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The internets has been a little wonky (along with the landline) in these parts as of the past two days. So thanks to those posters yesterday who posted a gaggle of mastiff’s and oodles of puppies. I spent an hour and 1/2 on youtube watching basset hound/puppy videos. I can now say i feel a lot better. Thanks to everyone who felt the need to vent with me.

for your viewing enjoyment please check out all the sewing i did last week. Basset hound for scale, or merely she is wondering where the heck her bed went it was there a minute ago.

Posted by Jennifer on 08/29 at 02:05 PM ♥ Comments (13)

Dear…

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Edited to add: there’s even more musings about dogs and dog pictures over at Erika’s blog. She’s still kinda new to the blog thing so give her a look see and check out mr. fuzzy pants. Plus she does etsy fridays!

Dear Michael Vic,

I really don’t care much now what you have to say. You are a man. You are a man who little kids look up to because you play a major sport, and you play it well enough for millions of dollars of endormensts to come your way. Perhaps you should have thought of this when you repeatedly denied having anything to do with the dog figthing/gambling ring, UNTIL 3 witnesses came forward to testify against you. You are not a man. You are a coward who gained nothing in the end from ruining animals lives and by making money from it. You always get what you put out there, Mr. Vic and i think the universe is trying to tell you something.

xoxox
jen

I really wish having to sit thru all the media PR crap with Michael Vic would just go away. If i see him trying to clean up his “image” one more time today i’m shoving a #2 DPN in my eye.
On a happier note:

Dear Oreo Cakesters,

Why oh why must you come TWO in a package and not individually wrapped? Ugh.
xoxoxo
jen

In the meantime to lighten the mood just go over and look at all the puppies over on Stacey’s blog On the needles. Everything will be better if you just keep looking at the puppies.

Posted by Jennifer on 08/28 at 06:51 AM ♥ Comments (11)

Etsy Friday and Other Stuffs and Things

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We’ve been getting pummeled over and over with some scarey storms. Meaning tornado siren type storms. I don’t know if any of it has made national news but chicago is a mess after yesterday’s afternoon storm hit, and we got it TWICE as if trees crushing cars wasn’t enough, we needed more. All is ok here.  I have for you all some more pictures of the hummingbirds and some wildlife fromt he backyard. Apparently they all ove to come out when it’s raining. First my camera does this weird mirco burst thing. I can’t figure it out, but i took one yesterday of the hummingbird. It is very weird, it shows allt he frames together and i can’t figure out how to break it. it’s large though.



Then i snapped two more that i thought were intresting cause i swear they are so fast my camera can’t even snap them in freeze frame





Then this little guy comes out





That’s allt he wildlife we’ve got int he backyard, now on to some etsy love. I’m sorry i didn’t get to it last friday but we had nasty storms last week that knocked the wind (and rain) out of my posting for that day. So to make up here you go:

Nathaniel got me two presents. I will get the second one this weekend...let’s hope it’s shiney and something from etsy! This was my first gift he gave me. Something from my favorites. A necklace from Local Library.



I really like her patches too. Lauren gave me one awhile back. I still need to sew it to something.
Next up is something goofy that i had hearted forever. Pop can jewelry. By Vintage Nouveau.



She sent along a little zipper pull/cell phone charm thing too



I know it’s corny, but i ♥ Dr. Pepper what can i say?

Next , it’s not esty, but handmade cuteness that kills. Amy from good to be girl, posted these up one day and i was like quick draw mcgraw.



So check her blog out and you can find some good stuff too

Now on to some esty love that will be going to all of you, well any of you who order from us that is.  I put up twonew project pouches and two new travel cases. We are so close to selling our 300th items. So special goodies will go to the person who buys them.

Now When you order from us we always attach a stitch marker to your bag. I’ve got a new shop to pimp to y’all. (her moo cards)



Cairi’s shop Middle Earth Yarns



These markers come all the way from the UK. And i think they are fun and will go great with some of those skull and tattoo fabrics. I am very happy to show off her cute markers to everyone. She also included a few yarn samples so make sure you checkout her yarns too!

Speaking of yarn. Nikki of Mamma Blue asked me if i’d send her cards.


SHe sent me some samples to send to y’all. She made me squee cause she sent piddleloop colors! (someday i will find a piddleloop colorway and it should look like this)





And look at her cards they are so CUTE.


I’m eyeing her shop for a colorway i thought was super pretty, so i hope i catch it! Now if we don’t get washed away i’ll be back next week. In the meantime this weekend i’m building an ark in addition to all the sewing i have to do. Have a good weekend everyone and please practice some handmade love and check out these etsy people!

Posted by Jennifer on 08/24 at 08:06 AM ♥ Comments (7)

A little of this and a little of that (big ass picture post ahead)

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Mostly WET and SOGGY. The weather has been a little nuts around here. Some really scarey storms came thru last week and the county had been declared a disaster area. Uprooted trees were everywhere. It has just continued to rain and rain and rain here. I’ve been up to a lot of stuff as usual around these parts. Let me show you.

First I want to thank Hannah & Joff. They don’t have a blog, but she lives in the UK and she knits up a storm. Her and I did a english tea swap on our own a while back. She up and sends me another gift.
I forgot the sushi bandaids in this picture! Yarn! A notebook! Oolong Tea! a cd of Joffs band!


can you see my favorite part of this package? Joff (her fabulous boyfriend who used to live in chiago) drew me my VERY OWN LUCY DOG on this notebook!!!!! SQUEEEE!


thank you hannah and joff! This whole little package was so very sweet of you. And i just love the time you took Joff to draw a Basset hound even though i know they are shaped like barrels and aren’t easy to draw. THANK YOU!

Next, we rode our bikes on saturday IN THE RAIN


5 miles down the lakeshore to the bend in the lake just before the oak street beach


to watch some of the Chicago Air and Water show...now what is this you say?


my camera didn’t want to focus on it, no wonder they say it disappears on radar! It’s the oddly square or bat-signalesque Stealth Bomber. This thing was impressive as it flew toward you it was so flat my camera wouldn’t focus. neato


then we caught the Thunderbirds, who this year had not one but TWO WOMEN PILOTS. go girls.


they were so fast by the time i’d see them they were gone and hard to shoot


So this week i’m busting a sewing groove for Renegade Craft Fair see


We also made this for our neighbor who just got back from Memphis for the 30th anniversary of the king’s death


I hope she’ll like it!
And last but not least more things that fly…
I’ve been stalking three of these little guys


they make me tired just watching them eat

Edited: to add one more picture of the little guys

Posted by Jennifer on 08/21 at 09:46 AM ♥ Comments (15)

Holy Fabrics Batman! And taking a 4 yr old zipper shopping

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First of all this is what ensues when you take a 4 yr old to Vogue Fabrics to do bulk zipper shopping. Courtsey of Uncle Nat using his iphone

the i’ll look innocent after 45 secons i’ll say HURRY UP JEEEEEN!



or i’ll just act like a muppet when uncle nat takes out his iphone




After 5 min, ARE WE DONE YET?



this ensues for half an hour.



So anyways, I wanted to thank you all for your support again. With a rash of orders in the shop we’ve been able to take care of craft fair fee’s, rental fee’s, and buy new supplies. oh yes. that means NEW FABRICS for y’all.

I wanted to take a minute to say some thing sabout our fabrics. You may notice we don’t buy all Amy butler, or heather bailey, or whoever just because they are cool. We tend to buy what reflects our personalities. So if you look over the fabrics in our shop you can see a pretty clear distinction as to what wendy likes to pick out and whai pick out. We pretty much just go on what we like, and what we feel show off our fun sister sewing team spirit and fun personalites. Another important thing about our fabric choices is, we buy 85% of our fabrics locally at a few shops owned by women, in our community. This way we enjoy the patronage we get from knowing the store owner/employee’s and have our money filtered back into our local community. I also enjoy knowing that both of these businesses are SMALL and owned by WOMEN. Women who rock. The other 15% of our fabrics we buy from etsy to again filter our money into the crafting community.  There’s a lot to be said about building a patronage with someone too. You get friendly chats, curosity of what you are making, extra yardage sometimes, or the end of the bolt for no charge. In this day and age in online everything, i value our patronages with several shop owners.
That said, check out what will be filtering down into project pouches sometime in the future, from fabric stash on etsy



from various shops

And we have more of the day of the dead fabric in the large glittery skulls coming, and we have loteria fabric as well.
We can still take custom orders, since stuff filtering into the shop will be slow until after Sept 16th (renegade) is over. So if you are intrested in something, you can drop us a line and see if we can work it out.
Also Wolly Bully’s Jenny sent me some little tiny yarn samples with her cards. So very nice of her. So some of y’all will get her little samples! yum!

I’ve enjoyed chatting with a lot you, and appreciate everyone’s hellos. Try to stay cool today!

Posted by Jennifer on 08/13 at 11:43 AM ♥ Comments (11)

Etsy Friday and Girls who rock

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Since I haven’t been doing much other than freelance work, watching Zander, and sewing. I haven’t had much to say. Perhaps feeling sluggish from our 95 degree days with 100% humidity. I don’t know. Nonetheless, thank you for your well wishes on five awesome years. I think even nat is suprised some of you said congrats. :D heh.
Not much going down over here. Although we are starting to prepare for craft show season. Mostly because we leave to go to Vegas a week ahead of renegade and arrive back the night before the one day we will do. EVERYTHING has to be done before we leave and hauled up to chicago. oh my.
I also wanted to say thanks to Stacey. I’ve read her blog daily for years. I don’t think i ever commented. I just didn’t feel like i needed to, i was her partner for the stitch marker swap we did years ago, but anyways i just love her posts with her neice. So stacey thank you for being excited enough about your custom order with us to blog about it. We are thrilled that you love it as much as you do.

Now, I did see at 1 am this week Robyn, who launched Robyn’s Nest this past weekend, said i was a ROCKIN’ GIRL BLOGGER. YAY! Altho when i just re-read that sentance it made me think of that awful but hard not to watch trainwreck of a show, Rock of Love. Why-oh-why Brett will you NOT take off the hats or bandannas? hee hee.
I feel good, I rock. Now this will be hard. I think a lot of people rock. A lot of people rock hard. So this will be tough to narrow it down to FIVE. But here goes:

1. Kayt - You rock because you personally know a member of Califone. I wish i had an Uncle Benny. And she makes me laugh pretty hard, and reminds me i shouldn’t be on a computer between the hours of 12am-3am.

2. Amy from the land of YEE-HAW you rock for so many reasons, too many to name. I’m so glad you’re a night owl.
3. Lesa - You rock because well for 100’s of reason’s. But well you’ve seen Johnny Cash live, gotta give you that.
4.  Carol rocks in so many ways it’s not even funny. Arrow rocks too.
5.  Amy rocks. Amy has always rocked, even tho i question her taste in music when she’s making all those cute little things! (cd swap circa 2005)
honorary rockers cause i imagine these girls to rock very hard
1. LALA because she lets me call her that. She’s rocks.
2. Nell cause she rocks some tasty beer.
3.  Stevie rocks, very much so. So does poor Elmo who has to wear the cone. (click the link)

Ok i know i broke the “rules” but i suppose that’s what people who rock do, we are rule breakers by nature. Anyways those are some girls i wanted to give shout outs to to say Y0- YOU ROCK!

now on to some etsy friday.

First up. Jillian of Wee Ones. Way back in May i asked her if she’d like to do the Piddleloop Hounds for me. I was in no hurry and she could take her time. Altho once they were done i couldn’t wait to get them! Jillian charges too little for her work. She even will put the little details that you request in there. I told her i wanted lucy dog’s white ink stain on the back of her neck in there, and that both dogs wear thick leather collars with their inital hanging off. Sure enough she captured those details and she was great to work with.

How about some yarn. From Melanie over at Lotus Yarns? How about this pretty colorway called Amber. Mmmmm pretty.

How about a loom woven bracelet! JD Star has a million choices awaiting you. I think i want 5 more. A new way to wear fiber.

Kayt made these earrings and I snatched them up before they even made their way on to etsy. I normally can’t wear those fish hok earrlings, they are so large and i have attached earlobes. But these, these are TINY (even tho they look huge int he picture) and barely there, but so pretty! She has other colors listed right now.


And Keys and Memories did this custom order for me. I’m a type nerd by nature i like letters. And i like the shape of letters. Anyways, she has great typewriter key jewelry at affordable prices and will whip you up anything you want for a custom order.

That’s all of the etsy love for now. I want to show you i am indeed knitting, for good measure. Here’s a monkey sock in koigu. I’m calling this color SKITTLES. Well because it looks like orange, lime, and lemon skittles.


Also I made a bag for myself FINALLY. Thanks to Amy from the land of yee-haw, she sent me a yard of that loteria fabric a while ago for a just because gift. I made her a project pouch and matching 4 x 6 when i made mine. Hopefully she’ll show us all soon. Y’all have a good weekend and stay cool.

Posted by Jennifer on 08/10 at 01:19 PM ♥ Comments (11)

My weekend and Five Years

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My weekend. Oh where, oh where did you go weekend? You went by too fast.


What is Jen doing? Why making more buttons and promos of course.


thanks to everyone who dropped by the shop, who ordered, and sent hellos and little notes. That was very kind of y’all.


I also wanted to thank Aija. She had placed a custom order with us and look at what she up and did Friday. A nice feature on our custom order we did for her. We’re glad she was so pleased.  If anyone is intrested we also nabbed 4 yards of the loteria fabric off etsy this weekend. The fabric is available for custom orders, and will eventually show up in the shop, somewhere down the line.

Zander’s Daddy started school a few weekends ago. Zander came to hang with us in chicago while daddy was in class one saturday. (I know this is from a few weekends ago but i just got nat to get them off his iphone!)






And nothing like getting a push from Uncle Nat

And sometime this week, five years ago, I had met Nathaniel. The boy who likes the color brown too much. Only wears stripey socks, frowns in every picture. Hates my ballet flats.


Here’s to five years with the most quiet, creative, and who would have known funny boy i’ve met ever. May we have many more years worth of pictures with you frowning.


Nat and his new bike




and i still love you even though you made me come outside to stand in the alley watching you mess with your bike.

Posted by Jennifer on 08/01 at 07:41 AM ♥ Comments (10)