HN&S' First Craft Sale

     Although the title mostly diminishes the effect of a drumroll, I'm going to selfishly do one anyway:

     *drum roll please* .................... HN&S will be doing it's very first craft sale next month! How exciting is that? (Answer: very). In case you haven't noticed, I am personally very excited about this.  My childhood is speckled with memories of small craft sales and I'm both excited and nervous to be handling my own booth.  The craft sale will be held on November 5th at a local church (more details to come in a later blog entry).  It's is just a small one, as of last week 16 tables had registered, and the sale will only be on for one day.  I still haven't decided which products to stock up on though rest assure I will bring all my totes. Since the craft sale is so close to the New Line release date I've decided to feature it at the craft sale and see how many I can sell before releasing the product to the rest of the world. I'm also considering a nice little stack of slippers, scarves, shawls, cowls and possibly an afghan if I can find the time.  I'm also most likely going to be selling items from HN&S' sister shop "DoulaMonica" which features baby items such as cribquilts/sets, booties, plush lamb teddy bears and mobiles.  However, this is all conditional on how much time I have to dedicate to each item.  With exactly one month to go, and still playing catch up on the demo for the new line I'm skeptical of how well this will all go down.  But, with a good plan in place and lasting energy and motivation I can hopefully reach a nice and modest goal for the craft sale without turning into this:

Sleepy Mangled Kitty

     On a side note another exciting happening: I now have my business cards!! And they are fantastic!  A big thanks goes out to my friend Dave J for all his help!

My new awesome business cards!

     

Totes!

         For the past month I have been sewing totes like it's nobody's business!! ... Well, it's MY business, but you get the idea.  I must say I've become a pro at this pattern, though I really need to start making something different.  20 thousand totes from the same pattern isn't very good for business. But they are pretty sweet totes! 

Gurr is Keeper of the Totes!

     I've just started experimenting with linings and matching clutches (making my own patterns).  The clutches are still very much in the "trial and error" phase and have a couple kinks to work out but I hope to have a working product out and ready to sell within a few weeks to a month.

First attempt at lining and matching clutch

Turned out pretty good

     These totes are available for purchase on my Etsy site here or you can send me an e-mail at HookNeedleSpindle@hotmail.com.  Keep crafty!

6am sewing adventure

     As of late my health has been questionable which has confined me to my crochet chair or bed, leaving me ample time to get crafty. So this morning when I awoke at 6 am feeling like I was hit by a truck the natural thing for me to do was make some tea and get sewing.  Of course, being that early, Gurr, my affectionate kitty, was wide awake and ready to play.  By 7am we were having an adorable sewing adventure!

     First he was good and just lay on the opposite side of the sewing machine and glared at me through the hole of the machine, then he decided that wasn't getting enough of my attention so he decided to continually flop on what ever fabric made it onto his side!  This was quite challenging as he was far too adorable to move; I know, I'm a cat-loving wuss.
     Luckily he soon decided that wasn't good enough and needed to lay on my lap, and as awkward as it was, I did still manage to get some work done.  

     Not long after that he became super hyper and decided to cause mischief (or at the very least what he considered to be mischief).  He sat on a chair and stared at me, then when I got sewing he started picking scraps off the table and batting them to the floor. Then, grabbing them in his mouth like prey, he quickly ran to another room to play with his seemingly sneaky kill. This was far too adorable. He would then return several minutes later to hunt another scrap.  Before long there were no more scraps to be found on the table.... they were scattered all over the house!  So he came back up onto the chair, laid down and attempted to grab the handles off the bag I was sewing.  Then he rolled around on the chair being all cute like, jumped back up on my lap, ran a couple more laps around the house then, tuckered out climbed back onto the table and contented himself to lazily napping and gazing outside at traffic.

Laying on fabric that is clearly on HIS side of the sewing machine

Playing with scraps

"No mommy, this isn't one of your scraps at my feet!"

     On second thought, having gotten up early and feeling rotten doesn't seem so bad... at least not when you have a sewing partner who's so adorable and makes you smile the whole time :).  For more pics of this morning's sewing adventure, click here.