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.

A treasury...

courtesy of monkeytreecreations in honor of the March participants of TheSpottedBox!

Thanks for including my Erlenmeyer Terrarium kit!

It should be spring!

All around the garden, I'm seeing new things pop up. My daffodils are peeking up, my fig tree is starting to bud out, my forsythia is sneaking out a couple of blooms, I've got a crazy sedum, and my japanese maples are starting to look alive.

I also got my new toy in yesterday, and I hope to be introducing some new upcycled plastic creations to my fluffnfixings shop soon!

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!

It's been a good day.

Today has been a good day. What's so good?

Well, it rained for the first time in 26 days today! Hurrah! Things were starting to get thirsty and the half inch we got today will definitely help out.

Other than that, it's been a plastic wonderland. I made about twenty envelopes from old potting soil bags yesterday, and six clear ones from scrap 6 MIL plastic. I listed the six 6 MIL ones and plan on listing a set of ten of the potting soil mailers today.

I couldn't bear to part with all of them, so half of the potting soil bag envies are MINE! :D I got an order for a book off of paperbackswap, so it got packaged up in one of these and is out in the mail. I hope the person receiving it reuses it!

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! :)

Shiny objects...

Got distracted again. There's been a lot of stuff going on recently, and it's been a bit tough to keep up between doctor's appointments, imaging appointments, and life in general.

The EtsyOrganicTeam is off to a good start, and I've, apparently, been given full reign of the blog. So far, it's been a lot of fun, but not having flash really prevents me from keeping up with treasuries and that sort of thing.

It's also harvest time in them thar gardens. I've been doing a lot of seed sorting and harvesting, cropping and pruning, rooting and moving. It seems that fall is in the air, so it'll get really busy in another month or so. I've got a ton of bushes that I need to move to new homes.

I've also been dealing with a piecing nightmare. I came up with a pattern for a pair of pants and it's truly one of the most annoying things I've ever done. I haven't decided what's going to be victim first: the sewing machine or the square. Luckily, I bought 6 yards (a whopping $4.81 at 5% of the original price!!) so I've got some room to play with it.

Busy, busy, busy.

The past few days have been pretty busy.

Yesterday evening, I took a bunch of crappy pictures of seeds and put them into my etsy listings so that people could get a better idea of what the seeds look like before they get them. I know, when I first started growing from seed, I was shocked regularly when new seeds arrived and they didn't look like your stereotypical, clip-art seed.

I contacted the Georgia Market Bulletin, a Georgia Department of Agriculture newsletter, and asked about putting an ad to my etsy shop directly into my advertisement. They said that that wasn't allowed, but it was completely allowed to put my email address and forward interested buyers to an online shopping cart. It won't be up until next month, but I think it's worth a try for free. I'll see what happens after the first month and go from there.

I've also started writing up articles, I guess you could call them, about how to grow seeds. There's been a discussion about adding more info to listings, and I've decided that putting a link to additional info would look better than having a larger, cluttered listing with it all in there. The first is about growing tomatoes from seeds and is now in all of my tomato seed listings.

Cleaning and collecting seeds has been a large portion of my days, recently. Basil, tomatoes, nicotiana, etc. I can't wait until my ladybell seeds are ready! They're lovely and delicate and I'll be adding even more of the lovelies to my gardens next year. This is a great time of the year, for me, and I love the bustle of collecting and preserving things that will burst into life next year.

Outside of my plant world, both of my patients are doing well. I'm researching a new impulse sealer for my new shop, which will, hopefully, reduce the time and effort needed to create each envelope and mailer so that I can make them more affordable for more people. I'm really excited about that.

Tool review and little notes

For my birthday, my awesome mother got me this awesome tool. I went out and took some pictures of it yesterday, and I decided to post a review on it today.

The tool in question is a DeWit Half Moon Hand Hoe. I love DeWit tools, and there's not much else to it. I've visited their factory (who does that???) and have an assortment of their stuff, but this handhoe is probaby my new favorite.

It's well-balanced with a long neck. I'm pretty clumsy and have terrible visio-spatial skills, but I can wield this hoe like an extension of my arm. That's quite an excellent thing when you're not interested in crawling through expansive beds that can't really be compressed without damaging the plants.

xp

With this lovely, I'm able to sit on my stool and hack away. The small head makes it ideal for whacking around in between plants. For those of us who have limited mobility, it's an even sweeter deal, since not having to squat or kneel can mean actually being able move the day after a rigorous gardening session.

When the blade starts to lose its impressive edge, you're able to regrind and sharpen it without voiding the product guarantee/warantee.

What else is going on in my little world? MORE RAIN! The Weather Channel says that we've gotten only 1.5", but there's been an 8" increase in my collection pans -- without the funnel on. It looks like we're going to get more rain tomorrow, but I'd be very thankful if we got a couple of days to dry out so everything doesn't rot. Please?

Also, I got a little plug for my other shop, fluffnfixings, here.

A busy Etsy day

Today, I spent most of the day working on Etsy.

The photos I sent off to be printed have returned in multiples, and I posted the first picture on in my shop, today. I only had a few samples printed, but I will be adding those over the next few days. I'll see how much interest there is and go from there.

This morning, however, was dedicated to my new shop! I noticed a few months ago that people were interested in fused and salvaged plastic mailers, so I decided to open a new shop dedicated to them. I've been making mailers out of salvaged plastic for years and never thought that there might be people interested in buying them. I spent a few hours yesterday making them in a couple of different sizes, and a few more hours were spent today photographing and getting the listings together.

That'll be another wait-and-gauge-the-interest area, but I'll probably continue making up a stock of them just to make a dent in my ever-growing plastic scrap collection. The pictures above shove a large plastic mailer (left) and some fused plastic mailers (right).