Owlishly

American & Japanese craft book conundrum aka the question of a virtual garage sale

So here's the thing.  I have way too many books.  Particularly crochet pattern books, both in English & Japanese that I don't anticipate using any time soon.  I love them to bits, but really, it's sad because they're not being used at all. 



I'm trying to decide what to do with them, I think I may actually put some that I know I won't be using in the near future up for sale.  I don't know if it's going to be on etsy or ebay.  I have an account with ebay too, but I've only ever bought things from there, never sold anything.  The thing is, I think lots of these books would appeal to a lot of crocheters/embroiderers (is that even a word?) so I don't know if listing them on etsy would be better or listing them on ebay to allow multiple bidding would be better. 



Sooo...what I'm thinking is I'm going to have a contest.  I need to know whether you think etsy or ebay is going to be a better place to list my books and why.  Mainly the why's are what's important to me; and then let me know which one of the books shown in this post are you most interested in because these are the three that are up for grabs.

Here are the rules of sorts, I'm going to use a random number generator to determine who will win a book.  Just make sure your email address is sent to me through the comments, no one else sees it- just me.  Only comments that answer the question I'm asking will be qualified to be included in the contest, and I allow commenting until June 7th, close the comments and announce a winner on June 8th.  I'll send an email to the winner to get your address, so on and so forth.

Let's hear what you have to say!

 What are your thoughts?

Helllooooo...

So geez, I've been pretty negligent about blogging lately.  Well, we had a birthday party last weekend that just seemed to sap all energy and inspiration from me.



I know I've mentioned privacy before, and as such, I have no plans on using my little one's name, but here she is at her party, hanging out on the stairs playing with her balloon.  Of all the things that I was working on for her birthday, I didn't finish A SINGLE THING! Thankfully she won't remember if I finished them on time, or a couple of weeks late, but boy I sure feel bad about it.  I think I just had way to many things that I was trying to do, so naturally, nothing did get finished. 

Then I've just been feeling off lately.  I don't know what's up, or if it's even worth a trip to my doctor (whom I haven't seen in 4 years) but I've just been more tired than usual and have just been having a more difficult time getting through the regular stuff I need to do, let alone having any time to crochet or embroider.  Coupled with insomnia, I've been a tad zombie-ish lately.  It's getting better, but I still need to take it slowly I'm thinking.

Here's an image of some of the Wee Wonderfuls embroidery I've been working on to finish up my little one's birthday gift.  I took this before rinsing out the transfer inky stuff, so you'll notice a bunch of blue lines around the embroidery. 



Other than that, I really haven't been too ambitious, I have a pattern I'm working on for someone and I've gotten hooked on my google reader (thanks to Average Jane Crafter's fantastic review), but besides that I think I'm just going to get my feet wet slowly to get back into my crafty groove.

Cupcake recipes?

Okay, I'm soliciting- I need a tasty cupcake recipe for my little girl's birthday party.  For some reason cupcakes seem SO much more doable than an entire cake.  Our favorites have always been the carrot muffins with cream cheese frosting from Trader Joe's, but I'm looking to find a recipe that my little boy and I can make together. 

I'm very competent at baking bread, but the sweeter baking stuff & I never really hit it off.  The only thing that I can bake repeatedly with the same results are the mexican wedding cake cookies from Baking Illustrated. Or whatever they're called, I think they actually have a couple of different names. 

Anyway, I'd love suggestions for anything other than chocolate, she's not a fan and sadly, neither am I really.  So what are your favorite cupcake recipes? 

What do you like about your favorite craft books?

I'm wondering. I like when they lay down flat, you know, when they're spiral bound.  That's not the only thing, but it's important to me.  I'd been thinking about this for a couple of days, I don't know why.  My mind just seems drawn to the qualities of a book which make it appealing to me.

I really enjoy the Japanese craft books, though I have absolutely no knowledge of the language.  I like the aesthetic and the sparsity.  I prefer pattern diagrams anyway; for some reason, every time I try reading patterns I usually get lost or end up confusing myself if it's a long round/row.  It's a lot easier for me to find my place when I can just look at a diagram.

If it's a pattern book, I like all the patterns to be at the front of the book, with all the basic stuff at the back. Of course, I don't think it's too much to ask to have illustrations that show left handed directions too, I mean the written directions could be changed to something a little generic like "primary hand" or "hand with hook" instead of always right hand. But maybe that's just me.  I just don't understand why with a craft that is essentially dependent on your handedness, why those directions aren't written for both. 

Colored photographs are definitely a must, at least for the finished item/garment/article.  I like when there are close up images, as well, I don't necessarily need photos of every step of the pattern, unless it's sort of tricky, but I do like to see at least front & back of what I'm going to be making.

Anyway, this is getting pretty wordy & I have some things to work on for my little girl's birthday party on Sunday.  So what do you think- what do you like craft books to have included for them to make the top of your list?

Sickies & a new little boy

Yuck, since Monday we've all been hit with varying degrees of what I'm assuming is a stomach bug. 

I'll definitely spare you the disgusting details, but suffice to say, I'm definitely getting cabin fever.  There were a ton of thing that I'd planned on doing this week, and pretty much haven't been able to get to it.  For example the grape boy pattern.  I don't know how the heck I wrote down what I did for the grape leaf, because it does not correspond at all with what actually happened.  I'm going to have to tackle it when my mind isn't so tired and fuzzy.

I did finish a little boy doll that I'd been working on though.  I decided to make just a plain little boy, and hopefully soon a little girl too.  My little boy wanted a big brother & little sister doll, since he's a big brother & has a little sister :)  I really like him, last night I was talking to my husband about it while he was kind of distracted and told him that I was thinking of naming the pattern after him, to which he replied, "whatever, that's fine".  I told him then maybe not, since I thought this little boy is super cute.  Then he decided it was a perfect name for the doll.  Geez, my husband is not nearly as humble as he should be. Really.  Anyway, here's the newest little guy-

I hope you like him too!

Cinco de Mayo- Free Pattern Day

Hi everyone, for some reason I was composing posts all weekend long, and yet, none of them actually made it to the computer. Anyway, since the weekend always seems to fly by, and Mondays are always extra tiring with trying to reestablish my little one's schedules I'm giving away a free pattern.

It's the Happy Maracas pattern free to 5 people who leave a comment.  On what you ask? Well, I'd like to know how you reestablish your weekday routines after a too short and too busy weekend?  Give me some tips! If less than, or only 5 comments are left, then you all get lucky, otherwise, I'm going to go to a random number generator and choose the 5 that way.  So Happy Cinco de Mayo people, and let's hear what you have to say!

Happy Maracas!

I'd like to introduce you to the Happy Maracas :)  They're super content being shake, shake, shaken all day long- as evident by my having a fairly difficult time convincing my little ones to lend them to me to take pictures!

*

My original intent, besides the cultural representation, was to make these for both Cinco de Mayo, and to give to the 4 little girls coming to my daughter's 2nd birthday party later this month.  I wanted something quick & easy, but super fun at the same time.  I was initially going to make them resemble some pairs of maracas that my mom has with flowers painted on them, and then another set that's striped with a beach scene, but I like the happy faces more!

My 5 month old niece likes them too.  Once she got over staring at the face trying to figure it out.  She shook one and heard the noise and seemed convinced that they were more fun to shake and throw than to look at. 

There are 2 different versions suggested in the pattern- one is more maraca-ish, and the other one is more rattle-ish.  Depending on your likes/dislikes you could even make them without any noise mechanism inside, which after a couple of days, I may want to do.

I hope you like them! Now on to finishing my other 2 patterns, the grapes & octopus boys.  I'll put pictures of them up here once the patterns are done, but if you'd like to take a peak at them now you could always saunter over to my flickr photostream! 

*By the way, if you are interested in purchasing them, I've included a link underneath the pattern that *should* take you to my Ravelry store.  I'm not quite sure if it works, but I'll try it out with this post.

**ETA, Neat! I tried it and it did work :)