A Week in Review

This past week I may not have been writing blog posts, but it was because I was doing so many other interesting things like celebrating my youngest daughter's 23rd birthday. My kids are not kids anymore!

I'm reading not one, but two, books: "The Geography of Bliss" by Eric Weiner which I am finding so interesting that I may have to do a book review for you later. Also my husband and I are reading this one together: "Murder Down Under" by Arthur W. Upfield. It is a murder mystery set in Western Australia, written in 1937. The language is a bit difficult in places, but reading aloud to each other makes it more fun.

I did weave a few things in between. Like this guitar strap which I find amusing because it uses an old tie-dyed t-shirt for warp (made into yarn by me) and recycled blue jeans for weft (it's a comercially available yarn from Kollage, called "Riveting".)

Several conversations with interesting folks about potential custom orders took place:
1) There was the guy from Montana who wanted to hunt in his buckskin clothes, but the state requires him to wear  Blaze Orange (Hunter's Safety Orange) so he asked if I could weave him a sash in Blaze Orange. I Googled to see what I could find in the way of yarn to accommodate this request.
There is a company, Bartlett Yarns in Harmony, Maine who makes some lovely-looking worsted wool yarn in this color.  And then I stumbled upon this knitter's blog because she mentioned having used this very yarn.  I inquired to see how she liked it and was rewarded with a friendly message and prompt analysis!  Too bad I never heard back from this customer; it would have been fun!
2) A representative of a very large textile manufacturer in North Carolina contacted me to see if I could weave 350 bracelets using some of their yarn in time for a trade show. I responded somewhat hesitantly to this request. Did I really want to do it? But, they do big business in this country and others, too, so I thought it might be interesting. Actually, I'm rather relieved that this order did not materialize, though.
3) A Canadian woman contacted me though to inquire if I would ship to Canada. This led to a long discussion of what she liked in my Etsy shops and ultimately, we agreed that a custom order was called for. I'm not going to go into detail about the project because I've asked her to take photos and write a guest post for the blog about it when we are done. I bet most of you, except maybe some Canadians have never heard of this one.

I've been working on some widget ads to promote new products and think if I had lots more time, I'd take up computer graphic design. My friend, Laverne, helped me out with this and referred me to the software she uses. Here I go downloading pure graphic potential! You can see one of the ads here on her blog. Scroll down until it appears in the sidebar.

Here's another one. 

One of my small works is in a small show at the Santa Cruz Art League, and I think I'll tell you more about that next time. We went to the show opening, but it was too crowded to get good  photos.