Ode to Elastic

Okay so I’m slightly stressed out. It’s in a good way, but still. Different magazines are wanting images and samples of my ribbon and since it’s perma-fog-low-light-land outside I haven’t been able to get good pictures. It’s very exciting that people even know what the Ribbon Jar is, but really overwhelming too. I just want to do everything right. Plus of course everything I’m giving as gifts is homemade. Which is awesome and fun, but time consuming. I really REALLY want to show pictures on my blog of all the goodies I have been cooking up, but I can’t because the gifters all read the blog, except maybe my dad, but you know the one time I put something up here I don’t want him to see he’d read it. So no pictures. Maybe I’ll clean my craft space tomorrow and post pictures of it.

Things making me happy:
-elastic pants (in my family they are called Joggins)
-songs Bj’s friend Brian wrote
-crafting up a storm, and things coming out like I designed them
-diet coke
-my Dad inviting me to dinner for no reason
-super advent (Q of the day: "What are Miss Piggy’s measurements)
-comments on my blog – love you guys!
-pulling and packing orders
-finding suitably designed wrapping paper for my gifts
-someone telling me: "I like that you have things that mean something to you, instead of just stuff"
-my Mom and Bill getting home, I get a little creeped out being here alone at night
-candy
-the colors green and red together
-did I mention Joggins? Elastic = one of the top 5 inventions EVER, it so does not get the respect it deserves!!

Cool Stuff

Okay so this sweet girl, Liz, from 2 peas asked me about my Quickutz Tags and how I got the writing on there, and what it was and stuff, and I realized that I hadn’t shared my latest eBay stamp find. That right there on the left is an auction I came across on eBay a few weeks ago. It looked like a pile of sticks and it said, “These are photographed on a full size tray. There are 60 larger rubber stamps.108 medium and small loose and 102 in wooden box.They are all letters, numbers and symbols” Hmm, I was interested and I could tell that some of the stamps were like my vintage sign making stamps, but what was a full sized tray I asked my self? Well I decided to bid anyway because it was starting out low. I ended up being the only bidder at 9.95 and shipping was 7.75, so for 17.70 I was thinking I would either get treasures or trash. I got treasures man!

Those sign stamps are much bigger than my others, and no, it’s not a full alphabet, but it really doesn’t matter to me. The set in the back I think is from an electric company based on the unique symbols that came with the TWO full sets of alphabets in the holder (on really tiny, and one bigger). Plus I got this:

Another complete alphabet (the standing up one), and then more random, almost a complete alphabet of the same style as in the box thingie. Here’s the cigar box I altered for them:

The “STAMPS” was done with those ones standing up in this box. Phew, so all that for 17.70, man I love eBay. So there you go Liz!

In another cool stuff note: Yesterday I went to a couple yarn shops, my local one, Have You Any Wool, and one in Beaverton called Knitting Bee. I had never been to this Knitting Bee before and I was like drooling like a crazy woman. Tons of hand-dyed, Patagonia cotton yarn, a huge selection of Cascade 220. I knitted last night driving home IN THE DARK I was so excited about this stuff. Taro do you see your black yarn in there for the requested ribbed hat? 🙂

Doesn’t my CarryBag basket look so happy. If you don’t have one of these lightweight collapsible things you need one, and they come in more colors now. I take my packages to the post office in it, go to crops with it, shop at the grocery store with it, basically I use it every day. I digress.  I also got an amazing book called the Stitch Dictionary:

I’d like to say that the fact that all the swatches in the book are done in yummy greens has no baring on my having to have it, but I would be lying. No seriously though, if you like to tweak patterns, or just make cool patterned scarfs you need this book. Of course if I got the Vogue Knitting: Ultimate Knitting Book (on my amazon wish list, wink wink), that would be great so that I could actually attempt all 250 patterns. 

Yum, yum, yum!

I’m working on the December 01 newsletter right now (tried it last night, but had some technical difficulties). Working with all these “new” vintage jars I’ve hunted down has been so much fun. Lots of people have bought them, but I haven’t found a picture of anyone’s jar in their creative space yet. So if yours is in your studio, sewing area, gift wrapping room, whatever, let me see!

Tree and Album

Have to make this quick because my mom and I are headed to the yarn shop, but I wanted to get the tree in good light. It is so much fun, we picked it up off a store display in an after Christmas clearance last year. Cute, huh?

All the little presents look so cute!

And I was totally inspired by Ali to create a little mini album to keep track of all the tags, questions, laughs, and gifts:

I’ve had some of these things forever. Those little metal pieces I picked up when I was a kid walking a round my dad’s job-sites, they came from the punched out hole when you put in electrical outlets. I have a whole collection. I’ll post details later on 2 peas.

*Edited to add: here is the link to the album at 2 peas, and I forgot to say that Humpback Whale’s milk has 54% fat. 🙂

December one

OMG this advent thing is going to be too much fun. My mom and I got our gifts and she got gifts for Bill because she thought he wouldn’t get them, but he did, so now we have extras, whoo hoo!  Bill won my first gift by answering this question closest (Price is Right rules in effect):

"What is the percentage of fat in Humpback Whale’s milk?"

He won this silly thing I found at Target, a plant you grow in a pop can thing that sprouts and then you can read a fortune that magically appears on it’s leaf! Is that so cool? Then I won a Pez Dispenser for getting closest to the correct elevation of  Mt. Hood. You can guess amungst yourself for the answers, I’ll post them tomorrow. I’m also going to take a picture of the advent tree in the morning light (here’s hoping we have some!).

SUPER Advent!

It’s greyer than grey here, so the pictures are going to suckx0r, sorry.

Dude, who is going to have the sweetest advent calender at their house? Um, me! My mom Bill and I are doing a super advent this year. 24 days of fun! I made all the tags up last night. We are each getting eight little gifts (I was like, hey lets all get 7 gifts, and their like, you  mean 8? Um ya) and wrapping them up cute. Then I will randomly distribute these tags. They are going to have a little riddle or trivia on the back, written by the person who got that days gift. Who ever gets the question right gets the gift. Cool huh? Well I’m excited for it. I’ll put pictures up later of the whole thing together.

These tags are totally jiving with me. I was a little weary about having to buy a THOUSAND so that all my jars could have the same tag, but I’m anal like that (Virgo what can I say), so I had to. But I am finding tons of uses for them:

Oh I just realized I didn’t write what I have of Empire on the tag, oops. Maybe it was because I was distracted by the fact that the binder it is on doesn’t match. Ahhhh. I got it before Quickutz started selling zippered ones. It’s really bugging me, but I can’t justify getting a new one just to match, can I? Now see why I am selling the Stiletto Katie? I have a lot man! Wow, these socks really work with those colors, hehehe.

On a totally separate note, went to the dentist yesterday, cleaning, and I have NO CAVITIES!!!  I eat a crap load of candy, plus I have some kind of genetic low enamel level so this is good news, especially since I don’t have dental insurance. Oh and I asked for a new case for my midnight torture device (otherwise known as bite guard), and they gave me one of the fugliest things I’ve ever seen in my life. It is absolutely gigantic and the sickest color brownish pink I’ve ever seen. Ugh. You try and keep ugly and poorly designed things out of your house and they just get in here, ahhh. I might actually have to try altering it some how…

Stiletto

Oh, P.S. I’m selling my Stiletto font that came with my Black Squeeze, since I had to have the skinni mini Studio set, I figured I didn’t need this one. It’s on eBay, I started it at 9.99 and it will probably go pretty cheap beacuse I don’t have the cardboard envelope packaging for it, since it came as part of package. But it’s all brand new, never opened, here it is if you want to look.