Bathing beauty

Sofie got into her pool today for the first time all summer after finding the wading pool utterly terrifying for the last six or eight weeks. Today, after her usual round of throwing her toys in and watching them swim instead of her, she came over and asked me to take her shoes off so she could walk around in the water, and from there it was a short trip to swim diapers and a suit and laying on her belly trying to swim for real.

And a fedora, of course.

What a cutie patootie.

Storque!

Hey! Haven't posted in a while but just wanted to stop in to mention that I got featured in the Storque, Etsy's blog, this weekend! Click here to visit the Etsy Weekend Deals article. My item is the light blue and yellow daisy crayon roll about 2/3rds of the way down the page.

I was featured because I'm offering free shipping on everything in the shop until Monday morning. Stop in for some great deals - although I'm practically sold out on crayon and pencil rolls all of a sudden!!




I was really excited about this because in addition to sitting on the blog, these deals get mailed out to thousands of subscribers on Fridays. I had a huge day yesterday because of this and am running at something like 22 sales already this weekend, more than tripled my site visits, and am all around on a high from this!

I took some stats snapshots right before the mail went out, and I'll be analyzing the overall effects of getting featured at the end of the weekend to see exactly how big of a spike it brought in, so stay tuned - I'll post the results!

Happy fourth of July, everyone!

The Mystery of Crikabee

Sofie has been saying this thing for a long time now that we just could not make sense of -- "Crikabee! Want Crikabee!" What? Wha huh? We tried and tried to get her to tell us a little more, but the most we get out of her is, "OH, you mean CRIKABEE!" which is what she says when she wants you to just understand her already and stop bugging her. :)

Craig the bee?
Crikabee?
Climb a tree?

Well this week we finally figured it out when we put on a CD we got from the library, one we also had out about a year or so ago but that she hasn't heard since. She meant the song you might know that goes "Boom Boom, ain't it great to be crazy..."

Greattobe = crikabee

Wow. That was a tough one! She never seemed to particularly like this song when we had it out the last time, so I never would have figured this out.

300 Sales! And some fun new items

Yesterday was a big day -- I made my 300th sale in my Bellflower Textiles online shop! I'm very excited about this because I've been working hard towards this milestone since January. My 300th sale was to a nice lady in Japan, who's receiving a fabulous free gift with her order. Thank you so much to all my customers these past nine months!

My new goal is to be at 365 sales by my one year anniversary. Because that would just be cool, you know? I'd love to say I've averaged a sale a day for my whole first year in business.

I also wanted to share some of my latest listings. I've been trying out some new applique designs for my shirts and onesies, including these very lovely little hummingbird designs - these are made from hand-dyed fabric I picked up on our last trip to Hawaii, so they're absolutely one of a kind:



I'm also selling the appliques on their own so that crafty folks can add them to shirts, bags, book covers, scrapbook pages, or whatever projects they're working on. Check out my Supplies and Iron Ons section for a beginning selection - I plan to expand this a lot over the next few months.


Next is this gorgeous burp cloth gift set (which comes with a matching onesie) that I call Pink Lemonade. Aren't these colors just amazing? I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of pale pink, but when you combine it with this ultra-intense gold I'm sold! Click on the pic below and it will take you to the listing where you can see the matching onesie.




Another new design - fun French poodles in a super-cool black and white print. And of course I had to pair it with the hottest pink shirt I could find! Oui oui!


This is one of a number of new pencil rolls and crayon rolls I've listed in the last week -- I just love this sky blue and fuschia damask print. I seem to have a thing for fuschia, don't I? And you can't beat a lovely pinstripe (or is it a reverse ticking stripe?) to go with it.


Thanks so much for looking and happy handmade shopping!

New Big Girl Bed!

Sofie got a big girl bed yesterday, a momentous event that involved two trips to IKEA (I forgot the slats that hold the mattress in the first time), much carrying and hauling, and the piling of about 400 stuffed animals on it the second it was completed. But I'm happy that after an hour of spazzing out, she managed to get to sleep and stayed in her bed all night.

Here she is trying it out:

You can't make it out all that well here but there's a black cat and a blue dog cutout in the headboard. Totally cute. Sofie picked out the crazy fishtank comforter cover herself.

Here's a better picture where you can see the cutouts:



This is the Kritter Bed from IKEA, if anyone is interested in getting one of their own. There are various colors, each with different animals in the headboard.

Fire Truck Adventure

We went to the third birthday party of a little boy down the street on Saturday night, and the main event was a ride for all the kids on a vintage, full-sized fire truck:

We were a little worried about whether Sofie would go along with this since the parents couldn't go along, but she was a real trooper - walked right up, got on the bench, let the fireman strap her in, and went off on a twenty minute tour of Ballard without a tear or a sniffle. This is her, right under the blue balloon (and with Daddy peeking over the edge of the truck from the outside rail.)

Getting ready to leave for the ride, but still stopping to smile for the picture...

I was so proud of her. Man, she's growing up fast.

nasturtium

nasturtium, originally uploaded by bellflowertextiles.

A picture from the back yard today...

Flowers

I got distracted from something that actually needed to be done the other night (amazing how easy it is to get pulled off track by pretty colored felt!) and ended up making these three little flowers.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet, but they're sort of sweet, I think!

Yart Sale Finds

A few cool things from my fellow yart sellers on etsy:


Aren't the colors in this just gorgeous? From Art2ArtColorado


Butterfly barette from 4thesparrowsnest


Sweet hopscotch pinafore from HumbleBea


Toddler tote bag from thishandmadelife - how sweet is this? I may just have to get this for Sofie.

How It All Feels (Grief, Continued)

In the vast realm of things I can't really find a way to talk about, I keep finding myself wanting to discover a way to write about my experience of grief. It's difficult to do so, being one of the most utterly private things I've ever felt, and fraught with potential hazards and emotional minefields, and there's also just the scope of it - anything I write just seems so inadequate. Nothing fits.

So forgive my choppy, ineffectual writing here. Words fail me, for once.

For about a month after Mom died, I was deeply depressed and could hardly get through my day, sometimes. That lifted a little bit after our week away in Cannon Beach a couple weeks ago - a well-timed diversion (thank you Brett) that helped clear the mental fog. Since then it hasn't been quite so hard to slog through the days - but it's all still there, just taking a new form.

Instead of the depression, there are just moments now of intense pain. Less long-lasting, but still frequent, a daily event where I seem to be caught unaware by one of the more painful memories of the whole ten weeks from Mom's hospitalization to her death. A few days ago I was playing with Sofie and was just randomly knocked over by the memories of trying to spoon feed Mom in the last few days before she slipped into a coma. Yesterday we drove up Market Street by a bus stop where I waited one night to find a way home after a late night at the hospital, after her surgery, feeling incredibly forlorn and lost, and also guilty for sneaking away after she'd fallen asleep but needing to get home and see Sofie, and I swear it was like someone hit replay on a movie and I was right there again.

My brain seems to be throwing these images at me at random. Feeling ok today? Well here, try this on for size. Uh, thanks.

Mom's memorial bench arrived at the Washelli cemetary last week, and Dad and I went out to see it. It's lovely, but my mind shied away from it - I just couldn't really stop and experience the reality of seeing this thing with my mother's ashes inside, especially with Sofie there with us. It's like a wall slammed down and shut me off from the whole experience. I meant to go back last weekend alone and try to connect somehow but so far I haven't been able to do it. When I do, I'll take some roses out of the yard. But I just can't do it yet. Maybe this weekend.

Today the shorter version of her obituary ran in the Seattle Times, and the longer version runs in the Ohio paper we subscribe to tomorrow. We'll get a stack of copies of that paper in the mail early next week. One for Sofie's baby book, one for the genealogy files, one for Dana, others for various family members... I'll distribute them, but if it's like today I won't be able to read it. I wrote it, there are no surprises there, but I can't read it right now.

I did show Sofie the picture of Grandma in the paper, which made her smile so big that it just broke my heart. She still talks about Grandma every few days. I know she misses her.

Today I was at the gym I recently joined while Sofie was at her friend Jack's house, feeling pretty good. I'd just completed a really long and hard workout and was stretching in the little room reserved for that, lying on the floor doing a hamstring stretch, when BOOM, out of nowhere I was pretty much overcome again. Your mother is dead. Don't cry.

It's like a foot in the chest.

I wish it would stop.

YART Sale on Etsy!

I'm having a great big sale, as part of an etsy-wide summer sale called the Yart Sale. It's like a yard sale, but focused on art -- yard + art = yart. See how that works?

The sale runs site-wide from June 10th through June 14th. You can read a little more about it at the Storque article on Etsy: Ya Gotta Yart, and you can search using the keyword "yart" to see what's available.

On my site, I've marked down over 20 of my shirts, coffee sleeves, and tooth pillows, all at least 10% off and some much more! You can take a look at all of my Yart Sale items in my Sale section at Bellflower Textiles.



Here's a sneak peek at some of the items that are on sale in my shop:


Strawberry Cupcake onesie, 3-6 months


Great tooth fairy pillow in fun Japanese pig print


The last of a great series of pencil rolls I made from Oilily repro fabric. So gorgeous!


Red duck polka dot onesie, size 6-9 months

Stop by and take a look!

Labels, pt two

And here's the new label on a crayon roll I made yesterday - to those of you who asked in comments how I put them on, I don't hem them, just zig-zag stitch them down around the edges.

Thank you Jennifer!

New labels!

New labels!, originally uploaded by bellflowertextiles.

Check out my completely awesome new product labels designed by my very talented friend Jennifer. Aren't they great? I print them on this special fabric that can go through a printer, then cut them and use them in my creations.

I love them - thank you Jennifer!

Mama's Girl

Sofie, in the back yard this morning, loaded about five of her little plastic animal friends into her little red coupe car, got behind the steering wheel and closed the door, and announced that they were running out to get some Diet Coke.

That's Mama's influence, right there, yup. :)

The Late Spring Garden

Took a break from product photography today to go out and take a few pictures in the yard. Here are some of the better ones:


Graham Thomas Rose in bud


Just waiting to burst into a monstrously bright orange poppy. I actually prefer them when they're like this -- all spiky and fuzzy and full of potential.


My Gruss en Achen rose


I love smoke fennel, and am always forcing the babies on my friend. (It seeds liberally.) Within the space of a few weeks, it goes from cut completely down to about 6-8 feet tall, and it's so wispy and lovely. And it's smell - anise, licorice, heaven. I will always try to have one of these in my yard.


Queen Elizabeth rose, a prolific bloomer


A good view of the front yard veggie growing operation -- two 4x8 raised beds on either side of the central sidewalk, and about a dozen large pots.

Octopi and Chthulhu

With Brett out of town, I'm staying up late working on things. Last night I found myself suddenly obsessed with octopi, which led to the creation of several of these cute little shirts for toddler boys:




What do you think? I'm really happy with them, particularly the blue and gold one. I made several and have posted the first two, which you can see by clicking on the pics above.

A friend of mine looked at them and said I should make Cthulhu shirts, which led me to this great product by John Kovalic -- My Little Cthulhu! Just what every child needs, right?



How funny is that? I totally want one. Look at the little screams of fear on the tiny victims. Ha!

This Year's Tomatoes

Taking a page from my friend Erica, I wanted to post my tomato list for this year. Here's what I've put in for 2009.

Cherries:

• NEW! Black Cherry, black, 65 days
  NEW! Red Grape, 70 days
• Sungold, 65 days, Yellow cherry -- of course! How can you not grow Sungold? As Erica says, they're basically candy on a plant. This is my fourth year, maybe fifth, growing these. Sofie loves them, eats them right off the plant.
• Isis Candy, 67 days, yellow cherry -- third year now for this one. Pinkish, egg-shaped, between the size of a cherry and full-sized. Yum.
• Sweet Million, 60-75, Red cherry
• Chocolate Cherry, 70, Black cherry
• Matt’s Wild Cherry, 60-70 days

Early:
I try to load up on the early and mid-season tomatoes, because you just never know in this climate. But I dropped a few of my old standbys this year - no Silvery Firs this year, for one. I've grown those for several years now and last year I wasn't so pleased with them. Used the space to add another couple super early ones.

• NEW! Bloody Butcher, 55 days, red -- I just couldn't resist. How can I not have something named bloody butcher in my garden??
  NEW! Anna Russian, pink, full, 60 -- an oddity I wanted to try out. I've seen them in books.
• Sasha’s Altai, 59 days, red
• Moskovitch 60, red
• Grushovka, 65, red

Mid-season:

Lots of new varieties here! Green Zebra is Brett's favorite, so that will be appearing every year, and I'm faithful beyond all reason to my beloved Juane Flamme and its bright orange, tangy loveliness, but otherwise I pulled in two new black varieties (I love black tomatoes!), a new sauce variety (I've never been all that pleased with the ones I've tried in the past - San Marzano and Princepe Borghese haven't done all that well for me), and a few other things just for fun.

• NEW! Polish Linguisa -- a sauce tomato, red, 73 days
• NEW! Yellow Perfection Salad, yellow (obviously), can't remember the days on this
• NEW! Prudens Purple, black, beefsteak, 75 days
• NEW! Plum Lemon, yellow in color, plum in shape, 70 days
• NEW! Japanese Black Trifelle -black, 75 days
• Green Zebra, 75-80 days, green
• Juane Flamme, 75 days, orange

All that said about sauce tomatoes, I don't really care if I grow a lot of specific sauce varieties because I make sauce from all of them, even the cherries. One of my favorite things to do in the summer - haul out a colander, fill it with cherry tomatoes, and saute them with garlic and onion and olive oil on low heat for an hour or two until they dissolve into the world's best, sweetest tomato sauce. Soooooooooo good!

Late:
I don't do a lot of late-ripening varieties, as mentioned above, but there are a few I just can't live without. Mainly Brandywines. This year I got two. Some years you get a lot, some years you don't get many, but what you do get is always worth the space. Last year my Red Brandywine was a strange mutant plant that produced early, before many of the earlier-season varieties, and produced all summer long. I've planted this year's right smack next to the same brick wall where the last one grew, hoping for a repeat performance due to reflected heat.

• Red Brandywine, red, 80 days
• NEW! Yellow Brandywine, 80 days

And that's it! Sounds like a lot, but with the two big garden beds out front that were not in place at tomato-planting time last year, I've actually got a lot more room this year and have been able to put more plants in the ground and fewer in pots. Which means that not as much of the porch will be swallowed up in tomato-jungle (yay! usable porch space!) and hopefully that I'll get even more fruit, since the ones in the ground always do better.

And yes, I AM crazy. Tomato crazy. I admit it.

Look Daddy I Flying a Helicopter!

Sofie, at the Tillamook Air Museum, flying herself and Daddy "to Rainbow Canyon." She spent almost a half hour in this thing.

Immortalizing Max and Phoenix

I made these two coffee sleeves last night in honor of Max and Phoenix, our two wonderful boy kitties.

Max:




Phoenix:




Aren't they handsome?

America's Next Top Grizzly

At the zoo today, we were watching the grizzly bears, and one after the other they both came up and sat on a rock that was really close to the glass wall, posed left, right, and center as if they knew they were being photographed, and then wandered off. It was the darnedest thing.

I suppose they were just sizing up the crowd for the easiest-to-get snack, or something, but they sure seemed to be working the camera.

Lambs, Bears, and Craft Shows

I made a tactical error with Sofie this weekend, who has so far been a very happy little carnivore, contentedly eating chicken, beef, and fish whenever it's presented to her.

Saturday was a gorgeous day and to celebrate we decided to grill some lamb, roast little tiny potatoes, make a big salad and eat outside. I was sitting in the backyard with Sofie playing well Brett finished up in the kitchen and decided to give her a rundown of our dinner.

"Sofie, we're going to have salad, and little potatoes, and lamb, and then ice cream!" I told her.

She looked at me balefully, big eyed. "We no going to eat lamb," she said, her tone reproachful to the extreme.

Oops! Is two-and-a-half too early for a kid to decide they're going to be a vegetarian? Because I think she might be on her way.

***

Last night there was apparently a bear running through our neighborhood. For those of you who aren't local, we live right smack in the middle of metropolitan Seattle, about two miles from the center of downtown. You can read about the wild bear chase here in the My Ballard blog, but according to the comment stream tracking the bear's location from minute to minute, the bear di come within about two blocks of our house at one point, clocking in at one a.m. at the corner of 76th and 8th. How bizarre is that?

We asked the cats about it this morning but they weren't talking. With our tendency to collect wildlife in our backyard, I wouldn't have been all that surprised this morning to find a bear sleeping it off under the swingset.

***

I've decided to drop out of the big craft show I'd been preparing for. Reason? I just can't do it all right now, and with the show only two weeks away it was just feeling like too much of a stretch to get ready and carry through with it. Even when you're not grieving, craft shows are really hard work (although lots of fun), and this one, being a two day show, would have been the most ambitious one I'd done to date.

I'm doing pretty well most of the time, but my energy levels still swing rapidly between normal, overdrive, and completely lethargic, depending on how I'm feeling any given day about Mom. I just can't push myself hard enough to work day and night on show preparation right now. I'm sort of disappointed not to be going, but I think it was the right thing to do.

For once in my life, I'm not going to try to do everything perfectly. Let something slide. Put the extra energy I *do* have into keeping the shop (which is BOOMING! right now) going, for sure, but not take on too much else on top of it.

More on my new life as a slacker soon. :)

My first lovey blanket!

Just wanted to share something I made recently - and a picture of it that I really like:



It's a lovey blanket (small toddler blanket designed for cuddling), which is something I've been meaning to branch out into in the shop, made from a gorgeous green floral that my friend Dianne picked up for me in Portland. Modeled, as you can see, by Sofie's friend Tiger. He was very nervous about his first photo shoot but he managed to smile with his eyes and look fierce at the same time. Tyra would be proud.

Sofie has something like this, her rainbow blanket I made from a little bit of leftover fabric, and she takes it everywhere. It's not very big, but she spends half her day wrapping one or the other of her toys up in it and "putting them to bed." And she seems to gravitate towards these bold, bright colors - so I'm taking some inspiration from her preferences and launching a new line. This is the prototype. What do you think? Feedback very welcome

As always, I put a lot of quilting details into it - piecing, an appliqued heart, channel quilting, a nice soft layer of batting... Wow, my almost-two decades as a quilter have come in handy as a craft-business owner!

If you're interested in the listing, you can see it here!

Wordless Wednesday