Well I thought I would be posting once a week here on my blog, sharing updates about new items in my store and also what's been going on behind the scenes, but it's turned out my blogging frequency is averaging about once a month. Oh well. Just take it as a sign that lots and lots has been going on around here...
I spent today listening to the
magical Joni Mitchell
and finishing a very cheerful afghan for a friend's baby shower this Saturday. It makes me happy just looking at this sunny afghan. I had fun making it and I plan on listing a made-to-order version of it in my shop this month. This pattern was found on Ravelry, it's a free pattern from DROPS Design, however I had to make a few changes for it to look the way I wanted, and of course changed the color scheme.
Halloween is this week, and I've had a lot of customers requesting more color options for
these little baby legwarmers, so that is my big project this week and next, getting more of those made and photographed and listed. Next year I'll have them in fun Halloween colors. I came up with a cute holiday color scheme that I think is really sweet. I'll share some images of that project when it's complete, later on in November. Here you can see the black option for the baby legwarmers, now available
here in the shop. These were requested for a baby Halloween costume and I was happy to quickly complete them and send them off in time for Halloween.
I feel like I've really been neglecting my drawing lately, and made a goal of at least doing some fun
ACEO sized drawings regularly to keep things active on that side of my brain. Not sure what I'll do with these, they're almost more of a stress-relieving activity than anything official, which sometimes turns out to be a better final drawing than when I really sit down to draw something specific. I think they might make cute tiny notebook covers, or greeting cards. Definitely need to keep brainstorming on them.
That's my cat, Jane, seen out my window as I sit inside with a cup of hot tea and my drawing pens at the ready.
Can you tell by this snowy drawing that I'm feeling ready for winter? No sign of snow in our yard yet, but other parts of Kentucky did see some flakes last week! I think it's exciting and inspiring, and makes me homesick sometimes for Michigan, where I grew up. My sister and I have agreed that if one of us wakes up before the other, and sees snow on the ground, we are to immediately wake the other up, no questions asked. It is that big of a deal, yes. I'm definitely going to be taking pictures and sharing them on here when we get our first snow. :)
I tried to take a break from television last week. I realized it was making me feel a little bit down, and getting into that bad cycle of comparing myself with the characters in the show and their homes, their jobs, etc. Sometimes that happens to me on facebook too, and I have to take a break from those kinds of activities that make me think I'm not measuring up.
My first day I attempted to break my tv addiction I completely failed and ended up binging and watching a whole bunch of episodes of The New Girl on Netflix. It's a cute show, but as usual, has me comparing my clothes and my body size, my career, everything... so I realized the quitting cold turkey technique was not going to work.
The next day I told myself I could watch tv, as long as it was something that aired on PBS. So I would at least be learning something. That worked awesome! I watched some Nova documentaries and loved it. I felt a lot less negative and down on myself and remembered how much I enjoy scientific and social documentaries. I think my brain had really been needing that. I even decided to go to the library and check out some books. I keep feeding myself these mental messages that I'm not allowed to read certain things, either because they're a waste of time or because they're shallow, or whatever little myth I make up... the day I went to the library I did something I've wanted to do for a long time, and people might cringe or judge... but it was so fun. I just went through the aisles at a very leisurely pace and picked out about 10 books based purely on their covers. I didn't read the back of them or anything. Some of them had interesting illustrations on the cover, or just an interesting title with a neat font. And wow, what a weird variety of stuff.
One of them I started reading and it was kind of a slow pace, not really my taste and wasn't really grabbing my attention. But the cover was very intriguing. It was called
"Lookaway, Lookaway." By Wilton Barnhardt. Isn't that an interesting cover?
I moved on to the next one and found out I had accidentally picked a book 8 in a series... oopsie. But it was super interesting so I went back the next day and checked out book number one. That one is called
"First Grave On The Right" by Darynda Jones.
I can see myself getting sucked right into reading the entire series. It's really grabbing my attention so far.
This little adventure is proving to be a really cool way to open up some of my old judgmental tendencies about only reading certain authors or genres. If I get my act together in November, I'll do a blog post on this fun adventure. I keep wanting to do some kind of book review post, after all the reading I've been doing. Anyone out there reading anything good?
My sister and I have been going for evening walks with the dogs and I saw this nice sunset last week. I think that was one of the nights it really got cold. One night we even walked in a very cold rain. The dogs really love it, and we have a nice warm wood stove to come inside to when we're done!
Today I'm leaving you with these sunny images of the finished afghan. I can't wait to start another one of these.
Here's a very colorful granny square afghan that's still in progress. I love how bright and happy this one is. It's going to be hard to let this one go...
Hope you have a good rest of the month!
