Tuesday, June 30, 2009

New Etsy Shop

I've been dyeing silk scarves for the past few weeks, having fun experimenting with different colors and techniques. The problem is that now I have nearly a dozen hand-dyed scarves and not enough people to give gifts to, so I'm going to open up a second Etsy store. Right now, the name will be 'Elegant Essentials', unless I come up with (or someone suggests) something better. That name will also encompass my partner's gorgeous hairsticks/shawl pins. They're either wood or bone sticks, with strands of semi-precious gemstone beads dangling from them. They're absolutely stunning to look at, and believe me, they work wonderfully as shawl pins -- I've used them that way!

If you've got any suggestions for a shop name, please post them! If I choose a name that's suggested by one of you, there will be a pretty thank you gift!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Wow! Has It Been That Long?

Sorry for the lack of updates -- I've been working on a crochet project (yes, I learned to crochet, although knitting is still my favorite) for most of the last 4 months. I finished it about 2 weeks ago, and I've been recovering since then.

I was working on an afghan that was raffled for a Dragonriders of Pern club that I belong to. In the Dragonriders books, dragons come in 5 colors - the queens are gold, then there are bronzes, browns, blues and greens. The afghan had a knitted center square with a dragon in relief. That square was a vibrant yellow (for gold), surrounded by a ring of afghan squares in the same color. going out from that there was a ring of light tan squares (for bronze), then brown, blue and green. Each ring was, of course, larger than the ring before it, which was perfect since the dragons in the series are more numerous as you move from gold through green. I joined the rings with single crochet in black yarn, which helped set the colors off nicely, then I added a border in black as well. I finished it at 11 PM the night before it had to be somewhere for the raffle! The afghan raised a decent amount for the club, even though the annual get-together where it was raffled was smaller than usual this year, and it went home with someone who truly appreciates the work that went into it.

I wasn't able to get any good photos of it before it was raffled, so I'm hoping that the many people who took pictures of it at the get-together will share them with me. If I get some good photos, I'll add them.

I'm going to be adding a second Etsy shop soon. I've just recently gotten interested in hand dyeing silk scarves, and I'll be selling them as soon as I get a small stock built up and come up with a name for the shop. I'm leaning toward 'Elegant Essentials'. What do you think?

I'll try not to be so long between posts, but no promises!