My First Studio!

Hi friends! I am busily gearing up for my move to Baton Rouge, and I am so excited! Last week, I flew down there to "apartment hunt," check out more of the city, and meet once more with my future co-workers. I can't say that I really "hunted" for an apartment, however, because I ended up taking the first one that I saw. You guys, I'm completely in love with the apartment and the location! It's near campus, so I can walk to work, even though Baton Rouge is definitely a driving city - as a former New Yorker, being able to walk places is pretty critical to my happiness, so I'm thrilled with the location. But more importantly, it's a two bedroom apartment that costs about a third of the one bedroom I had in New York, and it's located in a complex with a pool, has a view of the lake, and, most importantly, has... wait for it... a washer and dryer IN THE UNIT! I know, right? Unheard of!

The reason that I'm extra excited about this place is that I'm planning to turn the second bedroom into... you guessed it... my very first studio! Or craft room, to put it less pretentiously, I guess. This is where my yarn stash and spinning wheel will live, and it's where I'll do my metalwork (it even has a window through which to vent the fumes from the E6000.) It'll be so nice to have a separate space for all of those things, rather than having it all over my living space. Until now, my "studio" has always consisted of a spot on the floor in front of the television... but now, I'll have a real craft room, and hopefully be inspired to create more (and more consistently!)

I don't have any pictures of the apartment yet, but I will definitely try to post some as I get things set up. For now, here's a picture of University Lake as taken from campus. My building is on the other side... if you look to the left of the photo, near the bridge, that's where I'll be!

Exciting News!

I have exciting news to share tonight, readers!  Well, actually, first things first (and this is exciting, too) - my Halloween treasury, "A Dark Night of the Soul," tied for the win in the Time Travelers Team's contest!  So thanks to everyone who came over to Etsy and left a comment!  I appreciate the support!

I have even bigger news tonight, though, and it's something that I've known about for awhile but wasn't able to share.  From this point forth, you will be able to see some of my creations in person at the Arts Barn in Orwigsburg, PA.  I met the owner at the last craft show I did, and we got to discussing my metalwork and the possibility of my joining their gallery and selling some pieces on consignment.  I visited the Arts Barn in early August, and was really impressed - they have lots of amazing artwork of all different kinds by a variety of artists, all housed in a beautifully renovated barn.  It's also a gorgeous drive to their location just outside of Pottsville.

After visiting the gallery and setting up a meeting, I decided to design a collection specifically for them.  I knew right away what I wanted to do - I wanted to use beautiful fall colors, gemstone beads, birds and insects, and rusty looking patinas to capture the rustic, artistic character of the gallery and its location.  I've been working like crazy on this collection, and tonight I was rewarded when they accepted all six pieces!  Of course, I took pictures ahead of time to share with you:

These pieces can be seen and purchased at the Arts Barn, located at 3 Berry Road, Schuykill Haven, PA, 17972.  As much as I love Etsy, metal collage is so much more amazing when you can see it in person, so I hope some of you will make a trip up there to check out my work!


Oh, and by the way... in addition to these six pieces, they also kept one more.  It was originally intended to be a part of my Fall 2011 shop collection... which means that posting a picture would be giving too much away.  ;)  But you'll be able to see that line soon.  It's darker and more industrial, and should be posting in my shop within a couple of weeks.  I'll be sure to blog about it here, but keep an eye on the shop if you want first dibs!

NaNo Fail

I'm supposed to be doing NaNoWriMo right now.

For anyone who doesn't know, NaNoWriMo stands for "National Novel Writing Month." It happens every November, and the goal is to write an entire novel in one month. It's pretty popular... there's even a website through which you can arrange local meetups and chat with other writers about your ideas. It's a big crazy writing party, basically... at least, from what I've heard. I tried to do it in 2008, and wrote about 15,000 words of a crappy vampire novel before I got totally overwhelmed and quit. Every year since then, I've promised myself that I would participate again, and every year something (Christmas knitting? Final exams?) has happened to prevent me from doing so.

This year, the powers behind NaNo decided, quite rightly, that November was a pretty craptacular month to have to write a book. So, for people like me, they set up "Camp NaNoWriMo," to take place during the entire month of August. I got really excited about this, thinking I'd have plenty of time to write, and I contacted a friend and we agreed that we would both participate. Fast forward to yesterday, when I realized that it was three days into August, and I had never even signed up.

The sucky part is that I actually feel guilty about this, even though it will probably have absolutely no impact on my life. I could still start, of course, and try to make up for the lost time. I also have what I would consider to be more important things to do... job hunting, managing my Etsy shop, and bringing my cholesterol down, among others. But I feel like I'm letting myself down by not doing NaNo yet again. When will I get around to this? Will it become like the enormous stash closet of yarn that I will never knit up because it so far exceeds my life expectancy? Or the "to read" list that still includes unread titles from 18 years ago?

Arg.

Anyway... I don't know what I'll be doing about that, but having gotten that vent out of the way, let me focus on a few things that I HAVE been doing.

First of all, the Glee Cast Knit Project seems to be a go. If you haven't visited the Rav group yet, then definitely check it out. It seems that one of the team leaders has been in touch with someone from the costume department and is photographing all of the items before sending them on. Whether or not my scarf ends up on the show, my dream is for Naya to tweet about it. Everyone should be following her at @NayaRivera on Twitter, because she's just fantastic.

From the scarf, I moved onto a couple of new projects. I'm actually knitting for MYSELF for a change. I'm working on an Amiga cardigan, the pattern for which can be found in the spring/summer issue of Knitty.  I'm also test knitting a really cute felted witch hat pattern for everywitchway on Etsy... check out their store to see the pattern, as well as a lot of adorable Pagan-esque quilting patterns (they will appeal to non-Pagans as well; for example, the "Samhain" pattern will easily fit in with anyone's Halloween decor.)  They have an awesome shop, and I'm excited to be trying out one of their patterns.

I've also been doing quite a lot of metal collage and assemblage work.  I'm probably going to do a post about metal collage at some point, but for now I'll just say that I've gotten some awesome things up in my shop, and am working on getting a few placed at a local gallery (because I really think that metal collage pieces look a lot more spectacular in person.)  Here are a few of my newer listings:

I sent in my contribution for the August Phat Fiber box, the theme of which is Bollywood.  To be honest, I wasn't nearly as into this theme as I was with the Art Nouveau one last month.  I'm not crazy about Bollywood, so I didn't take any particular film as inspiration; I just sort of conjured up some Bollywood type colorways and sent in a variety of samples:

Even though the theme wasn't really my thing, I am thoroughly enjoying these contributions.  I'm definitely going to continue with this... the September theme is "Enchanted Forest," which is a bit more appealing to me, so I'm already thinking over some potential colorways.

Finally, I am seriously gearing up for Halloween!  Though I appreciate the idyllic summer I've been having here in the countryside of Pennsylvania (last summer I was doing an internship in Boston and sleeping on the floor in an unfurnished apartment with no air conditioning), I always get antsy for Halloween around this time of year.  The Time Travelers Team on Etsy held a big surprise Halloween event on Monday night, and it was a raging success.  I think people are getting ready for fall, and I'm excited to start putting up more yarn and knitwear and other cold weather stuff, not to mention knit myself some fall sweaters.  What do you guys think... are you ready for fall?

And I wonder why I don't have time for NaNoWriMo!  This blog post probably has enough words to make up my daily installment and then some!  Ah, well, you can't please all of the people all of the time (or even yourself for that matter.)  Perhaps I'll start late, perhaps I'll wait until November, but either way, I can't say that I haven't been busy.  :)