A (Small) Photo-Editing Tip

I figured out something new the other day, to help make my photos a bit better, and thought I'd share! Some (most? lol!) of you have probably already figured this out, but I thought I'd mention it just in case it's helpful...

So, I've been taking pictures of buttons lately. I take them outside, in bright light, and use my macro button so I can get up close and personal. Then I copy them into Picasa (wonderful free photo editing software!) and crop them.



I've noticed that they have a tendency to have a kind of grey cast to the background, though. Distressing! So, I did what I normally do with my photos that look a little dingy and went into the "basic fixes" section and hit the "autocontrast" button:


Hmm. Only a tiny bit better. So, how do I fix this photo? Then - tada! - I decided to venture over to the "Tuning" tab and played with the "Fill Light" "Highlights" and "Shadows" sliders a bit - and, hey, much better photo, and much better representation (at least on my monitor) of what the buttons actually look like.


My photos always need work, but it was fun to find out one little thing to do to make them a bit better. Hope this helps you, too!

Open Studios and Open Source Loom

Trying to keep true to my newly-turned-over leaf, and posting again. Short and sweet, right?

Open Studios has been a crush today! Western Avenue Studios was featured on Chronicle, a local Boston news magazine type tv show, a couple weeks ago, and the foot traffic has been great today. You can't buy publicity like that...

This scarf is heading off to a new home... It's got a nice backstory - a friend of mine from high school really wanted to give her sister, a breast cancer survivor, a special Christmas present this year, so we chose the colors together, and 10% of the proceeds from this one will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Fund.

Also got to meet a lovely Etsy customer in person - she knows somebody else in the building, compeletely by coincidence, and stopped by to pick up her scarf in person. Very nice!

Finally - have you heard about the OSLoom project? Margarita Benitez is heading a project to create Open Source plans/software/etc. for people (guilds, smaller educational institutions) to construct jacquard looms. How fantastic is that? And, happily, the project has been fully funded through Kickstarter - I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with in the coming months.

Hello Friends! How Have You Been?

So, obviously, I've been neglecting my blog even more that I've been neglecting my Etsy shop for the past couple of months...

I hope all is well with all of you, and I thought I'd start trying this blogging thing again, but with a little bit different approach. Maybe short and sweet would be a good way to go about it?

So, with that said, I've been working on lots of random little projects lately and finally getting my weaving/making mojo back after feeling pretty burned out in January (it was a crazy fall - crazy busy, which is good, but I really needed to take time to recharge my batteries a bit). Here's a photo or two of the latest little project...


Yup, little silk buttons! I've been listing them in my Etsy shop, no idea if I'll sell any, but I'm having all sorts of fun making them.

Also - tomorrow is our monthly Open Studios at Western Avenue Studios from noon - 5pm. I'm participating in the Spring Art Thing - look for studios with the signs for the Spring Art Thing on their doors, collect punches on a postcard that you can pick up in any of those studios, and enter to win a $25, $50 or $75 gift certificate (depending on how many punches you collect). Fun! And a great place to get a unique gift for new grads, moms, dads, newlyweds... You get the idea.

If you're actually reading this - thank you! Nice to see you!

Creativity...

I was stuck in a jury room last week-ish (called for jury duty, but, luckily, the district court disposed of something like 15 cases that day without needing a jury), and read a bit more of Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit - it's an interesting book, I like to browse through it once in a while.

I think it's been stuck in my head since then, just a bit, and I've been noticing a bit more about my creative process. Like lots of weavers, I think, I tend to get ideas while I'm seated at the loom, weaving - especially when I'm weaving a pattern that doesn't take a lot of concentration. Leaves your mind free to wander, and, I guess, mine tends to wander to other weaving projects.



My only real observation, though, is that I find it interesting that I get the most ideas when I'm in full-on production mode (as I am now, weaving like crazy!)... Not sure whether they'll be good ideas or not, but they sure do seem to come, fast and furious. Maybe my creative weaving muscles, so to speak, are like any other muscles? When I'm using my basic weaving muscle a lot, the creative ones get all limber and productive as well? Just a thought...

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on creative flow.

And on a happy personal note - I've been on the Front Page of Etsy twice this past week (at weird times, but, hey, I'll take it!), and 1000 Markets just sent me an email inviting me to participate in a special Holiday Gift Market. (I adore 1000Markets, I have to say - it doesn't have the traffic that Etsy does, but, man, have they been good to me - lots of features, etc., love that they appreciate handweavers!) Also had a wonderfully successful Open Studios yesterday - thanks to everyone who stopped by! Back to weaving for me - have a big delivery to the deCordova Museum due tomorrow morning (eeps!).

On An Etsy Roll!

It's an Open Studio day at Western Avenue Studios today... And I'm actually wishing I were outside instead! It's beautiful out - 70s, sunny, absolutely perfect - and, not surprisingly, there aren't many people coming through the building. They're all outside gardening (as I should be) or kayaking (as I really want to be) or planning a cook-out for this evening. Hopefully Mr. SkiingWeaver is doing that last one!


This guy was on the front page of Etsy this morning! In this treasury. It was an Etsy-Admin curated list - thanks to whichever kind Admin liked my work enough to put it on the front page! That makes two Saturday mornings in the past couple of weeks. Crazy!

And I've sold five scarves through Etsy in the past couple weeks also - this normally only happens during the holiday season. Two went to San Fran (man, do I love that city!), two went to Texas, and this one:

Is on its way to South Korea! How fun, I love the global market aspect of Etsy... Thanks to it, I've sent work to Australia, France, the U.K., all over the United States and Canada, and now to South Korea.

Warping is underway on the Weavebird. I'd post a picture, but I left my camera at home, argh. Another argument for getting a Blackberry.... (Mr. SkiingWeaver calls them "crackberries" - lol.) And to think I didn't even *have* a cell phone until I got pregnant with Bella. Good grief, how low I've sunk.

Front Page on Saturday!

I'm still playing catch-up from this weekend, and I just realized that one of my scarves was on Etsy's Front Page on Saturday morning!



It was this one... It's been in a ton of treasuries lately, so it was really nice to see that it got it's 15 minutes of Etsy fame. You can see the whole treasury here on CraftCult. (For some reason I can't seem to embed the widget from CraftCult here in my post, argh! It's really a very nice selection, I'd love to put it all here.)

Hooray for StudioHaus for creating such an awesome collection!

Two Months?!

Good grief - almost two months, that has got to be some sort of new blog-slacker-record... But I've been busy, I suppose - kids, house, working in Boston a bit in March and at the studio, and Carlos (Mr. Skiingweaver) has been working literally around the clock for the past six weeks or so at his start-up, it's been pretty insane. Add to that that I'm stressing about having enough inventory for an upcoming art show I've been accepted into...

But it should be fun - several people that I know from my studio building are going to be there as well - but in the meantime, I'm frantically weaving! (Click on the poster if you want to read a little more about it.)

Weaving some lace scarves...

This one has been in a couple Treasuries on Etsy!

I've been busy researching new yarn sources, too, and have some gorgeous yarn being dyed for me in Canada as we speak - I really can't wait to get my hands on it.

What else? Ah yes! A new loom is on it's way to my studio! Tom Beaudet (LeClerc's U.S. rep., at least in my area) is refurbishing a 45" 16shaft Weavebird (compudobby) for me! Hooray! I jumped all over it when it came up for sale - it is really, really hard to find used Weavebirds... I've been kind of holding out for either a new or used one, just because I love my LeClerc Colonial and they're built in the same way. Also like that you don't need to add any sort of lift assist mechanism to the Weavebirds... (If you go here you can see a video of the loom in action!)

Isn't she pretty? I wouldn't be terribly surprised if I end up trading up to a 32 shaft eventually, but, for now, I'm sure this will keep me busy. Although, considering we are also in the midst of getting estimates to get our roof replaced (ouch!), maybe this wasn't the best time to be spending $$$ on a new loom. Ah well! :)

I hope all of you are well, and I won't let it slip for this long again, I promise. Ive been thinking lately that I don't have anything particularly interesting to say - mostly just feeling tired and overwhelmed. Things are easing up for Carlos at work, though, thank goodness, so hopefully I'll have more energy for blogging!

Waaaaay Behind

Gah. So much, once again, for doing it all. I haven't posted in ages. I haven't visited other people's blogs in ages, either! Thank you so much to everybody who's been commenting on my blog regardless of my lameness, I promise I will make the rounds soon to catch up with everybody.

I don't even really have much of an excuse for it - the legal work has been on hold for a little while, so it's just life as normal around here. Sold a couple of scarves at Open Studios last week, that's always nice. I've also been experimenting with these little guys:

Little fibery beads! They're about an inch long, woven with 20/2 silk and that yummy Dragon Tale's variegated rayon. Making them stick has been a challenge, but I think I have it figured out. Though my brain might just be addled from the glue fumes, I'm not sure.

Purple ones, too!

And a bracelet that I made - one of my first attempts at actually making jewelry. I'm terrible. LOL. But I can completely see why people get addicted to it, it's so much fun!

I'm also conducting a little experiment... With the new-ish batch uploading at Etsy, views are a bit slower in coming. So I listed the berry colored beads on both Etsy and Artfire at approximately the same time, I'm curious to see where I get more views! (My money is still on Etsy, but this will be interesting.) I'm terrible about promoting, so we'll see.

OK, off to get some weaving done. Or maybe some cleaning. My house is a complete wreck, as usual... Time to print out my Fly Lady - inspired cleaning task list and get to it!

Busy Week - And a Return to the Dark Side?

Phew, crazy week, or so it feels, though I'm not quite sure why. I had a birthday (we won't talk about how old I am), managed to take some pictures of some scarves this morning (and have several more waiting to be photographed):


(Mixed twill scarf, using Dragon Tales scrumptious variegated yarn, sett at 24 epi, IIRC). I just got it listed in my Etsy shop.

And I delivered two custom scarves, including this one:


for my friend Bob, a fellow artist on the fourth floor at WAS. It's 50% cashmere, 50% bamboo with a hem-stitched fringe and it's a scarflette, not full size. I loved weaving this piece! (Still loving working with that cashmere!) More to come from this warp...

Bob is a silver smith - and his jewelry is *gorgeous* - and he repairs handmade flutes, too! A weird little bit of coincidence, there, because I was a very serious flutist when I was younger, and my teacher repaired flutes, too. I even got to play one of James Galway's flutes when my teacher was repairing it. Amazing instrument. I won't comment on Galway's tonal quality. (It sucks.) (Apparently, I couldn't help myself, lol.)

And I also spent Saturday and Sunday in Boston! On the 33rd floor at One Beacon Street, right next to the Common and State House. The views are *amazing* I cannot believe I forgot my camera both days, oy. I love the city, and it was really fun to be in there again. To work.

Uh-oh. That's the Return to the Dark Side part. A former colleague of mine (yes, lawyer) is working on a case involving a *huge* amount of document production - which means the documents need to be reviewed (for relevancy and privilege), which means he needed lots of help... I actually never mind this kind of work - document review, drafting motions, etc. - it was the arguing with opposing council that I loathed (and which you do a lot more of as you get more senior). So, I'm hoping to get in 30 -40 hours on this case, we'll see how it goes, discovery can be a bit of a moving target as the parties involved negotiate what to produce. But, if I do get in about that much - hey, that's studio rent for the rest of the year + some yarn, too! (Or a ski trip!) I'm heading in again this evening for four hours or so...

Front Page! Whoop!

Wow, it's been a while since I've been on Etsy's front page, so I'm pretty tickled...

There's my green Ms and Os scarf in the third row - that thing has been featured *everywhere*!

Thank you to awesome Etsy seller ChelseaEBird for creating this treasury. Isn't her work gorgeous? I am in awe of silver smiths. And I really like this piece:


(Click on the photo to go right to the listing in her Etsy shop.)

My featured scarf didn't sell, but I did sell a different scarf:

It will be making it's way to its new home in Canada tomorrow! (Post office is closed today - and Priority Mail will get a rate hike as of tomorrow - and I haven't changed my shipping rates yet, whoopsie, think I'll go do that right now...)

Blues

I'm finally getting around to taking some picture of what I've woven lately, so I can get things posted in my Etsy shop... Lots of blues lately, and purples, too. And, if you peek, you can tell that I'm working on some teals on my big loom at my studio. Goodness, I'm going to need to work with some different colors after my custom orders are all done!!

Mr. Skiingweaver, wearing the scarf he got for Christmas (he's going to *hate* that picture, poor guy, lol). And, yes, our Christmas lights are still up. Finally took the tree down over the weekend - though I think I'll be sweeping up needles for weeks!

And a custom cashmere and bamboo scarflette that is on it's way to Los Angeles as we speak!

The whole scarflette idea has been kind of interesting. When I brought some to the Weavers' Guild of Boston sale this fall, the person who juried my work jokingly told me I should plan my warps better (i.e. she thought I was making a mistake by making them short).

And yet, they sell really well (including at the WGB sale)! I think it's because not everyone is tall, not everyone wants a huge amount of scarf, and, of course, I price them at about half of what I price my full-size scarves. I have found it difficult to find a balance between higher and lower price points (mostly because I absolutely hate to sew, so I have no patience for making little zipper bags/checkbook covers, that sort of thing), so the scarflettes seem to be a nice compromise.

Handmade Christmas Presents

So, I've been meaning to post a couple of things that I bought from various artists on Etsy for Christmas...

Love this belt buckle from Etsy seller Metalogical (bought it for Carlos):

The whole idea of actually forging something in this day and age really caught my fancy. And Carlos likes it too!

Another present for Carlos - a t-shirt with a graphic of a Puerto Rican petroglyph of the Coqui (Carlos used to fall asleep listening to Coquis when he was a little guy):


This shirt is from Etsy seller AmaAmo - I was soooo impressed with her packaging and service. She's a newbie on Etsy but she is just incredibly professional.

And, finally, for me:


Hooray! A ring from TreAnelli that I've been wanting forever! I've been wearing it every day, middle finger of my right hand - that's one of the really nice things about Etsy, you can get something like a ring in whatever size you need, generally.

Ice Storm! And Handwoven

Good grief. If you're not in New England, you probably don't know, but Massachusetts/Southern New Hampshire were hit with a HUGE ice storm Thursday night/yesterday. We lost power for the whole day yesterday - got it back around 9pm, I think. We spent the night in a hotel - it was supposed to get down to about 19 last night - too cold to spend the night in a house without heat! (And little man Conall is sick, too, to make things more complicated.) It looks like Worcester is a huge mess, yikes... (one of my brothers lives there - another lives a bit south of Worcester and didn't get any ice!).

On the bright side of things, the latest issue of Handwoven magazine arrived yesterday, and my ruffley scarves are in it! Hooray!

This was a fun project, I actually got a lot of input from Madelyn van der Hoogt on it. The scarves started out like this:


And, after a lot of back and forth, ended up like this:

(The photos in Handwoven are so good!!) The project scarf is actually in the berry colorway, like the little one above, but I didn't have a chance to take pictures of it, I was weaving right up to the deadline, it actually went into the mail still damp, lol! (After my dear little son got into the laundry room, pushed buttons on the washing machine and sent it - the berry one - through the wash a third time - ahhhh! LOL! It shrank a bit more than I expected, needless to say. This child, I'm tellin' ya...)

Anyway, it was such a fun project! And the Dragon Tales yarn is just so gorgeously colored, it's hard to go wrong with it...

Well, here's hoping today gets back to normal. I theoretically have Open Studios, and I also have a couple of cashmere scarves to send out to Etsy customers, goodness. Time to get going!

Open Studios Coming Up!

So, did everyone go shopping on Friday? I'm actually pretty proud of us for *not* going out shopping, lol... We did buy some outdoor Christmas lights and put them up, though, so that was fun. It even flurried here a little bit on Sunday (didn't stick though, rats).

And I sold the sister to my cashmere scarf that I posted about earlier. Barely got it listed on Etsy, and now it's off to Chicago...

Love that cashmere... I've got two with navy stripes in the works (too dreary to take good photos, waiting for some sun), and have some on my loom with yellow in the stripe that are looking pretty cool, too. I'm pleased - and they're fast to weave, since they're twill (my shadow-weave bamboo scarves take two shuttles, so they're a little slower). I'm hoping to warp and weave a couple more sets of the variegated rayon scarves as well. All this because we've got the Holiday Open Studios coming up at Western Avenue over the next two weekends - Saturday and Sunday both weekends, from noon - 5pm.

And, finally, I'll be delivering five pieces to a new shop in Chelmsford, hopefully today - one of the WAS artists is opening a shop about five minutes away from our house! How fun! (We live near the center of our town, it's nice to be able to walk to the library, the grocery store, etc.) Even better, her shop is *right* along the new bike path that is being built through Chelmsford (as part of the Rails to Trails network, very excited to have it here). So, while I wouldn't exactly recommend biking while wearing a scarf, it will be great exposure for her shop...

(Oh - and I'm about halfway through New Moon, the second book in the Twilight series... Jacob has definitely taken a turn for the grumpier, but I still like him better than Edward, lol! I thought I was going to finish the book yesterday, but I was good and went to the studio to weave, instead...)

Cashmere....

Oh my. I splurged and got a bunch of skeins of cashmere yarn...

I used it as the weft in a couple of twill scarves - that's bamboo in the warp - and, oh my, they turned out so soft and snuggly, I love them! I actually wound all of my bobbins by hand as I was weaving, if you can believe it, lol, just because the cashmere yarn feels soooooo good. I could spend the day petting the stuff!

Not much else going on. My berry pie scarf is in a very nice berry-themed treasury on Etsy, that's always nice! (Click on that link to see it.) Thanks to Karen Garner (the curator) for including me in it!

It's raining cats and dogs here today, but Stowe (Vermont), at least, seems to be getting snow, hooray! Can't wait to hit the slopes! Soon. Still have to get Bella fitted for seasonal rental equipment, but I'm looking forward to it - it will be so much easier this year now that Conall is walking! (Kept worrying about him wanting to crawl around the ski lodges last year, not a good place for a little guy, but he'll be fine this year.)

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Spinning again - and a Drumlin

So, I spun a bit again on Sunday, how fun. Here's the results of my second ever attempt:


Ha! How fun! I'm really enjoying it, and it was a nice little reward/break after threading a new warp on my loom at my studio...

Sold yet another piece today:

It's tencel and variegated rayon from Dragon Tale yarns - I used this same colorway for my project that is going to be published in the upcoming January/February issue of Handwoven. (The directions will be for a different colorway, though...)

And, finally, while downloading photos from my camera today, I found this one that I took about ten days ago - we were on a little trip down to Lancaster to buy some apples and stopped by the drumlin there (it's preservation land now, and it's lovely). Aren't drumlins neat? (Click here to read about them on Wiki if you don't know what I'm talking about!) (Yes, I admit it, I'm a bit of a geology nerd.)

Hard to capture the shape of it, this one might do a little better...

Open Studios - Holy Smokes!

Wow!

So today was the first day of the Lowell-wide Open Studios - it was a rainy but not particularly cold day today, so I was really unsure of how well I'd do... Happily, I was an early bird today (setting up my small loom with warp for people to try weaving on), and I sold several scarves before the Open Studios even officially started at 11am.

(A pretty bad picture of my inventory in my studio before Open Studios actually started.)

All in all, I sold TEN scarves! Wowzers! Five of them never even made it into my Etsy shop - including all three scarves from the Not for the Faint of Heart warp (loved weaving those, such fun colors)...

Turns out I only took photos of *one* of these completed scarves - whoopsie...

Another lesson I learned today - I need to come up with some kind of code to write down on receipts so that I know who bought which scarf. I know which scarves sold, but mostly just be default, not to due to any kind of competent book-keeping on my part.

So, all in all, a very successful day. No idea if the success will continue in to tomorrow - my racks are starting to look a little sparse, I need to rearrange things a bit. And boy do I need to weave more!!

Busy Season?

Fall is in the air in New England... (Though, of course, as I write this, a warm front is coming through, bringing heavily humid air with it, yucko.) The leaves are already starting to change a little bit - kind of early this year, but not surprising after a very cool August.

We had Open Studios at Western Avenue Studios on Saturday September 6, and I swear if was the hottest day of the summer, it was horrible. Humid, rainy, everybody was sweating - not a great environment to sell scarves in!

But, when I got home, I discovered that a very lovely customer had purchased this scarf:

from my Etsy store. Excellent.

I shipped it off to her last Monday morning and then got a lovely note from her saying that her husband had appropriated it as soon as it arrived and could i please make another one for him? Even more excellent! so, I'll be making one in more manly colors (black, greys, blues) as soon as I can manage to finish weaving this warp:

I am seriously thinking of calling this series of scarves Not For the Faint of Heart or something like that. The colors are a lot of fun - black, purple, deep red, orange and bright pink in the warp, mostly purple and black in the weft with stripes of orange, red and pink at each end and in the middle. Yeah, it's colorful.

Apparently, I'm in the mood to work with bright colors. Does anyone else get those moods? I try to kind of balance out my color schemes for my store and studio, but sometimes i just a hankering to mix, say, orange and pink and make my eyes pop a little. And other days I prefer working with more serene color combinations...

Front Page - Thanks to the Storque!

So, for those of you who aren't Etsy-people (Etsiers? Etsians? Etsites? Something like that...), a little explanation is in order. The Storque is Etsy's online Newletter for sellers, buyers, browsers, anyone who just wants to keep up a little bit with the goings-on in the Etsy World.

They have a series of Spotlight articles - including the recent Gift Ideas: Teacher Teacher. And my lemongrass green tencel lace scarf is one of the featured gift ideas! Neato! Always tickled to be noticed by the PTBs (PTBs = Powers That Be for you non-Buffy fans out there).

And to make it even more neato, it made the front page! Let's see if I can manage to get my screencap here for you (saved it in a little different way this time, so we'll see...)


Itty bitty. LOL. But there it is! :) It's this scarf/sash, in case you're interested:


It's the sister to the green lace scarf that sold in about two seconds flat. (It's cousin, a similar one but in solid adobe also set a speed record - for me - for selling!) And it's also part of the series that I developed based on my design that was published in Handwoven.

Hmm. Maybe this is the figurative kick in the rear that will get me going/motivated again. It's getting really hard to make myself go in to the studio on weekends, which are usually my productive time! And this is theoretically the time of year when I should be stocking up for fall... Not happening so far, but that's ok, it's nice to be selling still when I thought I'd be well into my summer slowdown by now.

Anybody else have motivation problems when the weather gets nice?

Wednesday Artist Profile - Amanda Sainsbury

Finally, another profile! I've been having severe motivation problems now that the weather has gotten nicer... Even finding it hard to get my rear over to my studio. (Not good! This is when I should be building up inventory!)

I've seen Amanda Sainsbury's work around Etsy a bit lately - she has a really strong design sense, in my opinion, and her work catches my eye every time.

5 Small Knitted Buttons. Aren't they neat? And aren't her colors great? (Maybe that's why I like her work so much, I love her color sense.)


She makes trim in all sorts of lovely colors, too!


Or how about a selection of knitted beads? In purples, too - purple is sooo the color this year. :)


She also makes fabric that you could use to make something fantastic... (She has some Orange Circles fabric that just really appeals to me. Go check it out.)

OK, one last photo of some of her yummy Spring Knitted Buttons...


Lovely shop. And outstanding photos, don't you think? I've been noticing that the overall quality of photos on Etsy seems to be improving... Or maybe there are just enough experienced sellers now that the folks that wind up on the front page are just all doing a stellar job with their photography. It's great to see!