Earrings

Some earrings waiting for adhesive and hooks!

Orange county fair

I love county/state fairs more than many things in this world. I try to make it to the orange county fair multiple times a summer. I've even been to the Alaskan State fair (where I rode a mechanical salmon, by the way).

My favorite things about the fair are the knitting, quilting and crochet, the wood working, centennial farms... oh man, all of it.

This year was a little different with baby in tow. Lots of finding a good place to feed him. But I did get a chance to go through the textile exhibits twice and got all inspired. Next year I will submit a piece or two, just have to decide what!

Heritage Arts and Why I Love These Photos

Handmade earrings, available at www.showyourcolorz.etsy.com - made by me!

a beautiful example of Sposto Photography's wedding work
Also happens to be a photo of my cousin and his new wife :)

A few days ago I had the wonderful experience of having a professional photographer take pictures of my handmade jewelry and accessories. Her name is Shauntelle, and her company is Sposto Photography. 

Although I have been following her blog and her posts on her facebook page, I was not anticipating just how beautiful the photos of my work would turn out. 

a mini-shop set up, just like I have when I sell at craft fairs and festivals

We did a little studio set up in her backyard

 along with 3 dogs and chickens... 

Bird and Zoe

That's a chicken.

I honestly walked in thinking she would take photos for about 20 minutes, and be done - since she was doing me a huge favor.

butterfly rings

But she made a list of all the types of photos she wanted to take, and spent a few hours on it. Even looking at photos on the back of her camera impressed me. 

Brand new earrings, I especially love my classic granny squares!

Crocheted bracelets

I love creating jewelry - I love creating the color combinations and the design. I think I have an eye for that type of work - which you would think would translate to photographing this work. Alas, it does not. 

Hair clips!

Watching Shaunie work was great - not only because I knew I would be getting wonderful photos from the experience, but because I learned a lot about how to create the visual I wanted. 

Big dangly heart earrings - one of my best sellers :)

She also had the equipment to really show the details - which is, of course, as the person spending hours crocheting these little details - one of the most important things. 

One of my favorite photos - simple, clean, and beautiful

She did such a good job showing every, loving stitch.

So if I haven't mentioned - go to her facebook page and click 'like' and visit her website. This is a shameless plug for Sposto Photography - because look at what she did for me. I am so amazed. 

Hey look! Those are my actual hands! Actually crocheting!

Here's a little more to why I think this is important: heritage arts are a link to our past. When I crochet, I feel connected through something really tactile to Laura Ingalls, who hated to sew sheet hems, to Anne Blythe (maiden name: Shirley) who knit 2 socks a day during WWI. When I take my crocheting out into the world, little kids come up to me every time and ask me what I'm doing. Teenagers tell me about how they used to watch their Grandmother knitting or crocheting. Everyone has a fond memory of someone in their life doing something with yarn. It's a thing that used to be a necessity, and is now an art form. I imagine it's what people who are good at gardening/farming feel like when they sit at their table and eat the food they grew - they could have bought that pasta sauce at the store, but instead they are intimately connected with the process and ingredients. It's the same for me - I am just amazed, sometimes, when I look at a bracelet or blanket that I've made that we can do that with string, with fiber from a plant or animal.

What do you do or make that makes you feel connected to your past? Tell me in the comments!

Some of my little owls - magnets and keychains

earrings!

I love crocheting. I've been crocheting since I was about 8 years old. I wish I could remember how I started - maybe my mom remembers. 

I call these my "unschooling mama" earrings

But I don't remember the learning process, I don't remember the person who I first saw doing it, I don't remember falling in love with yarn.

Emerald is going to be a color of 2013. Apparently.

 I remember many living history events where I would plant myself next to the woman carding wool, or using a spinning wheel - and just watch and watch and watch. I remember making friendship bracelets for the kids on my swim teams and girl scout troops. 

I started selling my handmade crocheted jewelry at a few craft fairs and at royaboya.etsy.com and showyourcolorz.etsy.com - and then ignored it for a little while.

 I've recently decided to devote more time to it - and have been really enjoying the process. 

Bold, geometric shapes! Also in.

I've consulted with a few people who are successful on etsy, and realized that one of the most important things I need to do is to improve the photographs of my items.

I just make color combinations that make me happppyyy

I'd been using my smart phone to take all the pictures - I have it on me, it's easy to upload, and didn't really think that the quality of photo was that much different.

Today, though, I got out the Canon PowerShot A480 that I bought my husband a few years ago, and decided to give it a try. I used different layers of curtains to diffuse the light to try to minimize shadow and glare - and I was more or less successful.

I only had time to do a handful of earrings that I made this week - my goal is to get a good photo-taking set up, so that it's easy to stick a pair of earrings in and snap a few photos every day - take advantage of when the light is right, and it's not a huge production every time.

Another thing that I never really thought that much about were fashion trends. I've always been sort of oblivious - at some point I realized owls were in. Then I noticed that people are wearing a ton of neon. 

bright, sunshiney, spring and summer colors

But when you make fashion accessories, it's sort of important that you are aware of these trends at the beginning of their appearance, if not before. 

It also never really clicked for me that there are people out there who are making these decisions -and putting them down on paper, in blogs, and magazines. The information is there for the having. 

Project List!

So I spend a lot of time working on all my projects... we moved not that long ago, and so a bunch of mine are still in boxes, slowly getting unpacked as I try to find yarn, needles, etc. Here's a list of some projects that I am currently in the middle of -- my hope is by listing them here, I'll actually get around to finishing them! I am really great at starting things...

1. Cathedral Windows Quilt, hand-sewn

2. Granny square earrings, crocheted

3. Granny square vest - crocheted, improvised pattern

4. Silk vest - it's on knitting needles right now, but I started over and am doing a crocheted shell stitch pattern

5. Pink crocheted skirt - picture to come!
6. Purple sock yarn beanie - picture to come!

7. About 4 pairs of socks, including the other half of this one

8. Ripple scarf, made with birthday yarn

9. knitting needle holder - wool, to be felted. Picture to come.
10. baby animal hats - all my friends are having babies. Time to make some gifts.

11. Granny square curtains - about 150 of 500 squares made so far!

12. a bunch of coin purses and granny square bags - maybe 15 of them? Some are needle felted.

14. Granny Square Cushions - need to sew lining/backs and add the stuffing!

fiberific

At every conference I go to, and lots of times in between, I have parents of young children ask, anxiously, "is it really okay that my child wants to do __________ ALLLL day??" 

I usually say - yes. Then, not so flippantly, I ask them to be realistic. Are they really doing that thing 24 hours? Are they eating? Are they going to the bathroom? A lot of times the kid actually has a lot of other activities - karate, park days, music, play dates, whatever. What the parent really means is "my kid wants to do _______ all of the hours that we are home and they are not sleeping." That sounds a lot different than "ALLLL day." For one, it makes the parent stop being catastrophic  When they are more specific in their language, they can't let themselves get so caught up in hyperbolic distress. 

Even with that new-found specificity and reality, the number of hours their child wants to do one thing still bothers parents. It's funny, too - because no one ever says "my child wants to play soccer 5 hours a day, is that a problem?" or "My child wants to read and read all day and not do anything else, will they grow up okay?" They are only ever worried about tv and video games. But that's another fifteen blog posts.

Well. Here I am. Living proof of an unschooled child who really did spent hours and hours and hours per day passionately involved with some very sedentary activities, often at the exclusion of other fun activities - and I am jeeesst fine. As a 28 year old married woman with a career, and you know, laundry to do, I still manage to spend many, many hours doing exactly what I want. 

Today, for example - I didn't need to leave the house. Not once. We had enough groceries, no park patron knocked on our door needing help. I have the 4th Game of Thrones book downloaded on audible.com and The Cabin in the Woods is new on Netflix. I had a late night last night, so I woke up around 11am, reached for my crocheting (which is next to my bed), and started on a vest idea I'd had last night. At about 2pm I decided to do some laundry, because I have committed to doing one household chore a day this month. I crocheted some more, sitting on the couch in the office listening to my headphones while my husband played his computer games a few feet away, and our dog split the difference between us sprawled out on the floor. 

I washed the dishes. I made green smoothies. I made coffee for my husband. I warmed up some leftovers for myself and ate them. I made breakfast for dinner for my husband. Oh, and I took a shower. I crocheted the rest of the day. It is now 8:30pm, which means I probably crocheted about 8 hours total. While I was doing that, I watched a movie on Netflix, and many episodes of The Office. I had facebook open and talked to a few people. I emailed my resume to a private practice I might want to work with, rescheduled an appointment, looked into a music therapy workshop I want to attend, fed the dog, and checked on my tomato plant. I jumped up happily to get things my husband asked for, and he brought me things I asked for when he got up.

So I guess I want to point out a few things -- one, that as an adult, I am able to decide when I can and want to spend the majority of my day doing one thing. I can weigh my priorities and decide what I want to get accomplished. Multiple times today I thought "do I want to do something else right now?" Sometimes I did. But mostly I didn't. Nobody and no things were harmed by my 8 hour crochet day. I did not blow off appointments or neglect anything important. 

Secondly - I got a lot out of my fiber-ific day. I had a lot of ideas spinning around in my head, and I had the chance to get some of them out in the world. I spent today creating larger items than I usually do, and I am trying to make up my own patterns. I had many really pleasant interactions with my husband. I have a lot going on, what with trying to start my own practice and looking at my upcoming week it's going to be a busy one, where I will be out of the house a lot. This was a good day for me to appreciate my house, my husband, my yarn, and time without interruption. After today, I'm looking forward to the upcoming week. It was a good and refreshing day.

I love to crochet. I love it. I would be upset if a family member tried to make me do less than what I wanted to do. I would not feel respected. I would not be able to express myself the way I want, or process the way I process. After I finish typing this, I am going back to my crocheting. Some weeks I have a lot of days like today. Others, not so many, or different things. 

The point is - I learned all of this about myself when I was younger because my parents did not think "she's spent too many hours obsessed with yarn. It's time to make her stop and do something else now." 

So here I am today - about a quarter of the way through a granny square vest. I'm improvising the pattern as I go.

And it has been a delightful day.

lizards and firemen and ground squirrels, oh my!

A few weeks ago I went with my book club to a coffeeshop in Claremont village to discuss the novel we'd just read. It just so happened to be the weekend of Earth Day, and Claremont was having a street fair! We walked through, enjoying the demos and all the people dressed in their finest hippie-wear, and one booth was giving away free tomato plants!

I may have forgotten to mention that the garden I so delightfully planted a few months ago...got eaten. Super de duper destroyed. Ground squirrels came in and ate everything, down to the stems (except the basil. Note: ground squirrels are anti-basil.) And they did it really fast. Suspiciously fast... ahem. What is having a giant German Shepherd good for unless they are scaring the squirrels out of your garden? (the dog is snoring right now. I feel bad talking about him this way when he is asleep and can't defend himself). 

Anyways - so I was glad to be gifted this tomato plant, but felt a little guilty, fairly certain I was taking it home to be the amuse bouche for a tree rodent's meal.

My solution: put it in a movable container, and move it around, a lot. I figure the squirrels won't catch on, and I might get to eat a tomato by the end of the summer. It has actually been working! No squirrel teeth marks, and the plant is growing! Maybe one tomato plant (oh and the basil plant, can't forget about that one) is all this newbie gardener can handle for the time being. Caprese salad garden it is!

This dude lives on our front porch, with a couple others. There's a really big one, with the stump of a tail that I see a couple times a day in the backyard. Lizards are awesome. 

I spent the sunniest portion of the day in my backyard doing this. I'm crocheting little granny squares to make earrings for a few upcoming craft fairs. There is something so insanely satisfying about granny squares. Oh, see those plastic water bottles? I've got 3 loquat seeds in those, cross your fingers that in 8-10 years I'll be reaping the rewards......

So here I am. Netflix is on, my shoulders feel nice and warm and toasty from being out in the sun, I feel all good and virtuous cuz I did chores too, I had a visit from a bunch of firemen who thought our house was a nature center (it happens), I mentioned the dog snoring loudly on the floor, and it is time to switch to a project suitable for a warm spring evening in my little house in the big park.

Embroidery floss

This is a pile of sorted embroidery floss, ready to be made into crocheted earrings. This plus the tv show Parks and Recreation for the 458475th time sounds like a perfect,  low key night.

passion berry

A friend of mine in San Diego sent me a beautiful package - and it's a gift that keeps on giving, because it included a variety of tea bags. So I am here, enjoying my evening, working on my marathon crochet flowers, drinking passion berry tea, out of a ceramic mug I made. Feeling sweet and thoughtful and loved.

flowers!

I applied for the Renegade Craft Fair - which is a giant craft fair in LA. If I get in, it's a two day show and I'll need lots n lots of product... so it's time for some marathoning crocheting. These flowers will be turned into hair clips, rings, and earrings. I also sell them here, on my etsy shop. I have a bunch of photos of them as finished products on my facebook page.

someone asked me for a pattern -- so here goes

using the magic circle technique I then do 10 half double crochet stitches in the circle, and pull tight. (If you want a smaller center, do single crochets. If you want bigger, double crochet.) 

Switch colors, and attach with a slip stitch to the top of one of the hdc's. Chain 2, and attach to one of the stitches with a slip stitch. Chain 2, skip 1 stitch, and attach to the top of every other hdc. So you should end with 5 chain2's. Attach to the nearest Chain2 space with a slip stitch. Then, *single crochet, half double crochet, 4 double crochet, half double crochet, single crochet* in the same space. Repeat from * in each of the 5 chain 2 spaces. Finish off, tuck in strings, and you have your flower!

I use embroidery floss and a tiny little crochet hook for these - but you can use any weight yarn or size hook, it'll just change the size of the flower.

curtains part three

The curtain project is slowly, slowly coming along....

curtains and a new project

In our house I am lucky enough to have a whole room for my art supplies. I can't wait to turn it into a beautiful place for me to sit and work on things... it's got two windows that look out onto our backyard, and I want to make curtains for them. I saw these - and decided to make some granny square curtains. But being who I am... I picked out the tiniest cotton yarn and a tiny hook and I think I have to make about 400 squares to cover the windows! So here goes...

earrings

Lately I've been working on new earrings -- I like this new design. I crochet all the pieces then put them together with little bits of jewelry chain. They'll be up at my etsy site soon.