What Do You See?

What do you see in the picture above? To the ordinary, untrained eye, it might look like three small pots of dirt and a vine in a jar but in reality to my highly trained eye, it looks like tomatoes, cilantro, basil and a vine in a jar!

That's right, I'm planting again, now that we are settled in a house (for better or worse) I can finally unpack (if I had the time) and plant some seeds. I am waiting on the vine to grow some roots so I can put it in my massive tea cup planter, and the tomato, basil and cilantro seeds just need to sprout into little delicious plants and I can move them outside :D

Are you planting anything this year?

*sidenote - all of the planters came from the thrift store :D

Flashback Friday - Three Stooges

Every Friday, ChristopherandTia host a Flashback Friday posting. Basically, you find an old(er) picture of yourself, your family, your pet, etc, and you talk about it however you please :D Wanna join the fun?

This week my photo depicts three shady characters.

I mean, who do you know with brightly colored, huge lensed sunglasses and Squeezers? If you look closely, you can see my older brother, picking his nose. On my other side is my younger brother, whose hair looks like he just got hit by lightening. It looks like we were camping (which was a very common vacation, who wants to try and wrangle three kids in a hotel or in the city? Nah, just take 'em out to the woods, at least they'll keep the bears away with their monstrous screams right?).

These Clothes Speak Relaxing Melodies in My Ear

Love is dress

I recently stumbled upon the shop cocoricooo (I honestly have no idea how I really found it, I left my computer, came back and it was in a random tab...creepy cool :)).

Flower Garden

I love the shirts, I love the dresses, the skirts, the pants!

Three times a lady

They are relaxed and loose fitting while still remaining a bit sultry and sexy.

Love at first sight dress

Its so hard for me not grab up everything in the shop!

Wise Wednesday - The Art (or science?) of Pricing - Follow Up

from Sassboxclassics

So last week I shared with you my take on the art and science of pricing. A number of great comments were made and I chatted with CarolBradley about the formula and she brought it to my attention that I had mistyped! I wrote that you multiply your labor by your materials when really you add them together to get your At Cost price (you should NEVER sell at cost, by the way), it is now corrected in the original post. She also shared with me her formula for pricing which I really like. To price her jewelry, CarolBradley uses:

Materials = Raw materials for the piece + shipping, etc

4 x materials

add pro-rated labor at $xx an hour

add 10% for overhead

and this gives you the MINIMUM price for retail

from Sovietvintage

Again, this formula can be personalized as needed, and make sure that you are paying yourself a fair hourly wage!

from SomethingUsed

*Also, in all of these formulas, we are assuming that the seller buys their materials at a wholesale price, rather than retail.

Tuesday Learn to Knit Day 9 - Two Simple Decreases

So by now I'm sure you'd all like to move on from rectangles and squares and maybe do a hat or something with shape! That's why this week I am going to teach you the two simplest decrease methods that are very widely used. I use them in most of my hats, sweaters, socks, etc etc, the list goes on.

Ok the first one I am going to teach you is the Knit 2 Together (K2tog) method.

Basically, it is what it sounds like. You knit to where you'd like to decrease, then insert your right hand needle into both of the next two stitches on the left hand needle as if to knit.

You then complete the stitch as one normal knit stitch. You wrap the yarn around the right hand needle from right to left, back to front, and slip the two old stitches off the left hand needle leaving only your new single stitch on the right hand needle.

Pretty simple no?

The next decrease method is fairly similar in appearance although the "direction" of the decrease goes to the right instead of the left, this will be more obvious once you've seen them both.

Again, knit to where you'd like to decrease, slip the next stitch off the left hand needle onto the right hand needle without knitting it (sl1).

Knit the next stitch on the left hand needle.

Now take the slipped stitch and pass it over the knitted stitch and off the right hand needle (Psso)

What do you think? Which is your preferred method of decreasing?

Latest Custom Order!

Ok ok, I have to tell you all about my latest custom order that came in last week, at first, I wasn't sure even the customer (a friend of mine) was serious! But, he's totally serious.

Guess what I get to make! Guess Guess Guess!!!

Ok, did you all guess? Cuz I'm gonna bet that none of you saw this coming. I get to make...

A full adult-sized Max suit! From Where the Wild Things Are. I am very excited about it :D

It will be an interesting trip, the customer is about 6 feet tall (I'm not...) and he wants it complete, like, footie-pajama style with a hood and ears and tail and everything! Are you not excited yet? So I ordered the yarn the other day, but its going to take a few weeks to get here because I had to order a lot (I mean, he's six feet tall...that requires a lot of yarn). I think I'm going to do it top down, kind of raglan styled.

I promise to keep you all up-to-date with the process!

Is This The Beginning?

Swimming through the items available on Etsy can be inspiring, uplifting, and exhausting. Getting found can be even more of a trip! I listed my first items on Etsy May 31, 2008 and it seems that, as of late, I have been seeing a bit of a rise in my "notice-ability" (if you count that as a word).

Just last week my Long Eared Beanie with Pom-poms was included, briefly, in this Storque Post.

And I found out from the lovely shop carolinascreations that my Lacy Green Slouchy Beanie was even featured on the front page this weekend!

This is the first time that I have been featured in any way on the Storque and my first time on the front page as well. My sales have slowly started picking up and I am convinced that if I had more time to dedicate to my shop that it would flourish even further. Granted, school takes precedence right now, but this gives me hopes that once I'm done I can take my shop further and further! This could be the beginning of my dreams coming true :D

I foresee much more hard work, sweat and tears. I certainly don't expect this ride to come easily, but I am excited to be on it, and I am excited to share it with all of you, so that none of us feel that we are in this by ourselves.