Links you'll love
Crafters unite! Literally! I thought I'd share some links from blogger friends; I hope to share their links with you each and every week here on "links you'll love."
Aileen's Musings
Find out what Formica and Christmas have in common when Aileen shares a great gift idea with you! Check out her tutorial and download a free Vintage soda label while your at it.
Cathie Filian
Craft up an end of summer wine tasting with Cathie!
Craftside--A behind-the-scenes peek at a crafty world
Craftside has a bunch of cool photos that have words spelled out with objects, try it and post your photo in the Flickr group, fun photos from the Squam Art Workshops, single letter cards to send out for the Week of Hope Sept 1-7 and how to turn an old metal link belt into a fat cuff bracelet.
Crafty Princess Diaries
Check out this unusual call for entries the Crafty Princess found for Momiji doll lovers.
Craftypod
In Sister Diane's latest podcast, Patricia Zapata of A Little Hut talks about the intersection of graphic design and craft.
Cross Stitch at About.com
Get ready for Halloween with free Cross Stitch patterns. Ghouls, ghosts, bats, cats, About.com is where it's at!
Mixed Media Artist
Why take a class? Cyndi shares about her experience learning from the fabulous Jane Sassaman!
Naughty Secretary Club
Jen gets invited to a mustache party and busts out the fun fur and old records to make kitschy masks.
Stefanie Girard's Sweater Surgery
My Christmas tree is getting adorned with a cute crochet bird from the charming new book Crochet Adorned by Linda Permann
The Artful Crafter
Eileen would like to introduce you to Precious Metal Clay. It’s an amazing medium for jewelry crafters as well as polymer clay artists.
The Crochet Dude
Drew shares before and after photos from his recent studio makeover!
Vickie Howell--Craft.Rock.Love
Knit hats for the homeless with Vickie, Lands' End and Warming Families! Read more for a free hat pattern & the scoop on how you can be a part of the FeelGood campaign!
Checking in from sunny CA
Since I'm still on vacation in CA, I'm unable to post any photo or projects, since I haven't created anything since I've been out here. But I did press some pennies at Disneyland, so maybe I'll create a project or two from them when I get home (thanks for the inspiration, Cathy).
Gotta run. More boxes to pack at Vickie's!
What happened between April and November?
I suppose some of you might be wondering what happened between April and now. So here's the true Farm & City story.
It's a start
Welcome to my blog! Isn't that how everyone with a new blog starts? It's technically not my first blog, I previously had a blog with the magazine I worked on, but when we decided not to move forward with the magazine, my blog went with it. I've missed blogging about my projects, creative and otherwise, and hearing from my blogging friends, so here we are--my new blog. I'll be sharing some of my previous musings in backdated posts (to give you the proper frame of reference), as well as adding regular new offerings, so stay tuned. And leave a comment so I can get to know everyone who's coming by to visit.
Thanks for stopping by!
Creative recharge
What a great weekend! First, I found some amazing clothing deals around town. I had to alter one of the skirts (last of its kind) and shorten one of the dresses, but that just motivated me to do the same with a few things that had been tossed into the sewing room to be altered, so the bonus is now I have a few more items back in my closet and out of the sewing room.
The underlying reason for this spree was that my blogging friends have helped me with one of my pledges for this year. Lest you've forgotten, at the end of 2007, I was involved in Ornament Thursday. This blogger exchange involved a bunch of creative gals, and several Thursdays in December, we posted Christmas ornaments on our blogs. I got so many great ideas visiting the other blogs and made some new friends and magazine contacts along the way! So this same creative group decided we should keep it going with one post a month. The posts will be themed, with the "Ornament" part really being the origin of the group--so anything goes as far as the finished piece! (Of course, once the holidays draw near again, we'll go back to ornaments and increase the frequency.) So one of the garments (can't tell you more than that right now) will be my first Ornament Thursday posting! Be sure to check in this Thursday (the fourth Thursday of each month) and see what everyone has going on!
And by the way, lesson learned: When a care tag on a knit garment says, "hang to dry", it probably doesn't mean, "tumble dry low". Luckily, rewetting immediately after noticing the loss in length, a some gentle tugs to the bottom of the dress, and hanging to dry seems to have corrected my error, though it's still drying in the basement because thick knit hanging dry doesn't happen in two hours--even with the fan set on high! Perhaps next time, the better solution is to launder first THEN shorten! Or actually paying attention to the care label...
What will you BE in 2008?
I've been bumping into a lot of information lately about resolutions, finding your authentic self, the secret to changing your life, etc. Transformation is often the focus of January, as resolutions come and, very often, go. And I ran across an article that Sandra Magsamen of Living Artfully wrote for Oprah.com that talks about not making yourself over this year (or any other year for that matter) and just learning to BE. I agree with her thoughts, as I see life as a journey, not a "do-over" every year, starting at Jan. 1 and ending at Dec. 31.
As I read her post, I was struck by the fact that she's encouraging you to be who you are while encouraging you to make changes in your life to reflect who you are (or discover who you are). She talks about being on a journey to create ourselves, and I agree with that wholeheartedly. Where I'm not in total agreement with her is where she makes the assumption that "You have put a lot of time, consideration, and heart into all the decisions you've made to create the one and only you." Depending on how you look at it, some people may not have honestly put a lot of time, consideration, and heart into creating who they are, they might just discover themselves there, and they need to have someone or something challenge them to consider what a new, different them might be.
For many years, my weight was slowly creeping up on me. I wasn't watching what I ate and I wasn't exercising. I occasionally thought I was putting "a lot of time, consideration, and heart into ... creating the one and only me", but I was making up the rules as I went (exercise for 30 minutes, follow up with ice cream) and there weren't many rules. Amazingly (she says sarcastically), I wasn't seen results. It took some honest and, at the time, hurtful words from a friend for me to realize what I was doing was just pretending to put forth effort. That kick-in-the-pants comment, someone else suggesting that a "new, different me" was possible, helped me find the motivation internally to take a long, hard look at myself and realize that I was just fooling myself if I thought that my former strategies would ever have been effective. I sought out external guidance to educate me on how I could stop pretending and actually make an intelligent and successful change. Here I am, almost three years later, having kept off the 20 pounds that I lost. It took work to get here, and it took me wanting to change the "me" I was into a different, new "me"—not necessarily trade in who I was lock, stock, and barrel, but improve who I was physically. As I worked to lose the weight, I learned about myself. I learned I was stronger than I thought. I learned I had discipline. I learned that I had to take control of and accept responsibility for my decisions. I learned that a walk with a friend can be fun and that a walk alone allows you time to decompress and that both are enjoyable. Am I done with this physical journey? Nope. I still want to be in better shape, and I know I'll have to make an effort to do that, as it's not easy for me. I'm not driven by any Hollywood image of what I should weigh. I'm driven by wanting to be healthy now so that it's easier to stay healthy as I get older. I want to be healthy for as many years as I can—I have a lot of supplies in that craft room of mine and I want to get time to work with all of them! (Yes, I know, I'll need to live to 150!)
I share that story because it's the first place Sandra's story took me, but it wasn't the final reason I'm sharing her posting with you. Sandra also got me thinking about a piece of paper that recently surfaced while going through some papers--a note about having a goal. My goal from early in 2007 was to learn more about blogging. And several of the points in Sandra's blog entry, such as "BElieve in yourself," "BEgin today," and "BEcome what you dream to be" address my journey of the last year. My blog started as a little bud of an idea—a "what if" that was based in some scribblings made at a trade show. Sometimes, when you're away from the office, you have time to think and process in ways that you don't have when a deadline is looming or a computer screen is flashing meetings and deadlines before your eyes. Your mind has a chance to process what it's seeing and spit out ideas like the fortune teller machine in the movie Big did. And before I'd even read the encouraging words that Sandra shared, I "BEgan today," by sharing my thoughts, and I discovered that I could make something happen.
