Tuesday, October 21, 2008

New Patterns!

Woo!  New Patterns on Crochet Pages.  

A wacky Bean Sprout pattern.  
Also, a set of 6 snowflakes for Debbie! 

Hope everyone likes them!

Monday, October 20, 2008

Alien Cake for hubby's birthday.






Some design info:

Only the head is cake.  The body is marzipan.  The UFO is a foil pie plate, the space suit is aluminum foil with icing for trim.  The lights on the saucer are also icing.  Hands are dyed marzipan.  Head decorated with dyed cake gel with some decorator icing added to make it opaque.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Yarn Pixies Finally posted!

New Pattern at Crochet Pages!  I finally got the yarn pixies pattern settled and uploaded.  Enjoy!

Monday, October 13, 2008

Pattern Requests

Wow, I can tell the site had a huge surge in visits recently, I'm starting to get requests for specific patterns again.  With that in mind, there's a couple of things I would like to say about pattern requests.

1) Please, please feel free to send them.  Sometimes you guys think of things that never occurred to me.
2) Please give me some time to work something up, the bigger the project, the more lenient I'll ask you to be with the deadline.
3) Understand that I am a stereotypical artist of the worst sort.  I could have all the ideas in the world and the pattern still may not come to me. 

If I can come up with something, I will email it to you as soon as I have it and post the pattern on Crochet Pages, with a nod to you, as soon as I have the pictures for it.

If I can't come up with anything in a timely manner, I ask that you please do not take it personally.  It way mean I'm struggling with it, it may mean I have family commitments, it could mean work got crazy.  

Many of you know, although some don't, that I work for a major Arts and Crafts chain.  This means a couple of things - I love my job, I get to be creative every day, but also, I work retail.  I'm the Framing Manager at my local Michaels.  Which means, a minimum of 42 hours a week (if you include travel) I have no access to yarn or a computer.

It also means that this time of year, work will only get more and more hectic until about January.  Last year, I spent almost a week in New Jersey (driving 50 miles each way, every day) before Christmas, and a little over a week going to the same stores just after Christmas.  I put almost 6oo miles on my car the one week and over 800 the other.  I got gas for cheaper than I could in PA and didn't have to get out of my car in the cold (Jersey's all full service).  I loved it.  I love meeting new framers, you never know when you'll learn something new.  I got reimbursed for gas mileage, and I got a ton of overtime.

Unfortunately, I was getting up, going to work, filing my paperwork on the way home (I had to drive past my store, anyway), saying goodnight to my husband and going to be early.  I didn't have time to think about crochet.  If I start to get into a situation like that, I'll make sure I let you all know, but I wanted to mention it now, just so it doesn't come as a surprise later.

On that note, I need to get on with my day.
Thanks for reading and happy hooking to all!!

Monday, October 6, 2008

Back to reality.

So, my vacation's over now. I don't work until 2pm today, but it is officially back to work starting today.

What does this mean to you? Well, now that I'm done getting a tattoo and visiting Maryland and taking my best friend to a concert for her birthday, life will be getting back to normal. Which means, site updates and patterns!

I finally got the pixie photos from the friend I borrowed the camera from, so that means I'll get those up, and I'll be trying to do at least one new pattern every month from here out.

I will also be putting some time into getting the studio put together and working on some more t-shirt designs. I need to look into where I'm gonna have them printed at a little more, but right now I'm looking at PrintFection. I have mixed feeling about CafePress, because of the limits that they put on free accounts, and I'm just not a good fit for Zyraxia, even though they do hand screenprint all their shirts, which makes the printing more durable.

The draw back to Zyraxia is that they don't just print stuff because you submitted it. They review they design, decide if it's sellable, then, if they like it, it becomes they're design to do with as they see fit, and they run off a batch of shirts. The only way to make sure that they print your design is to upload it and order a full printing batch. Since I'm looking for print on demand, so I don't have to store or ship the shirts, not really what I was looking for, Also, I'll consider my designs a hit even if only one person other than me buys them. Not an option with Zyraxia.

Which is where I come back to PrintFection. Print on demand. When you want a shirt, they print that one shirt and then ship it off. They take their share and I get what's left.

Also, I've been working, finally, on support badges for a local charity group called Because We Care. One of the reasons I'm putting a lot of effort into the stuff for Because We Care is that it's run by an older woman and at this point in time, the only web-presence the group will have is what I give it on my website.

I've been rearranging the homepage somewhat to start working all this new stuff in, so you will be seeing some changes coming up. Hopefully, they will all be minor, at least visually. I think all the changes are going to be for the better and I hope you feel the same.

As always, thanks for reading and if you have any ideas or concerns, please, please, let me know!

Thursday, October 2, 2008

So, we were stuck in our house by police order today.

The details are a little fuzzy, but you can check out the story on our local news website, WFMZ.com or the local newspaper's site, The Morning Call.

Apparently our neighbors, or someone staying with them are bank robbers.

No really how I expected to spend my Thursday, but at the same time, everything seems to have resolved with no one injured, which is always good.

Although, I do have to say, it's a little disturbing to not know anything's going on and walk out your front door and see a SWAT team with assault rifles camped out behind and armored rescue vehicle.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

I always knew knitters were Crazy

A woman was arrested and now has to knit sweaters for her victims.
Story here