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.

Pretty in Pink

Oh my goodness. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this apron. I wish it were a skirt, actually. Maybe I'll make one like this, but it will cover my butt, you know?

Right before I made this apron, I had fears that the pattern was too short, meaning that it wouldn't cover the rear end well. Not that it needs to, because you should be wearing something underneath. Unless you're being naughty, in which case it still doesn't need to cover the butt. But on another pattern (the peach and brown one a few posts down) my mom said it would look better if it extended around more. So I added several inches to this pattern before making it. Alas, it ended up being a bigger-sized apron. If your waist is smaller than 33 inches, then it won't tie shut because the sides will meet together first.

That's OK! I'm sure there are some larger ladies out there who would look great in this! It's really well-made -- there are no visible hemmed edges anywhere. Both sides are equally finished -- the inside waist is sewn carefully by hand.

It's for sale at Babycakes Aprons.



I can also make this in a smaller size, so contact me!

Hey, Babycakes!

Here are a few aprons I've made for my Babycakes label with my mom. I may have posted some other pictures a while back, but the lavender one is new.

Knock this one off the to-do list, too

A while ago, I published a big list of things I needed to sew. One was this top. I had designed and made this beautiful brocade skirt a year ago, but nothing matched it. I bought this fabric for the top this summer, but just got around to making it. It looks pretty good, here, but I definitely botched a lot of things on it. For instance, the zipper down the back has little puckers, but I have so much trouble with zippers, it looked pretty good overall. I thought that I better not take my chances with ripping the stitches and then doing a worse job next try. I just tried to steam out the puckers the best I could. I also have some bunchy areas in the armhole, underneath on one. This fabric was a pain in the ass to work with, so I'm just glad it's wearable and I can now wear this skirt!

Missions accomplished

I'm tired of living in a dirty house. When I had an apartment, I cleaned it top to bottom every week. In a larger house, it's just too overwhelming.

Recently, my coworker said that she had a friend with 7 rooms in his house, so he cleaned one per day. It was easy to do, because they were cleaned so regularly. I started to wonder if I could accomplish and stick with this. I'm giving it a try:

Sunday: downstairs bath
Monday: spare room, sewing room
Tuesday: sweep and mop all hard floors
Wednesday: den and living room
Thursday: master bedroom
Friday: master bath
Saturday: upstairs guest bath

So far, it's working well. It's maybe 1/2 an hour of work a day, and the house is so much more pleasant. Mark doesn't think I'll keep it up, but we'll see. I'm afraid I'm jinxing myself by mentioning it here. Also, I realize nobody cares, but thanks for reading anyway.

Today I accomplished:
Tuesday cleaning, cleaned the kitchen, walked/ran for half an hour, worked on a top I'm making, updated the Duke City Renegades Web site, uploaded some items for consignment at Bagadoodle.com, which may take a while to actually be posted. All this before work! Granted, I go to work at 3 p.m. ...

My craft show

I set up yesterday at a holiday arts and crafts show. It was held at an office building and had pretty steady browsers. I seemed to be the only dummy who didn't request two tables instead of one, even though it cost the same $15 to participate either way. But it worked out in my favor because I got a spot right by the door where everyone walked in and out. It was a spot too small for two tables.
Here's my setup:



The event was held 8-5, which meant I had to get up when it was, gasp, DARK! What an awful, awful feeling. The first 5 hours I sold nothing. I got nice compliments, including someone telling me my stuff should be in a gallery, not at a craft sale. A very butch, crew-cutted lesbian said, "Hey, I'd buy a purse, but ... well, you know," as she pointed to herself. I laughed pretty hard at that.

Finally, a lady who had wandered by quite a bit earlier in the day and said she'd be back actually did come back and bought a $50 bag. Then another person bought a handbag as a gift and my friend bought a bag, too. I also ran into a woman selling in another room who I'd met before. She had said months ago that she'd order a diaper bag from me for her daughter. When she saw me, she went ahead and placed the order, so that's in the works. In the end, the long day was worth while.

I felt a bit discouraged as I saw people eating up the cheap holiday crafts. You know, they'll fork over dough for a silly pumpkin craft or santa stuffed with candy, but not for a well-made bag they can use over and over and that is actually practical. But I guess that's what holiday craft shows are about, and that's why I will not do many more live shows, but stick more to the Internet.