Knitting Paraphenalia and Geekery

Last night, I expressed my inner geek and made these.


Up until last night, my double pointed knitting needles were tied or rubber banded together, which was extremely inconvenient. Add to it that, every time I needed to clarify the needle size, I had to look up which color was which set (great until you buy two sets in the same color!) or pull out my sometimes unreliable and unfindable needle sizer.

So I sealed together little needle cases. I love the look of the rolled cases, but I don't find them overly practical. Maybe I'm just a messy, careless knitter, but I was never careful enough to keep the roll just at the right angle to prevent needles from escaping or sliding around. With these, I just velcro them shut and throw them in my little knitting tool box. Handy!

I would like to use snaps instead of velcro on these, but I will probably not be getting a snap press in the near future.

Gotta get moving.

Spring is officially here! Only a couple more nights are expected to be below freezing, and I've got soooo much stuff to do. I'm a bit behind this year, but that's what I get for always finding a new way to get sick.

I've got a handful of seed orders that are still in the mail and I want them NOW! I said I wasn't going to do any orders, but I broke down and decided, with the newly expanded space, that I must have new stuff to fill it in. My tomato trading group seeds should be here Tuesday, and that's what I'm most excited about. I'd love to top 90 varieties grown this year, but we shall see.

Now for the master list:

- clean up property; bricks to the back, unusable corner, hay raked in
- start more seeds!
- get a roll (or two!) of concrete reinforcement wire for more tomato cages
- get water hooked up

Yay for front page!

Well, that lovely treasury that monkeysalwayslook put me in (I'll call her the evil wench, since she objected to the 'nice people' label) made it to the front page!

Yay!

It had my fly bags in it, and I think my little fluffnfixings shop got more views today than it normally gets in a month!

Achievements and goals.

I've finished my year end taxes, and I'm rather proud of how fluffnflowers has done. This year proves to be even better.

The acre piece of property that is owned by my guy's family is going to be demoed shortly. I hope to have it cleared and ready for planting this spring. I know that it'll take years to recondition the property into a fertile, perfect plot, but I think we'll be able to grow this year with minimal cultivation. I'm excited and can't wait to expand my tomato varieties and start growing larger quantities of some of my favorite heirloom 'other veggies'.

Sales have been extremely good this month, and I'm also excited for the rest of the year. As a go-get-'em-girl gift to myself, I bought a lovely sealer and hope to increased the value of the ecofriendly, recycled mailers in my fluffnfixings shop.

Not only that, but my friend monkeysalwayslook and I plan on opening up another endeavor that will be entertaining for us, if not profitable. Check out her shop, while you're at it. She's got the cutest little succulents in interesting containers. They're perfect if you're not up for an interesting plant that doesn't require the maintenance involved in outdoor gardening. She also has some pretty sexy vintage finds.

Here's to a new year!

Bit of a blog break.

As you might be able to tell, I took a bit of a blog break. Life is going swimmingly, but a couple of things have popped up that are requiring a bit of work. One of them may lead to my own little farm for the spring! Excitement.

I've spent a lot of time inside because of rain, recently, so I thought I'd share my current project. I got a bunch of plastic from the lovely Katy of girlindustries and have spent a lot of time piecing things together, testing, and thinking. She sent some clear bags that I just couldn't wreck by fusing. I, instead, trimmed off some undesirable lettering and added drawstring 'tubes' to the top. Now, I have some pretty fancy drawsting giftbags. I need to run them with some black cord, and they'll be finished!

Mmmm, compost!

I've been pretty productive for the past couple of days. I finally got around to dumping out one of my composters and can't wait to start filling it up again. I dumped it out after it got rained on, so I declined taking pictures of the finished product. I added some leaves and bark shreds to it, and it's now sitting in our 'pit' to cure.

I set up these composters about two years ago and they've served me well. Here are some pictures.We assembled a 'deck' out of scrap lumber and fixed a bunch of small, fixed casters we got at Harbor Freight for .35 each.

I cut a door in the end, screw in hinges, and a latch. I also used a hole cutter and drilled 1" holes in rows along the sides for ventilation and drainage.

We got the white bin from someone who attempted to make a standing bin. She was moving and it hadn't worked out for her, so we happily took it off of her hands and have a nice second bin. We had to modify the deck to work with the way it was cut.

You can see how the bins sit on the decks. They roll quite freely and it's soooo easy to get things mixed up. I knew I couldn't do the pitchfork/pile method, but this has been great for us. These bins maintained temperatures into the hundreds all winter last year, which I thought was pretty surprising.

I made it out alive!

I'm back home and comfy after my heart surgery. Sadly, the procedure wasn't as successful as we'd have liked, but we'll know better what the course of action will be in a month or so.

For now, I'm thrilled to be home, and I've been pretty busy. I've redone a couple of listings, added a few new listings, and have been getting together more promos to send out for the next big rush.

I spent some time before I went into the hospital cutting and finishing a bunch of glass bottles, so I've been taking pictures and introducing these 'pinch' garden kits. The containers are small, so I've chosen seeds that do well in tight quarters for several months. Spicy Globe Basil, Fern Leaf Bleeding Heart, and Jewels of Opar are some of the selections I've made.

Talk about neglect!

It's been almost a week since I last posted and there's been a lot of stuff going on. I'll probably be out for heart surgery by the end of the month, so I'll get to check out etsy's new, shiny vacation mode.

I've been working on various kits to list in my fluffnflowers shop, and have had a couple of fun ideas. One is this Erlenmeyer flask terrarium kit. I call it the flaskarium, and I hope someone finds it as charming as I do.

I've also started working on some 'garden in a bucket' kits, but I don't know how, exactly, I'm going to work that. I don't have an eye for arrangements, so I'll have to work on getting some shots better than this:

Too bad I stink at gift baskets! I'll have to work on it some more before I list it.

Some pretty Etsy things.

I haven't written much about my joining up with the Interior Design Team on etsy, so I figured it might be a good time to show some of the interesting and truly great things I've found through this group.

First would be MatthewHamblen. I can't even begin to explain how NOT an art critic I am, but I can't find one thing in his shop that doesn't pull me in and entrance me. Truly a beautiful tour and a wonderful artist.

Another fantastic shop is hillspeak. I'm not usually a fan of the 'shabby' look, but the mosaiced bird houses in this shop get lots of smiles from me. This is my absolute favorite.

I've come across BrazanDesign a handful of times and I always am completely drawn in by how clean and classy this shop is. I finally found a nightlight that my SO can sleep with, or one of these lovelies would be MINE!

Just a quick scan, for today. :)

Fused business 'cards'.

I had a lot of fun making these; and, while they're still obviously a first attempt and the design needs significant polishing, I'm pleased with the results. I've got several ideas for future designs, but I think these will keep me for awhile.

A bit of a break.

I got to take a short break over the weekend while visiting my in-laws. It was quite nice to come back to two sales, one in my fluffnflowers shop and one in my fluffnfixings shop. I'm a bit disappointed that the first sale in my fluffnfixings shop was not one of my upcycled mailers, but that's how it goes and you can't argue with any incoming moolah. :)

I've got a lot I need to do this week and a two days are already gone from it. I got my first business card order from vistaprint, and I must say that I'm very pleased. The colors are excellent, the printing and alignment is excellent, and the quality of the paper is also excellent. Even better, it was very inexpensive. I'd rather support an etsian or private printer, but it's hard to argue with the budget. I spent the morning collating (without the intention of binding them ;) them and have them ready to attach to my sample seed packs. I've got four or five people waiting for promos to include in packs, so I've got a lot of work to do on them.

Because I was pleased with my first order, I've placed a second order for a small run of labels (free except for the $3.93 rush shipping) that I plan on placing on my fused plastic 'business cards' that I cut out the other day for my fluffnfixings cards. I think these will be a LOT of fun to hand out and can't wait to get them. They take considerably more work, so I won't be handing out as many as the fluffnfixings cards.

Some hard decisions and some good things.

Fabulous! My toad lily has been blooming for the past two days, and here's a pic of one of the blooms. What I think is absolutely wonderful about it is that it's got blue on it. Not the wannabe blues that you see on most flowers, but true blue, dyed in the wool BLUE. I'm lovin' it lots. This is now my favorite flower, I think.

Besides that, I made the difficult decision today to cut back on the amount of recycled packing materials I use. A guy on freecycle asked if anyone had any spares, so I bit the bullet and put two large boxes out for him. He shreds them and uses them for other packing needs, so they're not just getting thrown away.

Most of them were too old and fragile to be reliable. His request came at a great time, because I'd already decided to stop using the ones in good shape. Why? you ask. Because, after three months of charting postage costs for private trades, I've found that reused bubble mailers increase the postage cost somewhere in the area of .16-.55 a mailer.

While it hurt, it seems like a good business decision and a good healthy home decision. I eliminated a large, ugly clutter that made me avoid my sewing room, and I'll now be able to reduce my shipping costs.

And the sugar on top is that I don't have to be concerned whether people are put off an old mailer, even if it was safe to ship in, and I don't have to worry about throwing away mailers I receive -- cuz I got the hookup, now. He gave me another box and told me that, as soon as I fill it up, he'd be happy to come and pick it up again.

As soon as I use up the stock of new mailers that I've been hoarding, I'll invest in some new bubble wrap and start making my own mailers to send my seeds. Using salvage plastics and saving money is even better than saving money! :)

Today, I rock.

I mentioned in an earlier entry that I was considering making some frog caves to post on etsy. I haven't had a ton of time and the weather has been less than ideal, so I haven't gotten around to it. Today, however, was a beautiful day with cooler temperatures and a lovely breeze, and I decided to go out and play in the tufa.

I ended up making two frog caves and four or five planters. I'll go out and take pictures of everything after the initial curing, but I made a dinosaur egg planter, three 'petrified log' planters, and one round bonsai tray. We'll see how those come out after they're safer to handle, but I'm pretty excited.

I decided to use an experimental mix which ended up coming out beautifully. True to form, though, I didn't bother to write it down and will probably never be able to replicate it's wonderfulness again! Everything came together beautifully, much easier than I'm used to, and it just made the creation so much less stressful and so satisfying.

If everything turned out well, I'll put these in for a soak and leach for a week or two and then get ready to list them in my shop. There's nothing like a day when things seem to create themselves!