Hoot! Hoot! For hats!

OK so life started out this week crazy per usual….I am finally getting around to finishing up some hat orders for some Kiddos. I had an order for an owl hat. Now, I’ve seen these owl hats everywhere, and I’ve already made some penguin hats, which are very similar to the owls….just add some ears and tassels….and the beak a tad smaller, no big deal. The hat order was generic. The mom left me plenty of creative freedom. All I could picture was the owl from the Tootsie Pop commercials. “one…..Two….THREEEEEE!” I thought I would make the owl kinda woodsy looking. I wanted him brown, maybe dark and light, with some red and orange. The image I had in my head was great! Something very fall-ish like a Thanksgiving turkey—BUT MORE LIKE AN OWL.

The nearly finished hat? Not so much… I finished the hat portion, started the eyes….then placed the eyes on the owl before stitching them and I HATED IT. See for yourself:

It was horrible. I don’t know why, I was just put off by this. ZERO wow factor for me….I know it still needed the nose and such, but something just looked wrong. The colors reminded me more of a pair of grandpa pajama pants, or a 70’s shag carpet. BLECK! I don’t know if it was the red or the funky mango orange. Whatever I was just disappointed.

So I contacted the momma and let her know I was having an artists block. Similar to writers block but it happens to crafters too. I asked her if there were any other color choices she would like. She suggested blue and grey. Perfect, I had a new idea! I so I set aside the yucky hat, not sure what I wanted to do with that yet.

So creative juices were flowing again, and back to crocheting. Halfway through the blue and grey hat, BAM——I had that ah-ha moment where I figured out the durned brown hat. Over a days time (hit or miss between my 2 year old pulling yarn from my bag), I finished 2, yes 2 owl hats and I LOVE them.

I ripped out half of the brown hat, took out the orange stripe, then put the lighter brown back on. I really liked the olive green I added into the eyes. It really gave the owl that woodsy feel that I wanted from the beginning. Why not add some eyelash yarn for eyelashes? I really love this now and have NO PROBLEM putting my brand name on these. 🙂 Oh and I like the blue and grey one too. It was a great color combination from the mom. Thanks mom.

Have a look at some close ups.

I love the eyes!!!

The blue and grey really work well together

I used the green in the braid as well

So I have to say, I was pretty upset when the hat didn’t turn out how I wanted it to the first time. But now I have two finished products that I’m in love with. The mom will purchase one and the other will be listed for sale in my Etsy shop. This project may have taken me longer than normal, but I’m much happier letting my customer know I had a good reason for the delay, and I’m satisfied that I’m putting out a great product. Quality is more important to me.

To me this is what I call a Clever Catastrophe. Wink wink.

PS Don’t forget about my Fingerless Gloves Giveaway!!! If you haven’t checked it out yet, please do. We are 23 likes away from giving away an awesome pair of gloves!

As Always — Don’t forget to visit me on ETSY, and LIKE my page on Facebook to keep up with all the goodies!!!!

Fingerless Gloves Giveaway!!!

I haven’t been on my blog in AGES!!! But I miss you allllllll!

I can’t tell you how much has happened in the last few months, but it’s been a blast. I’ve done so much sewing, knitting, crocheting, painting, just so many crafts and awesome stuff! I have finally opened my own business. I have a shop on Etsy named These Old Blues, and I also network through my Facebook page also titled These Old Blues.

I don’t really have a ton of time to explain EVERYTHING that has happened but I wanted to promote my business, and share my very first giveaway!!! So this is priority for tonight.

Have you seen these gloves???

Fingerless gloves

Are they not awesome???? I love mine! I’ve been making these for years and there is finally a market for them and I cannot make them fast enough. These gloves are warm and cozy, great for typing on the computer, reading a book, or just keeping your arms and hands cozy on a rainy day.

These gloves are knitted by me, yes by hand! No machines, no funky plastic things that help you knit. These are painstakingly time consuming! What knitting project isn’t??  But they are sooooo worth the effort. The picture is shown in a Heather Grey with black accents, and a horseshoe cable. [The gloves in this picture are SOLD] I make them in three lengths: wrist length which is about 6-7″ from end to end, mid-length are about 12″ they come up the forearm, and the full-length gloves are about 21.” I use a very soft, 100% acrylic yarn. I use this yarn as much as possible in everything I do. I admit that sometimes I do purchase the rougher more traditional acrylic yarns, but only if a specific color request requires me to do so. I can tell you that these gloves are best in this brand of yarn, and I loveeeeee them.

So anyhoo, because everyone is RAVING about these I am going to treat my readers and Facebook fans to a giveaway.  When my Facebook fan page reaches 100 “LIKES” I will give away a custom pair of wrist-length fingerless gloves in a color (or two) of the winner’s choice.

Here is how to enter:

*First go to my Facebook fan page  found HERE and “Like” the page if you already haven’t.

*Then “Share” the post I have pinned at the top with the same picture of the gloves you see on this blog post.

*Once you have liked and shared my post, PLEASE come back here and comment on THIS blog post (not my Facebook page) and I will enter you here. Facebook frowns upon giveaways directly on Facebook, all these things I am learning as a new business owner.

***For my fans on Facebook who have already shared and commented on my photo, no harm done, YOU ARE STILL ENTERED in my contest.  I just went about the giveaway the wrong way…So sorry!*****

Anyhoo, I can’t wait to give a pair of these away! So please LIKE and SHARE!!!!

This contest will end at 9pm EST on the same day my fan page reaches 100 LIKES!

Thank you so much!

 

*****Winner announced!

Unfinished Business

Ever have a bunch of projects you started ages ago but you never finished? Remember this conversation yesterday about an A.D.D. kid in a game shop? This is where I come in. Do you know how many projects I have started and left unfinished?? You do? Well I don’t! Haha! I start new projects all the time because something inspires me and then….I either get bored or I decide to start something else new and exciting. I DO finish projects, [eventually *sigh*] don’t get me wrong, I just have a hard time staying on the same path for too long. I prioritize I should say.

I have a few baby showers coming up and I know I need to get me booty in gear (*arg –that’s right with the pirate attitude, I said ME BOOTY! What can I say, the kids are watching a pirate cartoon…) I need to get my baby projects rolling. Well my hindering factors include my baby girl, Shelby who is 15 months old, and blankie-less. Not completely, she has some handmade blankets from her Auntie Kayla (or, La-La as she calls her), and other random blankets, but she doesn’t have one from me. All my kids have a handmade blankie from me. I started crocheting Shelby’s blankie when I was pregnant and I was so excited about it!  I nearly finished it, but then she came 4 weeks early.

A blankie from Auntie Kayla

Another blankie from Auntie Kayla

Things were a little crazy then because I was totally unprepared for a preemie, well, who is? At least she wasn’t too early; she was definitely ready. Shelby was 7 pounds, 9 ounces! If I had gone completely to term she would have been 9 and 1/2 pounds, sheesh! My other children were all born at 38 weeks, and good sized as well, so this was a little bit of a shock having her coming this early. You would think that the 4^th time around I would be prepared, but nope, not me, queen of procrastination!

Just home form the hospital

So life was busy with a newbie and Shelby’s blankie went into a pile of stuff, yes, stuff. Then a few weeks ago, something randomly inspired me, I can’t tell you what that something was but there is a lot of randomness in my life if you can’t already tell. Anyhoo, back to the inspiration part, SOMETHING inspired me and I decided to pull out my box of handmade stuff that I put into a few craft shows. I was so excited to see all the beautiful things I created and attempted to sell at one point. Money is always tight around here so why don’t I sell them again I thought….ponder. Hmm.

Here I am staring at a potential business and I’m stumped at where to begin. I run into the problem again of choosing a direction. Everything I have is mostly knit and crocheted but I just get bored. I want to do more! Then I thought, what about Etsy? I could open an Etsy shop and because it’s online, I don’t HAVE to choose one direction, I can just include a little bit of everything can’t I? Sure I can! So on to new adventures. ***I’m not going to show you my crafts yet, I’ll save that for another post when I get my shop up and running. ***

This was a few weeks ago. And I’m still sitting here with no shop. What is wrong with me? Why do I have such a hard time making changes and moving forward with things. Well the big thing holding me back was Shelby’s blankie sitting in a pile of unfinished stuff. Something in my gut said that I couldn’t proceed to make any other kid a blanket or open up my shop without finishing my own daughter’s blankie first. I know I know, I could have posted all my cool stuff on Etsy by now, selling stuff and making money, but it just does not feel right until I at least finish Shelby’s blankie. So, I cracked the whip.

TA-DA!!!!! I finished it a few days ago, but I tucked it away because I have yet to weave in all the ends, I’ve been dreading it, it’s so time consuming and just boring. It is my least favorite part of knitting and crocheting. I find absolutely no joy in finishing a beautiful project then having to tuck in all the teensy pieces. When I’m done with a project that’s it, I’m DONE, I don’t want to do it anymore.

Doesn’t she look so cute? Oh yes, she is in a tie-dye shirt that I made myself….and the hat, oh jeez—yes I just finished the hat too! But I have to talk about the hats and tie dyeing later.  I have decided after taking some pictures of little Miss Shelby with it, I think I like the fringe. No, I’m not just being lazy and deciding not to weave in all the ends, I just think that the fringe looks pretty. Of course you normally wouldn’t see an afghan with fringe all up and down the sides, usually it’s on the ends. But I kinda like it. I’m debating whether or not to add more fringe so that it looks like it was meant to be there and not just me being lazy. Yes, I’m going to add more fringe, definitely. What do you think? Do you despise weaving in ends as much as I do? Do have a ba-zillion unfinished projects like I do? What’s next on your to-do list?

Don’t forget to visit me on ETSY, and LIKE my page on Facebook to keep up with all the goodies!!!!