Happy Corduroy Appreciation Day!

11|11|11 – the date that most resembles corduroy (ever).

Today is Corduroy Appreciation Day and I have to say, I just love corduroy! I would encourage anyone interested in texture, luxury, class,  wales, and/or scholarly fabrics to try creating something with corduroy. My everyday messenger bag is made in part with this golden fabric of the Gods. It has moon faces on it as well because, well, it’s just out of this world. I think I will soon be making myself an autumn skirt with one of the many choice corduroys available to me. Perhaps the Plum wide wale, it’s delightful.

 

I thank you for sharing this beauteous day with me and I implore you to never underestimate the power of dressing in a classy fabric and remind you to remain wary of velvet.

 

HAIL TO THE WALE!

All Wales Welcome!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Treasure on the Island!

I’ve officially reserved myself a booth at the Treasure Island Flea for the weekend of November 26th and 27th at which I will be peddling my wares. Be there or be square, I say! I beg of you, attend, attend! Please oh please come see me at my fair! Ok, enough of that silliness.

Seriously though, it’s gonna be so much fun! I’ll be selling mostly bags (messenger style, big purse style, mostly organic, classic or otherwise cool fabrics) and knitted/crochet treasures such as hats, fingerless mittens and cowl scarves.

Have a whale of a time!

WHO: dinomeg and other fine artists as well as antiques, food, fun and games
WHAT: Open air market with artists, makers, creative people ($3 admission)
WHERE: Treasure Island, San Francisco
WHEN: Saturday and Sunday November 26th & 27th 9-4pm
WHY: Because you love handmade things and supporting this amateur blogger

Happy Halloween, my friends!

This Halloween unfortunately landed on a Monday which meant I couldn’t have very many late night plans. Too bad, so sad you might say. The Sunday prior, however was quite a delight at Dana’s house! She dressed as a sunflower and was just the cutest (I mean spookiest?) little plant there ever did grow.

I was in rare form the few days before… dare I say prepared?? I Made James’ costume on Saturday and my costume the night before. James was the ever charming, oh so handsome Commander Riker and I had a Halloween spirit manifesting itself as a creepy forest dress. And awesome witch boots.

I made my dress from a cool fabric from the Haunted Mansion collection by Sanae and used my own design. It has pockets and ruffled elastic for the straps, so cute! James’ I mean the Commander’s uniform top is made from organic cotton spandex and organic cotton soy fabrics. Our friend bought a star trek shirt online and I traced the pattern pieces from that to make one for my hun. Pretty Dashing, wouldn’t you agree? Commanding, even. Below you will see him in Danger Mode, ready with his phaser, aka my stun gun (it’s for safety when I come home from sewing dates late at night. Can’t have hooligans trying to jack my Singer).

 

Tough guy Riker

On Halloween night proper, I watched a scary movie at Julia’s but before that we needed to wait for our pizza so we wandered down town and costume spied. We saw some awesome costumes, there was the American Gothic couple with their giant picture frame on wheels, a few characters from Adventure Time, a great Doctor Who and TARDIS and then there was the Telescope Guy! He had a super cool homemade ball joint telescope and we got to look at the moon and at Jupiter with it’s moons. It was raaaaad! Julia (dressed as Red Ridinghood with her wolf fur lined cloak) is seen here in this “action” shot.

Kind of amazing, I know.

All in all, we had a pretty rad Halloween weekend. Boo!

Tell me what you love about Halloween!

New Life Plan

James and I are experiencing a variety of difficulties with continuing to live in Santa Cruz. Issues include but are not limited to cost of living, cost of living, and cost of living. It’s really expensive. We find ourselves working way too hard at our sort of okay paying jobs and then paying more than half of what we make to rent, bills, food and pet supplies (granted we have 4 cats, it’s still too much money gone on pay day). What else is there to do but wallow in our own depression, moping around and feeling sorry for ourselves? Haha, okay seriously, we aren’t that pathetic.

 

We sat down (well, more like went on a stroll) and made a plan!

 

Our stratagem is as follows:

1. Move forward with our lives as if we have no lives (i.e. do nothing, no going out, no extra spending, pretend we have zero dollars)
2. Save the heck out of our paychecks, pay down the credit card, fix the Camaro
3. Sell all of our junk that we don’t absolutely NEED
4. Have a ton of money
5. Throw the kitties in the car, drive to North Carolina and set up camp

 

NC Triangle: It's vintage cool.

 

In the mean time I’ll be working on my crafts to add to our money banks! I’ll be applying to the Treasure Island Flea in San Francisco for the November market, adding things to my Etsy shop, selling things in store fronts where I can, you name it! Check out my shop, come visit me at Treasure Island, go buy my stuff at Eco Carmel!

 

I need your support to follow my dreeeeeeeaaaaaaaamzzzz!!

Renegade Update

If you’ll remember with me, a few days ago we were waiting to hear from the Renegade folks whether or not we would have a booth at the Holiday show this year…

Next time, my friends.

Alas, our dreams have been stomped upon. Never fear, dear readers. We’ll try again in the summer and we’ll try again the winter after that.  We’ve got other crafty adventures ahead of us this year and one day we will vend to the Renegade masses!

Alpaca Farmer Scarf

When I grow up, one of my hopes and dreams is to be an alpaca farmer. My ultimate plan is to run the Noah’s Ark of magic farms. I will have two alpaca, two cows, two sheepsies, couple of cashmere goats, angora rabbits, Fiberous Joys!  James said he’s cool with all the animals as long as I do all the cleaning after them.. Eh, we’ll see how that goes.

Alpaca Farmer

Here’s what I used:
1 pair of 24″ knitting needles in size 10.5
2 pretty little stitch markers
1 darn useful darning needle
1 beyond soft skein of Cascade Eco Duo in grey and charcoal

What’s my gauge again?

5 sts / inch (gauge is not super important with this project)

Here’s how I did it:

CO 3 sts

Row 1: knit into front and back of first stitch, k, knit in front and back of final stitch (4 sts)

Rows 2-14: rep row 1 (17 sts at ent of row 14)

Row 15 (RS): sl as if to knit, k7, pm, yo, k, yo, pm, knit to end

Row 16: sl first st, k until first marker, p until second marker, k until end

Row 17: sl first st, k up to center stitch, yo, k, yo, k until end (beyond the 8 sts for your border, the number of stitches between the markers and the center stitch will increase by one with every odd row. For example, for this row you will have 1 st between the marker and the center stitch, for row 19 you will have 2.)

Rep rows 16-17 until your scarf is about 2 inches shy of the size you would like ending after completing a wrong side row (I stopped at 108 sts)

Ending border

RS: slip first st as if to knit, knit in front and back of second stitch, knit until last two stitches, knit in front and back of next stitch, knit last stitch.

WS: Knit even across

Repeat these two rows 8 times (ending after a WS row)

Now that you’ve finished your Farmer Scarf, wrap it ’round your neck and go tend to your flock!

                  

SF Renegade?

A few of my delightful friends and I have decided that we must craft for the Renegade! Now if you don’t know what the Renegade Craft Fair is then… well gosh, I don’t know. Ok, ok, just kidding, I’ll tell you! In a word, it’s Spectacular. Every summer and winter there is a show somewhere in the country (big cities like Chicago, Houston and San Francisco) where hundreds of independent artists come together to put together any crafter’s dream shopping mall. They set up 10′x10′ booths and showcase their handbags, handspun yarn, plushies, jewelry, paper crafts, EVERYTHING! It’s so the coolest thing ever! Now there are only 250 booth spaces and not surprisingly sometimes up to a few thousand people apply for a spot. That’s where we come in.

Here’s a little line up of some knitted things that I made that I’m fond of:

Triangle Alpaca Scarf

Camo Fingerless Mitts

Circus Stripes Hat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We four are called Fates and Furies and I oh so hope we get a booth at this crafting phenomenon called the Renegade. Broken up, we are Julia of Alchemy Tea, Dana of Peapod Design, Meri of Little Meri and me, Dinomeg! We are obviously cool so, you know, all we need is recognition.

We put in our application and we are excited to see whether or not we will get a space to show our wares.

 

Fingers crossed!

That was Craftacular!

This last Sunday was just about the greatest thing! My super bud Chelsea is leaving Hart’s pretty soon and she’s been wanting to do this craft fair for the longest time. It was pretty much her brainchild and, I have to say, a damn fine success.

Sewing is for friends!

She got there at about 7:30 in the morning (the thing started at 11) and just went to town on cleaning up the parking lot and making sure when vendors got there they were greeted and taken care of.

Kickin back after helping out

My baby brother volunteered to help set up the sound system so we could play music from James’ iPod all day. I had to go get him in the morning and then we ran to the fair to help set up the music and my booth.

James was super helpful in keeping me focused and on track with what I had to get done by the time customers started showing up (which included sewing on a couple of last minute buttons…). Once the fair really started rolling, I decided that it was totally worth the frenzied crafting and fair related stresses I had endured over the past few weeks. Totally worth it!!!

In the first ten minutes I made an $80 sale making me instantly out of stock of the two Owlie Totes I had made (I knew I should have made more!) and down two little snap wallets. This customer ended up coming back later to get a couple more items and to tell me that Chelsea and my booth was “definitely the cutest here.” It sure is exciting to get that kind of approval that quickly. This was the first fair I had participated in as a vendor and now I’m totally addicted!

Dana, Julia and I are now planning to apply to the SF Renegade Craft Fair (Holiday Edition). I’ll keep you updated on whether or not you can expect to see us there.

Good Times in Santa Cruz

So we got our article last week and it’s pretty much awesome. We met with our Good Times Weekly counterpart and had coffee and talked about crafts for almost 100 hours. Serious, it was a long chat. Christa was super sweet and seemed really interested in everything we had to say, asking follow up questions and prompting us to go in certain directions with the conversations. It was a real live bonafide interview.

Check out those celebrities!

Here’s the link to our Craftacular article in all it’s glory! Post a comment and tell me what you think! (I’ll give you a hint.. I LOVE IT!)

Craftacular Photoshoot!

In case you didn’t hear, Hart’s Fabric is having a super duper Craftacular Wonder Fair on August 28th. It’s gonna be pretty much the coolest thing ever! We’re having an article written for the Good Times Weekly and the writer we’ve been talking to needed us to take pictures for her to use. Dana, Chelsea and I were modeling and Julia was our photographer, it was so much fun! We went a little crazy and ended up with a ton of pictures so we don’t really know which ones will end up in the paper.

This one is a cute picture of us peeking out from behind Dana’s old Sovereign machine, I hope they use this one.

peek-a-boo!

Chelsea really wanted to do a jumping shot too so we took a few of those. What can I say? We’re just that excited about crafting! You can really see the delightful dresses we’re all wearing in this picture. super rad. (Psst, we each made our own dresses!!)

peek-a-boo!

Stay tuned my friends, I’ll be posting some details on some of the crafts I will be selling at the Craftacular (including a free pattern or two…) and I’ll post the Article that gets written for us too. Too much fun, I can’t stand it!! I better get crafting for the Fair