really appreciate the impersonality of online sales. But there were a lot more today. I think all the publicity about the bomb scare actually made more people come to the show. Weird.

So this morning our booth changed from this:

To this:

It’s what you saw right behind the information booth at the entrance

The cameraphone doesn’t take great photos but you get the idea.

So calloo callay Barry is spending another night with the cops then he’ll be back home to mama. And this show is over. And I made some decent money. Got some good responses despite clearly being in a show targeted towards a, well let’s just say thriftier customer.

Now I’m going to sleep for a week.

Ok! After a lot of drama (to which I reacted by going and hiding in the corner to knit for a while - hey, I’m a Cancer! It’s what we do!) and more trips to Party City store than I’m willing to admit we seem to have gotten a booth nicely set up and the Zia Arts and Crafts show starts tomorrow at 10 am. I meant to take a photo this afternoon after we’d finished putting up the displays but I forgot until we were just putting the last dustcover over the racks.

So I’ll take photos with my cameraphone and flickrmail them to the blog in the morning. I’m completely shocked the three of us (there were supposed to be seven but…seriously, don’t ask) managed to pull it together on a week’s notice. I’ve learned a lot of new things from this process.

Among them the importance of working as a team and sharing the responsibilities. That way no one person gets too stressed and we all feel involved in the process. But it’s also really important to have the other people on the team be people you trust to get their tasks done too. Which can be hard for some folks. But it’s kind of part of the deal when you’re in a show with a group. On the one hand you save money on the booth fees but on the other you have to trust the people you’re sharing the booth with. I got pretty lucky in that I trust the people I’m working with this weekend. With the extra stresses we had this week we split the tasks up and pulled it off. I’m so incredibly proud. And the trust got stronger. Which is cool. I’m hoping to learn more in the next three days. We’re also planning on applying the things we’ve learned this week to some exciting projects in the future but not before the holidays. God no, not before the holidays.

I have a bunch of felted bags, some roving, I made a few drop spindles, handspun, dyed sock yarn, scarves, some totally KICK ASS gypsy scarf kits in little translucent chinese food takeout boxes with their own little chopsticks I whittled into knitting needles, a few other scarf and shawl kits, some really cute hats, two neckwarmers with pin closures that Ashley made especially for them, and some fun holiday postcards! Have you ever seen holiday postcards? I haven’t so I had some printed using two of my favorite photos from last year.

Ashley has so much stuff! Tons of scarves, hats, wristwarmers, gloves, earrings, bracelets, and the coolest crocheted beads! Lots of beading and crochet! And it’s all so colorful and soft! That girl is creative!

Beth has lots of socks! Some using handpainted sock yarn (which she also has for sale) and several different sizes in a natural color. She also has some scarves and a hat or two. And wristwarmers. She’s taking orders for socks made on her sock knitting machine! These suckers do ribbing and short row heels. Her bring your own yarn deal is my backup Christmas plan since she can literally crank out socks in whatever yarn I bring her!

Mara has great shirts, adorable hats, and cute armwarmers. I don’t even know how to describe her work. It’s like postmodern punk, harajuku, cyberpunk, ethnic, scrappy, antifashion? She would totally kick Project Runway’s ass. Yes, that’s right I said it: she’d kick the entire show’s ass.

Mara has to be out of town for family stuff so the rest of us will be manning the booth this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday until closing time.

Friday’s hours are 10 am to 5 pm
Saturday’s are 10 am to 6 pm
Sunday’s are 10 am to 5 pm

We’ll probably all three be there most of the time. I know I’ll be there all day tomorrow and most of the day Saturday. I’m hoping to be there Sunday afternoon until closing. Come by! We’re all so nervous you’d laugh at us. But we’re excited too.

We got a really good spot for our booth. It’s about twenty steps from the main entrance of the Manuel Lujan Building at the Expo New Mexico grounds. We’re in Booth 206. And I have a handy little map! Click on the photo for a hugely huge map of the building.

Enter the Expo/Fairgrounds from the West/San Pedro side using Gate 3 or 4 then head to the Manuel Lujan building on Main Street. If you need more info about the layout you can download a map from the Expo website.

Ok last minute stuff to do around here. I forgot to bring a few things today and I might have to dye more roving. We have more spindles than roving right now! Oops!

Wish us luck!

Oh! And Erin and Tomas had a beautiful little girl the other day! Go wish them well too!

by reading my blog you’d think I was hibernating or something. I’m totally not. In fact I don’t really have a lot of computer time at all right now. I’m too busy making stuff!

Like seven new gypsy skeins

from left to right they are

Rusty Trawler

Blue Bird’s Nest

Craaaaaazy Quilt

Gypsy Cowgirl

Babykins

Pank

And Sleepy

No, not really. This one is Gypsy Macrame

All for the Craft Show. More photos later. I really need a nap.

Lay that yarn skein down, ma, lay that yarn skein down.
Yarn stash bustin’ mama
Lay that yarn skein down.

Noro Transitions # 19
Textiles a Mano La Perfecta Superwash in Purple
Textiles a Mano La Perfecta Superwash in Blue/Green
Vesper Sock Yarn in Midnight Knitter
Fiesta Watermark in Taos and Kokopelli in Turquoise Trail
Sandstone Ranch Santa Fe Rainbow thick n thin handspun

I have some handknit items to put up in the shop later as well as some of my handspun and some more scarf kits.

And check out my mom when she met Alexander McCall Smith today. How cute are they? We’re both big fans of his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books. I just finished Espresso Tales the other day too. I’m so excited she got to meet him I wish I could’ve been there!