I've decided to use my remaining birthday money to buy every color of DMC embroidery floss (regular, not linen, even though the linen looks beautiful).  I don't have quite enough cash left to get them all right now, but I've devised an elaborate scheme, involving compound interest and waiting for sale prices, to achieve my birthday dream. Plus, I love anticipation, so it's more fun for me to drag this out.

I bought these great drawers to hold my floss.  They are see-through, so I can see what color-family is in each drawer without having to open them.  The skeins are the same length as the drawers, so they fit neatly inside.  The drawers also come out and go in very easily, which is super convenient.  I have an empty forth one hidden under my craft table in anticipation of my surfeit of floss.

Stashed away in my little organizer is the DMC Shopper's Checklist from their website.  I have all the colors I own highlighted.  When I find myself in a store with embroidery floss, which is about  every 2 hours, I can check my handy list to see which colors I already have.  Right after my birthday, JoAnn's had floss on sale for 20 cents apiece, limit 30, so I have 60 new skeins.  I happened to go to two different JoAnn's that day. I contemplated going to my car, then going back in and buying 30 more, etc., but it takes a year-and-a-half for a cashier to ring up 30 individual skeins of floss ( . . . beep . . . beep . . . beep . . . beep . . . ), and I just didn't have the patience for more than 60.

I was going to explain "why" as in, "Why would someone decide they want every color of embroidery floss?" But  I suspect you know already. :)

Saturday was full of crafty museums and crafty mail.

First Marci and Amber came down to Philadelphia for some museum visiting.  Our first stop, where we hooked up with Amber's mom (who was way cool), was the Fabric Workshop and Museum.  My favorite part was Jean Shin's TEXTile.  The central piece is an interactive "fabric" using thousands of discarded computer keyboard keys embedded in a continuous textile approximately 25 feet in length.

I think it was my favorite because we got to touch it. Some of the keys actually worked, so viewers (like me!) could type using the fabric and see their typed letters appear on a video projection at the other end of the fabric.  It felt so interesting.  I liked running my hand over the keys - they were all sizes, heights, and colors.  Who knew there were so many colors of beige?  

Our next stop was the American Swedish Historical Museum to see the exhibition, In light of us - Weavings by Anita Grede.  The weavings were incredible.  Amber, the resident weaver in our little group, explained that Anita was taking several strands of fiber of different weights and colors (sometimes up to 15 at a time), twisting them together, and then using the resulting bundle to weave.  The effect was an impressionistic, pastel-like finished weaving.  They were dreamy.

Our last crafty stop was Jomar, whose fabric supply seems to be dwindling (Get on the ball, people!).  We didn't see my favorite fabric dude, but the 50-cent-a-card button box is significantly lighter, thanks to us.

Once I got home, I had awesome mail waiting for me.  I got my Tiny Original (image above, used with permission) from AshleyG of Kitty Genius fame.  Oh!  I love it.  I love the color of the paper.  They eyeless girl is so wonderful.  I like that I can't tell what her mood is - she could be upset, angry, sad, confused, inquisitive...  Not being able to determine her frame of mind makes her so intriguing and unsettling.  AshelyG also tucked in some awesome little extras - the cutest pins and postcards.

My other crafty mail was from Laurie from Old School Acres.  She sent her readers (who were brave enough to comment) a little package of goodies for her birthday.  How sweet is that?  The answer: really sweet.  Thanks Laurie! :) Do you see the awesome mushrooms hidden in the floral? Love it!

I've completed the crocheting of two bags this week and started two more - all for my mother-in-law.  Each of the seven bags I'm making for her is going to be different - different lining and embellishments.  The recipients don't read my blog, so I'll be able to show them to you guys as I finish them.

I don't have enough to do between crafting, my full time job, keeping myself clean, making sure I eat, and getting whipped at Scrabble.  So, I started a blog of the non-craft type.

I've been testing it out for the last couple days to see if it's really something I want to do, and things are going smoothly, so why not?

Thanks to an Amazon gift certificate, I am now the proud owner of this book.  It's so awesome!  It has a hidden spiral binding, so it'll lay flat.  The table of contents has little pictures of each stitch to help you pick where you want to go in the book. Yay!  The pictures and colors in this book are wonderful.  I can't wait to get started on my embroidery patch swap!

I finished one of each size of my bags in ecru cotton yarn so I could do a comparative set of photos.  I think the ecru works perfectly for generic product shots (i.e. "This is a Small Bag"), so people don't get hung up on the color or the embellishment.

Starting from the left, Mini, Slim, Small, Medium, Large.  The Slim bag is in half-double crochet and is flat when it's empty.  The rest of the bags are in single crochet and have flat bottoms so they easily stand on their own.

Andrew picked up a huge roll of white paper (25 yards of 36" wide Sign Writers Bond, 20lb.) that works perfectly for a backdrop.  We took a bazillion group and single photos.  I'm really pleased with them.  Next step, photo editing.

Yesterday we went to dinner at the best steakhouse in South Jersey with Andrew's parents.  I'm not a big meat-eater, especially when there are bones involved, but I absolutely *devour* the end-cut prime rib at The Library.  At dinner my mother-in-law asked if I'd make 7 bags for her to give as Holiday gifts!  I'm determined to get them done by Thanksgiving.  I've already started!

Yesterday I received the most wonderful box of gifts from Bitter Betty.  The packaging itself was a work of art, but there are no pictures of that, of course.  Who can wait to get the camera when there is a big box of birthday presents to open?  Not me.

Here is my very own Alice in Wonderland Egg (with Kate the Cat from Isa).  Mine all mine!  Bitter Betty let it slip that a package was coming my way and I hoped with all my hope that it was going to have an Alice the Wonderland Egg in it.  All the hoping paid off.  The egg will be getting it's own little shrine, but for now, Kate is keeping an eye on it for me.

When I was little, I would imagine myself living alone, away from the whole world, usually in the woods behind my Grandmother's house.  Now my secret place is going to be inside this egg with the Cheshire Cat.  I want to crawl in there and live in it's red glitter center.  I'll peek out past the rick-rack occasionally, but for the most part, I'll just sit in the crook of the tree listening to riddles and napping.

The owl plate in the center of my monitor stand was the next gem in my box of presents.  As you can see, it's already become a part of my desk decor.  My burgeoning pin collection (the two owls were from Andrew this birthday) and some mini lucky stars have found a home here.  It's bizzarro-cool, and not a little creepy, yet totally compelling.  There is a face, a leaf, and a stem.  I'm not sure what the creator was going for, but "joyously unsettling" is my description.

The blue and green glaze is sparkly crackle glass.  I haven't seen anything like it.  It's totally unique and it's what gives the piece a whimsical, cheerful edge.

Goodness me.  Ruby Crowned Kinglette just informed me that my owl doesn't have a leaf and a stem, but, when turned upside right, my owl has a wing and a tail.

That's right, I had the plate upside down.

Maybe it was the green wing that tricked me into thinking it was a leaf. Perhaps it was Halloween-brain that turned the tail into a pumpkin-y stem.  The mystery as to why I couldn't see the owl, until it was pointed out to me, may never be solved.

Of course, now there is no mystery as to what the creator was going for. I have completely fallen in love with this plate!  Oh, it is the neatest owl depiction yet.  And, now it's perched on my monitor stand proper-like, and not hanging upside down like some kind of vampire owl.  Although vampire owls are a cool idea...

How crazy is it that the card accompanying my gifts was reversible?  Now it's like some cosmic joke.  From now on, I'll be sure to turn things upside down when they are perplexing me ... you never know when upside down is really upside right.

If you haven't read Heather Bailey's tutorial on making a knot for hand sewing, you must check it out.  I stumbled on it a couple months ago and it's totally changed my attitude towards hand sewing and embroidery.

Before, I would make knots by wrapping the thread around my finger a couple of times and then I would roll it off with my thumb.  I would get a big clumpy mess, or maybe no knot at all.  I ended up wasting a lot of thread.  I hated knots so much that I would make my initial piece of thread really long so I wouldn't need to knot again for a while.

Now I make a perfect knot every time.  It makes embroidery quicker.  I don't waste thread.  I have neat little knots to hide instead of rat's nests of thread. The best is that I can use my short left-over thread because I can make a neat knot right at the end of it.

I'm going to participate in Red Button Tree's embroidered patch swap.  As sad as it sounds, I probably wouldn't have considered participating if I didn't know about this knot.  This will be my first group swap.  I'm planning on making three patches (the more you send, the more you get).  If you are interested, get over there and get the info.  You have until November 15th to send her your patches.

I'm loving my birthday season this year.  I've taken some time off work.  There's been some crafty fun, like the seamless crochet photo shoot, where the picture above came from. I'm also having *way* too much fun with Andrew playing games, watching movies, walking around, going out to eat, and sleeping.

I've been super neglectful of the blogs I read the last couple weeks, which makes me sad.  I love leaving comments, and I just haven't had the time to do it lately.  I have tons of posts saved in my bloglines, and I hope to catch up soon.

I've started to spend my birthday money.  Last week, Andrew and I went over to Art Star, our local indie art and handmade store, to get some prints by Stella Im Hultberg.  They only had one of the prints I wanted in stock, so I had them order the other two.  Actually, as we were browsing, they emailed Stella and she replied that she'd send them right out.  How cool is that?!

  Stella gave me permission to use these images in my post (I emailed her less than an hour ago).  Thank you, Stella!  And, not that this should matter when one is buying art, but I love the name Stella.  I used the name Stellan for my starfish. And, I like the actor Stellan Skarsgård just as much for his amazing movies as his wonderful name.  Stella let me know she's having her first solo show at Art Star in May.  I can't wait to see some of her original art in person.  Art Star has art installation/shows all year and puts on the Art Star Craft Bazaar in June.  Maybe some year I'll have a booth there ... a girl can dream.

I have a LCD monitor, which totally lightens the images.  When I got the actual print, I was struck by the warmth and depth of the colors.  In the image above, the lips are a wonderful rose color and the elbows and fingers have blood-red highlights.  Stella has her own distinctive style, but I love the hints of Egon Schiele in the hands and elbows.

These prints leave me awestruck.

I love making seamless crochet stuff.  It's great when I make the last stitch in my crochet item, and it's done.  Joining can be such a pain.  Since I can't find instructions anywhere (do you know of any?) that explain how to make something seamless, I'm going to publish the method I settled on after much trial and error.  The following instructions are for single crochet.

Basic Instructions

Row 1 - Make a row  of single crochet, slip stitch last single crochet to first single crochet, chain 1, turn clockwise.
Row 2 - single crochet in top of slip stitch, single crochet to end of row, slip stitch to first single crochet, chain 1, turn clockwise.
Row 3 - single crochet between the first and last stitches of the previous row, single crochet to end of row, slip stitch to first single crochet, chain 1, turn clockwise.
Repeat Row 3

Detailed instructions (text is above its corresponding photo)

1) Make a loop of single crochet stitches.  In my example, I used the Happy Hooker magic ring technique on page 52 and made a circle of 19 stitches. I count the slip stitch as number 20.



2) Slip stitch the last stitch to the first stitch of the row, chain one.



3) Turn clockwise (indicated by red arrows above) and single crochet in the top of the slip stitch. Turning clockwise is important.  I've tried everything I could think of, in all combinations ... clockwise, counterclockwise, turning differently every other row, doing the single crochet from the inside, wrapping the yarn in the front first ... turning the piece clockwise every row produces a consistent looking non-seam.



4) Single crochet to the end of the row for a total of 19 stitches. I know I'm at the end of my row when I see the vertical yarn from last row's turning chain.



5)   The next two photos are a different crochet piece (I don't want to confuse you), but they are a good close-up example of what I mean when I say "vertical yarn from last row's turning chain."  In the first picture, I'm on the second to the last stitch.  In the second picture, I've made the last stitch.  See the vertical yarn coming out of the next stitch?  Don't' stitch in that one.



6) Open the supplemental tutorial for images of this part of the process from the inside and outside of your item.

This step is:  slip stitch, chain one, turn clockwise, deep single crochet in the space between the first and last stitch of the previous row.




I make this deep single crochet to even out the huge bump you get if you just make a normal single crochet.  


7) The rest of the single crochet stitches in this row should be made as normal.  Repeat step 6 and 7 until your item is done.

Here is what the non-seam looks like.  The green parts show you what the slip stitch and turning chain look like as part of the fabric.  If you don't always turn your piece clockwise, this part will look randomly uneven.

I made my first sale on Etsy! It's so exciting.  I'm working on finishing a mini, slim, small, medium, and large handbag so I can take pictures of them together for size comparison.  Once they are done, I'll post them in the store, too.  I'm having such a great time with this.  Unbelievably fun!

This rest of this post has nothing to do with crafts ... it's just a story about me.

My birthday is coming up soon.  I'm an October baby, one of the many reasons Fall is my favorite time of year.  As I get older, the cash-to-presents ratio has been growing (more cash, less presents). I love it because I get to splurge on myself, which I normally don't do.

Now I have to change the subject ... but we'll get back to the birthday money in a minute.  In my early twenties I started getting terrible acne.  I tried everything to get rid of it, and I do mean *everything*.  After the dermatologist had me take antibiotics for a year with no improvement, I decided to take Accutane.  This stuff is intense.  I had to sign several forms saying that I understood terrible things might happen, like my corneas might turn permanently milky white.  Sounds good to me!  That is how badly I wanted to get rid of my acne.

Once a month, for 6 months, I gave blood.  The blood was analyzed, and they did a pregnancy test.  Accutane causes wicked-freaky babies, in fact, the blister pack had a line drawing of a deformed baby with a red circle with a red line through it printed over *every* pill.  Right after starting Accutane, my blood lipid (fat) levels were a little elevated, and my doctor became concerned.  I begged her to leave me on it for another week. I told her I would do whatever she asked to lower my lipid levels.

She told me to stop drinking alcohol and severely limit my fat intake.  So I did.  After a week I returned and my lipid levels were back to normal, so she left me on Accutane.  But, just in case you missed that, I couldn't eat much fat!  That means no donuts, no mayo, no cheese, no ice cream, no cookies, no butter - nothing that tastes good!

The dermatologist hadn't set any sort of level for my fat intake.  I arbitrarily decided I could eat 15 grams of fat a day, maximum. Most days, I don't think I even ate that.  I clearly remember being offered some M&Ms by a co-worker and counting out exactly 15-grams-of-fat worth.  It was a sad, sad time for yummy things.

To allay my fat cravings, I got creative.  I turned to scented candles and lip gloss.  Vanilla is my favorite flavor in most anything - ice cream, icing, cake, etc. The most yummy smelling candles in the world (THE WORLD) are buttercream scented Yankee candles.  From the time got home from work, to the time I went to bed, there was one burning in my apartment.  But, when I wasn't at home, I needed something portable, so I bought every vanilla lip gloss I could find.  Most of them suck ass.  The worst are the ones that don't taste like vanilla at all, but more like a weirdo banana flavor.

But, I fell in love when I found Smackers Roll-on Shiner in Va Va Vanilla by Bonne Bell.  This stuff is the best lip gloss in the world (THE WORLD).  It smells like vanilla cream cheese icing.  It tastes yummy.  It stays slick and shiny and never ever gets tacky or sticky.  Along with the candles, it got me through my six months of no fat.

Va Va Vanilla was my faithful companion for the next 7 years.  Until one day last year, when I was buying a replacement, I noticed that they were on sale for half-price.  I bought every lip gloss they had.  At first I was excited about the deal, but then it dawned on me that they were getting rid of all the Roll-on Shiners, and I started to worry.

I contacted Bonne Bell and found out that they were discontinuing Va Va Vanilla. (... oh, no ...)  They told me I could order it directly from them, at full price, of course, until they were out of stock.  I was not happy, to put it mildly.  If they weren't going to make it anymore, I wanted to find a sustainable source of good lip gloss.  I went out and spent a truck load of money to test all the current vanillas.

Yuck.  The worst was when I bought the one that plumps-up your lips.  I thought it was just a goofy marketing lie, but that stuff *stings* when you put it on.  And it *is* a lie, really.  It stings your lips and turns them red, but there is no plumping going on.

At this point in my failed quest, my birthday rolls around.  I'm sitting on a nice pile of cash from the relatives and wondering what to do with it.  I call Bonne Bell back and ask about the lip gloss again.  I'm informed that they have a couple hundred of them left (!) and they are selling them at half price now.

I did some calculations and figured that I use four lip glosses a year.  I had enough cash to buy 40 (a ten-year supply) plus have money left over - so that's what I did.  I thought I would look insane buying all they had, but that I would look reasonable only buying a ten-year supply.  I probably should have gone ahead and bought them all, because, at this point, it's all just shades of crazy.

The first question people ask is whether they are going to go bad.  I asked, and have *in writing*, that they have no shelf life.  They are going to last forever.   Some people think that should freak me out, but I'm the girl that took medication that could blind me ... lip gloss made with god-knows-what doesn't phase me at all. I use every last drop of the lip gloss before I throw it out, because I am *so* not looking forward to having to find a new lip gloss.

Soon, I'm going to have another pile of birthday cash.  I'm trying to think of something as good as a ten-year supply of lip gloss.  I've got some ideas, but I haven't decided yet.