terror in a onesie

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I started this Teresa Wentzler before Liza was born. I stopped to cross stitch something for Liza’s room and then just never picked this piece back up. After I finished the lighthouses, I asked the Craft Night Ladies what I should work on next and they all unanimously said, “THAT!” when I showed it to them. I’ve nearly got the main panel completed and will start on the border for it and then there’s another huge section of text and more border after that. I don’t see it being completed anytime soon and I’m likely to put it down and work on something else for a while to take a break. But for now it’s pretty satisfying.

This past summer I started an art journal and I’ve worked in it as I’ve had ideas and wanted to try different things. This is my latest page from this week. I always think the one I just finished is my favorite and this one is no exception. I’m sure I’ll love the next one just as much.

I bought new lampshades because the old ones were so bent and mangled that it was starting to be embarrassing. I was just going to throw the old shades away but decided to see what the kids would do if I let them play. They spent a solid 30 minutes walking around like this and all they did was cackle like fiends and run into things. And I wonder how the lampshades got bent in the first place?

I traded my friend Janelle a notebook for these awesome slippers. Liza walks around saying, “Oink!” endlessly.

Speaking of notebooks, I have 12 to the point where I can take photos and start posting them. I’m hoping to get that done this week after I return from Atlanta and seeing U2.

Yeah, I said it. U2 for my birthday.

It’s the second time I’ve gotten to see U2 and both times it’s been in October. So I’m a lucky girl. Doubly lucky because Stephen is taking off of work to stay home with the kids while I go hang out with friends and go to the concert. I’ll have much to post about when I get back.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Yes, I’ve been working on Etsy shop stuff but I’ve also been taking care of other things. How is that whenever I decide to embark on something kinda big the whole rest of my life decides to be busy and awesome and crazy and full at the same time?

The kids both have colds this weekend so we’ve been quarantined at home to keep from being contagious. I’ve spent the past 10 days reading the Sookie Stackhouse books (Gigantic thanks to Megan for having them all including the last one that she’d checked out from the library and loaned me!) I’ve also been working on Ladies’ Bible Study at my church that I am leading this semester (gulp!) and I’ve had to work pretty diligently to stay one tiny step ahead of the bright ladies in my class.

But for those of you who might be curious, here’s a photo of my notebooks that I’ve been working on:

The sheep notebook on the left stack is already spoken for but the rest will be up in my shop shortly.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

…wonder no more:

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Had a marathon stitching session last night and then finished up this morning. I’ve ironed it and emailed my client to say that it’s ready. Can’t wait for her to see it. I’ve talked about it and tweeted about it and you guys have traveled the road with me. This is a pretty awesome end to a pretty awesome week.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

A while back I asked you all if I should open an Etsy store. A couple of you replied that I should. I talked to Stephen about it (more than he ever wanted to hear, I’m sure) and I decided that I would go for it. My goal was (and still is) to finish the lighthouse cross-stitch piece before I jump into the Etsy pool. But I’ve been dipping my toe in the water for the past week just to see how the water is.

Step 1: Research is for Scoobies
I’ve been doing research. It feels like I’ve looked at every page on the Etsy store front. I know this is impossible, but I’ve looked at a lot of people’s shops, their mastheads, what they charge and what they’ve sold. I’ve been looking for that magic bullet that makes some stores so successful. The good news from all this research is that I’ve not really found anything quite like what I do. But does that mean the bad news is people won’t be interested?

I’ve read articles on getting up and running and how to get in with the Etsy folks so that they might feature me. I’ve joined a ton of flickr groups, which seems to be one of the ways you promote the goods in your store. I’ll be adding a link on this site so you, my faithful readers, will be able to easily access my store for all your notebook-buying needs. I won’t be placing any ads just yet, but I’m hoping I’ll get a mention or three on friend’s blogs so more folks can find me.

I’ve got a good idea of the categories of products I’m going to offer. I’m trying to make myself stick with what I do well for now and see how it sells. But I keep thinking, “I could make THIS for the shop!” “THAT will definitely sell!” “I should make 50 of those!” But then I look at the short list I’m trying to focus on and remind myself that I need to make the few things that my friends have enjoyed and not be distracted by new possible crafts.

I need to do a bit more work figuring out how to set up my payment options. I have a Paypal account, but I need to hook it to my business checking account. I need to figure out the shipping part of the shop and have all that stuff in place. Basically, I just need a giant block of time to sit down, go over my options, and get it all typed up.

Step 1a: Panic

Step 2: Graphic Design for Shop Girls
I have the name I’m going to call my shop. No, I’m not quite ready to share it yet. I have no idea for the image(s) I’m going to use for my masthead and product labeling. I feel like a big ol’ dork since this is what I do, but I think I have performance anxiety. I want it to be exactly right yet I’m unsure of what note to strike to make it awesome. I’m hoping inspiration will hit me. Barring inspiration, I’m hoping once Liza is back in school, I’ll have some time I can dedicate to figuring it out by good old-fashioned hard work.

A side bar to the graphic design work I need to do for the shop: I also really want to get my graphic design portfolio online. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but have put it off and put it off until it’s just ridiculous. I’d like to be able to mention it in my Etsy store so that folks can potentially hire me for that as well. I don’t know where this is going to fit into the schedule since Stephen is deep into Dragon*Con and is unlikely to be able to do the work for our site before the middle of September. I suppose I could figure out how to do it myself, but have you seen this plate I’m currently carrying here? Full, full, and full. Of course, I’m supposing I’m going to have the shop ready before then. Maybe I’m crazier than I thought.

Step 2a: More Panic and consider chucking it all to read the latest Suzanne Brockmann instead.

Step 3: I can haz prodkt?
Thursday, I wanted desperately to start making pieces to put in the shop but my first attempt caused me a massive round of performance anxiety, again. Yesterday, I cleaned off my desk and I am going to concentrate on finishing the lighthouses for the next few days before I start again. It’s hard though because my brain is screaming, “Go. Go! GO!” I’ve been shopping and have a ton of supplies. I feel like now that I’ve made the decision, I need to work. Then the rational part of me remembers the things that need to be in place before all that. I think the ideas for making things will be there but the shop needs to be in good shape before people get there. I can always add more and more product but I only have once chance to make a good impression with the business end of it all.

Seriously, there were more steps when I started taking notes on this process a few weeks ago. Now I’m starting to panic about the time I’ve spent writing this when I could have been: a: Working on the lighthouses, b. Making new crafts for my store, or c. Panicking some more.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

One more lighthouse to go and I am so excited to be nearing the finish! I’m contemplating my next project and what I might get done if I work as I’ve worked on this piece.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

What I’ve been working on:

…but maybe not so much today since Liza woke up grumpy and Eli’s ability to bug the crap out of her is up to gold medal proportions this morning. I’m not sure what I’m going to do to turn the day around. If anyone has any ideas, I’m all ears!

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Saturday was my first opportunity to tape skits for DCTV, so of course there were vampires.

Fine, fine, we had vampire hunters as well. That’s Buffy, Alucard, Edward Cullen, Spike, and Mina Harker in that photo. Why were they all together? Find out in September!

(And thanks to Patrick for the cast photo.)

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve had the notebook crafting bug:

Click to see some of the other notebooks I’ve made over the past week or so.

So, question: Should I put up an Etsy store and start selling my creations?

I’m still hard at work on the lighthouses. I’ll take a photo after tonight’s work and post.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Sunday night, for the first time in far too long, I ran a game of Paranoia.

Paranoia, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, is an RPG originally published in the 1980s. It was an unholy union of Brave New World, 1984, and the Three Stooges. Players took on the role of Troubleshooters, hapless people in a futuristic underground complex run by the Computer, who is helpful yet insane, and who is entirely obsessed with rooting out traitors. As you might imagine, it finds a whole lot of traitors, especially since the players are given every reason to mistrust each other.

How’d it go? Towards the end of the night, a player managed to catch his one-ton power armor on fire. The fire broke through to the power unit, at which point the player managed to hit the explosive bolts, turning one giant exploding exoskeleton into a smaller exploding exoskeleton and many deadly flaming pieces of metal. Another player fired an experimental tangle gun to try to stop the metal, only to discover that the gun didn’t so much shoot sticky strands away from the user as drape those strands about the user. A third had little choice but to activate his experimental rocket boots, which consisted of two boots with twelve rockets each and a belt with twenty-four adjustable sliders, one for each of the rockets, making the whole get-up incredibly fiddly and near-impossible to use.

I don’t run Paranoia games because it gives me the chance to kill players. I run them because it gives me the chance to put tools in the players’ hands and let them kill themselves.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

You know how the other day I mentioned that I was working on a cross-stitch piece someone hired me to do? Well, that generated a fair number of questions I thought I’d answer in a post.

How did the person find me?
A long time ago, like around the time Eli was born, I was talking with the wonderful women at my local cross-stitch store and the topic came around to people looking for people to stitch for them. I mentioned that I’d be interested in that kind of work. I left my name and number and about a month ago I got my very first inquiry.

How did I decide what to charge?
Everybody told me to charge hourly. I thought about it quite a lot. Hourly is certainly the way to go in most endeavors like this. I looked at some of the work I’d done previously and did some calculations. I came to the conclusion that no one in their right mind would pay me an hourly rate to cross-stitch, there’s just too much time involved.

I decided to do a per job charge, depending on the complexity of the work and what materials were or were not provided. I love stitching and as long as the pattern is something that I would most likely do without getting paid, the money is just fodder for my ever increasing stash.

It just so happened that the dollar amount that I came up with in my head exactly matched the dollar amount that my client came up with as well. I considered that an excellent sign and took it as an indication that I should take the job.

Am I going to be able to get it done in time?
We set a date of the end of September. My client wants to give it as a gift so I am working very hard to make that September date. I’m actually doing better time-wise on this project than I do on my own stuff. I know I need to spend a certain number of hours per day working and I haven’t been skipping very often. There are five lighthouses and a compass rose in the pattern and I have one lighthouse done and have more than half of the compass done as well. If I work as I’ve been working the past few days, I’ll be able to finish the compass today.

Does having a set deadline take the joy out of the work?
I haven’t found that to be true yet. Ask me again at the end of August.

I think I’ve covered all the questions people have asked. If you have others, post them below and I’ll answer them.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

The list is long but boils down to this: trying to acclimate to Eli’s last summer before school starts.

In an effort to keep things light this summer, I didn’t schedule any camps or lessons of any kind for the kids. Ironic, since this is the first summer Eli’s been old enough to be eligible for most activities that run in the summer. Instead I opted for just hanging out with our friends, especially the ones with pools, and getting Eli extra time with Josh before they go to separate schools in the fall.

We’ve gone and developed quite the schedule anyway. Mondays we play at church. Tuesdays are my morning off. A girl from church is coming over to keep the kids so I can run errands or grocery shop alone, which is a mother’s nirvana. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays haven’t quite settled out yet but will be some order or combination of going to the Botanical Gardens, spending time with Josh and his family or having Hallie over so the two of us can experiment in the kitchen.

This summer is already more bittersweet than I expected it to be. Eli is so ready for school, I’ve been saying it for a year now. And yet. And yet. It seems a giant corner to turn. A street he will go down mostly without me. I thought I would have NO problem with that. I’m looking at the couple of months until school starts and I’m wondering what else we can pack in before he goes.

The big news around here is another dishwasher leak. The first one, Stephen and his dad repaired in a day and cost less than $20. This time, the part wasn’t in stock so today marks a week of me washing dishes. It’s still not going to cost very much to repair the dishwasher and Stephen can do it. The bad news of the story is the slow leak ruined the kitchen floor. I had the folks who installed the hardwoods send someone to look at it and he gave us an $800 estimate. We’re thinking about replacing the hardwood with tile since this is the third time in seven years we’ve had water damage somewhere in the kitchen.

In crafting news, I’ve been working on a cross-stitch for hire job. It’s a lovely set of lighthouses that I need to get done before October.

And making notebooks for folks. I’ve made and given away a few and made a few more. I especially like making them now that I have an actual paper guillotine instead the 1-sheet cutter I used when I first started the process.

(Yes, I know Narwhal is misspelled. They’ve sent me a new card to replace that one.)

So all in all, shaping up to be a really busy summer. I’ll make sure to take my camera to the gardens this week so I can post some new photos.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

A while back I had the opportunity to playtest Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, the new RPG from Chad Underkoffler, who created the superhero RPG “Truth and Justice” and the fairytale RPG “Zorcerer of Zo”. The real strength of “Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies” is its setting: a world filled with floating islands, where pulp-style swashbuckling, intrigue, and piracy are the order of the day. S7S uses a lightweight ruleset that makes it easy to pick up and play.

And now you can pre-order a hardcover version, which is extremely shiny. And as with Chad’s other products, you’ll get a PDF to go with the book. If you’ve got a hankering for a good indie RPG, give S7S a try.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Last Christmas, through a series of unlikely events, we got a Wii. The house rejoiced over a new gaming system.

Over the past year, we’ve played Mario Kart, Lego Indiana Jones and about a million games of bowling and tennis. We weren’t letting it collect dust by any means but I had no idea we could re-energize it with something new.

Today, I got the Fit game and board from my mom for Christmas. I’m having a blast with it. So the next time you come over, I am totally making you do the hula hoop. Be ready!

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve got six graphic design projects going right now and most of them are paid work. I’m working on making way too many Christmas and birthday presents.

It is possible that in October I got a little overly ambitious about Christmas. I’ve made it so I’ll be working every night on hand crafts from now until Christmas Eve. It’s fun. I enjoy it. And truthfully I think I’m more productive all the way around when my plate is full. The downside is that I’m so busy I don’t have any stories to tell and I can’t show photos of what I’m working on because everyone I am making presents for reads this blog.

That’s what I’ve been doing. What about you?

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

We were outside at the playset one afternoon this past week and Eli requested I tell him a story. He’s always making up stories so I guess he decided he needed a break from all the work and wanted to hear someone else’s made up stuff.

I might be crafty with a glue gun and paper or even upon occasion fabric or other materials. I think I can cook decently and do a few other things nicely but I am not a storyteller. I guess it is the practical gene in me. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read. I just don’t seem to have the ability to make this stuff up.

So I started telling him the story of a boy named Kreeli who fought a dragon and saved his friends, LukeDuke and Burwill, and his sister, Bliza. Yeah, after that story I was out of juice. I didn’t have much to begin with but I was tapped out after the dragon.

But as in all things with kids, the thing that you most want to disappear becomes the most favoritest thing they can imagine.

Every night this week I’ve had to tell a Kreeli and Bliza story. Sometimes I slip and say Eli and Liza and he reminds me that these kids names are Kreeli and Bliza. I guess he has to maintain the wall or something. I’ve tried to keep the stories fantastical but the last couple of nights they’ve deteriorated into rehashes of the day or previews of the next day. He doesn’t seem to mind as it netted him pancakes this morning since Kreeli had pancakes last night in his story.

The nicest part of this is that it allows me to reinforce stuff we’ve discussed during the day. Kreeli never kicks other kids on the soccer field. He’s kinder than that. Kreeli always watches out for Bliza and takes care of her. Kreeli always does the brave thing, the kind thing, the smart thing. So while in the beginning it was annoying for me to do, it’s starting to grow on me.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed today. I realized this afternoon that I have about 17 frying pans in the fire and I’m trying to keep my hair from burning as well.

School has started back and I always forget that, even for pre-school aged children, the wheel starts turning again come fall. Eli and Liza had their two days of Mother’s Morning Out this week. Things were great except for lunch time, which I always thought was the easiest subject. We bought everyone bento boxes while we were in Japan. Cool, right? Wrong. Eli’s cup leaks so bad he isn’t allowed to return to school with it. The teachers in Liza’s room were confounded today by how her bento box stacks. I’m only slightly worried about the stacking training Liza is receiving from these sweet ladies since her box is keyed and will only fit together one way. I guess next week I’ll just go back to good ol’ American plastic bags and hormone-coated sippy cups.

This week also brought our first week of soccer practice for Eli. We returned home on Monday from Kansas City and Stephen took Eli straight to soccer practice. I took him tonight since Stephen needed to do some work at home. I think Eli’s going to have fun and I’m completely impressed that the coaches are teaching them actual fundamentals of the game, but I can already tell that the schedule is going to kill us. Games are on Saturday — wait for it — at 8:30 a.m. Everyone groan in chorus with us. I know that soccer is going to be great for him and he will make some friends that he will hopefully go to school with next year, but holy cow, 8:30 on a Saturday. And that’s what time the game starts. We have to be there between 8 and 8:15. I guess it’s also good practice for getting him up for school next year.

We also brought a lovely parting gift from our trip. All four Granade children have colds. Liza had it first, so I’m guessing it’s from when she licked the floor at the Nashville airport. Now Eli has it, and even Sam and little Noah have it. When I talked with Joy today, she wondered if we would be able to get together and not share germs before the kids are 15. I’m guessing it ain’t gonna happen. When Eli sneezes he sounds like a squeaking mouse. When I told him that in the car on the way home from soccer practice this evening, he nearly fell out of the car laughing.

Stephen is preparing talks for Dragon*Con. His involvement gets larger every year. I expect in about five more years he’ll have staged a coup and taken over the whole system. I’m guessing that when that happens, there’s going to be a sharp increase in the number of SciFi authors invited. I’m proud that he’s found his niche there and is having a good time, but the alternate schedule around our house for July and August while he is prepping makes for some crazy late nights. That schedule in combination with the above mentioned children’s colds is not a good thing. You might ask, “Misty, why are you staying up with him? You aren’t going to Con so why not get some sleep?” My answer, this Con anyway, is “Michael Phelps and Beach Volleyball.”

Next is work. Wha? Yes, I have some work going on right now. Some is Dragon*Con related; some is regular church stuff. Today I spoke with some folks for a new short term freelance job which I’m hoping, if I do a bang up job, will turn into more freelance work. Regardless, this first piece is cool and I’m excited to get to work on it. I actually used this morning while the kids were at MMO to do work. I sat at the computer for multiple hours in a row and worked. It’s amazing how much I can get done when I’m not tending my chicks.

Lastly, I have turned into a one woman craftapalooza. I’m working on the birds. Still. I made the first batch and then realized that I wanted to give a few more. Then I added to that list and then I just wrote down the names of pretty much every woman I know because I thought it would be a nice gift to get so I wanted lots of you to have one. So if you haven’t gotten a bird yet, you probably will. Be patient with me, though. I’m working on them off and on since I am also making a purse (pictures forthcoming as progress is produced), cloth bookmarks, paper bookmarks, storage containers from recycled tins (if you have any, I want them!), a new DIY planner for myself, and I’m in the process of updating my work portfolio so it looks a bit more cohesive. My latest brainstorm is to collect plastic lids off of bottles (soda, OJ, milk, etc.) so that I can carry them to Eli’s school for an art project. (OK, so I saw this on one of the crafting blogs, but I don’t remember which one so don’t yell at me for not having a link.) I’ve always found it funny that when I am busiest, I feel energized to work on projects for myself.

If I have two coherent thoughts to string together after all of that (and my usual child rearing and house chores) all I want to do is watch Dr. Who or sing songs from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I find it really funny that my two favorite actors right now are men with very expressive foreheads. I’m sure that says something about me but I don’t think I want to examine it too closely.

Anybody else out there obsessing about anything or enjoying their own chaotic life?

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

Since I was asked: why, yes, I can make an instrumental version of Boom Monkey available.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

For Christmas, Misty’s mom got me a set of boomwhackers. They’re pitched plastic tubes — think handbells for people too nerdy to play handbells. After I got them, I had fun playing various simple songs for Eli. Then I started wondering: could I do something more complex with them?

The result, through a chain of reasoning I will not attempt to reproduce: Boom Monkey, a cover of Jonathan Coulton’s Code Monkey. The vocals are his; I did the arrangement and played the instruments, where by “instruments” I mean “boomwhackers and a shaker”. Boom Monkey is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 US license. You can either download the mp3 or listen to it below.

Update: By request, I’ve made a separate instrumental version of the song.

Originally published at Live Granades. Please leave any comments there.

I was making Liza’s butterfly when I found this bird pattern on one of my craft blogs. I knew I wanted to make it and combine it with this quote:

Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those who sang best.
–Henry Van Dyke

I’ve been working on them almost since I finished the butterfly.

I’ve actually finished eight of them, but two of my first efforts went to Eli’s friend Will because of his obsession with birds.

Why has it been a secret? I was saving them to give as gifts. Now that those gifts have been given, the birds are no longer secret. I’ll probably make some more to give as gifts but right now since I’ve finished the first wave, I’m taking a break.