Reincarnation Sock Pattern

After a lapse of, well, way too long, I'm back in the pattern-writing saddle again!  First up:  Reincarnation Socks, the socks with a (replaceable) sole!

I got sick of having to throw out my handknit socks when I wore holes under the balls of my feet - it just didn't make sense to try to repair something that badly damaged.  But with this new construction technique, I can easily replace the toes, soles, and heels of any socks, with any yarn.  Sweet!

Plus, the pattern is in worsted weight wool on size 5 needles, so it goes zippy-quick.  And the Liberty Wool I used for the sample pair looks sooo cool when this technique is used - definitely an eye-catcher!

If you're interested in purchasing a pattern, you have three choices:
 - visit River Colors Studio, either online or in person, and pick up a copy there.
 - order one from my etsy shop.
 - in a hurry?  Download one NOW from my Ravelry page.

As always, I am available for moral and technical support while you're working on your project.  Just contact me through the blog, etsy, or Ravelry and let me know what's on your mind!

Looking to spruce up your walls?

I've got just the thing. Well, lots of things, actually:

Mermaid season approacheth

Well, once again my mermaid costume has been featured in the parenting.com list of cute Halloween costumes, so I guess it's time to haul out the satin and stretch velvet and give it a semi-permanent place on the cutting table (again).  Yay!

Breeding like, well,

This is what happens when I decide to make destash Easter rabbits for my daughter's preschool class ... they take over! That's fourteen rabbits, including the two evil zombie twins there in the back row. I'm partial to the decapitated bunny heads in the front rows, and not just because they took half as long to make :)

Anyway, the pattern is loosely based on my Zombie Bunny crochet pattern, which you can find in my etsy shop here.

Why yes, I am insane - why do you ask?

There's still time to order your custom Halloween costume ... mermaid tails are now available in a limited edition spectacular green scale print with purple backing.

Order ASAP for Halloween delivery, but definitely before Oct. 25.

Look! Free press for Lazy Mama!

I am really excited to have been included in a listing of etsy costumes available for Halloween. You can find the link here.

While you're there, check out some of the other costumes. We've got a lot of really talented folks on etsy, so if mermaids aren't your thing, maybe the baby sushi or cupcake costumes will float your boat. Sooooo cute!

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?

Rapunzel braids now in the shop

You can find them here.

My new favorite listing on etsy

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=19852075

(fwiw, I bought a DIY I Spy bag kit from aebaby, and it was wonderfully done, and just right for my pre-reading daughter. I highly recommend her stuff .... although I'd prefer a lower price on this one!)

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!

Custom order - finished!

What happens when someone wants to cross the Irish Hiking Hat with an Andean earflap hat? You get this ...

All details (tassels on braids, pointy top, color scheme) dictated by the customer, so I mainly get credit for figuring out how to combine three or four separate patterns and get one hat. Plus, I learned how to make a fleece lining for the hat, so between that and the really thick wool of the hat itself, the wind and snow don't stand a chance against this sucker.

Shameless cross-promotion

One of my friends has an etsy shop that hasn't had its first sale yet, despite her attractive products and reasonable prices. Check her out, and if you buy something, tell her LazyMama sent you!

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5846926

Pimpin' my homies

http://www.clevelandhandmade.com/?page_id=70

The Cleveland Handmade etsy team has an orange-and-black challenge going, with voting continuing until Sunday, October 26, so stop by the site and pick your favorite. Sign up for the mailing list at the same time, and you're entered to win a gift certificate good at any of the participating shops. Just in time for holiday shopping!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, I do have an entry - the Halloween Hexagons quilt. I can't decide whether I like this view better, or the view they used for the ballot - I guess it doesn't really matter, does it?

What I would buy for my husband ...

... if only I had sold a few more things on etsy this year. It would look awesome on the wall in his office.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=fp_feat_10&listing_id=15233947

Go check it out, and be amazed.

Show a Clevey some love

The Cleveland Handmade etsy team is doing a series of interviews with featured artists in the NE Ohio area. The first one is SaraKate, who makes really cool purses. You can check out the interview here, and her etsy shop here.

Way to go, SaraKate! You've got much more interesting answers to the questions than I'll come up with ;)

Attack of the (formerly) UFOs

After a brief family meeting, it was decided that I would take some time this weekend to get started on my holiday etsy shop sewing, since I've got Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas all looming on the horizon. My first goal was to clear out some of the UFOs that have been hanging around, clogging up the cutting table and taking up space in my brain.




So, in roughly the order they were completed, here's the list of the FOs from this weekend:

1. SWAK blanket as a gift for a friend.
2. Two custom mermaid costumes.
3. A school bag for Lazy Kid, who starts "real" preschool tomorrow.
4. Some throw pillow covers for Christmas, made from redwork patterns I got here. Sorry for the embarrassingly bad photo, but I was in a hurry. Notice I've got two pillow covers but only one pillow? Waiting for a sale at Joanns to get another one ...
5. Two eyelet lace SWAK blankets for the shop.
6. A Halloween Hexagon quilt from stash fabric, which is all basted and ready to start quilting.
7. Three madras plaid homespun SWAK blankets for the shop.
8. A swirly wool toddler/child hat that I'm insanely proud I designed myself. See how the stripes swirl and decrease toward the top of the hat? Brilliant!
9. Pieces for the next baby quilt for the shop cut out and ready to start piecing.
10. And, if I stop typing and get my butt in gear, I may be able to finish my first pair of winter socks of the season, which are about 3/4" from the toe decreases right now.

So I'm going off to watch football (yawn) and knit furiously fast. Hope your weekend was equally productive!

New listing - mermaid tail and tiara costume set

You know you want one - and they come in your size! So go buy one already ...

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=14789641

Mermaid tail for dress-up

Okay, when Lazy Kid spends all morning playing with her new imaginary friend, Alice the Mermaid, you can't expect me to refrain from busting out the sequins during naptime to make a mermaid tail, can you? Didn't think so.

Not bad for freehanding the design and basing the sizing off of a pair of leggings I swiped from her room after she was asleep. The fabric choice is admirably scaly (and from my stash, so therefore both free and studio-clearing), but the edges of the sequins are scratchy and have caused Lazy Kid to collapse in hysterics at least three times (since 4pm). Of course, she collapses in hysterics at least twice a day anyway, so it's probably not so bad, but I think any future iterations of this design will be made from the softer fabric Lazy Grandma used to make the shirt.

Future versions probably won't be lined in purple silk, either, but hey - I had it in the stash, and it was exactly the right size to fit the pattern pieces, so what's not to love about that? My daughter may have the only silk-lined dress up clothes in the state (country?), but that's fine by me.

So, how much would you be willing to pay for one of these for your daughter/granddaughter/niece/friend's kid? Would $30 be too much for a reversible, shiny-on-one-side, custom-fit play skirt? Too little? What do you think?

Very excited!

I got an order today to sell some of my SWAK swaddling blankets/nursing covers in a "lactation boutique" in a hospital in Georgia. Basically, it's a shop inside the hospital that focuses on things new mothers (especially those who breastfeed) might need. What a great idea! I wish I had had access to something similar when my daughter was first born ... we had a rough go of it at first, and a little extra support would have been appreciated.

Hospitals are a retail avenue I've been hoping to break into, but most don't have such a specialized shop. I'm not sure my blankets would sell next to the standard hospital gift shop "flowers and a get well card" fare, so I haven't investigated it too much.

Now I need to get off my butt and look for similar boutiques in other hospitals. Hurray for new business opportunities!

More hats

First there was the Irish Hiking Hat, made for my mother from cotton yarn I bought in Blacksburg.
She liked it so much that she asked me to make another one from the organic cotton yarn we salvaged from a really, really bagged out cardigan I made for her for Christmas last year (hint: The Fairly Easy Fair Isle doesn't translate well to thinner yarn on larger needles to get gauge). So after something like five hours of the two of us frogging and rewinding the yarn from the sweater, I got around to doing this:

Same hat as before, only now you can see the cables better. She liked THAT one so much, she decided that's what she wants me to do with all the yarn - make her enough hats so that she's not heartbroken when she loses one (which happens several times a winter). I was kinda sick of cables by then, and I didn't have enough of the next color to make the whole cable band, anyway, so I decided to practice my fair isle technique in a gauge that was a little more robust.

This hat totally kicks ass, and I think I may have to add a leash to it so she doesn't lose it the first time she wears it. Can't you just see it - an idiot hat instead of idiot mittens?

Since I came up with the pattern for this one all by myself (yay!), I can sell them if I want ... not sure I can get enough $$ for a hand-knit hat to justify the time spent making them, but they will make awesome Christmas presents for, oh, EVERYONE I'VE EVER MET.

Oh, and Laura - I totally need to teach you to knit, because these would be soooo nice in the CottonEase you like so much :)