International Shipping!

I'm getting all my shipping costs all worked out. Sadly, I had been guessing before at best. I have had my scale for a month or so and just haven't gotten around to weighing everything and looking up shipping costs. But I'm doing it now and I think almost everything has international shipping now. Not everything...but its getting there. Yay!!

I love thrift stores!

You can almost always find great stuff at thrift stores, at least if you have time and patience. Sometimes you find nothing, but other times you just hit it big. For all that my town is small and fairly remote, we have two fairly good thrift stores. The smaller of the two, I mostly check in once in a while to see if there is any yarn. Twice now I've gotten some pretty decent hauls. This last time (yesterday) I got some stuff by Cascade Yarns, three skeins DK weight for $3 (and their price tags originally were $4.95 a piece!) and three small mystery remnant balls that will work great either for my repurposed stuffed animals or maybe some doll clothes.

I just get to feel great when I rescue things from thrift stores and garage sales...take them from non-use and make them into something (hopefully) cool and loved.

The other, bigger thrift store, they have a $3 bag day every Friday (whatever you can fit in a paper bag for $3....dang good deal, let me tell you) And it is where I get fabric remnants to be made into reusable gift bags and the like. I also can dig in the boxes in the back (things to be thrown out) and take whatever I want for free. Some of it is in perfect or near perfect condition! Its just that they are so overloaded with stuff they can't sell it all (who buys regular cotton tshirts at thrift stores? we all have too many already!) and we're not in a location where its viable to ship extra stuff to 3rd world countries or whatever.

I get tshirts for my rugs and purses, tank tops for bags, sometimes more fabric bag there....occasionally some ribbons or lacy stuff to add to my bags. Its just really fun seeing what I can find in 20-30 minutes of digging around. I've walked out with multiple large bags before.

Oh yeah...then there is the fun of hunting for sweaters that I can unravel for yarn (only ones with the right seams work)--cause even if I pay full price for the sweater (I think its $1, maybe $2) that's still a great deal for the yarn. Sure, I've got to do some work to get it...but still! Odette Octopus is one of the critters made from a sweater yarn, I also have a hippo and a spider...with lots and lots more yarn to go! I may get sick of the color before I run out of yarn!

The long awaited dog

Its not done yet...if you look you'll notice its missing an arm. But since I was talking about it I wanted to post a picture anyway. Haven't settled on a name just yet but I am leaning towards the suggestion of Duke.

Newest Critter

So...I was messing around with some partially made stuffed animals (just the body with legs). I had two of them and was being goofy. I randomly stuck some eyes on it and thought, hey...add some arms and it would be a little alien critter or something.



Haven't done that, but Nathan (my boyfriend) suggested doing an octopus instead...so, here she is...Odette Octopus (made with yarn from an unravelled sweater)

Help! I'm having a color/pattern block

What I mean by that is I have been trying to do another rug.....I've got enough loops for 4 or 5 rugs....I've picked out colors that look good together. I start making a rug but I'm having a total block on the patterns. Anything I try to do just doesn't look good to me.

Here are a few that I've done. What I'd like to know, do you think I should do one with the warp (long way) all black, all white, mostly white with some black, or a color pattern. I love the way the ones with white and black turned out..but unfortunately I've used up almost all of the really bright shirts. (Did I mention these rugs are made from tshirts?). For that matter, I've used up most of my black and my white....I'd have to go see if the thrift store has more that are getting tossed out. I do have lots of navy blue. Lots of red I think too. Thought about maybe combining that but not sure.

Beginning

So many people seem to have blogs related to their shops. I figured it wouldn't hurt to have one too. I did have a xanga account but really wasn't so happy with the setup of it anymore.

So here I am. For starters, if you do like my shop but wonder why I don't have much for new items....right now I'm trying to work on items that were commissioned. A friend requested four hippos for his grandkids, and my boyfriend's grandma requested as many animals as I can do to raise money for the Breast Cancer Three Day...so I'm trying to balance making things for sale with that.

That being said, I've got a dog that is almost finished, as well as some smaller spiders than what are currently available in my shop.