Denver!

So I am on my vacation of the summer, two weeks out of Socorro! First we (Matt and I) went to Los Alamos to watch my little brother graduate from High School, then we came up to Denver to spend the next week and a half with his friends and family.

So far it has been so awesome! We went up to Boulder yesterday and piddled about the town, it was their annual Bolder Boulder run and some of his friends had been in it so we hung out with them, dodged (although not always successfully) the rain that has followed us for the past 6 days and ate some delicious foods.

Pouch Review

Remember that giveaway I did? Yea, the one that sort of...well...failed? Only two responses. As there were only two responses, I decided that instead of picking a winner, that both advice givers could choose their perfect pouch.

One of the winners, Carapace, received her pouch just the other day and wrote me to give me her review of it, here is what she had to say:

"It's so pretty and cozy,and I blew like
five minutes putting things in and taking them out and giggling. I
still haven't quite decided on its final destination; I'm too tickled
yet! Thank you!"

So I think thats a pretty good review don't you? :)

Mitts and yarns

Recently another Etsian, nigatsubebe, and I decided to swap some of her yarn for some elbow length fingerless mitts. I found some awesome recycled, eco friendly yarn which was also soft and in some gorgeous colors (I picked black and turquoise for the mitts since she said she liked those colors together).Since I get the Knit.1 magazine every couple of months in my mailbox, I decided to finally make a pattern from it. I generally look through it, love the designs and then get busy with something else and don't really ever get a chance to make any of their patterns. For these mitts, I chose the "Wristers" from their most recent issue.

Here are the skeins I received yesterday:They are gorgeous and I already know what I want to use parts of them for :)

In other knitting news, a fellow student recently requested a Dr. Who scarf. You know, the long, wide, colorful garter stitch ones? So I took the excuse to go yarn shopping and started on the scarf this morning, its going to be a slow project, but he gave me till the fall to complete it since it isn't going to be cold for a while, so that will work out nicely.

Kitty Sitting!

I got to babysit a super cute 7 week old kitten last night :)

She's the runt of a litter of 4 a friend's cat had and I've had my eye on her since I first saw her when she was under a week old. Sadly, I cannot afford to jeopardize my living situation as I am not allowed to have pets (Delilah does NOT count, I am convinced!) so I cannot keep her for ever and ever, but she sure was fun to watch for the night.

Camping

Matt and I decided to go camping Friday night. We drove out to Water Canyon, half way between here and Magdalena, drove past all the park-and-camp sites, parked his truck and took our backpacks in maybe half an hour, not too far since we got kind of a late start in leaving.

We saw a really cool old house from the late 1800s or early 1900s and of course had to go explore. I did not have a camera with me when we went to explore, but I got pictures of it on the way out on Saturday.

We found a nice little clearing, set up the tent under an overhanging tree and got to work on the fire so that we could cook some tofurky keilbasa (very delicious, I was even a little surprised) and roasted marshmallows, baked a potato and just relaxed away from all the people and civilization of our little rinky dink town. We will definitely be doing this again!

Snails!

So I told you the other day that we went snail hunting and came home with four of them. Here they are!

There are two big ones and two small ones and they are exceptionally difficult to photograph with my camera. Right now they are in my largest tupperware container which they will upgrade from as soon as I find a suitable snailarium. What do you think?

Woohoo!

I just had a lot of firsts...
I had my first international sale (to Canada!) and it was the first time one of my hacky sacks had sold online and it was the first time someone had bought two things at once from my shop! Hehe, yay!

On a separate note, last night we went snail hunting. Yes, they do in fact have snails in the desert of New Mexico. And I found some. I got four. I'm keeping them as pets and I promise to have pictures up sometime soonish!

Mother's Day

So I couldn't post before about what I got my momma for Momma's Day, but I can post it now! She reads my blog *hi mom!* so I couldn't spoil her surprise. After my recent trip back home for the art show, I was wearing my favorite necklace which I got from MiaBeads on Etsy and she commented on it, so I knew that a necklace from the same shop would be perfect!

I decided to get her this locket:

I almost didn't get her the necklace because I didn't want to get her something cliche, but I just knew she would love it (and she does I think) so I went ahead and had it shipped to her with a little note from me :)

MiaBeads is a wonderful shop, run by a wonderful person, very conscientious of her customers, personable and is always very prompt with her communications, I recommend her!

War Zones and Knitting Projects

As I walking around campus this morning the ground looked like a cockroach battle field. Seriously. They must have used some kind of insane pesticide because the sidewalks looked like there was some type of epic battle between the roaches.

In other news, I finally received the yarn in the mail yesterday that I am using to make my friend Heather a slouchy beanie out of. She is leaving for Washington on Saturday and I want to have the beanie done by Friday so she can take it with her. I am using Olympic by NY Yarns, it is 70% acrylic and 30% wool so it should keep her nice a warm all year long. It has a very nice single ply texture and looks more "rustic" than most commercial yarns. As it is my first time using this yarn I'm trying to be very conscientious about what I like and dislike about it.

Also, I recently changed the profile picture over thereish ---> down a ways probably...but what do you think? Or do you like the eyes better?

Exploding Soda

So the other day we were wanting to chill some soda rather quickly. Naturally we put them in the freezer and, of course, promptly proceeded to forget about it. The day after we put them in there I was meandering through my rather tiny kitchen and happened to look in said freezer. This is what I saw.

The soda cans, Hansen's Kiwi Strawberry, had exploded. All six of them. And the white frosty lookin' stuff isn't frost. It's frozen soda.

The caps of all the cans had been blown off, the bottoms were also now convex. It did make a rather delicious slushie when mixed with some orange juice we had in the fridge :)

What To Blog About...And a Giveaway! .... evidently hehe

After reading this excerpt of Tim Adam's hints and tips for us Etsians, it made me ponder what would my readers like to hear about on this blog? On the one hand I could very easily blog about my design process, the reasons I choose certain colors or materials, certain textures, certain vendors. I could also blog about some how-tos of my design process, I could post a tutorial on how to dye yarn, or knit a certain stitch or project. I could post scheduled events, Friday Finds, or Tuesday Tutorials or Wednesday...W...somethin or others. I could also always blog more about my personal life, but I don't want to bore you all too much ;)

So what would you, my reader, like to hear more about? Do you have any specific questions you want me to answer or any tutorials you want to read? Please tell me :) give me some feedback. Actually...I think that I will give away a pouch to a random commenter...here, one of these pouches...you get to choose which pouch if you win...so you should probably leave me some way to get a hold of you, Etsy shop name or email or something. Now get to suggestin'! *Please* :)

*should mention that the time to apply for the giveaway will be Wednesday, midnight, mountain time*

*Sigh*

Ahhh....so I finally get to relax some. Ok ok, so only for a day or so, but it will be the most blissful day or two I've experienced in....well over a month.

I think I'll knit. And clean my apartment. And sleep. And try to sell a few things so I can pay my bills...and hang out with my friends of course. What are you going to do with your weekend?Oh, and the first of my hacky sacks is in the shop :)

Soon to come...

So just as soon as I have time between classes, finals, work, and everything else going on, I will be listing the remaining items from the show that have yet to make it into my shop. Some of these items include hackysacks, pouches, an earband, some beanies, you know, the basics and some new stuff :) Here's a prequel.....

Loa Alamos Arts Show

Well, I did my very first art show this weekend. I picked a show that I had attended before as a buyer numerous times, I knew the market, I knew what other types of vendors normally sold there, I knew the little tiny town that the show was in. Every year that I had gone to the show before (about the last 5 or 6 years) the weather was always perfect, sun-shiny, clear, blue skies, warm, just wonderful. Guess what it did Saturday. Yea. It rained. And was freezing. And was cloudy. And of course, windy. So....the show wasn't the best that it could have been. However, I still broke even with the amount I spent on the booth and on gas and various supplies, plus made a very small amount of profit after that which I used to buy my honey some super crazy delicious organic goat cheese...which we have almost entirely annihilated already.

So here is a picture of my booth, I had planned on putting some boxes underneath the blankets and putting the baskets on the boxes to provide various levels of visual stimulation, but the sheets I had were all only fitted, I expected at least one flat sheet, but of course that didn't happen. I know a lot of different set ups that I will use for my next show, and I know I need a lot more merchandise, but with school getting so crazy with finals and the end of the semester approaching, it took precedence over preparing for the show this time.

*sigh* I can't wait till I don't have to worry about school and I can just focus on life and knitting and spinning and dyeing and promoting my shops.

I am not too bummed about the turn out for the show, I'm sure there were some sellers there who didn't even cover the booth fee, but I just had a sort of rough weekend and it just seemed like the entire world was against me...it happens right?

You see that earband I'm wearing? Yea, made that at the show hehe. I crocheted a flower to attach to it and it will be available in my shop hopefully soonish, whenever I have time to photograph it and list it.