Peace

On the first day of the new year I traveled north to visit my momma. We were going to go have some girl time, talk and eat delicious food. Although the trip was....a trip, if you catch my meaning, the time we spent together was amazing, as always :)

We were just beginning our mother-daughter time and caught site of this fellow:

He was standing at a busy intersection waving his flag calmly and with purpose. This particular intersection is a favorite for protest or awareness groups and his absence of protest, his lack of aggression, was very refreshing.

I suggest we all just some time to ourselves occasionally to practice peace. Don't get mad at the car who just cut you off. Don't fume over your neighbor's loud music or guests. Take a breather before snapping at your SO. And don't get mad at the weather when it doesn't warm the house, but instead turns it into a giant ice box...ok, that last one was a personal reminder more than anything...

The New Year!

Hello all and welcome to the 4th day of the year 2010 (twenty-ten, two-thousand and ten, just ... ten?) and I have some new things that I am very excited about telling you all about :)

Vintage Plastic Signage Letters from Retro2GoGo

First of all, there will be some new weekly features:

Tuesdays will be Learn to Knit Day! No alliteration and no rhyming, but a number of comments in a thread stated that they wanted to learn how to knit, so I'm going to teach you! Tomorrow will be the initial post telling you all what materials to buy then next week we will begin with the knitting lessons. I was thinking about ways for everyone who is learning to stay connected and so I am wondering if perhaps a link exchange sort of thing would work? I teach you a technique one week then the following week you can all link to a blog post or flickr stream or what-have-you showing off what you accomplished. What do you think? Yes? No? Too confusing?

Wednesdays will be Wise Wednesdays (yay for the alliteration!) where I will feature some guest posts written by others or some that I write that will teach you all something new. I have some posts lined up to teach about something business-y related (this week we will all learn how to write a good profile or bio for Etsy or a website, etc) or a new craft technique (I have some jewelry-related tutorials and other fun craftsy things).

I also have made some small changes to the layout of this blog. When I say small, I mean small. Specifically, I added Ravelry links to my available patterns over on the left sidebar. What do you think? All feedback is appreciated!

So I want to end this post by saying that if you have anything you'd like to learn this year on Wise Wednesday or if you'd like to write an article for this series, please let me know! And if you'd like to be featured on my blog or know a shop you think I would enjoy, again, bring it to my attention :D

Happy New Year Everyone!

Goals, Ideas and Hopes for 2010

Merry Eve of Christmas Eve to you all! This could potentially be my last post for the year (but who knows, I make no promises) and I wanted to let you know some of my goals, ideas and hopes for the next year concerning this blog and my shop.

In the shop:

• I want to bring more luxury knits, cashmere, silk, angora, etc
• I want to bring more patterns - since the patterns I have in there are doing so well I really want to bring more to the table.
• I want to bring better photos and descriptions

*Your turn: What do you suggest for my shop? Any items or materials in particular? A certain type of pattern you'd like to see? Anything you'd like NOT to change? Please help me out with this :)

For the blog:

• I want to engage my readers a bit more - I know you're out there, my analytics tell me that you read, but you don't comment so I need to figure out a better way to entice comments :)
• I want to interview some other bloggers or shop owners and perhaps do more giveaways (if you're interested, please let me know!)
• I want to know what you want to read - which features did you like that I tested out this year? The Monday Color? Tuesday Learn Something New Day? Friday Feature? Again, please let me know so I can bring you what you want to read :)

I hope you all have a wonderful Holiday Season and that its filled with rest, relaxation, food, family and laughter :)

*and, as always, if you click on the pictures, it will take you to the item listing in the Etsy shop ;)