such a lazy blogger

I'm averaging about one post a month these days. What a crappy deal. I do have some stuff keeping glued to the real world instead the internet one. I have a craft festival coming up at the end of next month. http://www.strangefolkfestival.com. I am beginning to cram for that one. My new fall product is going to be guitar straps. I'm waiting on the postman to bring me supplies for those.

I must have lost my mind, because I have changed my diet completely. I am now a (gulp) vegetarian. I have not had any meat (or anything else unhealthy) in the last four weeks. I was hoping to lose some weight along with this. I'm down about 8 pounds, but not as drastic as I had hoped for. I guess it is true that you have to exercise to lose weight. Today I made veggie pizza with whole wheat crust. I must be nuts. It was really pretty good.

Here is a big fat bunch of stuff I made (mostly finished up today).

I actually finished some stuff.

Here are a couple I finished up today.
This one totally hates me. I wanted it to be sharper and boxier. I do have some ideas for next time though. The whole construction of the thing has to be different.

I didn't take any pics of the sides because that is what I hated the most. On the bright side, it does have this great wide opening up top.

The second one is more my style. It was a good baby and did not give any grief.

man this hurts.

I just died a little today. I went into my local Wal-mart to do a little grocery shopping and pick up some odds and ends for one of the purses I am finishing up. I get back to the craft section and the empty hole there was indescribable. Where there had once been rows of glorious cheap fabric by the yard is now replaced by overflow school supplies and whatever else. I do admit I have been a little bit of a fabric snob lately. I also spent about two months away from Wal-mart, because everybody knows I hate the place (f Wal-mart). I really did like having the option if I was in the middle of a project and in a bind. I did hear rumors of this happening, but I was not prepared to deal with this. Once again Wal-mart sucks a big one and I will retreat to my online fabric shopping.

Stars are Bullets

Oh I forgot to mention... another reason why I haven't posted in a while. My husband convinced me to start practicing with his band Stars are Bullets. I learned how to play bass guitar about seven years ago for another one of his bands called Blue Collar Crime (later to be known as Camino). Here is the myspace. http://www.myspace.com/starsarebullets Check us out if you are into indie, low fi, straight ahead rock, or me. I had my first show with them on the seventeenth of this month. It went just fine, but we were definitely lacking in audience. We are playing again at the Red Sea on Delmar in St. Louis this Friday (6/27/08).

Ugh I haven't posted anything in a while.

Here is a bunch of the projects I have been working on. Projects making me too busy to post blog entries.These are for Brit at work. She digs all things palm trees. She also wanted me to make this teeny tiny zipper pouch for her mp3 player.

This one was also for her... what a girl. She wanted something for her mother who is a police officer (and gun lover). Brit saw one of these I made earlier and thought it would be perfect.
I made a tutorial with this guy. Paste this into your browser and take a look.
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=251643.msg2799354#msg2799354
It was practically painful to churn this one out, but I think a lot of people might actually try to make this one.
Here is a Chinese inspired messenger based off the tutorial I wrote for this one^^^

Alexander Henry designed the lining fabric. I have yet to see fabric cooler than his.

scraps and squares

I went through a lot of my stuff this past week. I tend to hoard little bits and scraps in hopes of someday churning out beautiful quilts that remind me of all of the little projects I made from all of this fabric. Since I only have the patience for one - two day projects and I am the bag making fanatic, I came up with this messenger bag. I am going to try to sell it next weekend at the craft show in Highland. I do have secret plans for this one if no one has the same love for it. It just might be mine. I have been taking more and more process pics so I am going to bore you with the details.
Small bits...

made into bigger bits...
into bigger bits...
made into resting place for Scottie...
and then wrestled away to finish this bag.

on a roll

I spent last weekend putting together another bag tutorial for craftster. I've learned so much from the folks on that board. Giving back makes me feel good and the forty some odd replies were quite the ego booster. Here's the link.

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=243097.msg2683204#msg2683204

Here are a few of the key pics.


Dinah even got some face time in this one.

I couldn't pose her like this if I wanted to. This was all her.