What goals... where?

Ahhhh, to be a cat. Lounging in the sun would be my great accomplishment of the day. Perhaps my owner would share some of her lunch meat with me? Maybe she'll stop and give me some cuddles and pettings behind the ears. Yes, that wouldn't be a bad day.

My goal this year has been to work smarter, not harder, with my Etsy business so I'd have more time to lounge in the sun a bit, perhaps even have time to scratch the Schmoo (seen above) behind her ears. To do this, I started off the new year with some new pieces over at IdyllHands that were a bit nicer, and therefore, a bit higher in price than my other items. I've sold a bit, but not a ton. I blame it on the economy - it's foiled my plans. The addition of roving to WoolyHands has kind of taken away the working smarter part. Yes, I was smart in adding this in as I can dye wool for my own spinning pleasure AND the stuff sells a bit faster than yarn and jewelry, but dang, dyeing wool is hard work. Wait, scratch "hard", instead insert "involved". The interesting thing is, I'm happier being busy with this Etsy stuff than I was sitting around waiting for a $30 necklace to sell.

I'm a busy bee, what can I say?

Something else that I've already gone back on is my vow to myself to not do any spring shows. I was going to take spring off to rest, to gather supplies and make products for the fall shows. Weeeeelllll, I kind of enthusiastically said "yes" to doing a trunk show. I did one with this group of ladies last November and it was fabulous - I couldn't not say "yes". We're planning on May, sometime, and I need to get kicking on the jewelry production... really kicking.

And I do this to myself why? Is it even worth it to set goals? I never seem to keep them. Here I go, working harder.... not smarter.

I promise I'm keeping up with both shops!

I have not been ignoring Idyll Hands in the wake of the wave of wool that has taken up almost all of my free time!! You see, I've listed 2 new items in my jewelry shop tonight and have a few more to list this weekend... and who knows, since I'm out of wool tonight, I might just whip up all kinds of new jewelry this weekend.

So say what you will, I am completely dedicated to both shops - I've just had some trouble getting good photographs of these new necklaces.

A new spring dress

Well folks, I think you're going to start seeing a new look around these parts. I'm ready for something new when I go check out my blog, new colors, new layout, new banner, just new. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet, but I want to do something. It's mediocre, at best, right now, and I want it to be fabulous - so stay tuned...

Presenting...

I'm kind of... okay... very excited to announce that I am the featured artist of the week on the AREtsy Street Team (Arkansas Street Team) blog here. I was all giddy when it was posted this evening. You all should read it and stuff... because it's cool!

Today was day 7 in the Yarn Everyday in April challenge and yes, I spun yarn. I'm going to ply it up tomorrow with some thread and poofs of wool and hopefully have my first, true, art yarn. If it turns out in real life like I'm picturing it in my head, I'll be a very happy girly.

I'll leave you with my Etsy purchase of the evening -

It's from moonrover and I couldn't NOT have it. My heart melted when I saw her post it on Flickr. This is going to be knit into the most fabulous scarf to ever grace the streets of Fayetteville next year. See it here.

In hindsight

I should have known better. Somehow or another, the organizing/cleaning/redoing of the bedroom turned into spring cleaning the entire house. I'm not quite sure when it happened or why it happened, but I think it might have started when I found some expired salad dressing in the fridge while making out a small shopping list. That led to cleaning out the fridge which somehow led to deep cleaning the kitchen which led to moving the couch to sweep under it... yeah, I'm not sure what went wrong either.

I did get to my bedroom and I've got it organized like I want it. It's still ugly, I'm not going to sugar coat it, but now I know what to do next. PAINT! I've got a reddish dresser that needs to be brown and a weird corner table that came with the house that needs to be brown. The room also needs curtains and end tables and more rugs, but I'm on the way to liking it.

Somewhere during the spring cleaning activities I hurt myself, badly. My right arm has been screaming at me since around midnight when I rolled over on it and woke up going "ow ow ow ow". I've been very tender with it since, but still, it screams. This is going to be a damper on my spinning every day challenge, but I will not give up yet, no, I will not give up.

Onto crafting news (because I know you don't read this blog to see which part of my house I've decided to organize). Sometime last week I decided I needed to participate in a fiber festival OR a different type of craft show this year. The shows locally are fabulous craft shows - HUGE craft shows - busy craft shows - but they are very generic craft shows. My scarves sell well and my jewelry does okay but I'm not sure my yarn and roving will do well locally. I'll know more after October once they have come and gone, but in the mean time, I need to branch out. I'd love to head down to Austin for some shows down there, but they are on the weekend of a very profitable one I do up here, so those are out. There is the Urban Craft Uprising in Seattle which I am very interested in and a couple in Chicago. I need to get busy and start making a list of which ones I want to go to and see if any are even possible.

Any show/festival suggestions to send my way?

Oh - I dyed some more this weekend - you can see my favorite addition to last night's shop update above. I love this dyeing thing :)

Betcha didn't think I could do it...

But I'm still spinning. Day 4 of the Yarn Everyday in April challenge is almost over but I managed to get one done early today. This yarn was spun up from some lovely samples I've received in the Phat Fiber boxes. I killed two birds with one stone with this project, I managed to spin for the 4th day in a row AND I was able to post in the Phat Fiber forum over at Ravelry about the samples. Don't you love it when it works out like that?

I also spent the majority of my day dyeing what was left of my roving. I'll be posting that throughout the week.

Tomorrow is going to be dedicated to making my bedroom livable (have I said that in this blog yet - I feel like that is my project every other weekend). It's just UGLY and I'm not sure what to do about it. I'm going to start by cleaning it up and getting the clutter contained. I have an idea of what I want it to look like, but I'm not sure how to get to that point. There are currently 2 dressers in the space, a weird corner table (there when we moved in) a cute antique table perfect for a jewelry box, a hamper, cedar chest, bed, and TV trays being used for side tables. It's all just there - no rhyme or reason for where the stuff is. Since it's supposed to be frigid (mid 40s is the high - yeah, cold for April) tomorrow, I don't see myself workout outside at all, so indoor improvement will be a good project. If I'm successful, I'll post pictures.

Judging by my lack of anything interesting to say this evening, I think it's time to call it a night. Hopefully the interesting stuff will come to me soon. Goodnight.

A Challenge

I have enjoyed spinning since December of 2007 when my mom gave me a drop spindle for Christmas. If you have followed my blog, then you know I purchased my spinning wheel this past fall. I have spun, spun, and spun some more ever since. I've tried to fill my shop and my Holiday craft sale tables with my handspun lovelies and have succeeded in doing so.

Since getting some wool to dye a little over a month ago, my attention has been diverted over to the dye pots. Spinning was put on the back burner as I mixed dyes and steamed roving. A challenge set up by Tara of Blonde Chicken Boutique was JUST what I needed to get back to spinning. She set up a group in Ravelry to spin or dye everyday in April. My challenge to myself is to spin everyday.

I'm only 2 days into it but I discovered something while spinning tonight. I'm not choosing wool to spin in order to fill my shop back up with yarn, but instead, I've spin for the past two days just for myself. I picked roving that I purchased for "me" yarn and I took the time to try a realllllly thin single in order to ply it into something not so artsy and bulky. I wasn't spinning this to sell, I was spinning this just for the pure delight of spinning this lovely wool.

Huh. Who knew this challenge would lead to that so quickly.

The yarn I worked on last night and tonight is seen above. Spun from roving from kcknits.etsy.com on my Fidelis wheel. I cannot wait to knit something from it. I'm keeping this one for myself.