Thanks Mr. Hair Dresser

I've been totally traumatized today.  I went to the hair dresser today to get a trim.  The operative word here folks is TRIM.    Not cut, TRIM.    Well.  Guess what happened?

When you tell a hair professional that you want a chin length angled bob, aren't you supposed to get that?  Where, for the most part, your hair is supposed to be more than three inches long?

So I went in expecting this:

And got this:

Except, it's shorter.  Not happy folks, not happy.  I'm about to go on a trip to Orlando and I'm feeling way insecure about my hair now.  Thanks hair dresser.

Why do hair people do this?  You tell them one thing and they decide to do something else.  I would pay extreme money for a good hair dresser that listens.

Amateur Photography and Lace Scarves

Last night The Eldest was working on a photography lesson for Cub Scouts.  Not to be outdone, The Youngest had to take some pics too.  This is what happens when a four year old takes a photo:

Of Himself

And of a cat:

 

But wait!  I bet you missed the cool part of the cat photo.  Let's zoom in a little closer (I didn't say clearer, I said closer):

Did ya catch it that time?  He caught the cat in mid-yawn.   Cool.   That cat's got a really big mouth.  I guess it goes well with the rest of him too, all 16 pounds of him!

******

I finally finished my Queen Anne's Lace Scarf!  I did it in two sessions.  Unfortunately, I put it down for about two weeks in between sessions.  But it's finally done:

Here's a closeup:

This is destined to become a gift in the future for my Sister In Law.  The greens will look fabulous next to her red hair.

Toggle Clasp Bracelet

Remember me saying that my Great Aunt was a waste not want not kinda person?  Well, I guess the nut didn't fall far from the tree.  That's what I get for growing up around people who grew up during the depression huh?  It wasn't my Great Aunt that I grew up around, I never knew her well.  I'm throwing the blame at my Grandparents.

For a while I had been making my stitch markers using the round piece of a toggle clasp.  Which meant that the bars from the clasps were just sitting there, staring at me.  I couldn't bear to throw them away, knowing that sooner or later I would find a use for them, and I did.

Check out this bracelet:

 

And here it is laid out:

 

 

Isn't that fun?  I call it the Toggle On Bracelet.  

It's up in my shop now, but it's super easy to make.   I took a 7 inch piece of chain, grabbed some jump rings and just started attaching the toggles all around the chain.  Then added the lobster claw clasp pieces to both ends of the chain.  Very simple.

You should hear the pretty jingle it makes!  When I came up with the idea, I didn't think I would like it.  I made it anyway and I'm so glad I did.  It's actually kind of neat and would look really cool with a black turtleneck sweater.

Toggle On Dude!

Crochet Nostalgia

Have you heard the phrase "It's in her genes"?    Or is it the phrase "Nothing comes between me and my  genes but my crafting"?  In this case, maybe both would be appropriate.

I come from a line of crafters:

My mother sews, crochets, paints, draws, designs jewelry, etc.     Every formal gown that I ever wore to proms and college dances were handmade by her.   She's an amazingly talented woman.  The one thing I didn't inherit from her are my artistic skills.  I can't draw or paint worth a flip.

My grandmother sewed and made jewelry.  She was also a very crafty woman.  Feisty too.  The only person that I've ever known to tell a pastor to kiss her a**.   You should have seen my eyes bug out of my head at that one!

Here's the one that I specifically want to tell you about today though.

My great aunt.  Tatter, quilter and crocheter extraordinaire.  I never saw the lady without a needle of some sort in her hands.  There's no telling how many miles of afghans that she made.  Somewhere in my attic is a couch back cover that she crocheted of granny squares.  It's a particularly amusing piece.  The colors are brown, green and yellow.  Except for about two inches that are in your face RED where she ran out of the proper color yarn.  This woman was from the "waste not want not" generation.   She saved every scrap and used them whenever the opportunity arose.

One project that she got absolutely right though, was her crocheted teacups.

Look how dainty these are:

 

Aren't they lovely?

They live on a book shelf in my bedroom now.  They sit on the lowest shelf so that The Youngest can have tea parties with them.  Wouldn't she be tickled to know that her Great nephew was playing with them now?

Let's hope that all us crafters leave such a legacy behind.

Cats and Freshwater Pearls

Pay no attention to the cat behind the light box!

 

I had a helper whilst taking pics of some of the pieces that I've been working on over the past couple of days.  

Here's one of the things she helped me with:

 

Freshwater Pearls in every muted color of the rainbow with silver accents.

I'm not completely happy with this piece. I need to go back and alter it just a little.  There's too much string and not enough beads on one of the strands and it's bugging the heck out of me.  Maybe if I hadn't had a cat in the middle of things that wouldn't have happened.  I'd like to think so anyway.  :)

Make a little Money with your Blog

I had a friend ask me not to long ago if you can make money by blogging.  His son, a recent high school grad, had heard you could do this and get wealthy doing it.  Well, yes and no.  I don't have a high readership on my blog, so I don't make loads of money.  But with my BlogHer ads, I do have a little money trickling in.  If you have a higher amount of readers coming to your blog, then perhaps this is the way to go.  You can click on the above link for more info.  Remember, more readers = more people who see the ads = more income for you.  How do you get the higher readership?  Write more articles that actually go to your target audience.  Mine target audience is mainly knitters/crafters/diy-ers.  Most of whom are struggling in this economy and looking for more ways to add some dollars to their wallets.  Thus, this article, although not crafty, is still targeting the audience.  I hope.  :)

Another way to go would be with Amazon associates.  I haven't done this much in the past and that's just plain not smart of me.   It's a win/win for everyone.  I direct you to something you will buy and I basically get a referral fee for it.  You, in turn, do this on your blog and we all continue winning and making a little pocket change.  For instance, here's a book that I got this weekend: "Fitted Knits: 25 Projects for the Fashionable Knitter" by Stephanie Japel.  Love this book by the way, planning on making several of these sweaters.  See?  Amazon link to my associates account.  Now if I can just learn to do this quickly I'll be set.  Again, it won't bring in loads of cash, but any is better than none, right?

Want a little more money from your blog?  Add a SwagBucks link.  What's SwagBucks?  It's a search and win site.  You use their search engine for your searching and you can earn enough swagbucks to redeem them for awesome prizes.  For instance, I earned $15 dollars in January in Amazon e-cards, which are stackable.  Meaning that you can use multiple cards for a single purchase.  Another bonus, the amazon e-cards don't expire.  You just put them in your account and use them when you want to.  My kid wants a Wii, so I'll be saving up for one of those.  Oh, and that $15 was without any referrals earning me the Swagbucks.  Get a referral or two and your earning of Swagbucks goes up exponentially.  The best thing about Swagbucks?  It's the only legitimate site that I've found that basically gives away free money.  Cool huh?

1.  So can you earn some money while blogging?  Yes.
2.  Will it pay all your bills and buy you that Mega Mansion you've been wanting?  Um, no.

3.  Should  I build a blog just for making money that has no content whatsoever besides links and adds that will make me money?  Please, please, just don't do this.  Make sure your blog has real content.  Your readers will thank you also.

The Business Side of Things

The past week I've been spending tons of time working on my jewelry business instead of playing with my sticks and string.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to play with jewelry either.

I've been trying to get a lot more serious about photographing all the items, alter them and get them entered into Etsy.  I mean, if it's not up there for someone to buy, it won't get sold will it?  Money is still very, very tight here in my household and it's stupid not to be getting everything up and out there for the public to purchase.

I never realized how much time went into the back end of things though.  Yes, it's fun to make jewelry and it's quick, instant gratification.  What's not fun is the time the rest of it takes.  Photography is so important when selling products online.  Since the customer can't touch the item they're looking at purchasing, they need to see tons of pics.  Etsy has five slots for photos of the items to go in and I intend to use all of them.  So I've been taking like 20 shots of each item, moving them over to my Flickr account, altering the exposure, color and sharpness.  Then I have to narrow it back down to five again.  Folks, that is incredibly time consuming!  Written that way, of course, it doesn't really sound that way at all, but it is.   I'm trying my best not to get lazy.  I need to have someone standing behind me with a whip.

Here's an example of how I'm using the Flickr/Picnic account to adjust my pics.   I took about 114 photos one day and got only a handful that I could ultimately use.  But look at the before and after difference on one of the pairs of earrings that I've got up for sale:

Before:

After:

See the difference it's made?  Well worth the time, I'd say.

Another issue is that my Mom and I have joined up together in this business (which means way more inventory to photograph).  My store front name will be changing soon and I'm going to have to create a new banner/logo for it.  I don't have a clue what we'll go with yet and my brain hurts just thinking about it.  We're also going to start doing some craft shows together starting in the spring and we've lots to do for that as well.

One good note that happened this week with the new jewelry business is that we've found a temporary supplier of beads that is incredible.  I'm so excited about the prices we've managed to get from this source, but it will only last until the inventory dries up.  Even so, paying this much less for the product means so much more profit, if the stuff sells.

I've also been working on the marketing side of things as well.  I totally suck at this, but I'm working on it.  :)

So, that's what I've been doing.  Spending way too much time in front of my computer screen instead of clicking away with the knitting needles.  I'm hoping to get some free time this weekend though, my fingers are starting to get itchy for the wool!

Potted Kitty

I'm afraid my green thumb doesn't extend to kitty gardening. Are they annuals? Perennials? If they re-seed themselves, will I have a porch full of kittens? How much sunlight do they need?  Do they need to be moved indoors at the first freeze?  Are they herbs, weeds or wildflowers?

Pinewood Derby Skateboard Car Followup

Well, the 2010 Pinewood Derby is finally over.  The car did not do as well as the Eldest would have wished on the track (his father set the wheels wrong and they scraped the center of the track), but everyone thought the Skateboard Car was really cool.  That's good enough for his creative department (me) to be happy!

I wanted to show you guys the finished product:

Specs:

- Painted Hemi Orange
- All artwork was body tattoos!  Had to be very careful placing these on the board.  They wanted to slide all over the place.
- Coated the car in resin to get a high shine.

Queen Anne's Lace Crochet Project

I started a new project the other night, but it wasn't knitting, it was crochet.  Ya'll, it's been so long since I've done crochet that I had to look up some of the stitches to make sure I was doing them right!  I've been crocheting off and on since I was eight and my Mom semi-patiently tried to teach me, but it never sticks with me.  Over the years I've either forgotten how to hold the yarn or how to do certain stitches.  I don't know why I can't keep it all in one tidy little place in my brain so that I can reference it as needed. 

It didn't take long to look things up (I love the internetz) to remind my poor brain what it needed to tell my fingers and I was off and running.  I'm working on the Queen Anne's Lace Scarf from here.  If you follow the link, he's taken off the pics, scroll down to get to the free pattern. 

I'm using some of my homespun yarn that has a huge range of greens and black in it.  It's lovely, but it's not photographing well.  For some reason, variegated yarns never do photograph well for me.  I got two shots that I liked:

Here's the first:

And here's the second:

This is a really quick pattern.  I finished half of the scarf in one day.  I'll go until I run out of yarn.  There's approximately 222 yards in this skein.  It should end up just the right size.  Hopefully it will look better once it's blocked.   This is probably going to be put away as a gift to my Sister In Law for next year.  She looks stunning in any form of green (she's a redhead.)