Crafting Firsts: PODCAST!!!!!

A bit of old news, but since I'm still excited and it's technically still relevant, I'll happily bring it to you all here!

Back in June, I attended Zombie Knitpocalypse just a 90 minute drive down the road in Rochester, MN. While I was there, I had the opportunity to meet some lovely people, as usual, but I spent much of my time getting to know some of my favourite podcasters (and now favourite people), Susie and Danie from the Prairie Girls Knit and Spin podcast and Sarah from the Cultivate and Create podcast.

Over dinner the first night of the event, Jonas was relaying to the table how I had asked (demanded) that he go to the hardware store down the street (where we shop a lot, so it wasn't like this isn't a place he ever has to go again) and get me one of each of the colour cards from their (admittedly small) paint colours section. This is because when I dye yarn I get the picture of what colour I want in my head and then I translate that into a visual cue based on the colours on the paint cards. Sarah loved this idea, and since part of what she is trying to do with her podcast is really get at the various ways that people express creativity, she asked if we could do an interview about my creative process. So we did!

I've thought at several times about starting a podcast of my own, but since you all can see how reliable I am at updating a blog regularly, I figured it might not be the best idea. Plus I'm not sure that me (and my monogamous knitting self) doing a solo podcast would actually generate any interesting content, especially when I'm working on big projects. So I've never done it, and Sarah's podcast was the first time I've gotten to appear in that medium. I had a lot of fun, and it sort of made me wish that I had a crafty friend locally who would be able to come up with more content than I could and also hold me accountable to actually doing things on time (and that I even had said time in the first place) so I could podcast. Of course, as soon as I got back to my room after recording I thought of six million things I didn't say or should have said differently, but listening back to it after it was released, I think it sounds better than I thought it would after my original critical remembering...which is normal.

Here's a link to the episode with my interview.

After you listen to that, be sure to check out Sarah's most recent episode where she announces a coupon code for my shop and a way you can enter to win a skein of my new favourite of my hand-dyed yarns, "Blue Lily" (more on that in a week or two!). I love the format she's chosen for the contest, and hope that I can take some of the great info that's coming to me and make even more exciting things happen in the shop, so check out Sarah's podcast, contribute to the discussion for a chance to win some yarn, and stay tuned for even more awesome!

Thanks to Sarah for letting me hijack her podcast. I had a blast, and I'm so glad we had a chance to meet at ZK!

(Another) Triumphant Return

Hi again! It's been a while, I know, and I'm sad to say that although I took a pretty awesome trip just a few short days after the last time I posted that I want to tell you about, I think I'm going to push it to next week in the interest of getting the photos a bit more in order and once again trying to regroup my thoughts. So I guess for now I'll just check in quickly and re-establish a bit now that I'm officially done with classes. I know I always make promises about posting and then life gets in the way, and I'm not going to promise it won't this time, but I will say that I'm going to give it my best effort to maintain a regular MWF(ish) posting schedule. Hopefully I'll be able to get back into my crafting in earnest and the content will be there and I'll have something more interesting to show you than just the same thing week after week.

For now I'll pretty much leave it at that. I'm (pseudo???) participating in Stash Dash, so hopefully some big projects are in the works (and hopefully I can complete them.) I'll be heading to a knitting retreat in June, so look forward to hearing how hard I fall off the no purchases train at that point (we're almost at the end of May and I've made 4 purchases so far this year! Only one of them was yarn!). Jonas is building me yarn shelves (and he's basically unskilled labour, so that should be an adventure). Plus, you know, all the usual shenanigans. So here's hoping we'll be seeing more of one another (and there will be new shop content!) in the next few months.

Thanks to any of you who are still bothering to read this after a 3 month hiatus. I promise to do better this time!

Sari

New Website Y'all!

Hi all,

Fall semester has wrapped so I have a few weeks of time to check back in with you again. Lots has happened over the past months, but I won't take the time to recap them here. If you want to check my Ravelry projects to see what I've been up to, that's cool. If not, also cool.

For now, a quick check in to tell you the exciting news that over the last month I've put in some quality work in what little bits of spare time I could grab creating a new website. It combines the hand-dyed yarns and project bags from my two Etsy sites (girlwhocrafted and 223people) with (eventually) the posts you all see here on my blog. In the future it may also do other things, I have no idea. It was super easy to set up (unsolicited plug for Wix.com) and will hopefully allow me to better manage everything in one space and not pay fees to Etsy for listing and selling items.

For now, the blog posts will also remain on blogger and on Tumblr (until I can figure out a good way to re-direct to the new blog, which likely won't happen until I've got more time) and the two Etsy sites will also remain open for a while as I figure out a way to drive traffic to the new websites. For anyone following me on Twitter, links to new listings will all take you to the new website.

If any of you find any issues with any aspect of the site, please send me a message (there's a contact form on the site, or feel free to leave a comment here) and let me know and I'll see what I can do to fix it.

I'm going to try to resume my 3-days-a-week posting schedule for at least the month I have off school (no promises beyond then, although I'd like to keep it up). There's still crafting going on (LOTS  of project bags!) and I have all sorts of ambitions for the new year. Let's hope these ambitions go better than the last (more on that next week!)

Thanks for those of you who stuck with me through my hiatus and sporadic posting schedule. For those of you just finding the blog, I have ambitions to update regularly, but I'm currently working half-time while getting a masters degree while running a crafting business, so blogging is often the first thing to get pushed to the wayside. At any rate, thanks for being here.

Resolutions Check-In: March

I think the fact that it's currently April 7 and I'm just now getting to this post speaks VOLUMES about how well I did on my resolutions this month. But the current run of Do All The Things is behind me and I'm hoping to make some headway as I gear up for the next round of Do All The Things. Maybe. I hope. I've got some new strategies, at least. But, let's check in anyway. If only because even though I know I'm failing, I have a scientific need to quantify how hard I'm failing. Or something like that.

Resolutions Check-In: February (or when I fell hard off the wagon)

I suppose while I’m sitting here thinking about how I should be writing all sorts of blog posts and then not actually writing them (and digging myself into a bigger hole of “I have to write about all these things and I don’t know where to start” while accumulating more things I have to write about) I may as well start with my February resolutions accountability post.

February. I really dislike February. For so many reasons. First, it’s almost always the point at which I just start to get 100% DONE with winter around here. It’s cold, it sometimes snows but not that much, and all the holidays/my birthday are done. Plus, I was raised to think “March = spring” but around here, it doesn’t. So there’s this part where February feels like a neverending Thursday before the weekend starts and then Friday never actually happens. For someone like me who suffers from the whole reduced photoperiod/Seasonal Affective Disorder business this is bad news. It basically means that although I know there are things I want to be accomplishing, my brain just doesn’t have the motivation to actually accomplish them. And then I feel bad about not accomplishing them. Which leads me to more inability to accomplish things. Add to this that I have (for the past eight years) had a major freelance design/layout project I do for a local non-profit and all the work for that happens in February. Which means that in addition to my regular job and my other hobbies (and now my yarn dyeing job) and my real life, I have to put all that together. Ordinarily, I take a week off of work and I knock most of it out in a week, but this year I had to head to an out-of-town work conference the week I’d be doing that, so I quite literally spent all of February trying to work this in to my spare time. Which means that things like blogging and knitting suffered. Oddly enough . . . yarn dyeing didn’t. Hopefully you’ll be hearing about all of that soon.

So. I’m going to make references to some things here that I meant to blog about and didn’t. It’s my sincerest hope that March and I can make a fresh start and I can actually tell you about all these things in the coming days so you can fill in the gaps. I was trying to put off this post until I managed to post about all the things I’m going to reference, but I realised that if I did that, I’d never get anything posted, so I just have to start here and work backward through time.

All that is a long way of saying, sorry I fell off the posting wagon, I’ll try to be better now. Words you’ve heard before. I really do mean them every time.

Resolutions Check-In: January

It’s a few days past the end of the month, but weekends tend to get away from me moreso than weekdays, so my first “2015 Resolutions” check-in post is a few days late.

I hope to do one of these at the end of each month this year to see if I can measure the progress I’m making toward my goals and resolutions that I posted at the start of the year. Hopefully it will help keep me accountable, if nothing else.

So. Let’s take a look.

New Year: A Look Backward and A Plan for the Future

Hi there. First of all, wherever you are in the world, happy 2015. I wish you and yours a safe, happy, healthy year.

Now...down to business. First, a little look back at 2104.

I know I've been pretty bad about blogging regularly, and there were a lot of things I wanted to share with you that I simply didn't make the time for. I hope to get better at that in the future (see the plan for the future section), but for now, let's do a little recap of the year and then talk about what I have planned for crafting and blogging in 2015.