What's old is new

I went to hock my wears on S. Congress today in the Guerro's outdoor area, along with my friend Jody who also sells hand embroidered and appliqued children's clothes. Unfortunately, today was one of the only super cold and windy days in Austin this year. The winds were so strong that our entire tables and garment racks kept dumping over, so we packed up and decided to have a mamas' day out. Luckily for each of us we sold a couple of items in the short time we were there, covering the cost of the spot, and we scored a free make-up day next Saturday!

After a tasty lunch and couple of drinks we checked out the new old-fashioned candy store and ice cream fountain shop: Big Top. I've been watching them decorate the shop with giant circus posters for a while now, anticipating their grand opening:


There were wall to wall candies- the hard to find kind that you thought you would never see again!

The ones that immediately grabbed me were these chocolaty morsels, filled with liquid marshmellow:

Because the store just opened I knew that whatever I bought would be super fresh and I was not disappointed one bit. This Valomilk melted in my mouth, and the chocolate was surprisingly good quality. As soon as I saw these maple peanut balls in the bulk bins I knew I was a gonner:

What they lack in aesthetic value they more than make up for in taste and texture. Again, they were super fresh tasting. "Num num num" as Harlan would say (and as he did say when he got hold of the bag I left on the counter). Less appealing for taste value, but more appealing for ha ha value were these:

I also picked up some cinnamon toothpicks for my mom since we'll be seeing her up in NYC very soon:

Last week I received a surprise book from a secret friend of mine who works at Conde Nast and always hooks me up.
The new Son of Stitch 'N Bitch book by Debbie Stroller. The patterns were overwhelmingly cool and very clever. My favorites include the Lucha Libre ski masks:

The High Fidelity sweater (look- the pattern across the chest looks like 45 rpm records):

Joe wants me to make him this hat:


I guess I'll have to add it to my super long To Do list. Luckily I'll be able to get at that list soon. I've begun the Rose & Duke 2008 collection and have decided that once they're up and the site is launched (early Feb.) I'm going to relax and only fill web orders until the summer at which point I'll begin producing for next year's Christmas fair season. I seem to have spent all my "free" time over the past year working on embroideries and other business related stuff and suddenly I have no time to make anything for myself or my family. Suddenly it's no longer fun, and surprisingly unprofitable for the amount of effort involved. I may keep up with one retail store in Brooklyn and one here, but otherwise I would rather try to concentrate on the Christmas season when I can do what I've been doing on a more frequent level (I missed the deadlines to apply to a bunch of good craft fairs here this past season) and on web orders. This way I'll get all the profit myself and will also be able to make the whole thing more of a part time venture than it has been so far. I want to keep it fun! That said, here is a sneak peak of some of what I'm making for next year. A few of the designs are expanded and more detailed versions of the appliques I made at the beginning of last summer (see some old pears here.) These old applique designs were the first to sell at Stitch and the most fun (and least time consuming) to create. Bingo!
Happy Cherry Hoodie:

Happy Flan Onesie:

Happy peach face shirt:

A pair of pears:


I have a few more in the works as well, mostly inspired by Japanese sweets that show up in my craft books or on bento boxes or Decole goodies. I've seen a couple of crafters out there make really great stuffed versions of these sweets. Check out Cutseypoo and her egg tarts, Cocokoala's needle felted critters, She Like's Cute's softie pins. I can't get enough. What did old people do before the internets showed up? I feel like when Joe and I one day tell Harlan tales of how we grew up with telephones that were attached to walls and no internet, that he will think of these stories the same way we thought of the ones our parents told of growing up sitting around a radio on a Saturday night, and what they watched the first time they saw a television. Joe recently had such a conversation with one of his classes of high school seniors. A particularly funny student asked him if they had cars when he was a kid, or they had dirt. Perhaps I should call Bill Cosby and tell him this "kids are funny" anecdote. Perhaps he's already reading it.

I've got Bento Fever and I'm in Love

Now that Harlan goes to school in the mornings, it is up to me to pack him a lunch each day. Never mind that he only seems to like hot dogs cheese and fruit, I still need to pack these items in his super-duper lunch bag. I'm sure many of you who pack lunches are familiar with this site about bento lunches and ideas for what to put inside them. For those of you who love all things cute and Japanese, here are my latest acquisitions, all purchased under the premise that Harlan will like to eat what is inside things that are cute:





The best place I found online to get great bento boxes and accessories is ebay. There I discovered the colorful silicon baking cups that make great food holders inside larger bento boxes (or any larger plastic box). They sell a good assortment of these on amazon.

Here are good websites that carry Decole and other cute goodies. WARNING: LOCK WALLET UP BEFORE PROCEEDING:
http://www.sugarpinebeauty.com/ (type decole into search)
http://www.pancakemeow.com
http://spiralling.typepad.com/shop/
http://www.loloko.com/catalog/decole.html
http://www.shelovesstars.co.uk/

Click here to see the most amazing bento lunches ever.
My Nikon D70 SLR takes great photos but unfortunately one can only use the manual settings with a specific lens that I do not own and can not justify purchasing right now. My condo (like most structures in hot climates) is very shady. It is surrounded by dense trees and has long eaves that hang over the windows, keeping it cool but also quite dark. It's nearly impossible to get a good photo of anything on my porches or inside, but here are a few peeks. This is my trendy gnome and mushroom doormat, courtesy of Target:


This is the are in front of my front door. My mother gave me the beautiful bougainvillea, which I have always always always wanted to grow, ever since seeing them all over Florida. Anyone remember Poppy the Pig? I have filled him and a metal bucket with various succulents. I love me some succulents, ever since seeing them all over San Francisco. Now I live in a climate where they will thrive happily. The man at the gardening store warned me to bring them indoors when the temp. drops below forty. How can this be? What about all the giant ones I see on everyone else's front lawn? Does anyone know? I have many more planted out back on our deck but no photos yet.


Here's the cabinet I bought at Ikea recently to keep my fabric in. I may not have my craft room yet, but at least I don't keep it all under the bed anymore.

This is the area over our sideboard in our living room. It's what we see when we are sitting on the sofa on the opposite wall (which I will photograph when I finish making pillows for it).

Here is a close up of my Halloween chicks, purchased from Jennifer Murphy.

They're just so dang cute, and the fact that they are made in China did not deter me from buying them in the least. It's great that Jennifer had such a high demand for her products that she was able to outsource making them. One lesson I learned back when I went to that Design Sponge sponsored event for people starting their own businesses (be sure and click the link as it goes to all the files from the event) is that most buyers are interested in the design and price of items, along with the story that is behind them. Were they designed by a famous RISD grad who used to work for Martha Stewart but then dropped out of the corporate world to raise her daughter and sit around crocheting pot holders that she started selling on the street corner? Apparently most consumers are only interested in the story up to a certain point, and after that the price is an issue. Making things by hand in the U.S. is costly because the cost of living here is so high. Minimum wage is even up to $7.50 an hour in some states (still too low in my opinion but that's another discussion). If any of us expect to make a living by making things by hand then we have to charge accordingly and the question that remains is, Will people buy a bunch of Halloween pom pom chicks for $20 a chick? I wouldn't. Not because I don't respect the time that went into making it, but because right now I can't afford it (although I have found a way to justify such purchases many times in the past). Now, happily there are some people who can afford it and will shell out the big bucks for things that are locally made. These are most of the people who buy my stuff, and I'm happy they are there, but the truth is that I can only make one or two items a day and that is not enough to live off of. So, I have finally found a company in New Jersey whom I am working with to make a couple of my designs by machine. The process is not cheap, because they are in New Jersey and not China, but I want to keep my products 100% American made and charge accordingly, hoping that customers will still support me because they like the designs, the workmanship, and the fact that the products are all locally made. The one glitch I am having right now is color matching machine threads to DMC colors. We'll have to see the results when my samples get back. I hope that I can eventually have everything I design made professionally so that I can spend my own time making things for myself and designing. You get tired of embroidering or sewing the same exact design over and over by hand. Getting back to Jennifer Murphy for a moment, does anyone know where one can buy the material used to make the kind of bears she and Molly Chicken make? I would love to try making a few for gifts (gifts for myself that is) but I have never seen any place that sells that type of faux fur.

This weekend Joe and I did some iron-on transfers on t-shirts for Harlan. They came out pretty cute. Guess which two designs I found and which two Joe found. Scroll down for answer.


The two of the left are Joe's. The first is an Pogo image that is super cute. He wanted to do another one using a Love and Rockets image but we could not find any that worked on a t-shirt for a little boy. Instead he went with a good old fashioned Black Flag logo. I chose a page from Richard Scary's most beautifully illustrated book I Am a Bunny, and of course the Stray Cats logo. We have to keep Harlan old school.

I have one last question to pose for my readers. I've cancelled the business Bun Bun Babythreads with the state of NY. I need to reopen it here in Texas, but I also want to change the name so that people don't assume everything I sell is for babies (I often hear, "Oh, I don't know anyone with a baby"). I'm thinking I should keep Bun Bun as a prefix for the name but don't know what to put after it. Let me know if you have any ideas.

For good tunes, go here and listen to Petra Hayden's genius cover of Thriller and breathtaking a Capella version of God Only Knows. I heard Petra's a Capella cover of a Journey song while driving Joe to work one morning on a local radio station. The music in Austin is one of its main draws, and I'm relishing in discovering new artists to listen to now that I'm here. I don't get out to many (many being zero) shows any more, so being able to actually depend on the radio for good music is a saving grace.