mellowbeing - crafty, geeky and a new yorker.
This entry has been in the works for quite a while and I've been quite the awful friend for not having written it up earlier and taken the appropriate pictures. A few months ago, I asked my friend Jessica from
Haasome if she could make me a bag in this incredibly gorgeous teal material she uses for her wallets. ( I told her at some point that if I could, I'd marry the patterned cloth. heh )
The finished bag:

Jessica made it with such intense labor as she described in a well written
blog entry about the process behind the bag. I have used it often since and appreciated it and today, I found the perfect little outfit to go out with it into a sultry 85 degree NYC day. Cute polka dot shirt and khaki shorts to go with my delicate, polka dot bag:

I must show the inside of the bag - the deep turquoise colored lining with little pockets for all the little things I must carry with me (keys, phone, napkins apparently). A little bit of self promotion: my own crochet phone cozy! See, not only the owner of the cozy empire but also a member ;) Also please note my custom knitting needles I bought from
Chelle last Christmas as a small gift to myself (or that was the excuse..) These are really great needles - I asked her to make them a custom length ( 8 inches ) as well since I was to use them in future train knitting that would facilitate my craftiness without poking those sitting near me. Also, the wood is so light that it doesn't tire me as my metal needles would. She's incredibly friendly and professional - definitely recommended for your knitting needles needs!

I also highly recommend Jessica's (Haasome)'s
shop! She has some very adorable wallets, pouches and aprons in her shop right now that you should definitely take a look at. I've been told that some purses of this sort would show up and hopefully this post will inspire some motivation. *hint hint* ;)
Labels: appreciation, knitting
A few of weeks ago,
Michelle from Eggman Studios, wrote a post on her blog asking if anyone would be interested in some less-than-perfect printouts from her printing experiments. I replied that I'd like one and she was very awesome to send me a perfect copy that was sales quality! I was secretly hoping she'd send the tree stump print she had
written about but I would've been happy with any of her work :)
I received this beautifully illustrated package while at the office. It made a nice little break from the work day in a the windowless room and see some pretty colors heh.

(to cover up my address, I've used a work in progress of mine.. call it a sneak preview ;)
I did indeed receive the tree stump print :D It's a great piece of artwork - it was going on my wall as soon as I could figure out how to show it off properly. Now, what kind of craft geek would I be if I didn't turn this gift into a project? Welp, I was on a mission to recreate the white frame Michelle uses in her listings.

I was a bit too eager to begin the project so I didn't get a shot of the print itself but I shall provide the one "borrowed" off her blog:

And so, the crafty afternoon began by trying to figure out which materials to use. I started off by choosing some rich yellow felt, some cardboard from an embroidery kit I apparently have (I really need to revisit my stash more often) and the necessary pencil and graph paper.

I was hoping to draw freehand the shape of the frame but in the end, I was getting very anal about the project and started to obsessively erase curves because they were too wide or tall on some sides. Best solution? Pick one corner you like best and just use that four ways. As shown here:

The graph paper ended up being smaller than the cardboard paper so I had to draw it and redraw a larger version onto the felt that was about 3/4" wider. I kind of liked the edge once I looked at it longer but a hand drawn black edge looked a bit messy. Now, my knitting was sitting next to me.. so.. I had to incorporate it :)

With my newly acquired embroidery skills so patiently taught to me by
Haasome at Etsy's Cupcake Crafts Day, I was on my way to embroidering the green yarn onto the felt. Btw, is it just me or is this post really color coordinated? The pink from the knitting matches the postage stamp, the pencil matches the felt and the green brings out the grass in the painting. Hmm..
I was contemplating whether to mix it up and place the print next to my smaller postcards or to give it its own special area. In the end, I figured this will have to go in its own little nook above my crafty stash. Without my further ado, voila!

p.s. If you'd like your own Black Forest Stump print, check out the
listing at
Eggman Studio's shop!
Labels: appreciation, crafty
Some notes from the Microbranding talk (I just transcribed them this week)
Long Tail TheoryAccording to Wikipedia.org, "Businesses with distribution power can sell a greater volume of items at small volumes than f popular items at large volumes."
The chart displays sales rank vs. inventory. From what I understood it to be, there are a small portion of companies that sell quite a lot and the 'long tail' is a good majority of the shops but they sell smaller quantities. In order to be a successful microbranded shop, you'd like to be somewhere in the corner of the green colored area so you are selling a nice amount of items and can still keep up with inventory.
New international market: Japan
Why? Japanese youth likes American culture a lot and are big consumers of American products (although that's true for many countries, he only mentioned this one as an example).
Some ideas for a blogger
- Run a "free gift" post to get more viewers (and bring out the lurkers).
- Use Google Translate (done! I got this idea from the Bent Objects blog)
- Create 3 Main Topics for you blog, then 3 subtopics for each. That way, you'll have 9 topics total which should be plenty to work with ( I really should narrow down the number of tags I have ).
Some sites to check out
- www.shapeshifters.net (creative people social networking site)
- www.deviantart.com (artistic community)
- www.dismantleddesigns.com
- www.theblackapple.typepad.com
- www.squiddo.com
- www.englishcut.com

So while researching "Beatles algorithm" in my failed attempt to find some programmatic algorithm to a Beatles song, I discovered this great blog entry: Great Blogging Tips from the Beatles
I found it so awesome - it's written as if the Beatles had had a blog, what would it be like, what kind of thought would go behind it, what would their principles be?
The ones I found most appealing:
Strive for Continual Improvement
"I’m pretty sure if John Lennon was a blogger, his attitude would have been that if his post didn’t come up high in the search engines, then let Google fix their algorithm."
Dream Big - Change the World
And of course, All you need is love :)
Labels: geekery, lecture, photography
After heading out to Etsy Labs with
Haasome for the talk titled -
The Global Microbrand: Further Resources - I came to the realization that blogging in of itself is very powerful and immersing oneself into the web 2.0 emerging communities is very helpful in getting more involved with like-minded crafty people and the crafty fans.
Some tips on becoming a better blogger:
1)
Listen to othersSign up for RSS feeds for your favorite blogs and try to at least skim them every day if possible.
2)
Say something Write about whatever you'd like but make it focused, meaningful and of course interesting. I hope I'm doing this.. but I am going to try to make them more focused posts with more of a 'message' to each one.
While at the talk, someone asked how she should set up her shop. I can't remember now if it was Antonio or fellow attendees who mentioned to her that it could be set up as "collections". That week I decide to start knitting up for the Fall season since I want try to make the most wristwarmers ever (only second year selling heh). It wasn't intentional but I guess it was a subconscious choice to pick just one skein of yarn and work with it until it was finished.
And hence, the "Blue Collection" was born! I still need to sew in the leftovers and sew on pretty silver buttons but I figured I'd post about them now as a "before" picture so you can see the semi-finished pieces. If you'd like me to reserve one for ya, let me know :)

Labels: knitting, lecture

Today's post is a quick one and a very recent discovery ( I just learned about it this morning. Edit: Thanks to my friend
Boris for telling me about this! :) ).
There's a new up and coming knitting & crochet social community website called
Ravelry.com. According to their site:
"Ravelry is a place for knitters, crocheters, designers, spinners, and dyers to keep track of their yarn, tools and pattern information, and look to others for ideas and inspiration...
...So what can you personally do on Ravelry? You can talk about your own projects, integrate that information into your personal website and contribute to someone else's project a world away."
Apparently it's incredibly popular already even though it's in seemingly alpha/beta mode. Who knew there was such a huge demand for a site only about knitting & crochet? I sent in my request for an invite to the site this morning and when I went to check around lunchtime what my status was on their list, these were the results:
* You are #16981 on the list.
* 11050 people are ahead of you in line.
* 204 people are behind you in line.
There are indeed yarn nerds other than myself but that's a lot of them! If you're already a user on the site, let me know what it's like - if it lives up to the hype, etc.
[Okay, I have several topics to write about that have been in the queue for at least a month and I will be getting through them soon!]
Labels: crafty, knitting, random
This entry has been a long way coming but I've been so busy that I haven't had time to take pictures while there's still daylight outside (I can barely wake up in time to make it to work as it is). [to note how late this entry is, these events took place on June 15 & 16]
Welp, I just wanted to share some photos with you from the events. The following is the black Etsy bag all the partiers got with goodies inside. I, being the klutz that I am, left mine in the taxi cab while traveling from that party to a friend's birthday party. While at
Renegade Craft Fair, the Etsy crew was nice enough to give me another one :D

The party was awesome. We (
Haasome, Kat, our friend Chris and I) had some pizza, Brooklyn lager and were too full to venture out and eat some cake. There was also a pinata broken which my friend
Kat was brave enough to go see and bring back goodies. We chatted with Haim, one of the Etsy admins, and had some good laughs.
The necklace in the picture is from
Imogene, whose booth I visited at Renegade Fair. It has become of my favorite pieces of jewelry - vintage key on brass necklace, it's so purdy :)

While at Renegade,
Haasome and I stopped by the
Adorn Magazine booth as we were about to leave. We figured, hey, why not and sign up for their raffle since it's happening in 15 minutes anyway? Well I was very lucky to be one of the 20 something winners. Eee! I, of course, needed more yarn.. (sarcasm goes here). Hehe, but I can't complain. I love the colors and they're perfect for winter knitting since they're wool yarns. I had been meaning to get some fabric glue and some bigger knitting needles so I'm so glad to have gotten this goodie bag! There's a hole puncher, a book on crochet scarves, ribbons and a few other things. Pretty sweet, eh?
Labels: crafty, knitting, shows, supplies
I've been meaning to write for some time now and of course I have a few ideas of what to write next but taking pictures of the things I'd like to show you has been hindering this process. So instead, I shall show you a photo someone else took!
I barely look at Blogger's list of featured blogs but today for some reason, I decided to give one blog on the list a try. Maybe with a name like "Bent Objects" my curiosity was piqued and I had an inkling that it'd be art inspired. And it is! I highly, highly recommend you visiting this blog ASAP. It's one persons adventures with wire and every day objects and put together to create sometimes hilarious, sometimes thought provoking pieces. This particular piece is just so funny and appropriate for a crafty blog :) There are some great posts there and I've already bookmarked it in my del.icio.us account.
(Geeky update: In one week, I have joined both digg.com and del.icio.us. Now all I need are Twitter and Flicker accounts and I will be fully integrated in the web 2.0 era. For now, I don't have much use for either site.. unless you have suggestions, dear readers?)
Labels: appreciation, artwork, crafty, photography