Back in the Saddle

It feels good to be back in the swing of things, still home recently enough that daily life doesn't yet seem like drudgery. After all, I've been able to CRAFT again! I put aside schlogging away at my Ravenclaw house scarf until booth-sitting at my next craft fair, and made some real recycled crafts in the last couple of days. I finally thought of a use for some little panels my mother cross-stitched on recycled denim:

And since it's nearly the end of summer (sigh), I'm running low on my wool sweater collection, so I sewed up a few of these babies out of pretty much my last big pieces of felted wool: Do you recognize this doll as the handknit Ecuadorian sweater I scored at my Goodwill Outlet expedition?

The girls seem to have settled back into the routine here pretty well, too, which is nice, since they were starting to get pretty crazy those last couple of days in California. We went to the library for Say it in Spanish with Miss Nancy, a superstar who can breastfeed baby Mateo while singing and playing her folk guitar, and we checked out the following items:

• Eyewitness: OceanDVD
• Born to AddCD
• Echoes of Nature: Ocean Waves CD (I think it has an actual recording of the waves at Pebble Beach!)
• Reading Rainbow Seashore Surprises computer program
• Zoe's Hats: A Book of Colors and Patterns
• Lemons Are Not Red (Ala Notable Book(Awards)) (Neal Porter Books)
• Fish Clip Art CD-Rom
• Colors in Nature: Yellow
• Triceratops Gets Lost book and CD
• A Busy Day for Stegosaurus book and CD
• Velociraptor: Small and Speedy book and CD
• An Alphabet Of Dinosaurs
• Orange by Sarah L. Schuette
• Seashells by Adele Richardson

Can you tell what the girls are interested in this week?

After school I wanted to engage the girls in an art project so I could clean, but nothing I suggested (decorating paper bags to use at my craft fairs, painting on butcher paper, drawing pictures on cardstock for thank-you notes, etc.) struck their fancies, so I ended up printing out dinosaur coloring pages from Geoparent. Filling in coloring pages is a really lousy art activity, but it can be a pretty good activity for other learning objectives--map work, absorbing how different dinosaurs look, associating words with letters, etc.

And then I cleaned, and then we went to the post office to mail an etsy package, and then we went to Goodwill, and then we got pizza, and then we watched our ocean documentary, and now Matt is putting the girls to bed while I gear myself up for putting my textbook order in at the IU Bookstore. I really should get on it, because school starts in, you know, two weeks. But it is a loathesome activity, and now I think I will put it off until tomorrow.

What activities do you find loathesome?

Simple Dolls

Willow hasn't yet really been into dolls--sure, she had her fair share of eco-conscious cloth dolls and dolls made by Mama, complete with doll cloth diapers and kid-sized doll slings (which are great for carrying toy dinosaurs in, apparently), but the types of toys she prefers over dolls are vast, indeed. Sydney, now... Sydney likes herself some "babies." Sydney loves the cloth dolls and the dolls made by Mama and the cheap plastic discard dolls from Goodwill and stuffed animals you can treat like dolls and kittens you can treat like dolls and even playing with her old toy garage this morning, I heard her talking to the Matchbox cars--"Momma. Dadda. Baby car--night, night."


And so, as it was with the dinosaurs, when my kid gets into something, I tend to come to appreciate it, too. And by appreciate, I mean make stuff: I really love, now, felting old wool sweaters and sewing them (this post on SouleMama about dying wool felt is about, I fear, to take me in another new direction) into awesome stuff. I've done felt food, shapes for the girls' felt board, ornaments, pincushions, stuffed animals, quilts, and all manner of other things that both turn out and definitely do not, all with tacky old wool sweaters cut up and felted in the washing machine. I'm most fond right now, though, of making children's playthings, balls and cubes and bean bags and these dolls, for my Syd and my etsy, all with really simple shapes.
It's in some ways a response, I think, to the wide variety of overstimulating children's toys on the market today, sort of like in The Bean Trees: A Novelwhen Taylor's roommate, Lou Ann, goes to work at a salsa factory and all her cooking becomes really, really spicy, so on the nights when Taylor cooks she makes the blandest foods she can think of, white fish and mashed potatoes and such. I make really simple toys for kids, with simple, organic shapes and single fabrics with interesting textures----and my girls love them, at least. Although I don't know what possessed me to put the creepy eyes on:

June Fair of the Arts

Whew--I'm exhausted! Today was the June edition of A Fair of the Arts, our local monthy craft fair attached to our farmer's market. Great weather, great people, no weirdos, and lots of love--a fun time was had by all.

Here's my booth this month: It's the first time I've actually been pleased with my display; it's organized, visible, reasonably attractive, especially if you look back on the blog and compare it to my other displays in past craft fairs. It could still look much more put together, such as with matching colors, more well-constructed signs, and a professional-looking quilt rack, but that's a job for another day.

The woman at the left of my photo is my awesome friend Betsy, and here's what awesome Betsy is awesomely busy doing:

Bags of bags! Betsy folds, cuts up, ties together, and crochets those vile plastic bags from our local stores into these handsome, sturdy, washable, and non-vile totes. Betsy didn't sell any of them today (I might maybe have over-priced them on account of I think they're so terrific, but I seriously think they're cheap at twice the price), but man, she got the love. She kept me company from 8:00 am until we closed at 1:00 pm, crocheting the whole time, and I can't even tell you how many people she had to explain her work process to, and happily so, because she's Betsy, and she likes to teach. This one mom brought up something like four kids and had Betsy explain the whole thing, how she got from bag to bag, with visual aids, and even after the mom wandered off to look at record bowls, the kids all still stood around our table, just staring at Betsy, maybe a foot away from her. "Keep talking," I whispered to her out of the side of my mouth. Anyway, I think Betsy's going to try to make a couple of items at lower price points for next time, so we'll see how the love pays out then.The fatty stegs also got a lot of the love today. A representative from the Waldron Arts Center asked if I'd bring some into their gallery shop to sell this summer--um, yeah! Only thing is, now I've got to spend the week working in my one-woman fatty steg sweat shoppe instead of decompressing, because I sold most of these, including the vinyl steg. It's very nice, because being represented in some local stores is one of my goals, and I managed to partly achieve it today without actually having to get off my butt. Yay.I spent most of the rainy day yesterday making this display on the living room floor, specifically to hold these record bowls, and it paid off nicely. People really like record bowls, and they have a great profit margin. I actually collect pretty specifically--I like showtunes/musicals; children's music; music I remember from when I was a kid (Peter, Paul and Mary, anyone? I sold my entire collection of them today); and weird self-improvement or instructional recordings--so often people will browse all the titles, and then pick a bowl based on what speaks to them. One guy today said to his wife, "Oh, my god, honey! She's got The Lettermen!" It's fun to sell to people when they do stuff like that.

And what else did we do today, you ask? Well, there was this little thing today that I like to call...THE GOODWILL 50%-OFF STOREWIDE SALE! But that's a story for another post.

Stegosaurus Weekend (Whew!)

I generally have more free time on the weekends, because my working-outside-the-house partner is, on weekends, perfectly willing to take on the less rewarding, more drudge-inducing aspects of parenting--the milk pouring, butt wiping, same book for the eighteenth time reading, nap administering, naughtiness punishing aspects of parenting. This means that, in addition to such family activities as shopping at garage sales, working out at the YMCA, goofing around in the wading pool shaped like a whale, watching "Kung Fu Panda" at the drive-in, and attending Matt's softball game, I had just enough time to work in my little one-woman stuffed stegosaurus sweat shoppe in preparation for the farmer's market craft fair on Saturday.

The shaggy red fur one with the white hearts is surplus fabric from my order at Distinctive Fabrics--it's so soft and comfy and I swear it feels like the fur of our foster kittens. The stripey one is felted wool from a thick sweater I bought one summer in Iceland, that never did suit me--horizontal stripes, perhaps, or maybe I just didn't need the extra bulk? Anyway, it's better as a stuffie. The blue vinyl is the completed project of what I was working on last week. And the blue denim one in the back is from a pair of my mother-in-law's pants. Now I need to find a sunny late afternoon between the storms to take some photos of the dinos outside, and I'll have them all set for etsy and my craft fair.

While I was sewing up the denim dino and Matt was putting Sydney down for a nap, I was, after a while, made suspicious by the silence in the house and went to find Willow. She was doing this:

She poured white milk for the kitties, and chocolate milk for herself.

Craft for My Kids Conclusion

The Craft for My Kids Swap is OVER, at least on the giving end. Being as my partner just, you know, gave birth and all, I reckon I can wait patiently to receive my goodies. Here's the swap gallery in which my partner very generously compliments my crafts, and here are my photos of what I made:
My partner's nursery is decorated in blue and sage, so this denim quilt has a sage wool felt backing and binding and is tied with an embroidery thread that sort of, but doesn't quite, match the backing:



I made this baby powder by sieving cornstarch over and over with lavender essential oil. It smells so excellently awesome that I wish I had an excuse to, um, powder myself...I used some different essential oils in these vegetable glycerin soaps. Lavender is calming and soothing on the skin, peppermint is energizing and helps upset tummies, and lemon-eucalyptus clears up stuffy noses: I think babywearing is critical to attachment parenting, which I think is critical to raising calm, confident, creative, and self-actualized people. I make a lot of these ring slings, and I teach babywearing locally at Barefoot Herbs+Barefoot Kids, so I felt very comfortable making a ring sling for my partner, but I still wanted to weight-test it, of course. Yeah, I think it will hold a newborn...One of my partner's kiddos loves turtles, so I wanted to make a turtle stuffed animal out of felted wool, but I never ended up totally happy with the pattern. I've got some more ideas, though, so I'm going to keep sussing it out:

I've made so many of these crayons in the past year that, seriously, the girls are running out of crayons. Is it still a recycled craft if you have to buy your kids new stuff so you can craft with their old stuff?This is my most favorite thing ever--I made my partner four of these, in different colors. These are made out of old T-shirts, y'all!I like to make kiddos doll ring slings to match their mommas' slings. Only Sydney uses them to carry actual baby dolls, though. Willow is more partial to hauling dinosaurs...On the whole, this swap was a huge success, and I haven't even received my own package of goodies! I learned some terrific new skills that are already serving me well, which is one of the big reasons why I love these swaps, and I developed some great new ideas for new products for my web shop and craft fairs. The essential oils soaps went over really well at their first fair last weekend, and I'll be bringing out the tie-dyed T-shirt bibs really soon. The felted wool turtle still needs some work, but I think it has potential.

I spent a little time today making black bias tape to frame up a tie-dye quilt I pieced, but most of the day was spent running a child-labor fruit salad sweatshop in my kitchen in preparation for Willow's school birthday party this afternoon. Willow's teacher, who is some kind of preschool evil genius, has a beautiful birthday celebration for her students. At circle time each birthday child gives a proper introduction of their family to the rest of the group--"This is my momma, Julie, and my daddy, Matt, and my baby sister, Synee"--and a large model of the sun is placed in the center of the ellipse on which the children sit. When it's your child's turn, she holds the large model of the earth and walks around the ellipse as many times as the earth has been around the sun since she's been born, while a parent reads a brief biography of the child, prepared earlier with the child's help. Willow was insistent that I mention she'd been to France as a baby, for instance. After every birthday child has had their turn, all the birthday children stand in the center of the ellipse while the teachers and their schoolmates sing the "Tall as a Tree" song to them. Reader, did I weep? Oh, freakin' yeah, I did.

Everyone Can Love Dinosaurs Now

It took forever, but the Girls Love Dinosaurs section is finally up and polished on my etsy shop. Some highlights:



Go check it out!

Luna Arts Festival, a Summation

I've been non-vocal for an entire week because I've been working like a dog for the Luna Arts Festival, which was yesterday, and which was actually pretty awesome. I'm much more pleased with the display I worked out for the festival--it wasn't professional-looking by any means, but it did look much more put together and appealing. I need a better eye for details, now, and a more polished infrastructure, but I think the dinosaur theme was well-visualized, and the photographs went over especially well.

We just had the one table, which turned out to be only 6 feet long, not the promised 8 feet, so the sign the girls and I made didn't quite fit, and we made the sign a little big for a craft fair taking place along the narrowish hallways of a building, but it's legible, the colors are bright and appealing, and it's a good name, I think. I think a plain tablecloth would have been better, though--the one here is distracting--and it certainly should have reached to the floor in the front. The back of the display is also a little distracting, and if I'd had some clothespins I would have draped fabric over that railing behind the table. I like how the table is pretty uncluttered, however. The solution most crafters at the festival seemed to apply to the very small space was to completely cram their tables up with product--things stacked upon things, and not a bare space in sight. I'm not sure what other shoppers think about that tactic, but I find it really unappealing--it's hard to focus on one thing that I might be interested in, it's hard to find a price or even an identification of what I'm looking at, and it reminds me of a cheap, tacky fleamarket. I absolutely adore craft fairs as a rule, but when Matt sat at the table while I took the girls around, I really didn't see many tables that looked appetizing enough to stop and browse at, and it was pretty much just because of how they looked.

I'm very happy with my fatty stegasaurus display--the signs were a little unstable, but they're nice and clear and attractive, and the stegasauruses themselves had a nice display in that a good selection froliced on the table next to the sign, and the surplus peeped out from the basket behind the signs, and everybody was able to easily sort through them and had enough space to lay them out and really look through them. I sold all but two of these, and I'm thinking that I underpriced them. For the next craft fair, I'm debating $12-$15.

Matt and I worked really, really hard creating this display board from scratch, and although there are several improvements I want to make, I'm quite pleased with it. First of all, I'm going to paint the whole thing, maybe green, which I think will dramatically improve its appearance. I also think we'll build several sets of these, at least one of each of all pegboard or all quilt hangers, which will be nicer for big outdoor booths as I can hang my record bowls vertically and give people better access and immediate selection while using a lot less space, and the same for the quilts. The design is a big improvement, with the accordion style making the display much more stable--I used to make tabletop displays from foamboard for my necklaces, but they were so front-heavy that I had to tape them down to the table and to something really heavy that I had to bring and hide right behind them. The height of the signs is good, since they're big and legible, but their placement looks messy--I'm thinking some Velcro arrangment to hold them neat and stable. I'm also so short that I overestimate how tall everyone else is, and I hung all my pendants way too high. They didn't sell, and the few people who really browsed them had to crane their heads. The quilts also didn't sell, and really didn't get much more interest than the pendants, which I was surprised by since I thought they were cute and reasonably priced. Too quirky, maybe? I'm hoping these things will do better on etsy. Willow had an awesome time at the craft fair, too--here she's rocking her free lipstick sample from Mary Kay. She's wearing one of the Girls Love Dinosaurs pins we made; these sold really well, too. She was good advertising by playing with her dinosaur toys behind my table, and looking all cute and dinosaur-loving.

I'd bought real bags for putting purchases in, and stamped them with Pumpkinbear, but I could only get one person to take a bag. It was good, though, because several people came searching for me, apparently, after seeing someone else holding a fatty stegasaurus or rocking a button and asking directions to my booth. I also gave away every single one of my business cards, which was a big improvement since I usually forget to offer them.

I'll be putting the rest of my dino stuff up on my etsy shop this coming week--come and buy it all from me, because you love dinosaurs, too.

Girls Love Dinosaurs

As a sort of last-minute idea, I've decided to sell at a local craft fair on March 29. It's supposed to be a showcase of female artists and businesswomen, and my booth rental fee benefits, in part, a local support system serving women and children who are the victims of violence.

I'd almost decided against selling at local, smaller markets, partly because I think my work is pretty weird and not to the general taste, partly based on a very silly couple of tiny craft fairs I did around Christmastime, including one for Girls Inc. at which it turned out I was the only vendor (I still pulled a profit, but being the only vendor...just embarrassing), and partly based on this book I've been reading, Crafts and Craft Shows: How to Make Money, by Philip Kadubec. 

Kadubec isn't really my scene, since he describes his work as "country traditional," highlights booths that look like little general stores or post picket fences at their entrances, and might possibly think that the Internet is a fad, but he was a very successful crafter before retirement and is very insightful about the business of crafts. He prefers larger shows that are precisely targeted toward your particular craft, even though they have scary-large booth rental fees, over teeny-tiny little local fairs that are really cheap to enter. Teeny-tiny little local fairs, he argues, can also be pretty ticky-tacky, don't necessarily attract anyone who wants or can buy your stuff, and waste time better spent more professionally marketing your business or even just making stuff.

I think Kadubec is right on track with this, based on my small experience, and he's voiced the reasoning that will allow me to no longer waste my time at, say, the Christmas craft fair at Matt's office. I think this Luna Arts Festival is going to be awesome, though. From what I gather, it's an established fair with a history, which is a pro for selling at it. It's a craft fair/expo with nothing else distracting, like a chili cook-off or auction or something, tacked on, but with local musicians playing and drawing in their fan bases. It's woman-centered, which I'm always on board with, and I can use it as a dry-run for building a booth that actually looks really professional, before jumping into applying to any big shows.

That being said, I'm still not going to show my regular Pumpkin+Bear stuff. Kadubec also speaks about the possibility of saturating your local market, especially if you don't sell stuff you can use up, like soap, but stuff that sits around and stays stuff for the rest of your life, like record bowls and T-shirt quilts. So I think it is important that if I sell a lot locally, I do provide some significant variety in my work. And therefore, I've decided that for this fair, Pumpkin+Bear will be selling under the alias Girls Love Dinosaurs.

My concept is stuff, primarily recycled but not necessarily, that is thematically centered on dinosaurs--primarily for kids but not necessarily. I worked hard the whole weekend, took the kid out for a photo shoot this morning before it started snowing (something else Kadubec suggests--awesome photos of your stuff or your creation process displayed in your booth or in an album in your booth. It humanizes your creation and highlights its uniqueness and the handicraft aspect), and here's what I've got so far (I can't fix the dismal winter lighting on any of the photos, because my 8-year-old bootleg copy of Photoshop 6.0 finally crapped out on me, and my legitimate purchase of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is currently still winging its way to my door):

These are the Fatty Stegasauruses, made from recycled wool sweaters and polyester batting (I like the fact that I can upgrade the stuffing to make them really eco-friendly, and they're a possibility for selling in a local store or two here). If I have time to make another batch before the fair, I might make a different size or type...say, apatasaurus?

These are the dinosaur-themed "summer quilts," meaning they don't have any batting, per se, just either a fleece back and binding or a fleece middle and a flannel back and binding. I still machine-quilted them, though, which is awesome fun. I'm thinking three sizes--a "play" size, for doll blankets or what-have you, a "baby," size, which is a crib quilt, and a "kid" size, which is a twin.

And these are my soldered glass pendants, made from dinosaur stamps that I bought from Western Mountain Stamp and Coin, which sells packages of stamps sorted by theme--I also have the cats-themed one and the space-themed one, and I really want the maps one and the elephants one, too, only I'm already swimming in stamps. I'm particularly pleased with my soldering work since I bought grozing pliers that permit me to smash the little uneven bits off the edges of the glass that I can hardly ever cut evenly, and the joy of this has given me good-enough glass-cutting karma to actual make some pretty accurate cuts now, as well.

So I'm thinking this might be a sweet product line, because people tend to like dinosaurs. My kids are obsessed with them, as are a lot of kids, and they're also quirky enough to perhaps draw in the quirky crowd. If they're the next stuffed chicken or not, I don't know.

A Few Good Books

The girls and I go to the Monroe County Public Library at least twice a week. On Tuesdays there is storytime with the guy who juggles and has puppets, on Thursdays there is Spanish language playgroup with Miss Nancy, who can play the guitar and breastfeed baby Mateo at the same time, and there are always thirty or so books and a computer game and a DVD to check out. Some of my favorite things to get are books and magazines about making stuff. Not much is specifically geared to what I like to make, although some is, but nearly everything has something to appreciate, however chintzy. Here are some of my favorites:

, by Melanie Graham, is a little-known book on remaking clothes for children. Graham has you take all your kids' measurements and then apply some of them to these templates she has in the back--armpit, sleeve, crotch and hips--basically all the curves. So, you stick the curve templates the right distance apart based on what you measured, and there you go, couture kids' clothes. Even better than that, though, is that she shows you how to get the kids clothes from adult clothes--you know, set the pattern out just like this to get jumpers or overalls from pants, set it out like this to get shirts or dresses or rompers from shirts, set it out like this to get pants from sleeves. Some of her styles are pretty outdated, but I like her techniques. It took two tries to get the templates right, and then I went and lost Willow's, and I've only set two sets of sleeves correctly, but my jumpers and dresses and pants work, and I think it's just really smart.

by Lisa Bluhm is what finally taught me how to solder, that and the hot pink soldering iron I also bought from Simply Swank. Mind you, I was suffering from psychosis brought on by studying for qualifying exams, and the resulting lack of sleep and surplus of caffeine, but I managed to break more than one soldering gun, including one that my Papa had given me that he'd probably had, successfully, for 30 years, before I finally broke down and just bought quality equipment. Imagine! Anyway, Bluhm has well-explained instructions and clear illustrations, a welcome change after trying to figure out how to do everything by reading Craftster forums. I wish she'd break down and give some actual product suggestions, because I still need to buy a decent glass cutter, and I probably won't ever do any of her actual projects she includes, but the techniques alone are well worth it, as is my "Solder Your Art Out!" inscription.

by Kathy Cano-Murillo is notable for reassuring me that my taste for the gaudy in decorating is not demented, but ethnic.

by Hannah Rogge and Adrian Buckmaster and T-Shirt Makeovers: 20 Transformations for Fabulous Fashionsby Sistahs of Harlem are inspiring in that I might even, sometime soon, or, well, sometime, cut down my whole huge stash of men's T-shirts into something vaguely feminine and flattering.

I have a million more books I love. Know more? Share!

What I made today: stuffed panther cut out from the image on a T-shirt depicting the local high school's mascot

A Few of My Favorite Blogs

There are a few other blogs I know about that also explore the DIY culture, also from the perspective primarily of re-use and recycling. When I find a blog I really love, I tend to treat it like a must-read novel, starting at the beginning and reading it all the way up to the present, often in a great big glut over the course of a couple of days. Here are some glut-worthy:


Crafting the Web has a really great combination: some projects with tutorials, some product reviews, and the best of all--thoughtful advice about various topics involved in running an online craft business. Her suggestions for advertising an etsy shop are really useful, and it was a terrific post about the possibilities of starting an online crafting information resource supported by ad revenue versus an online retail store that inspired me to start this blog as the first step towards my own online business someday. Her projects aren't necessarily recycled, but since they're mostly paper-based, they tend to support well the re-use of papers.


Some of the projects at the Craftzine blog are too elaborate for me, and some utilize skills I haven't yet learned, but they're beautiful to look at. Many of the projects with tutorials use repurposed materials, and this site also often explores the art along with the craft, with posts about exhibitions and innovative designers.


Dynamite.com has project tutorials, often using repurposed goods, in nearly every post, and they also include workable recipes. They do a lot of fabric, paper, and yarn art, and they also just look really friendly, I think.


Perpetualplum's Weblog also showcases her recycled work, and she works at a level of skill and craftsmanship that I hope I can someday obtain. Her jewelry is intricate and beautiful and vibrant--and often made of buttons! She works with game pieces a lot, too, but her projects are just in a whole different world.


I really ought to submit my stuff to the Re-craft blog, which is dedicated to highlighting those etsy wares that are made of recycled materials. It's useful and inspirational to see what others make and sell, especially since I'm relatively new at online business and all it entails.


The Craftgossip Blog Network also posts primarily recycled products and artwork, but if something links to Craftster, you'll generally find an awesome tutorial and discussion there, and some DIY project books give me more incentives to annoy the aquisitions department at the Monroe County Public Library.

Rostitchery is the most beautiful, most perfect blog ever. I love it--she has a daughter, too, maybe a year older than Willow, and she's a brilliant seamstress, so she keeps me flush with dress patterns. I made a pillowcase dress for Sydney roughly based on one of her tutorials, only where she uses the sweetest, most flowery, and precious pillowcases, I sort of used an old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles one. Sydney rocks it, of course. And it was her post about making her daughter some Max and Ruby stuffed "babies" that gave me the idea to try soon making my girls some stuffed dinosaurs (not like the ones I'd like to sell at the craft fairs this summer, but simpler and more satisfying to little ones, most likely).

Know more? Share!

Just Us...Squids? Kitties? Pigs?

Last year at the craft fair I sold at every month, this one month in the space next to me, instead of the hippie couple who sold hand-painted light switches, a couple of grumpy elderly ladies set up a little round table with an umbrella on top. I call them grumpy because pretty much the only interaction I had with them was when they stopped the director in charge of the craft fair to complain about the ladders I use to display my T-shirt quilts (to the right in the photo). I'm totally on top of the fact that it's not the most professional looking display, and I plan to look much more put together at my comic book convention table in a couple of weeks, but still.

So call it sour grapes that I am still so completely messed up by their success. I am messed up not so much that they had crowds three deep around their little table calling out orders while I had my usual trail of nice people who admire my stuff but do not so much of the "buy." Nor am I really that messed up that they sold completely out of their stuff by 11:00 am, clearing at least a thousand dollars, and then didn't stick around in the hot sun like they're supposed to so that the fair doesn't have holes in its display and look crappy, but called one of their middle-aged sons to come and get them and take them home. No, what I am really messed up about is the fact that they did all this, had all this success, were the hit of the fair that day, by selling...little stuffed chickens. Two colors of fabric, stitched in a triangle with a little beak and comb stitched on. Stuffed chickens!

It made me doubt my place in my local craft community--I spend quite a lot of my free time making funky, ironic, kitschy jewelry and household goods, with very modest success, but these ladies, Just Us Chickens (of course), had people absolutely hysterical over them. One grandma wouldn't let her two grandsons have any of my marble-ized reclaimed crayon hearts at $1 each, snapping at them to put them down, but next door at the chicken table she bought them each a $7.50 stuffed chicken and had them pick out one for their mother. Another older woman, out with her daughter, refused to pay $7.50 for a stuffed chicken with a strawberry-printed fabric, but as she and her daughter walked away, the older woman saying, "Maybe I'll come back later and buy it," the middle-aged daughter responded, "If it's still there," and the woman stopped right in front of my booth, actually blocking access to it, pulled out a ten-dollar bill, and instructed her daughter, "Go buy me that strawberry chicken." While the daughter did so the woman stayed right there, blocking my booth, staring vaguely off into the distance.

And the chickens brought people such happiness! Sometimes somebody gets really tickled at my stuff, like if they find a record bowl made out of their favorite record, or when they see a cool T-shirt quilt, or a bumblebee necklace, but it always seems really personal when they do, as if I've made something just exactly for them. But everybody loves chickens, it seems. One woman delightedly announced (I'm a shameless eavesdropper) that she'd set the chicken on her computer monitor at work, and every time she looked at it she'd smile. Another woman said that she'd give the chicken to her mother to put on the table next to her recliner, and every time her mother looked at it she bet she would just chuckle. I'm telling you, this chicken business was off the hook, and I had just no idea.

So I'm toying with the idea--this coming craft season, should I have my own stuffed animal? Made with recycled T-shirts or felted wool sweaters, of course. And what animal? These ladies used a pretty common pattern for theirs (sour grapes requires me to inform you that creating an object from a pattern you did not create is technically not allowed at many craft fairs), but to spend the time to create a pattern, I'd need to be pretty passionate about the animal in question. But if selling is the goal, perhaps I shouldn't trust my own pretty "unique" tastes.

Here's what other people have. BuyOlympia.com has these gorgeous reclaimed sweater owls, selling for $22 each. So that idea is taken. But aren't they beautiful, and so well put together? UncommonGoods.com has these elephants and lions for $26--a little too elaborate for me, and I'm not in love with the realistic coloring. But that's two other animals out.

Hmm. Willow and Sydney are both big into dinosaurs, and Willow is a big fan of buying a toy dino at Goodwill, taking it home, poring over her research tomes to match a picture with the toy, and then spelling out the name for me to label the bottom of her toy dinosaur with its actual real dino name--ah, we love learnin' around here. Stuffed dinosaurs might be pretty sweet. A diplodocus first, then maybe a triceratops, and perhaps a saltasaurus--if I can get some rhinestones...