Craft Fair

Leading up to the annual craft fair at the elementary school where I work is always insane, mainly because I usually decide to participate at the last minute (shame on me). This year I did the same thing. I wasn’t sure I had enough pieces to fill up a table and I certainly didn’t have enough time to make a bunch of new pieces. But a week before, I agreed to do it and then it was a frenzy of trying to create items the students would enjoy. In that week, I managed to make four Pokeballs, two poop emojis, eight doll purses, and two smiley emojis. That was it. Luckily, I still had some dolls and hats lying around that could fill up my half of the table. My lovely, artistic, amazing and super talented daughter had the other half filled with her artwork (bad mommy that I am, I didn’t take any pictures).

My booth at the craft fair at Promenade Elementary School

I noticed that there was another booth that was selling crocheted toys and they had a really nice setup with some really nice things. I felt too inadequate to actually go over there. I had a tiny table with a mish-mash of items. My daughter went over and checked out the competition and being the good daughter that she is, told me my stuff was more unique. Well, it was definitely that. None-the-less, I did better than I had in previous years. I only had a few pieces but I focused on things I thought the kids would like and I knew my students would come check out my booth no matter how small it was. Almost all the items I specifically made for the fair sold. I wish I had had more time to make more Pokeballs and emojis. Those sold out fast with the kids wanting more. The poop emojis didn’t last long either. But most exciting of all was that I sold the Elsa doll from Frozen and that red-headed doll in the top right of the picture (above).

Great picture of Elsa taken by a PTO mom.

I always get a little thrill when I sell one of my dolls AND no one tried to talk me down on the prices. One of the hardest parts for me is pricing my items. In previous years, people loved the work but thought they were too expensive. This year, the items just sold! I was so happy.

The making of some of the items on the table were chronicled on previous blog posts. The tooth with the toothbrush (sold), the Pokeballs (sold), the purpliciousdoll in the top row, the Christmas doll with the purple hat, the face emojis, the Elsa (sold) and Anna dolls, and the superman doll.

An added bonus of doing the fair is that I get to see my students, past and present. Lots of hugs were dispensed that day. My favorite part is when they tell me they still have and value something I made that they either got from our prize box or that they purchased from a previous craft fair. How wonderful is that!

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My Weed Garden

Not to0 long ago, my sis-in-law and friend was gazing out to my patio through the sliding glass door. She cocked her head and exhaled, “Huh, I never noticed that all your plants were the same.” I giggled  sheepishly because they were indeed all the same. I blurted out, they’re the only plants I can’t kill!” She laughed with understanding. She said they looked nice. I wasn’t sure if I should believe her.

Many years ago, someone, I can’t remember who because it was so long ago, commented that she (I’m pretty sure it was a she) hated this plant we saw in someone’s garden. It’s a succulent that has these big, shiny, tear drop shaped leaves. She said she hated them because they were the weeds of the succulents world. I didn’t say anything because I had some of those in my own garden. I was embarrassed to admit that I actually liked them. I didn’t know they were equivalent to weeds!

I have a black thumb when it comes to plants. I can pretty much kill anything except weeds. That hasn’t stopped me from trying to have a pretty garden , albeit with various degrees of success. I finally had to come to the conclusion that gardening just isn’t my thang. I know I can learn if I really wanted to but I just had to admit that I obviously didn’t want to.

My mom had once attempted to beautify my back yard with these lovely little flowers she bought for me. I looked at all those trays  of flowers and thought, “Oh no! death!” I politely told her that maybe planting those at my house wouldn’t be a good idea since I couldn’t be trusted with their care. She completely disregarded me and said all I had to do was water them. I thought but didn’t say, “If you say so….” My mom happily started digging and planting and sending me off to do various tasks, one of which was to water all those trays of flowers. I quickly did her bidding and asked what else I could do. When she was ready to start planting, she lifted one of the potted plants and said, “Didn’t I ask you to water these? They are still dry inside.” I replied that yes, I watered them. She saw me do it. She shook her head and said in Spanish, “These poor little plants. They were so excited to come to your home to be planted and now they’re thinking, why did you bring us here to die.” I just crookedly smiled and shrugged and she laughed. She said, “No wonder your plants die if you water them like that.” She kept planting them and told me to water them properly from now on. I’m sure nobody is surprised that they didn’t make it. Since then, I’ve tried different things, all mostly failures, until…

I decided I wasn’t going to be embarrassed for liking the weeds of the succulent world! How silly of me to let one person’s opinion color how I felt about certain plants. I chose to embrace that plant and used it all around my house! I couldn’t kill it no matter how much I neglected it. In fact, I could just cut off a stem, a leaf, or any part of it, stick it in some dirt, and voila! It grew. I loved it. It didn’t care if it only got watered when it rained. I even started wondering if I could do topiary with it. If I messed up, no harm no foul. I felt loved back by this plant because it refused to give up and die no matter what I did to it. Today, I saw a bunch of broken stems and leaves on the ground outside because we had some strong winds. I grabbed them, found a cute pot that’s been rolling around outside and put some dirt in it, some pretty rocks and those broken bits plus I cut some more and shoved them right in. I put it on my kitchen counter by a large window.

The plant that will not die!

Frozen Anna crochet Doll completed

I’m so happy she’s done. My favorite part of the whole process is searching in my stash for just the right yarns in just the right colors. I feel a sense of victory when I don’t have to run out and buy more yarn. With yarns and hooks in hand, I started on my adventure.

Anna’s outfit turned out to be more complicated than I expected. I started with her bodice and worked my way around her torso. The gold edging came next. The dress has a lot of design on it and deciding what to include and how to go about representing the artwork on her dress took me a few days of pondering. I went for a little embroidery on her top to represent the flowers and stems.

Frozen Anna Crochet Doll Work in Progress

Once I finished my Elsa doll, everyone  asked me where the Anna doll was. I put it off for a bit but I started working on her yesterday.

I’m off from work for the summer so I have a little more time on my hands. That’s how I was able to finish the dog sweater and that’s how I’ve been able to work on Anna. Now that I have some free time, I’m trying to catch up on all those little things I never have time for, like cleaning out my hall closet. A task I’ve been trying to get to for months. Steaming cleaning my carpet is a task I’ve been telling myself I would take care of in the summer. Deep cleaning my house, organizing my computer files, writing my blog :-), finish editing my book, set up my Etsy shop, create things for an Etsy shop, blah, blah, blah. So far I’ve done laundry, read some books, finished a dog sweater (which I’m happy about) and started the Anna doll. Not too bad but not so great either. Now that I have more time, I feel like I don’t want to do anything. I gave myself a break by telling myself that it was fine to be lazy my first week off from work. I spent a whole day and part of the next making that sweater while watching my stories. I was so conflicted! On the one hand, I was ‘working’ on a creation that hones my craft but on the other hand I was watching TV all day while making it. Then I started on Anna and told myself I would only work on her for a few hours and ended up working on her all day too! Oh well 🙂 It was my lazy week so that makes it fine, I just have to run around the block a few times to shake off the atrophy that settled in. lol.

I finished the doll head and it turned out smaller than the Elsa doll. Not a problem since she’s her ‘little’ sister.  I went looking in my stash for the perfect yarn for her hair and found something I liked. It’s Patons Metallic yarn in copper. I bought three skeins of this yarn in different colors because it looked and felt so pretty. It has a nice, shiny, metallic look to it. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it when I bought it but I couldn’t pass it up since I had a 50% off coupon. Normally I make the body parts first, assemble the doll and then make the hair but I couldn’t wait. I did make the torso and attached it so I had a reference for the length of the hair. I loved the feel of the yarn and wanted to get started right away. I cut it into long strands and realized something was wrong. I’m no expert in yarn properties and the yarn wasn’t turning out like I thought it would. I cut the yarn into strands and noticed these little copper flecks all over me and where the yarn was cut, there was black wool sticking out and sometimes falling off. The ends of each cut strand were going to be a problem. I was already committed so I hoped for the best and started attaching the hair. That’s when I discovered the yarn required that I use a lot of it in order to look good. That meant it would be more time-consuming to attach. When I was done, I was covered in copper particles but the doll looked good so it wasn’t a total loss. I’m just concerned that over time the ends of hair will continue to fray. It snags quite easily too. I still love the yarn but  I now know it’s definitely not good for doll hair, at least not the way I use it.

I started making the arms and realized that Anna’s dress has a blue sweater/shirt underneath so I changed gears and decided to make the arms in blue instead of making a separate shirt. I wish I had made the top part of the body in blue but now I need to make a separate piece for the undershirt for the torso part. I’ve seen what others have done for the dress and they are amazing. Hopefully I can meet the challenge.

I’m not sure how much she looks like Anna but I still think she’s pretty. Here’s the road so far:

Finished Crochet Elsa Doll

 

I’ve been working on my Elsa Doll for a bit now but I can finally rest easy because she is done. When I work on a new creation, I tend to procrastinate on its completion because I spend a lot of time contemplating how to go about accomplishing the vision I see in my head. I poured over images of Elsa on the web trying to come up with cool designs that make it clear it IS an Elsa creation.

Frozen Elsa Crochet Doll

I have a queue of projects I’m supposed to be working on but after finishing my mom-in-laws baby twins, I didn’t work on anything for a while. I got home from work one day as tired as I usually am, plopped down in front of the TV to catch up on my stories and felt guilty I wasn’t working on something. I ease my guilt of watching too much television by multitasking and making crochet projects while I watch. It makes me feel like I’m not wasting my time in front of the television. I mean, I could be doing laundry or cleaning the bathroom but hey, I’m making something here, right? I’m accomplishing quite a few things at the same time. I’m resting from a hard day at work. I’m avoiding housework guilt free and I’m making something useful while deleting all those saved shows taking up all that space on my DVR. Who knew crochet was so useful 🙂

So, Elsa is being created. I experimented with a head shape I liked and came up with this:

Work in Progress

I feel like I don’t have enough time to work on all the crochet projects I want to work on. I have two baby dolls I promised to make my mother in law, a doggie sweater for my daughter’s puppy and a doll that looks like me.

I also want to create a Frozen Elsa doll. I’ve had a lot of request for that so I definitely want to make one. I’m in the ‘imagining’ stage for that one. I’m picturing how big I want it to be, what yarns I might use, how to make the dress, which buttons I’ll pick for the eyes, which method I’ll use to shape the head and so on and so on 🙂

Today I’m working on my crochet doll look-alike. This is a doll I’m making so I can tighten up a pattern in a crochet book I’m writing. I want to make sure it works. It’s also going to have other uses to represent my book so it’s really important for this doll to come out right. I’m working on the head right now and I’m trying to select the perfect buttons for the eyes from my stash. I think I’ve narrowed it down to two sets. They are almost identical except for the size. One set is dark brown and the other black. I’ll decide which size is best when I finish the head so I can see which size works better. I’m leaning towards the dark brown ones so hopefully the finished piece can support the bigger eyes.

I love the part where I get to go through my stash of buttons to select the prefect ‘eyes’ for the doll that’s about to be born.