Its in your hands--or hair!

These super cute bows were made for a friend of mine who is opening up a shop soon. I can't wait to see what she comes up with!



What I especially love about these bows are the colors and the fact that I put the color choices in the hands of my buyers. This batch was especially fun because it was such a large lot and I was given a bit of freedom in the color selection.

I hope someone uses these as a bowtie, or attaches them to headbands like this:



These are so super easy to slide onto any old headband, its ridiculous. If you're like me and like to change it up, these bows are absolutely the best.  They are so fun to make. I can just chill out and make them and see immediate progress--unlike a lot of my bigger projects.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I do!

Supplies!

I have been trying to keep my business up during my "off" season and have decided to make appliqué flowers for my customers to use any way they choose. I have grand visions of them being placed on baby hats or headbands, affixed to adorable sweaters, maybe used in jewelry or even clipped onto some ballet flats. These are just the right size, so the possibilities are endless!

I'm going to give several listings of colors I match myself, as well as a DIY option where customers can choose a custom color combination. I'm really excited for this as the options are simply endless. It gives me the opportunity to work with lots and lots of colors as well as keeping my business moving throughout the summer.

Here is a preview of what the flowers look like. They are quite simple, 5 petal flowers. I'm going to make larger ones as well as roses and pansies!

Bahhhhhh Bahhhh

So the funnest thing I've done lately?  Taking a spinning class at the yarn barn, which is my local yarn store.  It was SO fun. Seriously. It makes me want to toss all my crocheting and knitting supplies and just spin yarn. What I like about it is the pulling motion and treadling with my feet. To get a feel for the pulling I'm talking about, try pulling apart a cotton ball. Its kind of like that. Easy, but good for the soul.

I have been spinning my own yarn on a drop spindle and hope to make some more soon. I am really interested in taking things in their barest form and turning them into something useful. When I cook, I like to do so from scratch and with home grown ingredients, when possible. With yarn, I want to do the same. My dream is to have a few sheep and an alpaca and get wool for spinning.  I've raised sheep in the past, so that part I know how to do, but the processing of raw wool is something I have been investigating via youtube.  The Yarn Barn also has more advanced classes I can take to learn more about this.

OK. With all of that, I have had sheep on the brain. Lucky for me, I was commissioned to make an adorable sheep for a great little boy. He will go up in the shop soon for your enjoyment!

Knitting in the media

First, I love this song.
Second there is someone knitting here :)

Wrapping the semester and wrapping up goodies!

I gave my last presentation for a research class last night, which went well. I'm working on the last edits of my thesis and would love to be able to defend in the next couple of weeks, but I dont' know if my committee will have time. Maybe in January!  Then I'll be on the road to my second master's degree in Speech Language Pathology. Then the reeeal world. The scary real world.

Anyway, what have I been crocheting and knitting lately?  How about a visual representation :)

Bears are too cute :) Earflaps just make it better.

 I want to talk in detail about this one. It is made out of a yarn called "bamboospun" that you can get at hobby lobby. This color is "pink camo" and it is SO amazingly soft. Like ridiculously soft. I want to knit everything in bamboo from here on out. And how about the appliqué? I'm thinking of adding some items like this to the shop, and I've been toying with it for a while because it is super cute and I love the mix of materials and methods.

Finally, these gloves. Theeeese gloves. I'm not sure if I've talked about it before, but I'm not the best knitter. I only recently got into it (like the past year or so) and seriously...it is hard to wrap my crocheting brain around. So for me to successfully knit a pair of gloves is HUGE! The cupcake is part knitted and part crocheted. I want to experiment some more with fusion fiber arts and this was great practice.

That's what I've been up to. School is on until the week of December 15th or so.  Hey! If you're a reader, how about a comment? I never know who is reading or if anyone reads :) Give me a comment and let me know if you are a fiber artist, what you do, you can link to your blog or shop or facebook fan page. Are you going black friday shopping? I am and it is my first time going "for real" so I'm kind of excited!

The big sale was great! staying on task

This week I did a giveaway on my shop for reaching 100 fans on my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/bowrene

In addition to that, I ran a 15% off sale that was so great. The orders came pouring in, and I'm so thankful. You have no idea how much this has helped me out. I got to create new designs that I will be adding to the shop soon, and the money I earned will go to our Christmas budget. As some of you may know, I am a graduate student and am currently finishing up my thesis and am teaching an intro course for money. If any of you have had a GTAship before...you know they don't pay much :)  That's why I'm so very thankful for all my facebook support and readers here on the blog.

You may wonder how I balance everything. I will tell you that I have been working on an empirical research study since 2009 and am just finishing up the writing of the stats and the overall analyses of the huge amount of data I collected. It is well over 60 pages at this point and I'm hoping I'm in the final stages of editing so that I can defend this sucker and be done with it! See what happened there? I got off task. That tends to happen when I'm writing. Again...you may wonder how I balance a two-year old, a busy etsy shop and teaching and being a student. This is the secret: http://tomatoi.st  This is a timer for the pomodoro method. What it is is a method where you work for 25 minutes; this is called a "pomodoro". When the timer dings, you must stop, start a "short break" and go do something else--usually I fill my water or tea and bum around on facebook. The timer dings again and you start another pomodoro. You repeat this another couple of times and then you get a long break for 15 minutes. This helps me stay on task and work without distractions but also without getting burned out and frustrated. I mark my pomodoros on a sticky note attached to my monitor and it really helps to watch them build up! I'm obsessed.

Crocheting and knitting--I never have trouble staying on task. I pop in a wonderful Korean drama (http://viikii.net if you're interested) and watch and crochet or knit forever and ever. Crocheting and knitting really are my two passions. I love doing it and am so glad that I get to share what I've made with everyone. Thanks again to all of you.

P.S. The drama I'm currently watching is "Playful Kiss" I want to strangle the main characters, which seems to be a common feeling when I watch Korean dramas, but then I get this weird attachment where I'm happy that they finally end up together :) It also helps improve my Korean. I took 2 classes over the summer and now meet weekly with my Korean teacher for independent lessons. Its a good break from all of my other studies.

Here is what's coming soon to the shop (there's more, but my camera is being a stinker)!

I made a lightbox ^  

The winners are in!

I recently had a drive for upping my facebook fan count. My goal was 100 fans and we exceeded it by ten wahoo!  The incentive was that I would give away one of these:



I used a random name chooser to choose ONE lucky winner from all of my facebook fans.

The lucky winner is

DRUMROLL
..
..
..
..
..
Emely W.!

If you are the lucky winner, send me a convo on etsy telling me what size this hat will be! :)

THAT'S NOT ALL (wow I feel like I'm in an infomercial)  I have decided to give away TWO runner-up prizes and drew two more names:

Julie G. and Stephanie V.  you have won the super secret mystery prizes! I will make you an adult or child sized hat. Just convo me on etsy and let me know what size and gender I am making a hat for!

For all my winners: Be sure to convo me your address as well. If you are new to etsy, feel free to email me at bowrene@gmail.com

Thanks to all my fans, we will do more fun stuff soon! How does a sale sound to you? :)