Preparing for the show!

Less than two weeks to go until the Crafty Feast Freedom Festival!  I've been working on a lot of other projects and consulting work outside of crafts so I haven't amassed as much of an inventory I would have liked up until this point.  I am busy taking pictures and recruiting models to take pictures of so I can have a book of designs to show and take custom orders while I am there.

I am working on small projects to sell like keyrings and dish/wash cloth sets.

 These are keyring lip balm or lip stick holders.  They are quick and easy to make and I can do a bunch in different colors.

 These keyrings are my favorite.  They are tiny crochet stuffed hearts and while it takes a bit more effort to make them  they are unique and cute!  I used this pattern as a starting point; however, since my hearts are much smaller a great deal more improvisation was in order.  I don't have the "pop" quality as the pattern does.  These hearts are about one to two inches high (depending on the yarn used), just the right size for cute adorable keyrings.

This beautiful unique dishcloth pattern comes from here.   I had tried my hand at knitting and while I did get the hang of it, it was a painstakingly slow process for me.  It's funny because knitters have told me they thought crochet was just as slow.  Anyway, the Tunisian afghan stitch gives me the ease of crochet with the look of knit and is really easy to pick up on and learn.  These dishcloths work up quickly.  I finished the set with the two scrubbies in less than an hour and the pink one in less than twenty minutes.  I did change the pattern...I wouldn't be me if I didn't.  I didn't sew up the ends like he suggested in the pattern.  I just slip stitched the wedges closed, drew in the middle stitches and single crocheted around the edges and added a chained loop to hang.

 One of my favorite hats to make is the crochet mesh cap.  They are light and airy and good for both summer and winter (at least in South Carolina).  The flower is a generic one and is detachable with a hair clip to be worn on the hat, on a headband, in the hair, or on a scarf or bag.  The yarn used is Bernat Satin (for both the flower and the hat) so it has a velvety feel and a sheen that doesn't translate through the photograph.

This one was made some time ago and is bigger than the black one.  The yarn is Vanna's Choice.  I didn't add a flower (although I am contemplating doing so).  I am going to do a few more of these mesh caps.  I have enough of the satin black to do at least two more and I'll make a few in pink for little girls to wear.

This is completely unrelated to crafts but worthy of a post.  My garden is finally producing!  Ok, so my "garden" only consists of peas and cucumbers.  Slugs and squirrels decimated everything else.  Given my shortage of space and limited time, my garden was reduced to elongated flower pots on my patio.  Just when I thought the 100 degree plus weather we had been having sounded the death knell for my cucumbers, a refreshing four-plus days of rain reinvigorated them and two are coming along quite nicely.  My peas are producing too.  It took them long enough.  The kids were excited, more so about the cucumbers than the peas.

Cucumbers are actually considered fruit biologically as well as peas.  It's something about them containing seeds which classifies them as being fruit.  This was a completely random and irrelevant factoid that concludes my ventures into gardening and tenth grade biology class for today :-).