signing off from crafty blogging, starting up doggy and me blogging

Haha, so I'm totally kidding on that title. Awww shucks, I know people are dissapointed, but no Doggy and Me blog. But for those who have followed my myspace blog, they know that our 1 year old Chocolate Lab named Miles aka Duke often plays a minor to lead roll in my blogging. Hey, we hear all about people's kids, Pat and I don't have kids yet, so my furry family members take the place.

I pretty much wasted my day away doing absolutely nothing productive, yet when it came to dinner I was feeling too lazy to cook anything, so I ordered in- I've been having a major craving for french fries, so I was sure to get a "side order" of fries with my dinner.... well the side order turned out to be a huge container, and they were so good that I couldn't resist eating them all. The aftermath- feeling very sick, very disgusted, and just pain. Yep, gluttony at its finest :)

So after moping around for an hour or so I knew I needed to get off my lazy ass and walk the dog, so I decided to make up a bit for all those fries, I'd treat us to the long walk around the neighborhood. All was going swell until about a couple minutes before we got home. We were powerwalking down the road, lucky for us the sidewalk was wet and muddy so I was walking in the street, b/c all of sudden I hear a deep growl and see a massive black mass come lunging out of the driveway we were walking by. Uh oh. This massive black mass is the massive Rottweiler that is notorious for misbehaving, thanks to its stupid owners.

Background: About a year ago our downstairs neighbor was walking her German Shepherd Chi dog. These stupid owners of the rottie had just installed an invisible electric fence and had left their rottie out there unattended. Any idiot who knows jack shit about invisible electric fences for dogs, knows that when you first install them you can't just leave your dog unattended and assume just b/c your dog got a shock, he won't try to go through. Sometimes they don't realize that's why, it takes alot of training, other times they're smart and know that one little shock and they're home free to rome the neighbor, small price for a free roaming gallivant. Anyways, so Michelle and Chi are walking, and this rottie goes through its electric fence and gets into a pretty bad fight with Chi. Apparently the owners weren't home or were oblivious their dog was loose getting into a fight in the street, so Michelle got their number and called them to let them know their dog might be hurt. The owners got a bit snobby, trying to make Michelle feel like it was her fault for their dog getting loose. Yep.

So yes, that deep growl and a lunging rottie. Uh oh. They had been chaining him for along time but tonight they must have decided to try the electric fence again. So he's lunging and growling and in an instant he hits the invisible fence, if he got shocked he didn't yelp, and he's coming full speed at me and Miles. Now maybe he was just excited and wanted to get loose to play, I don't' know this dog, I only know his reputation from attacking Chi dog. But I wasn't taking any chances. Actually I didn't have a choice, out of no where, well from way deep down inside of me, out came the biggest loudest growl I've ever heard out of myself (sometimes these growls come out when Pat makes me really mad, but nothing quite like this). Maybe it was all the oil pulsing through my veins from the massive amounts of french fries I consumed, maybe it was a survival response at the thought of my cute little pup getting mauled, maybe it was what little motherly instincts I have in me. But whatever forced that monstrous growl from me, it worked in protecting me and Miles. As soon as it burst out of me the rottie did an instant 360 and ran right back up into his yard, letting out a yelp when he reached the front door.

I probably had every neighbor peaking out their blinds to see what the commotion was. The owners came flying out of their house. I was in such shock at what had just happened, all I could yell is "your dog got into the street". The woman frantically yelled back, "are you ok". Me "yeah, but I heard it's not the first time this has happened". I was powerwalking as this dialogue was going on, so if she had a response to that I was too far to hear it. I had so much adrenaline pumping through my body, and when I finally came to my senses a few moments later and realized what had just happened, I burst out laughing. I laughed non stop for the few minutes left to our house.

So that's the end of my adventure with Dukey boy for the night. Now to set the record straight, I don't hate rotties and I know not all of them are vicious like they have reps to be. I have known a few of the sweetest rotties around. But when you have a dog that has a reputation of being aggressive, and you know that your dog has been aggressive towards other dogs and people, and people have a tendency to be afraid of these dogs, have some common sense people! You don't leave your dog unattended on an electric fence that you know he goes through.

my first giveaway- Paying it forward

Of the many blogs I've discovered over the months, I want to thank Jan of Scoutie Girl for her recent "pay it forward" giveaway. I won! She generously gave away several of her wristlets with the stipulation that if you won, you have to do a similiar giveaway on your own blog or store site.... so here it goes!

I'll be drawing two winners- For the first winner I'll be giving away one of my 8 oz 100% Natural Soy Candles in the scent of the winner's choice (limited to what I have in stock). The second winner I draw will receive two of my roll on body oils in the scent of their choice (again, limited to what I have in stock).

To be entered you must leave a comment on this post, so come on out and say hello! Since I just started up this blog and don't have very many readers yet, you have a good chance! The only catch is you MUST be willing "pay it forward" to keep the kindness going and offer a similiar giveaway on you blog or website. In your comment also leave the site where you'll be holding the giveaway if you win. I'll leave the comments open until friday, April 4, and will pick the two winners at random on April 5. I'll post the winners here on the 5th.

Thanks so much! Have fun!

playing hooky

Today actually felt like spring. So much so that I put off my day job work and decided to head over to the reservoir with Miles for a nice hike and a good swim for him. I'm blessed to be able to shove my work onto the back burner.... most of it at least. I'd say about 75% of my day job work I'm able to schedule around my own personal schedule. Of course with the exception of the day my car battery died, go figure, the client wanted it that day.

The reservoir is so beautiful. They turned it into a public park a few years back, which has put a cramp in my swimming style. Yeah before you weren't supposed to swim there, but rarely did anyone come to check. Now you're not allowed to swim there, and now it's patrolled by a park ranger. Bummer. That picture was actually taken last summer, look how stinkin adorable Miles was! He looks like a little teddy bear :) I didn't leash him here, not sure on the leash rules for this place, but figured I'm going to get my third strike at some point, might as well be a beautiful day. We got through without too much trouble, he took off a few times to hang out with some fellow hikers, but they were all very nice about it. I came up with the good excuse of, "oh sorry, I'm trying to train him off the leash, still have some work to do!" smile smile. Seemed to do the trick today.

After we hiked and swam I managed to still feel inspired to sew. I finished up a dress last night and just finished up another today. This one I wanted to share b/c I don't do too much patchwork, and come to think of it I don't use reds very often, and I thought it came out pretty for a summery hippie sundress.

This is stock for Merlefest, where these dresses sell very well. I can hardly believe I sewed so much this week- two of these sundresses and three of the hemp jersey skirts. I think it's because I switched things up. The hemp skirts are my kind of style, simple with a cool applique.... I guess maybe you would call it more of an indie style, perhaps? And the dresses are more of the hippie/bohemian style that I originally established my website doing. Although I love doing the simpler stuff, sometimes I run out of creative ideas. That's when it was nice to jump into some patchwork stuff, mix it up a bit. I finished up the last hemp jersey skirt of the Fly By Night mini collection the other night.

I am definitely making myself one of these in the black cherry hemp jersey. Just have to decide on the applique. Those skirts are sooooo comfy! Yep, I figure if I tell myself that enough (that I'll be making myself one) I might actually do it. I'm notorious for not ever making myself anything. Ever since I opened Magnolia Skies, I always feel like I should be putting my creativity towards pieces for there, not myself. Silly, I know, I can take a couple of hours to make myself something every now and again!

Well I should get the hemp skirt onto the site and at least get an hour or two of computer work done for the day job. I have a custom tam I'm almost finished with, might have to put off finishing that one until tomorrow. I told myself I wouldn't stay up for Sex and the City tonight, and get to bed early. We'll see how that goes, ha!

OH and if you're reading this, check back tomorrow, I'll be posting a free give away!

if you build it, they will come....

and if it's empty, they still come.


Last night I added a new stat counter onto my website. My web host was providing me with stats, but for some reason back in November it stopped working. A combination of being lazy and really wanting to switch my hosts has been the reason for not contacting them to fix it. When I started blogging outside of Myspace I wanted to be able to track how many visitors I had and I found these guys, Statcounter


Well let me tell ya, this has really opened my eyes more to my website. This counter Rocks!!!! You can see every person and their location with this program, how long they stayed on each page, what pages they went to, who referred them and the keywords they used. My old stats gave most of this info but didn't connect it to the actually users. This program makes me feel like I'm visually seeing the customers walking through my store. Suddenly I started getting antsy that my store was empty of stuff to buy. Hey you, wait! I'll have more stuff soon, Hey you, wait, come back this weekend! Talk about motivation to get some new stuff on there! Whew, I wish I found this stat counter sooner. I"m sure the novelty will wear off soon enough, but I think the insight will stick. People around the world are visiting my site. People are searching out what I do. How cool! Hahah, you would think I just started my website! Nope, had it up for a couple years now, just over 3.


So this has inspired me to get my ass in gear and get some stuff on my site. Something I had planned on doing anyways, to get some funds to buy more supplies for vending. But now I'm planning an update for this weekend, instead of "sometime in the future". I even went ahead and put it on my website, "new hemp skirts coming this weekend". As in, Hey you over in California, Greece, New Zealand, Colorado, New York, etc., yeah you, come back this weekend, I swear there will be some new stuff on here!


With this inspiration, I made up this super cute skirt last night.



Just when I thought I was easing out of my hemp jersey obsession, something new to make out of it! No longer will it just be hemp jersey tops, this skirt is SO COMFY! It reminds me of my favorite jersey capris that I live in over the summer. Comfy enough to wear kicking around the house, cute enough to pair with a strappy little tank and some sandals for a day out. Uber cute, Uber comfy, what's better!? This is just a sneak preview, the color is a little off and there's a little surprise on the back too. It's going to be hard not to add this to my personal summer skirt collection. But it made up fairly fast, so I think I can spare the time to make myself a few. I have a huge stash of hemp jersey that I've dyed up just waiting to be put to use.... there's only so many ideas I can come up with for hoodie tops and wrap tops to use it for! But voila, a new use! My plans are to make up at least one or two more of these skirts for my site update this weekend. The perfect summer skirt if I do say so myself! Hmmm will this mean another bale of hemp jersey is lurking in the near future? Will that be crazy, purchasing 3 full bales of jersey in a years time? Haha!

Oh and HAPPY SPRING! Sure doesn't feel like spring here today, it's only 39 degrees. I'm so ready for the warm weather!

always a good reason to splurge

It's funny how easy it is to come up with a reason to treat myself to something :) I just purchased these from the ever so sweet Janell of Dancing Mooney

Well Ok this wasn't too much of a splurge b/c I had set aside some money WAY back in November for her to make me a custom necklace (for my birthday treat to myself). Things got hectic and I fell through on going through with it, so when she posted this new birdie necklace I had to snatch it up before it sold. And I've been eyeing her earrings forever now, so time to snatch those pretties up too. So technically, sometime in time, I had this money set aside specifically to put towards something from Janell. Sure, ok, I probably spent the money since, but shhhhhh...

Something that was a splurge, but luckily not an expensive one, was this gorgeous necklace I also just bought off of etsy from Glittery Blue.

If you frequent etsy frequently you may recognize this piece, I snatched it off the front page of featured hand picked items :) The pendant is a locket. I've been adoring all the locket necklaces on etsy, very charming. I can't wait to pick a picture to put in this one! Normally I wear sterling silver or white gold in the case of my wedding rings, but I guess the brass is starting to grow on me a bit. I love the vintage look of it. Or perhaps its all these brass buttons that I inherited from my Grandma, that I just picked up from my mom's house.

This is just a handful of them, I have a jar full. Mostly vintage military buttons. I like the ones that have the company info on the back, a bunch of them were made in the city next to us when it was known as the "brass city" for all the brass companies that were there. I used to love going through my grandma's button collection. She had a couple of these glass jars full of buttons.

I adored the jars themselves. Something magical about an antique glass jar full of miscellaneous buttons.... some having stories to tell, most just colorful common varieties taken off of clothing or picked up at the local department store. I only got one of the glass jars and a coffee jar full of the brass ones, she had a couple and I'm curious who took the other ones. Guess I can't be greedy :) I just can't picture anyone else in the family needing or appreciating the button collections.

Anyways, I managed to finally finish the two dresses I started a couple weeks ago. Somehow I got hooked on watching Sex and the City on TBS. I rarely watch tv, but for the past 2 or so weeks, every week night, I anxiously await for 11pm to roll around. Two back to back episodes. I love that show. Well I always thought of watching tv to be unproductive for me, but surprisingly this stint of staying up to watch tv has been really productive for me. Since Pat is in bed by about 9:30, and most of the time I done playing around on the computer about that time, I've been getting alot of work done b/t about 9pm and 11pm to midnight (depending on what night it is, the show comes on b/t 11pm and midnight). Last night it came on at midnight.... I haven't gotten down the schedule yet, so when 11pm rolled around and it wasn't on to midnight, I had an extra hour to get some more work done. I had started working on the dresses while chatting on the phone with Justine, and by the time my show came on I had both dresses done! Sweet! I haven't photographed them yet, they're just really simple cotton calico sundresses for vending stock so nothing to be dying to photograph and share. But maybe for another day :)

another week passing

I am an ultimate procrastinator. I work best under pressure. I had big plans to have alot of stock piled away already for Merlefest coming up in a month, but so far only have 4 children's skirts and a couple leftover pieces from last year that I never put on the site. Two weeks before Merlefest I will be sewing like mad, and two days before Merlefest I will be kicking myself for not buckling down and sewing months ahead of time, as I look at my measely stock and get upset that once again I've ruined a great chance at making a good profit at a very good event. And you see, I know all this is going to happen. I'm not predicting the future, I know me, I know the future of this. Here it is 3pm on a Wednesday. Last week I got absolutely no sewing done, this week is now halfway over and I still have not turned on my machines. Today I need to go grocery shopping and should put in a few hours of work for Dennis. Will my machines be turned on tonight? Will I want to sew this week?

Instead I daydream and research the thing I want to be doing. Printing. Why do I do this? All winter I had down time that I could have been researching and daydreaming and probably DOING what I want to do now, but no, I have to do it during festival crunch time. A huge part of me knows I need to push these daydreams to the back burner, atleast until after Merlefest, and focus on what's at hand. But a small part of me, that small but REALLY loud and nagging part of me won't let it be. *sigh*

Besides being an ultimate procrastinator, my other problem is not being able to focus on one thing with all the focus it deserves. I get distracted by my daydreaming. Yep, this is and will be a recurring theme here. Whenever I get down or anxious about this, we'll be hearing about it again here :)

I printed a few pieces with the screen I made, but realized right away I'm going to need to practice to get to where I want to be. Today I did some research b/c I can't seem to get a clean print, the ink always seems to stick in the screen in atleast one spot, usually more. So I did a quick search and found a really helpful page- turns out I'm printing the wrong way. Also I let the ink sit too long on the screen and since it's water based it set in some spots and I think I've ruined the screen. But I'm OK with that. Really. That's what I'll keep telling myself. Haha :) But really, I kind of figured it was going to be a bit trial and error like most things I do. One screen gone bad, but I gained some knowledge on what was going wrong... hopefully. I guess I'll see the next time I print. It just sucks because the screens are so damn expensive, and I have so many ideas..... I'm looking at about $20 an idea just for supplies, and about 2 hours an idea for creating the screen, and that doesn't include the hours spent on design time. But the good thing is once the screen is made, as long as I don't go screwing it up again with leaving the ink too long, the screen will last through hundreds of printings.

You see, I wanted to incorporate screen printing into my clothing for the festivals this summer, starting with Merlefest. But I waited until 2 months before Merlefest to try it out, instead of in November which is when I bought all the stuff to do it (my birthday present). Had I not procrastinated trying it out, I might have been good at it by now. But nope. Now I'm just wasting precious sewing time. That's why I just need to go back to sewing and appliques until Merlefest is over, then spend a few days practicing , and maybe, just maybe I'll be ready to use it for Clearwater festival if I'm lucky.

Today, like many days in the past couple months, and many days interspersed in the past couple years, has been a day of pondering the future and pondering the idea of taking big steps, leaps and bounds. When is it time to go from baby steps to taking one big giant leap? My biggest fear is the lack of self control.

I was going to try to make this blog mostly image heavy, but decided sometimes I don't want to show pictures, I just need to get stuff out of my head.

telling KLEENEX to BLOWOFF!

Every now and again I feel like getting on my environmental highhorse.... mostly to try to spread the word and educate the folks who don't know or don't realize.

I have Greenpeace on my friend's list over at Myspace, and always receive environmentally educating posts from them.... an ongoing one has been a campaign against Kleenex. Did you know that Kleenex (whose brands also include Cottonelle, Kotex, Viva, Huggies, and Scott) is PROUD to use OLD GROWTH clearcut forests???!!!! Who the hell in this day and age is PROUD to be such an environmental disgrace?! whelp Kleenex is!

Please check out this page over at Greenpeace for more information OR at the very least, let Kleenex know they need to blowoff with their stupid damaging practices and DON'T buy their products!

As this woman in Colorado so perfectly depicted,

Artist trade- Grace Sheese

Going back a couple of years ago, I was contacted by a lovely gal named Grace Sheese to make a custom coat. Over the years we've chatted over the phone and through emails and she's become a good cyber friend (unfortunately she's halfway across the country from me). Grace is a very talented potterist (hmmm I don't know if that's a word) and I've been blessed to now have some of her gorgeous art in my home. Words won't do her work justice so I've snapped a few pics of the pieces I have. About a year or so ago we did a trade, I made her a custom piece of clothing and she made me this vase.

A little less than a year ago our dog Delilah died and we had her cremated. I figured we would spread her ashed somewhere at one of our favorite hiking or swimming spots (she was my number one hiking pal and a lover of swimming like me) but Pat wanted to keep the ashes. Since she was his dog I didn't argue, but knew I if we were going to keep them we needed to get something special to put them in, since they were sent to us in a tin that looks like it should have Christmas cookies in it. I immediately thought of Grace's jars, and we planned on another trade, hemp clothing for this jar.

The detail in her pottery is amazing! I can get lost in it finding all the little treasures she's so carefully added. We love the coloring on this piece.... when asked what color we wanted for the jar, I passed the question on to Pat. "The color of Delilah" Pat told me, so matter of factly. So I was very happy when Grace told me she had this beautiful glaze, perfect! This jar arrived today and I am in awe of how gorgeous it is. I was sitting here doing some work on the computer earlier today, when I heard someone coming up our stairs. I looked out to see the postman with a big package for me. I couldn't for the life of me think what could be in that package, I had completely forgotten Grace had mailed the package (haha, even though she emailed me just last night telling me, yep, space cadet). Also in that package were these cups.

What an awesome surprise! Grace made these matching cups for Pat and me as a wedding gift! I love everything about them, especially the glazes and that one is a bit narrower than the other, his and hers!

Well I just wanted to share a few of my most treasured pieces of art in my house- these will always hold a very special place for me because they are my first gallery-quality pottery pieces in my art collection.

jumping on the bandwagon

I decided to make the switch from blogging at vox.com to blogger- I enjoyed vox, but it seems like most of my favorite bloggers are using this one so I'm jumping on board. I really wanted to transfer my old postings to this new one, but I'm facing the fact that it's going to take way too much time that I shouldn't be spending to do it. So for those who are interested, my older posts are at Vox here.