The endless quest to get my shit together: {the homespun life – small business}

Those of you who know me at all will know that I am constantly fighting a losing battle to get (and keep) my shit together. It will come as no surprise to you, then, that despite having lived in Houston for over 2 full months now I still have yet to get my studio unpacked. Right now it looks like this:

Which, believe it or not, is a huge improvement over yesterday. Hopefully, over the next few weeks it will slowly become usable as various tools and materials emerge from their two-month hibernation. I look forward to dusting off the Fire Arts section of this blog, and maybe even posting some new jewelry items up in the shop.

In a further attempt to get my shit together, I’m attempting to schedule my writing for this blog in such a way that I can get up 5-6 posts a week. Quixotic, you say? Well, probably. But I do have help! I found a gem of an organizational resource the other say while browsing the much-neglected ranks of my google reader feed.

Those of you who found this blog while looking for online hand-embroidery resources probably already know about Wild Olive. (She’s a crafty blogger with a fun, modern style and great business savvy.) She recently posted a free .pdf download of a blog planner that she and Tara of Sew Tara had collaborated to make, and I snatched it up as soon as I saw it.

As I try to amp up this blog into something a bit more serious – you know, like, with regular posts and stuff? – this little planner may be just the ticket! I didn’t print mine in the fun color scheme (trying to save my pennies), but I did throw together a quick personalized cover. I bound the thing myself with my zimmer bind-it-all (that I had to unpack three boxes to find, and that I’m clearly not very good with, but it’ll do!) and I’ve already begun using it. Get your own and let me know much you love it!

Embroidery: Stitch Samplers Don’t Have to be Boring!

As regular readers will know, I’ve recently been playing around with embroidery and I’m absolutely loving it. My first project was a series of birds, which I chose to stitch onto the corners of a bread cloth. Nothing fancy, but I had a lot of fun with it!

However, once I’d established that this new hobby was here to stay, I figured the next step was to throw together a few stitch samplers. A sampler is basically a collection of stitches, often done in rows, intended to serve as practice for learning new techniques.

Samplers are by nature fun to do, since you’re learning a wide variety of new things as you go, and the tradition of creating a sampler is an extremely old and time-honored one. That said, though, it can get a little boring just stitching row after straight row. It’s a lot more fun to also create something fun and decorative while you’re at it.