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.

SpottedBox Team treasury!

Thanks, paisleybaby, for including me in this treasury!

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!

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.

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.

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).