So here’s the list:

Small Notions Bag -$15

4.25″ x 6.25″ zipper bag with 3.5″ x 2.5″ stitch marker pouch

2 Citrus

2 blue circles

1 tangerine flower

1 Q-bert

Hat and Mitten Double Pointed Needle Organizer -$32

8.25″ x 5.5″ zipper bag with 5 - 1.75″ x 7.5″ needle cases

Labeled US5- US8 and your choice US4 or US9

1 Juicy Bloom

1 Citrus (6 needle cases US4-US9 -Price: $35)

1 Pink victorian

2 Blue Circle

Sock Double Pointed Needle Organizer – $35

8.25″ x 5.5″ zipper bag with 6 - 1.75″ x 7.25″ needle cases

Labeled from 2.00 mm to 3.25mm in quarter millimeter increments

1 Citrus

2 Blue Circle

1 Q-bert

1. Juicy Bloom, 2. Blue Circle, 3. Tangerine Flower, 4. Q-bert, 5. Pink Victorian

Until July 15th, I will only list the items on Etsy if they have been asked for through the blog or an Etsy convo.  This will give the folks who have been interested first chance.  After July 15th, I will list what I have left for anyone to stumble upon.

I do not see myself making anymore for a long time (or possibly ever), so get them while you can. 

Thanks for your patience – Sarah

Just got back from a soggy day at the Iowa Sheep and Wool festival. I’m going to need a daily spinning routine if I’m gong to get this spun for next Christmas…

Clockwise from top
20 oz Cormo Top
6 oz Garnet Merino roving
2 4oz balls of California Red (Scott’s request)
4 oz Dove Cashmere
Center: 2 3 oz balls of California Varigated Mutant (CVM) from Cedar Falls
Basket woven in Guana from Elephant Grass
2 4 oz BFL roving dyed in Rain Forest

A bullet list of things that have happened in the last year since I posted:

• Etsy shop started to become a full  time job with not much profit, so I stopped selling.  (Though I do have a few things in inventory yet, if anyone is interested)
• Got a spinning wheel for my birthday and started spinning fibers, bot common and exotic.  So far I’ve made a cardigan out of black merino I spun, plied an ounce of handspun cashmere with an ounce of handspun camel, spun two different colors of alpaca and a whole bunch of wool (mostly merino tops from the Rose Tree)
• Started working 1 day a week at the Rose Tree Fiber Shop in Ames (usually Wednesdays, 12-5)
• Revisited a frustrating home improvement project (stripping paint from baseboards and molding) and got a second wind.
• Knitted many small projects for family and friends, but haven’t done much photographing

I have more paint stripping awaiting me right now, but I will make the next post about my first major house project and try to catch up as quickly as possible.

A couple of knitting pictures, for interest…

At that point, I had just started working on my Etsy shop, had maybe 3 items listed and hadn’t sold anything yet.  We were talking about Etsy and she warned us to “Watch out, Etsy is addictive”.  I was skeptical at the time, but now I see why.

It is such a thrill to get an e-mail in my inbox telling me someone has purchased my creation.  It has made me want to make more, make them better, come up with other products and generally spend all my time in my craft workshop.  A few sales was all the encouragement I needed to start a full time obsession.  In general, I’m as happy as I can remember being in a long time.  Even though Scott has to work such long hours and goes back to work after dinner every day, being busy makes being alone a lot less lonely.

I’d say I should have started this earlier, but this is the first time we’ve moved in 10 years that we don’t think we’ll be moving again soon.  Having time and space to develop something counts for a lot.

I’m very thankful for the sales I’ve had so far, and it has driven me to list new items.

Shameless promotion time:

A notions pouch in black, white and red paisley.

An organizer set for hat and mitten sized DPNs

And my newest set:

The Sock Knitter Set which includes 6 dpn holders, cards for recording sock recipients’ foot measurements in a custom holder with grafting instructions on back, a stitch marker holder and a work in progress (WIP) holder.

I think next I may change gears and work on another holder design, rather than stocking the shop.  Or I may just make another one of each of these in a different fabric.  I guess it depends on if the creative juices are flowing, or I’m in a production mode.  The flexibility of a little online shop really suits my work style.

I think I’ll end this rambling post, but heed this as a warning: Etsy Shops are addictive!

I’ve learned there is a lot to be done to get things made, photographed, posted, and ready to ship.  I can tell I am still just ramping up, since I have been knitting for pleasure and sleeping 8 hours. 

Taking photos that measure up to the Etsy average has taken a lot of time and learning.  I built a collapsible light box from this Instructables tutorial, that has definitely helped, but I could still use better lighting.  I’ve read a bunch of articles on Etsy about taking better pictures and have fiddled with my camera until I finally got something decent and then I fixed the white balance some more with Gimp.  I’m still learning, but after a couple of photo shoots, I got pictures I was content to use to list new items. Here are a couple examples.

As you can see, I got some new fabric (with a gift card from my mom to Crafty Planet in MN) that happens to have a 1 inch pattern that lends itself well to the top edge of the bags.  Getting the color right in the photo is still a tricky proposition and the real color is probably somewhere between these two.  The second item is my latest addition to what I hope to be a set of tools for the serious knitter.    I have a lot of double pointed needles, and I don’t want to carry them all around, so I use these little individual pouches to just carry what I need.  This set is for the mid-range needles, used for hats and sleeves and mittens.  I hope to make a set of smaller pouches for smaller needles some time this week.

Smaller needles have been on my mind since I got my book “New Pathways for Sock Knitters” by Cat Bordhi on Saturday.  This  book has been on my mind for a while, ever since Larissa got it and was excited about it.  I resisted a while, but I finally broke down and bought it.  This book was mentioned by the Yarn Harlot on Nov. 14th 2007 and it has been on my mind ever since. As the Yarn Harlot states:

” I think “There has got to be a simpler way” and Cat thinks “Screw simpler – get curious. There has got to be ANOTHER way.” and then all of these door swing wide open and it turns out that there really are whole new ways to knit stuff that you I thought were pretty firmly established.”

This is my kind of knitting.  I don’t really like doing the same thing over and over, even if socks are small and utilitarian.  This book has 8 different sock architectures with master patterns and tables of numbers to help you get the perfect fit.  She has different toe and cuff patterns to mix and match, too. I was so excited, I even used Inkscape and MS Word to make these little cards to store people’s measurements.

Card to be printed on Avery Business Card 8371

I plan to print a sheet of  business cards to carry around and get family foot measurements if they express an interest in wearing hand knit wool socks.  Want to use these cards yourself?  Try downloading the  Foot Measurement Cards-corrected pdf for a full page of business cards. I used Avery Business cards with template 8371, but plain paper would do.

ETA: My Cut and paste technique had some problems that have been corrected.

I’ve got one sock from the “Riverbed Architecture” nearly finished and I think I will try a different architecture for the other sock.  As long as they are the same color and the ribbing looks the same, who’s going to notice?   I may never make a matching pair (for myself) again. 

Well, I guess I should get back to work…

For example, I’ve been a fan of Tech Knitter for a long time.  Her illustrations on the TECHknitting blog are amazing and incredibly helpful.  I’ve often wondered how she makes them, and finally took the time to find out that she uses Adobe Illustrator.  I don’t have Illustrator, but I went on a hunt for free vector graphics editor and I found Inkscape.  I downloaded the software on my iMac, looked at a couple tutorials, and fell down the rabbit hole.  Before I knew it I had spent the whole day creating illustrations.

The first one I did was a cartoon illustration of my latest crochet critter creations: the Whimsies.  The pattern for these little guys just popped into my head one morning, and before I knew it, I’d made 4.  One from each of the bright acrylic yarn colors I had on hand.  Here is what I came up with:

The Whimsies

I’ve been trying to decide on the best way to get these guys out into the world, so for now they just sit in front of my computer and make me smile.  Since they were there, I couldn’t help but draw them to try out this new software.

Here’s my Inkscape interpretation:

The Whimsies, Illustrated

After spending time on that, I decided to see if I could create something similar to the TECHknitter’s drawings but use it for crochet.  All of my little creatures start out making a ring of single crocheted stitches on an adjustable loop called a magic ring.  There are several webpages showing the technique with pictures, but I wondered if I could make an illustration that showed it.

It’s taken several hours, but I think I’ve got it.   I am a left handed crocheter, so I did the drawings left handed and then flipped them.  It all looks a little strange to me right handed.  I’ve decided to collect technical illustrations on a separate page on this blog, so look for the Technical Tips page at the top for the left handed version, along with this one.

created with Inkscape

Is it helpful, or just confusing?  I think I may add a couple more steps to show how to use the ring.  I learned a lot, regardless.  It was helpful for me to spend some time studying the stitches, it is fascinating how it all comes together.  I also learned a lot about Inkscape and am looking for excuses to use it. 

I guess I should get back to cleaning up from my crazy cooking extravaganza, but I’m sure there will be more illustrations in the future…

• 2 lasagna
• 3 meatloaves
• 6 packages of meatballs (14 meatballs per package- serving for 2)
• 3 packages of spaghetti sauce with italian sausage (a lot of it didn’t make it to the freezer since we’ve been eating it all week)
• 4 chicken broccoli casseroles
• 5 meals of “Mexi-Chicken” (chicken taco filling with barley in it)
• 2 meals of ham broccoli bake (skeptical of this one, but we’ll see how it tastes)
• 4 meals of scalloped potatoes and ham

I also had 1 lb of ham and a chicken leftover.  Instead of making chicken soup, we ate the chicken from the crock pot and I used the ham to make 15 bean cajun soup last night.  Whew, I’m tired.  Kind of fizzled before the last cleanup, so that is still in progress. I’m letting the dishwasher do most of the work, I just need to unload and reload once more.

• Start an Etsy Shop
• Eat better
• Exercise More
• Look for Work

With the exception of the last one, I’ve made progress on all of these things.

Etsy Shop

I’ve gotten my Etsy shop started, though my inventory is still small.  I need to learn to take better pictures and make more things to sell, but at least I’ve got a few items listed.  Check it out at stellarb.etsy.com.  So far I have a couple of cacti for sale, in case there are people out there that like Claude the Cactus, but would rather buy him than make him.  Since these cacti are made with different materials and are larger than the original, I have named the boys Clyde and the girl Cora.  Cora is sporting a flower that is as near as I can get to an actual Barrel Cactus Flower.  Here’s a picture of the love birds cacti.

I’ve also got the first in what I hope to be a series of tools for the knitter or crocheter.  I’ve been a serious fiber fanatic long enough to have made myself several custom accessories.  I hope to make the same tools for sale in coordinating fabrics on  my Etsy shop.  The first and most valuable tool I have is my vinyl pouch and stitch marker holder.  I never leave home without them.  I only have one fabric choice at the moment, but lots of other fabrics waiting to be used.  I also plan to make double pointed needle holders, and possibly a circular needle pouch, though I haven’t found a style/method I really like yet, so it could be a while.

I would appreciate any constructive feedback on the shop including pricing and shipping.  It is all new and I want to get it off to the best possible start.

Eat Better

Moving to a new place is always stressful, and I’ve never been good at creating routines, so it is no surprise that Scott and I have been eating out more than we should.  There is a restaurant here in Ames, called Hickory Park, that offers good food at reasonable prices and can feed my carnivore husband with all the meat he can handle, since I don’t have much meat in the house.

This is about to change.  With the house, we inherited a large chest freezer in the basement.  So large in fact that, though we requested they take the freezer out of the house because it was old and we knew it was going to be hard to get out, they tried the night before closing and couldn’t get it up the narrow stairway.  Long story short, we’ve had this freezer plugged in to keep the compressor running without any food for several months, and I figure we might as well use it.

Though I’d prefer to eat fresh, locally grown food, there’s not much to be found in the middle of winter in Iowa, so I’m going the freezer meal route this winter. I’ve known about the book Frozen Assets for a while now, but I finally picked it up from the library and am going to give it a try.  The basic premise is to cook enough meals for a month in one day by preparing several meals from several recipes amd freezing them.  The book has a proposed grocery list and all the recipes you would need for 30 days of dinner entrees.  I don’t plan for us to eat completely from the freezer for a month and then start all over, but I am going to use it to “open the bank account” in our freezer.  I picked up another book titled Don’t Panic, Dinner’s in the Freezer, that suggests recipes that you just triple as you are making dinner to have two more in the freezer, and I hope use that one to supplement the Frozen Assets meals.  Couple this with the fact that my grandpa gave me his old Foodsaver vacuum sealer when I saw him at Christmas, and I’m ready to go.

The original Frozen Assets book has traditional comfort foods like meatloaf, meatballs, and ham and scalloped potatos that make it more calories than a lot of people would make for themselves these days, and as I was looking up the amazon link I found she has the Frozen Assets: Lite and Easy book coming out in June, 2009.  I think I’ll look into that one when it comes out.

So anyway, yesterday I went grocery shopping with the list from the book.  Just to get a feel for the quantity of food we are talking about, I bought 3 whole chickens, 9 lbs of ground beef and 2 lbs of bulk Italian sausage.  That’s just the meat.    I’ll start the cooking today, but I don’t know if I’m actually going to do it all in one day.

Along with all that food, I also bought the ingredients to make granola from scratch.  I’ve been eating oatmeal for the last couple years, and I’ve finally gotten sick of it, so I was looking for a way to make it tastier without paying large amounts of money for cereal.

I found this recipe with a google search and decided to make it.  IT IS DELICIOUS!  Even though I forgot the sesame seeds, I did add toasted almonds, peanuts, sunflower seeds, toasted wheat germ, coconut, raisins, dried apricots and dried cranberries.  It was really easy to make and they even have a video to make it simpler.  I’d  recommend this to anyone!

Here’s a picture from their post, just to make you want it more.    Scott really likes it, and he’s not a fan of sweet things, so you know it’s not too sweet.

And finally…

Exercise

This one hasn’t gone quite as well as planned, but we do have a treadmill in the basement I use every so often.  Shovelling snow and walking downtown have been my primary activities lately, and considering how often it snows, I exercise at least 3 times a week. 

Sorry for the incredibly long post, but it’s been a while and I’ve been busy.  I’ll let you know how the massive cooking and freezing experience goes.