Fiber Fair - Day 1

It was a great day at the fair today! I met so many fabulous people, and bought (and traded for!) some fabulous things! Guess what I forgot to bring, though? Yep, my camera :( I'll have to take pictures tomorrow, but it looked better when the racks were full. My son was an angel. We were there for a full 8 hours, with an over an hour drive tacked on to each end, and he didn't act up a bit. Thankfully my friend Nata-Leigh will be accompanying me tomorrow, so my son & husband will get a break... at least until Sunday!

For those of you that are new to my blog from grabbing my cards today, welcome! Make yourselves at home here :) The search box in the upper left corner can help you find anything specific, like "tutorials", and typing "FAQ" into the search box may help answer the questions you may have about recycled wool, and what I do.

It occurred to me last night (wish it would have sooner!) that I needed an apron, and whipped this one up. It must not have looked as bad as I thought it did, because I got a lot of compliments on it.


Since I forgot to take pics of my booth, how about a peek at some of the goodies I brought home?

Fingerless gloves by Feltwerker, a fellow recycled wool enthusiast, that have a wonderful crocheted thumb hole and quilted stripes:


A fun beaded necklace with a felted wool ball (i'll have to add the name of the maker tomorrow) that is even more pretty & fun in real life!

Some beautiful earrings (they look SO pretty with proper lighting) that are made from recycled buttons. They are from The Button Stops Here, where you can find beautiful & unique jewelry made from vintage, antique, and even Victorian buttons!


My son picked out this adorable little stuffed tooth pillow for himself, made by Sighfoo. If you are in the market for stuffies, I highly recommend checking out her shop.


Well, that's all for now! I promise to take lots of pictures tomorrow, and hopefully will have time (& energy!) to blog after day 2.

My online shop will be closed this weekend... Come see me at the fiber fair!

The bookmark above may look familiar to you, if you have ordered sweaters from me recently. I have been sending them out with my orders. For the local folks, come see me at the Midwest Fiber & Folk Art Fair this weekend! I'll be selling a few things that I have handmade, but my main focus will be, of course, the sweaters! I will be there all 3 days, Friday, Saturday, & Sunday.

Because of the show, my online shop will be closed from Wednesday evening (July 14th), until Monday morning (July 19th).

I hope to see some of you there!

Are you not getting emails from me?

Have you emailed me and not got a response? I ALWAYS respond to emails sent to me. Please check your spam folder and make sure your inboxes are not full.

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So sorry i've been MIA...

... we've been busy doing a lot of this...


and a little of this....


and some of this...


and even just some of this....


Hopefully you all are too! :) Happy Summer!

Want some free stuff?

I do! I am currently trying to get this cool glass water bottle on Amazon...

... but I don't have enough gift cards yet. What does all this have to do with you? If you sign up to earn Swagbucks through me (scroll down & click on the swagbucks button on my sidebar), I will earn Swagbucks when you do (and people can sign up under you too!)! What is Swagbucks? It's just a search engine, like Google. When you surf the web through them, they randomly award you points that you can redeem for prizes & gift cards. The best to me, is the $5 Amazon gift cards. In the past couple of months I have earned $65 in gift cards just for surfing the web! In the beginning I would get a gift card every week or 2, but now that I have some referrals, I get enough points for a gift card every couple of days! It's easy, and it's free. Sorry if I sound like a commercial, but I just love free stuff!

Off Topic Thursday - Bored kids can play with garbage!

Looking for some extra fun this summer? Go look in your recycling bin!

I don't know what the weather is like around where you are, but animals are about to start walking 2 by 2 around here! We were having yet another rainy afternoon, and Jack said he wanted to play bowling with me. I asked him how we were going to do that, and he raced away. I followed him to the recycling bin, where he was digging around, and he triumphantly held up 3 empty water bottles. He set them up in the hallway & got some balls, and we had a grand time playing bowling!

We also have a local spray park that we frequent a lot, and the kids love to play with water toys while they are there. I love to share the toys, but when it's time to go, gathering up the toys can be a heart wrenching (have you ever tried to explain to a one year old that they have to give the toy back?). We now take empty yogurt contains (buckets), and any other plastic containers we have lying around in the recycling bin. Now we can share, and if someone is still playing with one, we leave it behind. Luckily, our parks now have recycling bins, so they will end up where they should be, after the fun is over.

Tutorial Tuesday - Re-bags!

This is actually more of just a concept than a tutorial, since i'm sure you guys could figure out how to do this from looking at it ;) I have been loving all the heavy duty canvas shopping bag/ totes i've been running across at garage sales. I use them for everything... craft projects, swim stuff, shopping, sand toys, etc., and especially love the ones with a pocket on the outside for my water bottle. What I don't like is all the ugly logos that most of them have on them. Now I am just covering the logos up with recycled wool patches, and turning them into Re-bags! I used my sewing machine to sew the recycling symbol onto the patch, then hand stitched the patch onto the pocket of the bag. If you like the idea, but don't want to make the patches, Victoria Velting sells cute recycled wool patches in her Etsy shop.

Here's the bag I started with. I am not even sure what that was from, a gym maybe? Anywho... it needed some recycled wool!


Here's the patch I made, in progress...


...and here it is sewed on the pocket.



Much better, eh?