Well...

My eyes might have been bigger than my time limits this week! Maybe my New Years Resolutions should include at the top: Only promise what you can deliver not what you would like to. This morning I spent 2 1/2 hours in my son's Kindergarten class for their Polar Express party. There is nothing like trying to help corral 45 5 &6 year olds hopped up on sugar cookies. Once again I truly admire teachers. Not only have I flailed on the Etsy listings on and off this week but I also completely forgot to get Seamus' teacher gifts ready and there for their last day before Christmas break. Oh well, if I get cards at all this season they will be for New Years anyway so Seamus' wonderful teachers who I highly admire and would give the world if I could, will be part of that tardy gift/card giving spree.
So there you have it: the true confessions of a spacey well-meaning mom and artist. I am off to clean my house and take stock of Christmas presents oh AND to pick my son up from school. Don't want to be THAT Mom. ~*~*~

12.16.10 The Only

I obviously missed a day. Yesterday was a full one with spending time with a good friend I hadn't seen in awhile and once I get to picking up my son from school the day has already gotten away from me. The weather was ridiculously nice too and since the weather heads were predicting snow today a handful of other parents and I thought it best to let the kids play for awhile on the playground. It is trying to snow now but the main issue is the cold. 60 degrees yesterday and now 30s today. It is no wonder the illnesses are going around! Our bodies don't know which season to adjust to.
So enough of the excuses! I have sold out of my fingerless gloves, but have no fear! I will be knitting some fabulous new ones here shortly since The coldest months of winter are just around the corner and I know I am not the only one who likes my hands warm. So this morning I offer up for your viewing (and buying if you so choose) pleasure 2 sweet bowls.

12.14.10

I got caught up today and the light was pretty good for photographing the items I wanted to list so here are 3 new in My Etsy store today:

12.13.10

I didn't get a chance to post yesterday as I went on a lovely hike with my husband and brother in the sunny Colorado mountains. We didn't need snowshoes like we were hoping we would and actually couldn't take one trail due to a non-frozen creek crossing that was quite deep and very cold. Oh well... maybe winter will come someday.

I re-listed my Butter Yellow Wristwarmers and my Gray and Cream Alpaca Wristwarmers yesterday in my Etsy store. I have a couple pair of these fingerless gloves myself and can honestly say they are indispensable this time of year especially when I need to sit in this cold office and type for a while.





















I also wanted to share of my Mother in Law's wonderful ornaments with you today. Her store is called Carol's Sunshine designs. I love Carol's ornaments!! Here are a couple for you to check out.

12.11.10 Listings

Here are today's treasures just posted in my Etsy store:

Still Time to Shop

There is still time to order items from my Etsy store to get them for Christmas. I will be listing at least 2 items a day for the next 5 days so check back to see what is new! I am continuing to include a free ring bowl with every purchase of $50. As for today I have a couple of my favorite designs. Thanks for looking!

And the Winner is...

Marie Green! Thanks to everyone for entering. I used a random number generator and it came up with miss Marie. She has chosen the purple and brown coffee cuff. Please check out her blog if you get a chance: lifeinatinytown.

Christmas is Coming BUY HANDMADE

Ok, I can now talk about Christmas. Here I sit at the computer on black friday proud that I have bought nothing today!! Partly because I am almost done with my shopping but mostly because I refuse to become part of modern day ultra-consumer holiday of giving too much. I believe in a simplicity in giving (and receiving) things that are needed or thoughtful and as often as possible HANDMADE. My friend Val actually has a really cool tradition on one side of her family called "Make it or bake it" you can guess, but they all draw a name from the hat and have to give something yummy from the oven or something made by their own hands. Now I know that not everyone is a craft addict like myself and there are definitely lots of people who don't either have time to make things or don't really care to. I am sure my husband wishes I was one of these most days when he patiently maneuvers around my projects and piles and longingly imagines a home pristine and free of clutter. Anyhow, this inability to go through a day without creating is where people like me and the amazing handmade community that is Etsy come in.
I can't offer huge sales due to the nature of what I make and the time it takes to create my items, but I am pleased to offer a free ring sized bowl for every $50 spent in my store! Besides me, lots of sellers this year are having fabulous sales and giving great deals. Don't get me wrong, these are not Wal-Mart prices, but you know you will be supporting some fabulous entrepreneur who made that wonderful thing with their crafty hands.

I now am descending from my soapbox and do thank you for your time. I would like to give away a felted coffee cuff or a $12 credit toward something from Gretchen's Creations to a lucky reader who has made it through this e-mail. All you have to do is visit my store on Etsy and leave a comment here on something you liked there. If you want a bonus entry, search around a bit and tell me about another Etsy store or item you found that you love that I should know about. I will take entries through Friday December 3rd at 5pm. To do this giveaway I need at least 10 entires, so tell your friends!


Cheers and here is to a happy season of giving!

Winter?

Seriously! I logged in to blog and realized sheepishly that the last post was titled Fall! Oh how embarrassing. Once again, where do I begin? Fall was l...o...n...g around these parts. When the ground finally cooled enough to plant bulbs in early November we had 2 busy weeks of gardening. The funny part is that the trees still haven't dropped all their leaves so there is work to be done perhaps even into the first week of December. This week was a quiet one. It has been cold and although they were calling for snow and quite a bit of it we saw a skiff at the most. Someday I will learn to not put stock in the weather people. It is good that I was off work this week though for a couple of reasons.
The first is that my poor little guy is feeling the one down side of not going to daycare. Tuesday he developed croup! Poor little man had to get steroid shots on Tuesday night and then it morphed into an awful bronchial cough complete with hoarseness and low-grade fever which resulted in another visit to the doctor - I am pretty sure he has been to the doctor a total of 3 times this year and that includes this week. So I have been home with him catching up on laundry, playing games and complementing lego creations, making muffins from scratch, Sneaking extra garlic into everything I can, listening to podcasts of The Splendid Table, Radiolab and Story Corps and most of all getting caught up on my stitching! I am crocheting bowls constantly and when I can , needle-felting a whole lot which is where I am ultimately heading with this post. I have lots to share! All are in my Etsy store and as always you can reach the listing by clicking on the picture. I do want to stipulate that I do not decorate for Christmas until the first of December and after the very wonderful holiday of Thanksgiving is past, but I do need to start listing items in my Etsy so that people have a chance to shop for and receive these items with time enough to enjoy them for the season. :-) I say this mostly because I posted a semi-rant about the skipping over of Thanksgiving on Facebook today. Silly Me!

Fall?

It is nearing the end of September and here in Colorado Springs (and most of the front range of Colorado for that matter) it is HOT and DRY! No rain has fallen in 3 weeks and temperatures have been in the 80's and 90's. Instead of cutting back from frost and waiting until the right time to plant bulbs and garlic we are watering to keep things from dying before they have a chance to go dormant! You can almost feel Fall in the air but can't quite smell it through the dust.

I have been working away creating some fall inspired pieces and wanted to share a couple with you today. Hope you like them :-)

Going Global

My Heart Ring bowls are now being sold in the Netherlands on a really pretty site. The wonderful gal who runs it is marketing them for weddings as an alternative to a ring pillow which I think is brilliant and really wish I could take credit for. The store is called Het Zijstraatje. Sadly I can not read the site, but it is still beautiful to look and fun to peruse all the items she has brought together!

I have also been featured in an all EtsyFast (Fiber Art Street Team) Treasury that also includes some of my favorite team members work. It is called Fabulous Fall Fibers

Where are you Gretchen?

I know, it has been months! Apparently I am not capable of juggling a F/T job, my family, weekly hikes but most of all those three things combined with summer heat and a worse than usual allergy season (and my allergies are pretty bad to begin with). I love my job though! Today we reinvigorated one garden, weeded and dead-headed 2 more, and spread 2 yards of mulch in another! It was an exhausting but gratifying day; the beer I am drinking is well deserved!

As for the hikes, you can read all about them at our other blog: Ode to Ormes . My husband does a great job summing up our adventures and keeping track of our miles. If you feel compelled, leave a comment or follow the blog. We are still not sure how much it is being read.

I will be posting soon again here about some custom work and projects I have been working on. In the meantime, check out the hiking blog! Peruse the fabulous blogs I myself follow and be sure to stay hydrated until the heat wave breaks!

Cheers and Happy Summer!

Blog Feature!

The gardening season is off and running and I am holding on by the seat of my pants! Because of this (and my seasonal allergies) I am spent in the evenings and usually have enough energy to muster dinner and fall asleep on the couch. Hopefully this weekend I will find some time to post more pictures of what I am doing in the garden and also pictures of some needle-felted goodness as well. Especially since I have received a custom order from a friend for a Columbine bowl.
On another tangent, his Saturday I am running in the Take 5 in the Garden. It is a very hilly 5k or 5 mile (Tam and I are running the 5 mile!) in the picturesque Garden of the Gods. Cross your fingers for us that we will have fabulous weather!!
Finally and probably most important, my bird's nest felted bowl has been featured on a fantastic blog: What. No Mints? Please drop by and check it out if you have a minute. Sasha also has a really cute Etsy store by the same name where she sells little felt plushies resembling such outstanding things like paramecium and pet rocks and these adorable bird ornaments:

















As always, thanks for checking in! I hope you get a chance to get out and listen to the birds singing their twitterpated songs to one another and see the flowering crabapple trees about to burst into glorious bloom. Cheers!

A Little Spring Beauty

I am more distracted than usual lately! I have taken to changing the subject mid-sentence a lot or taking a detour to check things out. What is my problem? Spring is here! Things are busting out in bloom all over the place here. Flowering Crabapples and Forsythia; tulips, crocus, daffodils... the list goes on! My house is suffering even on days that I am not working because I am in my own garden planting seeds, amending soil and trimming things back. I seem to be consistently dirty and that includes bark and leaves in my hair. To anyone that knows me this isn't much of a surprise. So why am I writing this? I inadvertently found the coolest gal through Etsy the other day. I saw she was in Antarctica and dropped her a note to tell her how much I admired people that can go live and work there (my husband was one of them). We have been writing back and forth a little bit since and the last e-mail from Chelsea asked if the flowers were really starting to go off here. She also gave me a link to her blog: Chichi's Ice Adventure. This post goes out to Chelsea a little bit of Spring color for her in anticipation of the long dark winter ahead. Thanks for giving me the excuse to post some of the thousands of flower pictures I have been snapping these days!

Fun for the Little Ones

A while back Greenstylemom and I thought that it would be fun to put together some cute Waldorf style craft kits for the kids. There are 2 different ones: Gnome Family and Royal Family and I have just re-listed them in my Etsy store. I have multiples of both kits! They are $10 each and if you are in Colorado Springs, I will deliver them for free!

Spring IS....Coming

I woke up early this morning to run and get coffee before my husband left for work and it was 55 degrees out! The winter hat seemed a bit much. It is supposed to snow on Friday of course but that is Colorado spring for you.
I started back to my gardening job this week and am so excited to get my hands in the soil! Yesterday was spent raking away evidence of last fall (6 garbage cans and 2 bags later at one house and that wasn't even all of it) and cutting back to reveal the new green growth. Tulips, Crocus and Daffodils are blooming everywhere and their vibrant color makes my heart flutter... Can you tell why I am a gardener?
I am hoping to continue some needle-felted flower bowls in honor of my love of all things growing and this is one of the first. I love the yarn this tray/bowl is knit from; it is a light and cheery heathered green with fleck of golden yellow in it. I can't just put any old thing on it. When I started looking through my gardening reference for inspiration I came upon a picture of Thunbergia or Black-Eyed Susan Vine and knew that was the one. I love this plants vibrant green heart shaped leaves but even more so, I love it's golden blossoms! This plant is a prolific grower and looks wonderful on a trellis or in a hanging basket.

This bowl measures 10" across and 1 1/2" deep . The needle-felted vine makes a loose heart shape and is graced by 2 blooms and a bud.


















If you get a chance, please click on the picture to take you to my Etsy shop listing. Etsy has some major glitches right now that are adversely affecting it's sellers. We rely heavily on views and hearts of our items, and in the last couple of weeks they have taken a sharp dive with no explanation from Etsy Admin. In fact if you have a minute show your support of your favorite Etsy shops by stopping by to check out what it new. You can even post items you like to Facebook (and Twitter I think).

Thanks for supporting those who make handmade goodness and have a fabulous Spring day!

No Longer Custom Order

This fabulous true red felted bowl,tray with a big white heart in the center was created as a custom order in my Etsy Shop. I will not go into the details of why the sale did not go through other than to say that I live my life as honestly as possible and it makes me sad when others do not do the same. So here for your viewing pleasure is a fabulous felted bowl that measures 10 1/2" wide and has deeper sides than usual for my trays at 2" (it was designed to hold glass globes and we didn't want them rolling out). It would make a fantastic nature bowl!

Keeping Those Feet Moving!

I have set some fitness goals this year and wanted to take today to share some of my victories with you! First of all, my husband and I have set a goal of logging at least 300 trail miles this year. As of this weekend we have gone 80.02!! I feel pretty confident that we will reach 300~ You can check out our progress on our blog: Ode to Ormes. Not only are we keeping track of our distance and total ascent, but my husband does nice write-ups on each hike and we try and show pictures of the areas we explore. If you live in the Colorado Springs area I believe it gives a great idea of some hikes that you may have not heard of before.

My next bit of news is that I ran the Colorado Springs St. Patrick's Day 5K with my good friend Tam on Saturday and am happy to report that we did fabulously! I am not so apprehensive now of running races and dare I say I am actually excited for the next one? Tam was a great motivator (whether she realizes it or not) and I am so glad that we took this challenge on together!

Last but not least, I have set a personal goal for myself that I will be tracking indefinitely of walking/running/hiking at least 20 miles/week. This week I did about 23 miles! I am tracking this through the invaluable website Sparkpeople.com This is the website I have been utilizing since back in 06 when I decided I needed to loose the baby weight. It has helped me not only to once more become the athletic (and I would like to think more outgoing) person I am today, but has shown me that it isn't just about weight loss; it is about lifestyle and striving to be healthy inside and out! If you are looking for the tools to do the same, I would highly recommend checking it out. It is free!

So to anyone who might read this lil' old blog of mine! Cheers to your health! and Cheers to a beautiful new week full of potential!

St. Patrick's Day and Spring on It's Way!

I am working at stocking my Etsy store with fun spring themed items right now: Bright cheerful colors, nests and blooming flowers all over to herald in a hopefully fabulous 2010 gardening season. Here are a few I have gotten up in the last couple of days~











As always, Thanks so much for looking~ I hope you are enjoying the birds singing and the crocus blooming as much as I am!

For the Love of Knitting!

Now that Valentine's Day is upon us I have been turning my needles to projects outside of my Etsy store. Long promised cozies for patient family members and armwarmers for a friend in Durango to help keep her warm through their apparently endless and heavy winter (thanks Heather for the custom order!).
I am excited to needle felt some lovely spring related items soon. I keep having to remind myself that it is still only February and to have patience for the first signs of color sprouting from the earth. Meanwhile there is no reason I can't create gardens with fiber! Soon enough I will be placing seeds and starts in the soil and oohing and ahhing over the amazing beauty of Spring bulbs.
So here are a couple of treats for you The first is a picture of the arm warmers I knit for my friend stuck in eternal winter and the next is the Klean Kanteen Cozy I knit for Seamus (finally geez mom!) in his favorite colors : Green and orange.

For Your Sweeheart Revisited~

Here are 4 more bowls in my Valentine series. I like the non-conventional colors of the last 3!

For your Sweetheart~

Here are the "My Felted Valentine" Bowls I have listed this week in my Etsy Store.