Early Mornings

I won this yarn a week or so ago from "A Tree Huggers Wife" and am so in awe of the beautiful colors. It will take me some time before I can stop staring and turn it into something wonderful.

I have been rising a little earlier than usual this week. Ben started a.m. basketball practice on Monday and has to be at the gym by 6:05. Once I drop him off I have about an hour until DH and Anthony get up. A wonderfully quiet hour with no TV, no phones ringing, no texts pinging, no voices. That is my kind of heaven!

Last week I talked to a friend in Portland that had just finished a long weekend at a large craft fair where she usually does very well. She said sales were dismal and thinks the poor economy is to blame. Not only was attendance down by about 200 per day, but she said her sales were about 1/2 of last year. The interesting part is that she thought the quantity of items sold was up, but the $$ were down. "Little things are what sold", she said.

This got me rethinking my plans for the Christmas Fair I am doing the last weekend of November and first weekend of December. I decided to really build up my inventory of "stocking stuffer" type items. I grabbed my trusty notepad and started jotting ideas . . . . zipper pouches, hair clips, baby booties, t-towels, pot holders, coasters, bibs, totes, gift bag sets, headbands, rag dolls . . .

Do you have any idea how many tutorials are on the web these days? It is amazing . . . anything you could possibly want to make or create has a tutorial. When I wanted to make some headbands, all I had to do was search for headband tutorial and presto! After viewing all the great ideas, I sat down to work and created a bunch in one afternoon! I am going to list a couple on etsy today.

I will also will be adding some great vintage wool and wool-type fabrics (destash) as well as a fabulous 1940's dress print to my etsy vintage store. You can also see that the slide show has been updated with all the new patterns that are coming to my ebay store this week. Whew! That's allot of patterns to photograph and edit!