Hallelujah!

That right there is LazyKid boarding the bus for the first day of kindergarten, the start of 9 months of me having 9 hours a day to work on stuff around the house and in my studio.

Huzzah!  Let's hear it for public education - the next best thing to boarding school!

Knitting milestone - reached!

Today was LazyKid's first visit to the unofficial "sock club" that convenes at my local yarn store every Saturday afternoon.  Well, she's been there before, but today - worldwide Knit in Public day - was her first time as a participant.  She got a couple inches of spool knitting done while attempting to charm the pants off of everyone in attendance.  She wolfed down her weight in blueberries, carrots, strawberries, and broccoli from the snack table.  She remembered the names of some of the ladies she had met before, and she was polite to all of them.  I was so proud of her, I didn't even remember to take a picture!

What do you say when everything was just ... perfect?

One week ago today I was in the car, driving through five states with a friend, en route to Squam Lake, New Hampshire.  The trip was easy, if long, and while we didn't see any moose ...

... we did see a deer fly off the hood of a car in the next lane on the highway.  Did you know that deer bounce when they hit the pavement at 65 mph?  Now that's something I never expected to learn at ...

Four and a half days of crafting bliss - just me and 150 other crafty people taking over a historic family summer retreat on an idyllic lake ...

... for classes, camaraderie, and (at least for me) a lot of this:

Our first class was at a cabin that was, as I fondly referred to it, at "the ass end of nowhere," which was reached via a brisk 10-minute hike through the woods ...

Luckily, I had a hearty breakfast that morning, so I even after the hike I was ready to tackle my first class - Latvian fingerless mitts in five color stranded knitting, with the incredible Beth Brown-Reinsel.  I've done colorwork before, but never with so many colors, and she really opened my eyes to some of the things I've been unintentionally doing wrong (can you say, "dominance? what dominance?").



Really, it's not that hard once you get used to the whole idea of controlled chaos on the back side of the piece.  Don't give me that look - you know you want to try it, too.  Look how easy it is - I didn't even break a sweat!

My class the next day was even farther away from our home cabin, which gave me plenty of time to gather inspiration from the woods around me.  I'll spare you the approximately 48,000 pictures I took of ferns, and instead show you the most interesting bit I stumbled upon:

I swear, those puppies looked so fake, I was tempted to see if somebody had hot-glued plastic mushrooms to the tree.  Anyway, I needed all the inspiration I could get, because I was supposed to be designing botanical-inspired things to print on fabric in Maya Donenfeld's awesome class.  I was also totally copying designs out of that Japanese book on the corner of the table :)



Squam wasn't just about crafting, though - there was plenty of time to enjoy the facility and its surroundings. I decided to use a free afternoon to drag myself up to the top of a mountain the hard way (i.e. on the shorter path that went straight up the side of the damn thing, which meant there was a lot of actual "dragging myself  up the hill" involved).  Luckily, the view was totally worth the schlepp.

My last class was only half a day, which was a shame because I really had a good time meeting Jared Flood and starting the blanket he designed.  The thing was so fun that I couldn't resist working on it more in the car on the way home.  

Luckily for me, wool is very absorbent, because there may or may not have been a few sniffles from my side of the car as we drove off into the sunset (well, actually just away from the sunrise, since we were heading west at an ungodly hour of the morning).

I'm not a normally effusive person, but I have to say, this was among my best vacations ever.  Nothing went wrong, everyone got along, I didn't forget anything, the people were nice, the place was spectacular, there was plenty to do, nobody thought you were weird if you didn't want to do anything but sit on a dock with your feet in the water, and everybody was crafty.  I'd go back in a heartbeat, and while I don't know if I'd say it was life-changing, it was certainly awesome.  And fun.  And inspiring.  And only slightly mosquito-filled.  So if you're even slightly crafty, go check it out.  You'll be glad you did.

I came, I S.A.W., I Squammed!

I'm still planning to put together my thoughts on the experience, but here's a video from Jen Grey that shows where I was last week.  I'm in the video (look for the red capris around 1:30-2:00) and my partner in crime is the lady in short overalls walking through the dining hall later in the movie.  Thank you, Jen, for capturing the experience so wonderfully and sharing it with us all!

You didn't think I'd skip the fundraising message here, did you?

This summer I'll be participating in a very special event called the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure. I'll walk 60 miles over the course of three days with thousands of other women and men. But as crazy as that sounds, that's not the end of it ... or rather, that's not the beginning. Because in order to survive walking 20 miles a day for three days, I have to train, and train hard. I'll be walking four times a week, every week, in every kind of weather, from now until the end of July. I'll be averaging more than 30 miles every week, for a total of more than 600 miles by the time I'm done. I'll be rearranging my schedule, fighting blisters and chafing and boredom, and dragging my 5-year-old "training partner" behind me in a wagon for part of it. Why on earth would I do this to myself? Because net proceeds from the Komen 3-Day for the Cure walk are invested in breast cancer research and community programs. I've been lucky so far - while breast cancer has touched the lives of my family and friends, so far it hasn't taken anyone I know. But unless something changes, it's only a matter of time. Consider these chilling facts: - Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and is the leading cause of death among women worldwide. - One person is diagnosed with breast cancer every three minutes in the United States. - A woman dies from breast cancer every 68 seconds. That's why I'm walking so far. To do something bold about breast cancer. With every step I take, I'll be helping to stomp out breast cancer. I hope that you'll share this incredible adventure with me - by supporting me in my fundraising efforts. I've agreed to raise at least $2,300 in donations. So I need your help. Would you please consider making a donation of $60? Keep in mind how far I'm walking - and how hard I'll have to train. I'm hoping to complete my fundraising by June 1, 2010, so that I can more fully concentrate on training as the event approaches. You can give online at The3Day.org. Just follow the link below to visit my personal fundraising Web page and make a donation. You can also call 800-996-3DAY to donate over the phone. Thank you in advance for your generosity! Sincerely, Gretchen Woods P.S. Ask your employer if they will double your donation through a matching gift program! Click here to visit my personal page. If the text above does not appear as a clickable link, you can visit the web address: http://www.the3day.org/site/TR/2010/ClevelandEvent2010?px=5018396&pg=personal&fr_id=1464&et=Py5QUNZdp2wZculbOglr5w..&s_tafId=415331

For more information about the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure or Susan G. Komen for the Cure, visit The3Day.org or call 800-996-3DAY.

That sound you hear is me pounding my head on the desk

As I think I've mentioned before, I have opened a second shop on etsy to sell my photos and related products. If you're not reading this through a feed reader, you can check out some of my new items over there <-- on the sidebar of the blog.

Getting this sucker ready to go has taken way more time and effort than I expected. After all, I already took the pictures - how hard could it be to get them listed? I didn't want to bother just listing one or two photos - nothing looks sadder than a store that's practically empty - so I wanted to be ready to populate it quickly when I was ready to go. That means that for the past few months, I've been going back through every digital photo I can locate, copying the ones I thought might be worthy of selling, and then winnowing the selection down to something reasonable.

I've been researching other etsy sellers to determine pricing, and shipping costs, and what sizes and products I might want to carry. I've been playing around with some different ways to present the photos, things that might set me apart from the 14 million other people shilling photos on etsy.

I've been editing the photos, cropping and color correcting and adding watermarks to keep the deadbeats from stealing my stuff.

And I've been procrastinating. The period of uncertainty at the beginning of any project is the worst for me ... I hate not knowing what I'm doing, I hate having to make decision after decision relating to things I know little about. If I could wave a magic wand and it could be DONE, that would be so much less stress-inducing. But that, of course, isn't possible, so instead I've just been ignoring it. I've been getting lots of knitting done, and cooking, and the house has been pretty clean for the past couple of months.

Until last week, when I realized that the two hours each week that I'm stuck sitting at the nature center while my daughter takes a science class is the perfect time for me and my laptop to have some quality time together. Two hours each week when I can focus, without any phones ringing or kids calling or wash that needs to be done.

I've been getting lots done, but my god, is it tedious.

open picture

edit to 5x7

correct color

save file

add watermark

shrink file

resave file

open etsy listing

copy and paste most of the description

manually select pretty much all the same options for the rest of the listing where I can't cut and paste

import pictures

save listing

repeat.

I just took a bathroom break to relieve the monotony - that's how boring it is.

But at the same time, it's really cool to go back through the files, picking the best of the best, seeing all the places we've been and things we've seen. Even if I never sell a single print, I've got some damn fine photos, and that makes me proud.

Proud of my princess

Lazy Kid is almost 5 now, so I figured it was time for her to try her hand at embroidery. Here she is with her first piece, about half of which she completed on her own, with my only help being to hold the hoop for her while she handled the needle and thread:

We used some leftover Aida cloth I had in my stash, and some perl cotton that my mother got at a yard sale or something (because I know I didn't buy it). We used a slightly sharpened tapestry needle - basically, whatever I could find that had an eye large enough for the cotton but was still small enough to fit through the holes in the cloth.

I got her started, making the knot and showing her how to handle the needle safely and make the stitches roughly where she wanted them. I did a cross for the center of the flower, and she filled in the rest. I did one leaf, she did the rest. I started the sun, she finished it. She was patient, moving the needle around until it came out exactly where she wanted. And she knew exactly what she wanted, specifying when I had to change the thread colors for her and even asking how to take out one stitch that didn't work the way she wanted it to.

And when she was done "drawing with string," she insisted that she had to sign her work. I did the "Z" and "A" in her name, and she did the rest.

I am unbearably proud of her. Now if she'd just show any interest in doing it again ...

Well thank goodness!

Today was LazyKid's first day of pre-K, and I had almost two hours to work on whatever I wanted in my studio. You should see all the Play/Move/Store bags I've got cut out, and all the legwarmers that are hemmed and waiting for their ribbons and packaging.

And I get to do this three times a week!

It's good to be back!

Mother's Helper

Oh, the joys of knowing a 13-year-old who will come and play with Lazy Kid for money while I get massive amounts of work done. In two four-hour bursts, I have:

- designed a new product for etsy (all that's missing are decent photos and a good name)

- made half a dozen of said new product

- finished up and published a pattern that's been sitting on my desk for months, just waiting to be proofread and listed

- listed and relisted almost a dozen items

- got together another submission of my Awesome Underappreciated Quilt Design, which goes out in tomorrow's mail.

- possibly spent a little too much of my "work" time on Ravelry, looking for "inspiration." Yeah, that's it! Inspiration!

Here's hoping she can come back next week so I can get these new dealios listed on etsy and write up a couple of extra patterns and edit some photos I might try to sell online and ... oh, crap, guess I'm going to need more than one day, huh?

Feeling all smug in a MacGyverish sort of way

Lazy Husband was just getting ready for bed and discovered a rather troubling steady drip of water that is coming from the top of our bedroom window frame and splashing loudly on our windowsill every 0.65 seconds. Aside from the hideous mold this leak is probably causing in our walls and attic, the sound is enough to drive you insane while trying to go to sleep.

Putting down a towel on the sill didn't help, it just made it into more of a splat than a plink, and at the rate the water is coming out the towel would be completely soaked before morning, anyway. Lazy Husband was about ready to give up and sleep in the guest room tonight when I had a brain flash.

I grabbed the leftover (organic, unbleached, undyed, ridiculously expensive) cotton yarn from this hat, taped one end to the wall above the leak, ran the length of it so it touched the drippy point on the frame, and stuck the other end in a plastic pitcher. Once I wetted down the yarn along its length, the water ran (silently!) down the yarn and into the pitcher.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, craft gods, for helping me get some sleep tonight. Because I'm going to need it when calling repair people tomorrow ...

Going out of business?

Okay, so if you're at all crafty you have probably heard about this, but it could stand to be repeated here because it WILL impact my business.

The government has recently passed a rather poorly-thought-out law,the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, which goes into effect February 10 2009. On the surface, it sounds good, requiring additional testing of children's toys and equipment to reduce exposure to lead and other harmful substances. Great! I'm all in favor of not poisoning our children.

The problem is, this applies to EVERY toy and children's item, not just those manufactured by large companies or places with histories of problems in the past. And the testing has to be done by an official third-party testing facility, which can charge hundreds of dollars for one test.

So, for example, the tummy time quilts I make to sell on etsy for $18-50 would have to be sent away for testing to make sure the materials and design are safe for kids. Every quilt is made of a unique blend of fabrics and a unique design, so testing one quilt won't apply to all of them. And pretty much every etsy artist who makes things for kids faces the same problem, unless they are large enough that they are mass-producing items (which includes maybe half a dozen etsy folks ... the rest of us make very limited runs of whatever we make). We're stay-at-home moms, crafty parents, owners of small businesses, people who just like to make little stuffed animals. And we're pissed.

Come February, we're going to have to make a choice - quit selling children's items, or be non-compliant and risk major fines and legal entanglements. Personally, I plan to quit selling kids stuff - the most profitable and popular part of my product line - rather than risk getting caught. And I know a lot of etsy folks feel the same way. So next Christmas, good luck finding handmade children's items that don't cost an arm and a leg ...

Unless we can modify the law. If you'd like to learn more about the topic and find a list of ways you can support artists who would be put out of business by CPSIA, pop on over to the round-up on Cool Mom Picks. Write your congressman and senator, contact the folks at the CPSC, sign the online petition, add the button to your blog.

Please take the time to look into the issue and add your voice of support, if you can. Thanks!

Before and after

This is the inside of my sewing machine.

This is the inside of my sewing machine after I sew a bunch of quilts, mermaid costumes, pillows, and other stuff without bothering to do any cleaning.

This is the pile of stuff I picked out of the inside of my sewing machine.

The sad thing is that I sort of let it collect on purpose, because it's more rewarding to fish out a huge pile of stuff than it is to pull out tiny bits of fluff. I am a sick, sick woman.

Happy happy joy joy

Photos of the studio reorganization:

The valance of awesomeness, next to the mobile of zen raindroppyness:


What makes the valance so awesome? See for yourself:

The heart of the redesign, which puts my sewing machine in a place that - for once - isn't facing a blank wall. Oh, the inspiration! Oh, the run-out room for my quilts! Oh, the ugly back of the desk that I covered up by thumbtacking an antique quilt over it!

Of course, my cutting area still looks like this, so there's still a ways to go before it's perfect, but we're getting better. Oh, and I cleared room to set up my photo lighting cube semi-permanently in the basement, so it won't be such a hassle to set it up and take it down for just one or two shots. This should make it easier to get stuff listed ... if I'd ever quit organizing and start sewing, that is!

Studio redesign

In my quest to turn an inadequate space into the most workable studio I can, I spent the entire morning rearranging the furniture in my office/studio. There are only two things that didn't get moved at all, and that was partly because I was too lazy to completely unload the 6-foot-tall bookcase :)

I'm most excited about the fact that I FINALLY took down the awful navy light-blocking curtains the previous owners left in the room. They've been open the whole time, but they were sucking the life out of the room, even when they were open all the way. I've got some fabric and trim set aside to make a valance for the room, which hopefully will get done this weekend, and I'm really excited about how those will turn out. I've had this fabric since about 2002, and I've never found a worthy project for it, but I think this is it.

And, I finally got the mobile hung up ... it's been hanging at a cockeyed angle off one of the curtain hooks since, um, Christmas.

I'm still trying to find homes for all of the orphan projects and in-process stuff, so I won't post a photo yet. Can't let you know what it's really like in here on a daily basis, now can I? That's the number one reason I don't do things like the "corners of my home" group on Flickr ... trust me, you don't want to see what goes on in the corners of MY home ;)

Genius at work

Proof that my daughter can now draw almost as well as I can ... and she's three.

Not bad for her first attempt at drawing a person, huh? I love the feet - they crack me up. Now, just wait until you see what I have planned for Lazy Kid's first portrait masterpiece ...

Crafty birthday

LazyToddler is now officially LazyKid, having turned three years old earlier this week. We had the party today, complete with garden-themed birthday cake and food. I'm not usually a theme party kinda girl (last year she got cheap pizza and an ice cream cake, and the year before that we gave her a Kroger cupcake three days late), but I had fun this year. The cake was the best part ...

LazyKid helped make the "seed packets," and she helped mix the cake, but I decorated the whole thing after she went to bed so the final product would be a surprise. Decorating a cake after 10pm leads to flights of fancy that may include (but are not limited to) ...

... giant worms ...

... and bunny turds.

I was a little bit worried that the cake was going to be awful - I monkeyed around with the size of the pan so I'd have plenty of "garden" to decorate, and it took almost twice as long to bake as the original recipe suggested. I even had to wrap the edges of the pan in foil partway through to keep them from getting overcooked. That worked pretty well, actually, and the edge piece that I had was just as moist as the middle.

I was also a little bit concerned because I didn't notice until I was halfway done making the frosting that it never gets cooked or heated after the raw egg is added. But I solved that problem by feeding a healthy dose of extra frosting to LazyHusband last night and watching him carefully for signs of food poisoning. It's excusable to throw your spouse under the bus in an effort to keep kids from dying of salmonella, right?

All in all, it was a fun party, even if I didn't get to do some of the more elaborate things I had planned. I guess if I had gone all Martha Stewart on the decorations and games, my friends would have had to slap some sense into me, and that would have been unfortunate. So we'll just save the "pin the center on the flower" game we made for next year, and thank our lucky stars that the "toss the bunny in the rabbit hole" game never got finished.

And if there's any lingering doubt about my ability to give Martha a run for her money, you need look no further than my attempt at Ladybug Pizzas to see ... I'm not even in her league.

Who knew canned chopped olives looked so disgusting? Oh, well, at least they tasted better than they looked.

Well, fine. Be that way.

Dear LazyToddler:

Okay, fine, you're almost three. I get it. You don't want to nap, you want to stay awake and become increasingly cranky as the day wears on, finally dropping from sheer exhaustion around 7:30. That's fine with me, as it gives me time in the evening to spend with your father, time that can be spent completing sentences and not speaking in the third person or telling stories about a fairy named Liza.

But I need time to work on Lazy Mama stuff, and since you aren't taking a nap with any regularity anymore, I thought I'd be smart and get up an hour early to get work done before you wake up. You get up around 7:30 am most days, so I'd get up at 6:30 and get a whole mess of stuff done despite still being in my pajamas. And it worked great ... the first day.

But now you've decided to start waking up earlier and earlier, no matter what time we put you to bed. Yesterday I woke up at 6:40, and you were up at 6:49. That's not even enough time to pee and get the computer turned on and operational, much less make any significant progress on the pattern that I HAVE TO HAVE FINISHED BY FRIDAY NIGHT. And when my alarm went off at 6:30 this morning, you were already stirring and making up stories with your stuffed animals. I just gave up and laid in bed for an extra 15 minutes, reveling in the hard rock station you apparently tuned my radio to sometime yesterday. Nothing like "BBBBBBBBBBad to the Bone" to start your day off right, I always say.

So now you're at preschool, and I have one and a half glorious hours to finish this darn pattern ... only I don't feel like it. I feel like blogging about your annoying sleep patterns, and the deer tracks I found in the backyard, and the yummyness of the pork roast I made for dinner last night. Oh, I'm going to get around to the pattern - I always do - but I'm not happy about it.

So you'd better be ready to take a nap this afternoon, kiddo, so I don't have to pull out the Sesame Street video again (although you're getting ridiculously close to being able to read, thanks to the darn video, so it's not all bad to have a DVD player as a babysitter, right?). Because despite my name, Lazy Mama isn't feeling so lazy today.

Sincerely,

Mama, aka "George Gershwin" (don't ask, Internet, it's not my fault that she's decided I'm a character from a stupid bedtime story involving Rhapsody in Blue and a little fairy named Liza ... at least I'm not Herr Drosselmeyer anymore)

How lazy am I?

Yesterday my daughter and I spent a half an hour making construction paper bunnies and chicks with cottonballs glued on to make them fuzzy. And today we made these:
Four days after Easter, using raw eggs, which ups the Laziness Quotient logarithmically, I think, sort of like the Richter scale. And we may not get around to putting the princess stickers on them until tomorrow. That's how lazy I am.

Anyone want to guess why I'm posting this today?

btw, the official music video is here, but they disabled embedding (and Angus was wearing normal clothes), so I had to pull this concert footage instead.

Why I got no (machine) sewing done this weekend

If that's not the perfect place to get some hand-sewing done, I don't know what is.