Come on down, and don't forget your wallet.

I'm part of an Albuquerque, N.M., artist/artisans group called the Duke City Renegades. We're renting out the Factory on Fifth art studios for a group show next Friday, Nov. 30. I wanted to do a post about it, and figured the easiest way for me to do it was to steal the words right off of Ren's blog:


Winter Arts & Crafts Show
presented by the Duke City Renegades Art Guild

Come on by the Factory and get a little holiday shopping time in!

What:

The Duke City Renegades, a local arts & crafts guild, is hosting their first-ever winter art show.

You’ll find original paintings, art boxes, photography, designer purses & bags, crochet handicrafts, vintage-inspired jewelry, assemblage, beaded and hand-forged jewelry, and even recycled fashion clothing–all under one roof! A wide range of prices and items will give you something to talk about!

The show is indoors in the main Factory gallery building.

When:
Friday, November 30th, 2007. 4 p.m. - 10 p.m.

Where:
At the Factory on 5th Art Space (in the main red brick factory building).
1715 5th St. NW
Albuquerque, NM 87102
(between Aspen and Haines).

From I-40, take the 6th st. exit (one way, heading south), then make a left on Aspen and a left on 5th St. (one way, heading north). The Factory is on 5th St., right between Aspen and Haines.



Refreshments provided. Free parking.

Proshariffic

As if this cat video wasn't cute enough:



Someone had to go and do this translation to Human:

I told myself I wouldn't sew ...

I was going to NOT sew on my two days off last week, but I got antsy on the second night and whipped a few items up.





I also made another of these, but this one is a bit smaller. The first one came out big in the waist.



It matches the purse above, just in case anybody's into that.

I also made this for me recently, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I don't remember if I posted it yet:




MEANWHILE, the holiday season has been great. I've had a lot of sales in the past week. Plus, I have an order for 9 bags.
Here are a few items that are gone:

The ultimate guilt-tripper

I was trying to sew the other night and Roady would not stay off my chair. This means trying to sew with her either in my lap or squished behind me. I tried getting her her own chair next to mine, but every time I stood up, she'd snag my chair again. I kept tossing her down and telling her "no." Then I found her in this "tent" Mark made her, looking about as pathetic as possible and like she was freezing to death.

Cookin' food, lookin' fancy

Here are my most recent http://www.babycakesaprons.etsy.com. Lacy indeed.

For those little jobs

Sometimes I am sitting around darning socks and such, and this little pincushion ring is very handy:



I bought it from dottyral on etsy.com

Ass kicked by a rodent

Remember this post from a few days ago?
Well, Roady apparently is no longer king of the mountain. She has been deposed by this squirrel. I have never seen a squirrel in my yard before, but this one has taken over "the spot."

New style

This is my latest style. All of my bags are pretty boxy, so I wanted to do something softer and different.

Christmas orders

I've had some Christmas orders keeping me busy, which is great!
Here are a few I finished up over the past few days:



I took Wednesday off so I could sew, sew, sew. Mostly because I'm burned out at work and needed to do something else for a day.

Another girl

It's impossible to have a dress form and not feel it's a person and refer to it as "she" or "her."
I got this used one for modeling our aprons (my real dressmaker's form is very heavy) and taking to shows. It's really just for display and not for dressmaking purposes.

The four corners

Roady is still steadfast in defending her turf from Big Cat. She was waiting anxiously today when I woke up and ran straight to the door. When I didn't immediately follow, she started yowling. I saw Big Cat on the wall, so as I let Roady out, I also grabbed the hose. A few recent shots of water seemed to have been quite effective because this cat didn't used to run when it saw us. Now I didn't even have time to turn on the water before it was gone. Roady then stood sentinel at the spot where four yards meet together. This is the important place to be -- it's like king of the mountain. You can see four yards and the walls that the cats walk on. She's been there for an hour.

Now we're cookin'

Here are some more pictures of aprons for our new line Babycakes Aprons. My mom made these. They aren't posted for sale right now, but if anybody wants one, contact me through Burst of Happiness. She's going to see about getting a few into some local shops.

My mom always taught me that holiday fabrics were silly and not to be messed with. But she just made two adorable holiday aprons. The first one is a Thanksgiving apron with leaves on the outer layer, a burnt orange underskirt and a matching tulle layer in between. It's beautifully made:


This is a Christmas apron. It's a blue satin with silver design.


This is one I made, that's posted below. It's a little bigger, but I pulled the ties around and I think it looks really cute.

Spam: In a can or in my inbox, I hate it

I changed my email address not that long ago. I was giving up my ISP to go entirely through Qwest. It was going to cost me less and get me faster DSL. But I would have to use a Hotmail or Yahoo address, and I really didn't want to.

I wanted an email that sounded more professional and linked to my business. My brother hosts my Web site, www.burstofhappiness.com, so he set me up an email on the server.

I think my old ISP had lots of spam filters. I never got one piece of spam in all the years I used Cybermesa. Actually, I did one day. One day it flooded in so fast that I literally couldn't delete them as fast as they were coming in. Apparently, one of their employees turned a spam filter off.

Now, it seems I'm on some spam lists. I have no idea who sold my information or who found it and put it on a list, of course, so there's nothing to be done. I can change me email address, but it's on all of my business cards. Even if I did, you have to use an email address as a login for everywhere you go online these days, and it could just happen again.

I'm especially concerned I will lose a sale because when you're weeding through dozens of spam emails every morning, it's easy for a real message to get lost and dumped in the trash.

Maybe next time I need to order business cards, I'll have to consider changing the email address. Maybe I will change it to t-shirtface@burstofhappiness.com.

Winter wonders

A couple of things added to my shop, Burst of Happiness, in recent days:

Celery green, loosely knitted, fringed, boucle scarf:



What's black and white and gray and ivory? This bag. If you could see the fabric in person, you'd fall in love. Desperately in love. It's awesome -- you'll have to believe me:



Both are available at Burst of Happiness.

Roady had a really bad day

Poor kitty. Lately a big, strong, young cat has been coming around our yard being a bully. There is a turf war, and he wants our yard. My cats are simply not OK with this. There have been some vicious fights, to say the least. The other day, I had to break up a fight between Suggs and Big Cat that looked like a cartoon with a ball of cats rolling around the yard and fur flying everywhere. Lots of fur. Suggs was really shaken up after that and wasn't herself the rest of the day.

I don't let my cats out on Halloween. I just don't trust people not to do weird things on that day. When I woke up, Roady was waiting anxiously outside my door and ran straight down to the back door. She had her head peeking out the blinds and was growling at Big Cat, who was on the wall. I opened the blinds and Suggs, Roady and I just stood there looking at Big Cat. He stared back, but looked a little unnerved, like we must be up to something. Roady is hysterical because he's touching her yard and she can't do anything about it. She howls and yowls for hours. I don't get any peace from her till I take out the vacuum because she's terrified of the vacuum. It's pretty bad when the din of the vacuum is what brings you peace.

She goes and eats her breakfast, then comes inside and vomits everywhere. Then she follows me to the garage while I run on the treadmill. She wants to go inside, but she stubbornly doesn't want to use the cat door to the house. I know she knows how because she does it all the time, but she doesn't like it. So she goes up to it, stares, turns and runs around the garage and then starts it all over.

At one point she hops on some boxes next to the treadmill. Then she jumps onto the treadmill while I'm running, falls over and gets thrown off and into the stationary bike. I have to get off to see if she's OK and give her a hug. After my workout, I find her upstairs on the bed, totally defeated.

Today, I let her out. She promptly reclaimed her territory, left the yard (much to my dismay), found the cat a yard over and gave him a piece of her mind. I don't think there was a fight, and she came home promptly.

I foresee some medical bills in my future for abscesses. I am not a bad person, I am just loathe to take from my pets the one thing they love most: their back yard. I'm really not sure what to do about this other cat, so if anyone has any advice (serious advice, T-Shirt Face), please comment.