Climbs Back On the Horse

Good news. A new camera is headed my way in the mail from NY. So I'm going to focus on the future and getting my life back on track. I cannot live my present lifestyle without a camera it seems. About every ten minutes I think 'oooh I need a photo of that.' Here are some of the last photos I took with my old camera before it was stolen.

Hopefully I'll also be able to get back to my embroidery. Since my camera was sitting on my embroidery when it was stolen, even looking at it was creeping me out. Come to think of it even going in and out of my front door was spooky and that's a bad place to be.

Anyway, here are some horse photos I took on my visit to Silverado. And today I'm definitely going to be working on my crafts. The dark horse is named Monte and the spotted one is named Tink.

Jamaica

My daughter's plane just landed in Miami. She's on the way to Jamaica. I'm still recovering from taking her to LAX at 4 AM. I've caught a few catnaps but still feel pretty woozy. Oh, she took hubby too. Forgot to mention that part. American Airlines has a self-check service. Quite confusing. Scan passport, enter luggage amounts, enter emergency info, x-ray luggage...and on and on. I didn't even get to see them get on the plane. Ah well. Happy travels.

Not Getting A Thing Done

Usually doing crafts helps me to overcome depression. But since my camera was stolen right in the middle of a craft project (literally, it was sitting next to my embroidery) I feel sad whenever I even think about picking up a project. Because then I remember I can't take a photo of it when I'm done to show you guys. So, in my case it is fair to say that a camera is key to my creativity and my business. I just don't have the $200 to buy one. My bf will let me use his but he said he'd skin me alive if I dropped it or managed to get it stolen, so it's not like I'm going to feel comfortable using it. I'll probably use it for Etsy listings only as I don't want to risk taking it traveling or anywhere it might get lost of stolen. Which pretty much means using it in the house or backyard. This sucks. I've been using my webcam but I'll show you how poor the quality is. Here's a shot I took with it.

If you want to chip in so I can get a new camera, I put a PayPal donate button in the right sidebar. Hugs.

The Day That Killed Creativity

My day started out with not only feeling bad about my stolen camera, but also finally admitting to myself that I needed to see a doctor about several issues.
So after getting the run around from the doctor's office I used to go to I had to find a new doctor and deal with my coverage being about to expire in a month and so on. You've all been there...miles of red tape and you can't get from A to B. So the way it's looking now I have a doctor's appointment on June 11 looming over me and I still haven't heard back on how to reapply for my medical coverage. And oh joy, since I've 51 now I'm pretty darn sure they'll want to do a mammogram and a colonoscopy.

So I haven't exactly been in a creative mood. Frozen and staring into space is more accurate. I spent time in the Etsy chatroom to take my mind off of things. You hear the darndest things in there. One mother of six said the delivery of child number six not only left her with a broken tail bone, but a hernia as well. So much for the romance of motherhood.

Today is one of those days I could have used a damn-it doll...damn-it, damn-it, damn-it.

Not My Best Night

Like many artists, I sometimes find myself trying to do everything at once. So today I was out on the front porch shooting photos for a beading tutorial and a primitive embroidery tutorial. I had to run back in to get more thread. And then I saw my boyfriend's computer so I thought I better sit down a moment and answer emails. So I set the thread down and started typing away in the Etsy chatroom. Then I realized it was getting dark out so I took a quick shower. Then my boyfriend came home while I was in the shower and wondered why my stuff was on the porch in the dark because I hadn't turned the porch light on and also why was the door unlocked.

Well, doh, when I get distracted I get really distracted. Then he asked me if I was giving him embroidery thread for his birthday. So I said, "Why on earth would you say that? Your birthday is not even until January." Then I remembered I'd left the thread by his computer and everything else out on the porch. So I threw some clothes on and ran outside. There was my stuff, but no camera. I thought how odd and then I thought he was playing a joke on me. So I came back in and said, "Where's my camera." And he looked at me blankly. Then I realized either it was stolen, or I left it somewhere but I looked for an hour.

Small Loom Freeform Weaving

Today I went back to Joann's to get the weaving book I had spotted a few days ago. With coupon in hand I was on a mission. After more than 2 hours of looking through all their book racks I gave up. Evidently they have no way to tell if they've sold the book or which shelf it got reshelved on. I found the book on Amazon here: Small Loom Freeform Weaving so now that I know the actual title I can probably find it somewhere else, but it won't be 40% off. Or maybe I can look for it at another Joann's but I'm all shopped out for today.

Salt Cellar

My boyfriend just finished a very cool salt cellar made out of a gourd to give as a housewarming gift. He's explained the salt and bread tradition to me before but I've forgotten the details. So we are going to give them a loaf of bread and the salt. But I am short on time this morning so I need to go take a photo of it before he gives it away.

Making a Rug From Old Clothes

I got the two sports coats washed in cold water and now they are hanging to dry. One is a dusty blue and the other a reddish brown. After hearing yesterday on the news that 85% of used clothes go to the landfill, I was happy to think at least the clothes I cut up for rugs won't go to a landfill. I can also reuse the buttons and maybe the lining.
Living in S. California I don't exactly come across a lot of 100% wool clothes. This would be much easier if I lived where it snowed. I may have to buy some of the colors I need. We'll see.

Rughooking: Ready, Set...no wait...

I've gathered most of the supplies to at least get a start on teaching myself rughooking. I have Monk's cloth, a hook I got on Etsy, some wool suit jackets from a thrift store to cut up, a rotary cutter, a cutting board and 2 books of instructions.

Now if I could only decide what I want to put on the rug. This is worse than blank canvas syndrome, because with paint, I can easily paint over it. I have about 100 ways I could go with this: Pets, archery, nature, flowers, birds, landscapes, seascapes? What design is worthy of hours and hours of my time?

Have you ever made a rug? What did you put on it?

A Separate Piece Art: Article: Zorn Palette

A Separate Piece Art: Article: Zorn Palette

I came across this and I think it is well worth further study for painters. Working with a limited palette is fascinating because you have to become adept at mixing all the other colors. I'm going to have to try this because it seems like it would be hard to get fleshtones. I'm tempted to get back into portraiture with oil paints. I gave it up when my children were little and couldn't keep their hands off of my drying paintings.

Dave

Watching Dave the Painting Guy right now. Because you can always learn how to paint better. And his humor amuses me. I tried to embed it for you but having no luck there so here is the link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/dave-the-painting-guy

Another Quake and Heatwave

Felt another earthquake today. It was a 4.1 this time. If felt like my couch was on a conveyor belt.

I've been sitting in a chatroom absorbing good ideas. Someone recommended a site called Fotolia if you want to sell illustrations and stock photos. Looks interesting. And I was talking about Illustration Friday, though I've never had time to actually do any illustrations for it. I don't feel like working on anything lately. This heat is just miserable. Even taking the trash out is laborious. It's a good thing I'm not a blacksmith. I don't handle the heat well at all.

Free Felt Star Ornament Directions

I was writing an article for Hubchallenge on making ornaments and thought I'd put some instructions on making a felt star ornament so I put it here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Making-Ornaments-for-Special-Occasions If you make one send me a photo and I'll put it in this thread. It's designed for someone that has beginner skills in embroidery or sewing. Or read it just to see other ornaments I have made.

Earthquake

After tonight's 5.0 earthquake I wonder if I should make pillows that say, "In case of earthquake hug me." Or better yet, T-shirts. And no fair stealing my idea.

I haven't heard of any damage yet, but it's still early. If a wall had fallen on me, it's not like I would be on Twitter.com asking someone to send an ambulance, right? By the way if you want to read the funny and not so funny tweets about the quake on twitter search for #earthquake while on twitter. There were 100's of replies.

Goldenwest Swap Meet

I got some cool stuff at the Goldenwest Swap Meet this morning including these two great heads. And some amazing new cacti and succulents for my collection. Socks, jeweler's pliers, and some olive green shirts to print on for Etsy kept me busy today. Then when I got home I was pretty tired but suddenly remembered I had to go to the library to pick up Breaking Dawn again before the hold expired. The library isn't open on Sunday so I had to shake my tail feathers to get over there. Then I wrote one article for Hubpages on roses, and typed this blog post.
And then I'm going to take a nap because I'm getting so tired.

Hubpage Challenge

I just made my first International Etsy sale to Canada. I'm pretty nervous about the customs thing. But yay me.

I also got the rug hook in the mail that I ordered off of Etsy. I wish I had a real life teacher for this rug hooking stuff. It's going to be a challenge.

I'm writing 100 articles in 30 days for the Hubpages challenge. I want at least 20 of those articles to be on arts and crafts. So if you have any ideas in that area I'm all ears. I already have a lot of craft articles on there. If you go to the link you can read some of them. I think my first one will be on garden crafts; things you can make to add whimsy to your garden.

Keeping a Daily Blog and Owls

I wrote an article on blogging here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Keeping-a-Daily-Blog I'm also doing a writing challenge where I'll be attempting to write 100 articles in 30 days. Since I'm also attempting to make 100 items for my new Etsy store, some of those articles will be how-to make crafts stuff. I sure wish I had a working video camera for that but I'll do the best I can with my digital cam and be thankful I have one. Since my new shop will be owls, chickens, penguins and other birds, that's what the how-to's will be about. Hope you are down for that.

My Computer is Sick

My Computer is Sick
One of my Etsy chatroom acquaintances introduced me to blogtv.com. So I made my own broadcast that worked great the first night. The next night I was tweaking my profile and clicked on a button to put my broadcast in the proper category.

At that moment, my firewall exploded. I've got a doozy of a computer virus. Can't surf the Internet at all. If I open a page, the virus immediately hijacks it and tries to get me to buy some superpro antivirus program. Is that like a tire store slashing your tires to get you to buy new ones from them? I've run over 6 hours of virus scanners, which do find the threats and works to remove them, yet still when I reboot my computer the pop-ups come back insisting my computer's been infected and I must try their program.

Now tons of people on are blogtv.com, so I have to think and hope mine is an isolated incident. I'm on a borrowed computer at the moment and he's forbidden me to go on that blogtv.com site because the last thing we need is another computer with a virus.

So if any of you know a fix, or have that issue, or know how to reach tech support for that company, please share the info in the comment. Thanks.

Goodbye Project Wonderful

I am going to miss the Project Wonderful program on my blogs. I am thinking of making a new blog just for their ads, but that would mean more work for me. It seems they had issues with me also having Kontera on my blog. So it was their decision to delete my ads. Thanks to all my advertisers who posted on my blog. I think it's such a helpful and fun program for small businesses to get the word out about their shops and blogs. And it's fun designing the little ad squares as well. So if you've wondered where all my ad boxes went to, I hope this answers your question.

Now I've Gone and Done It

I've gone and opened a new Etsy shop. There is nothing in it as of yet, but I'll let you know as soon as I have some items for sale. My friend egged me on, so I'm gonna blame her. :P See how chatrooms get me in trouble. One minute I'm minding my own business and the next minute I'm opening a new shop.
Shout outs to my friends that I saw today: Siarh, BlaylockArt, Baconsquarefarm, RiverOtterWidgets and Choochcat.
Hope you guys are hanging on in this tight economy. I had my fingers full trying to type to so many people in the chatroom at once. Maybe mentioning you in my blog will make up for the lack of quality time I could spend with you all today. Take care and happy sales.
Right now though I'm getting pretty hungry so I'm going to go get dinner started.

Making Rugs

Today I am researching two types of rugmaking. Woven Navajo rugs made with the wool from Churro Sheep and Primitive Hooked Rugs. I want to get into one or the other and maybe both.

This morning at Salvation Army I bought 2 men's sports jackets in 100% Virgin Wool at 40% off hoping to cut them into wool strips for rug hooking. I was a bit discouraged to see that the cutters run about $600 to $800. But I will be cutting things by hand or maybe with a rotary cutter I guess.

I was happy to find some listings on Etsy for Churro Sheep wool. Alas, this venture is going to cost me some money. Whenever you get into anything involving wool the prices go up. Even so I'm itching to try it.

Crocheted Scarflette

While I was sitting at my craft booth Sunday I made this scarflette. I rather like the way it turned out and will get it listed in my Etsy shop soon. It has 3 buttons to hold it on, and it has a rippled edge. Perfect for foggy mornings and concerts in the park at twilight. The yarn is Woolease. I love that yarn.

The Watchman

A special shout-out to http://crazyaboutcrafting.wordpress.com/ who helped me to get more followers on Twitter. He has an etsy shop called Thewatchman and has some new ways to combine Steampunk with Dichroic glass. Take a looksie. His creations are fascinating.

Conejo Archers Traditional Shoot

We just got back from the traditional archery shoot in Simi Valley. My little craft booth did fine. I don't know what I was so worried about. I took lots of photos that I'll be posting soon. Archery is truly a sport for both genders and all ages. The Conejo Archers put on a great event.

The face painting was a big hit too. A lot of the younger kids were volunteers and enjoyed some face painting fun to go with their jobs in the snack bar and on the archery range. We shoot at big foam animals and someone has to haul them all out there over many acres, set them all, up, and bring them back in later. So the younger volunteers helped with that too.

They had prizes for the best archers and a big raffle. They gave away a lot of smaller items and also 2 bows.

Our campsite was busy making bows, mending arrows, grilling sausages, consuming carnitas tacos, and having fun. We had a jam session Sat. night with a guitar, drums, a ukulele, and flutes.

Then we went to sleep in our tent with the buzzing snores of our fellow archers. Then everyone was up early to do the 2nd day of the shoot. Except for me and the other vendors. We went to set up our booths for the day.

This post is getting long enough so more later.

My Stuff is Better Than Your Stuff

Even though this conversation is about crochet, just plug in your favorite craft and I bet you have had similar experiences.

Last night I was in the Etsy chatroom, and since a few of them do crochet I started talking about crochet. I was talking about how much I love it, and that there are four generations of crochet artists in my family.

This one woman who crochets says to me, "Well, what do you have to show for it." That seemed a bit hostile, but things can easily be taken out of context in a chatroom. I thought she wanted an esoteric answer so I said, "Do you mean like the satisfaction of working with your hands, or sharing a legacy with your ancestors."

Then I realized what she meant was if I was so great at it, why wasn't my shop filled with crocheted and knitted items. So I said, "Right now I just have the crocheted octopus finger puppets. I just finished a bunny but I already gave it to my grandson. Now I'm working on a giant squid."

So she says, "Oh, so you just give your stuff away, I see." Well, that sounded even more hostile. Like hers is good enough to sell but I just give mine away.

So more than a little miffed, I say "If you want to see my crochet, here is my flickr link." On Flickr I have about 500 crochet photos. So she goes off, presumably to look at my crochet, comes back about 30 seconds later and says, "Well, it looks like you are having fun." Now if anyone else said that I'd think they meant that in a good way, but when she said it, what I heard once again is when I crochet it's 'just for fun' and when she does it, it's a business.

At that point I gave up and left the chatroom. It was after midnight anyway.
Yes, I have had a lot of crochet items in my Etsy shop. But like many things on Etsy, most items never sell, and then I have to do something with them right? I'm drowning in things as it is. So if I choose to gift them to family members or donate them to a raffle to raise money, what's wrong with that?

I do about 20 kinds of crafts. At any given time, I may not have any of one particular item in my shop. Chances are I do have it in a box here somewhere. Some of the stuff is never listed on Etsy but goes straight into the inventory for my craft fairs.

I thought I'd be over this conversation when I woke up this morning, but obviously I'm not.

Even though this conversation is about crochet, just plug in your favorite craft and I bet you have had similar experiences.

Last night I was in the Etsy chatroom, and since a few of them do crochet I started talking about crochet. I was talking about how much I love it, and that there are four generations of crochet artists in my family.

This one woman who crochets says to me, "Well, what do you have to show for it." That seemed a bit hostile, but things can easily be taken out of context in a chatroom. I thought she wanted an esoteric answer so I said, "Do you mean like the satisfaction of working with your hands, or sharing a legacy with your ancestors."

Then I realized what she meant was if I was so great at it, why wasn't my shop filled with crocheted and knitted items. So I said, "Right now I just have the crocheted octopus finger puppets. I just finished a bunny but I already gave it to my grandson. Now I'm working on a giant squid."

So she says, "Oh, so you just give your stuff away, I see." Well, that sounded even more hostile. Like hers is good enough to sell but I just give mine away.

So more than a little miffed, I say "If you want to see my crochet, here is my flickr link." On Flickr I have about 500 crochet photos. So she goes off, presumably to look at my crochet, comes back about 30 seconds later and says, "Well, it looks like you are having fun." Now if anyone else said that I'd think they meant that in a good way, but when she said it, what I heard once again is when I crochet it's 'just for fun' and when she does it, it's a business.

At that point I gave up and left the chatroom. It was after midnight anyway.
Yes, I have had a lot of crochet items in my Etsy shop. But like many things on Etsy, most items never sell, and then I have to do something with them right? I'm drowning in things as it is. So if I choose to gift them to family members or donate them to a raffle to raise money, what's wrong with that?

I do about 20 kinds of crafts. At any given time, I may not have any of one particular item in my shop. Chances are I do have it in a box here somewhere. Some of the stuff is never listed on Etsy but goes start into the inventory for my craft fairs.

I thought I'd be over this conversation when I woke up this morning,