Small Business Saturday!

Instead of Black Friday mayhem at the mall, lets support the small businesses!

Through December 1, 10% off at my Etsy shop with the coupon code BLOGGER2010 or at Artfire, w/ no coupon code, but please let me know you got there via this post!

Happy holidays!

Sewing & coding, coding & sewing

For those of you who have built a website from the code up, you know how tedious it is. If you haven't done this, I don't recommend it!! I built my mother a website close to 10 years ago, if not a bit longer. I started with a blank notepad file & built it from scratch. I've decided that I need to have my own site, too.

Thanks to Liz from pesky.ca, I have a base to start from this time, but it still takes a long time to sort through photos, edit them, crop them, resize them, write the code, test the links, go to PayPal, create my buttons (hope that all the settings are good), etc etc. I'm not sure how long this is going to take me!

Add to that, I still have holiday sewing I need to do! I still have myriad gifts left to make for the family, and an order that I need to get out in about a week  & a half, which I'm waiting on a piece of fabric to arrive, before I get started on that one. UFOs UFOs UFOs....

Plus, I tested for a potential contract bookkeeping job yesterday, in hopes of picking up some side work to help make ends meet.

A is now 6-1/2 months old, and defiantly refusing to crawl. He'll sit on  his tush, lean AAAAAALL the way over & STRETCH for that toy, but he won't crawl for it. He'll grab the blanket or play mat & pull on it in order to move that toy to him (how's that for creative reasoning??), but he won't crawl. He rolls over and over, occasionally using that as a travel method, but he refuses to get those little knees under him. He is able to hold himself upright if I stand him at the coffee table. Something tells me that this guy is planning to take off running, and skip crawling entirely!

I suppose I should go find some more coffee & try to get some 'real' work done today. Wish me luck!

Changes!

They are a comin'!

I'm in the process of working on a new site, so bear with me. I hope to have my blog, shop & gallery all in one place once I'm done, but the setup and testing are going to take a bit of time.

Please bear with me!

Shhhh! Don't look now, but the holidays are coming!

The holidays are just around the corner, do you know what you're giving for gifts? No? Well, consider giving Handmade! Our family is having a handmade Christmas this year. I'm making ornaments, coasters, trivets, crayon rolls, tote bags, caramel popcorn and maybe a few other things.

Need some ideas? Check out my Etsy or Artfire shop! I can still take special orders, but remember, they can take up to 6 weeks, depending on what you want.

Take care, & happy shopping!

International Round Robins

I'm a member of the quilting board Scrappy Quilters, and they're running a quilt swap called an International Round Robin, or IRR for short. In this swap, participants are broken into groups (in our case, groups of 6). Each participant makes a center block for a quilt, plus a label for the quilt, and sends it on its merry way to the next participant. The next player then adds a small border to this block, signs the label, & sends it to player #3, who adds their own border & signature, mails it off, well, you get the picture. After your little block has made its way through all the members, you get it back as a grown-up completed top!

I was added to this swap at the last minute, so faced with no clue of what to do, I pulled out a block that Sam had designed using EQ7.

I've made a couple of modifications to her layout, picked my colors, and off I went.

It's quite a lot of pieces, but paper piecing, as difficult as it can be, results in beautiful, and I mean STUNNING corner perfection, which is an absolute necessity in a block like this.

I can't wait to see what the other players add for borders, although I must admit, I'm more than a teeny bit nervous about the quilts I get to work on. I've seen the centers, they are incredible. I feel outclassed! But it's all for fun, and it will be a great experience. 

Back to piecing, I have to send this little center off to Montana, ASAP!

New Storefront

So once again I find that I've been eyeball deep in sewing & other work, and have again neglected to post *any* of my work to this poor blog! No wonder I have so few followers!

In the past few weeks I've added an Artfire storefront, as well as completed some projects that have been waiting around, started some new ones, and done a few orders and gifts.

Back to the sewing machine!