Today is the last day of August and second to last day of another yarn sale over at Crafts Etc. All needlework supplies (yarn, threads, hooks, needles, etc) are 25% off, and if you order totals $25 or more, shipping is free. Because I do a lot of charity crochet work, I love these sales, which they tend to have every few months.

I have to admit that my tastes have gotten a bit beyond acrylic Red Heart Super Saver yarn, but you can’t beat it for making afghans, so I usually use these sales to load up on specific colors of it that I know one group I make squares for uses a lot. At my local craft store, a normal skein of Red Heart goes for $2.59, but on sale, Crafts Etc. has it for $1.94, and that includes both the 5 and 7 ounces skeins.

I also stock up on baby yarn. Though they don’t carry my favorite baby yarn from Bernat, I like the TLC Baby Amore yarn for baby ghans, which they have for $4.12 for a four ounce skein.

I really like natural yarns, so I got some cotton yarn to make some wash clothes. I also splurged this time and picked up some bamboo yarn, which I’ve never worked with before. I have no idea what I’ll make with it, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Naughty Secretary Club
Jen shows how to transform old lace curtains and a cheap wooden embroidery hoop into a one of a kind earring holder.

Stefanie Girard’s Sweater Surgery
Yoga ball never “looked” so fun, How to paint a yoga ball to look like an eye for a lawn Halloween Decoration

The Artful Crafter
Eileen just took her new Zutter Bind-it-All out of the box. Woohoo! Look at what a bona fide binding newbie can create with the Bind-it-All.

The Impatient Crafter
Check out this Haute Couture inspired felt, ribbon and glass bib necklace Madge made for I Love to Create teens!

Vickie Howell-Craft.Rock.Love
Get a signed bookplate for your copy of Vickie’s book, Pop Goes Crochet!

The Crochet Dude
Drew talks about the crochet conference he just returned from and you can listen to a podcast interview with him and Zontee from Lion Brand Yarns!

About Family Crafts
Who are your favorite popular characters? Are they included in this collection of free coloring book pages?

Alexa Westerfield a.k.a. Swelldesigner
Alexa visits the San Francisco Zine Fest and gives a recap of what she saw!

Cathie Filian
Cathie is holding a charity dog costume & book auction. All the costumes were handmade by Cathie and featured in her book Bow Wow WOW! The proceeds benefit the Humane Society.

Craftside-A behind-the-scenes peek at a crafty world
Craftside has tutorials on how to make two punk rock scarves one with yarn and one with fabric, info on participating in the Good Mail Day Challenge, One Person’s Oddity and a Polaroid Postcard design, a bunch of mixed element jewelry and tips on laying a pattern out on plaid fabric.

Cross Stitch at About.com
One of Connie’s friends is really big into Egyptian history and culture, so she has some pattern ideas for gifts. If you like Egyptian-themed decor, you will love these charts!

Mixed Media Artist
Have you ever used an online publisher to create your own artist book?

We had a heck of a storm roll through here yesterday. I had just fed the dogs, and we were in the backyard when the wind started picking up and dark clouds rolled in. It went from light to dark in minutes, actually dropping in temperature from 87 to 75 in about five minutes! As the wind whipped up, I noticed one of the boards on our fence was flapping around partially loose. Unfortunately, the DH was gone for the day and wasn’t expected home for a good while still, and I was worried that the board would fall with all the wind and obvious storm closing in. What’s a crafty gal to do?

I wrangled the dogs back inside, zipped over to my trusty yarn stash, and pulled out a scrap piece. As the first sprinkles started coming down, I raced over and tied the board back to the one next to it, and voila, safe and secure at least until DH can get out his hammer and nails.

About an hour or so later, the storm finally left and we had an inch of rain in the rain gauge and even lost one of our little pine trees.

There were sticks, bark, and pine cones all over the place, but the board was still there as was my yarn fix it. DH comes home today, so I’m curious to see what he thinks of my yarn crafting on the fence!

I wanted to share this interesting article from the New York Times, “The Women’s Crusade,” which talks about the place of women (or lack there of) in the 21st century, primarily in third-world countries. Of course, men craft just like women do; however, in this article they give two examples of women who used their crafting skills as well as their brain-power to make their lives and those of their families better. The first story is about a woman who was regularly beaten by her husband, a drunkard who threatened to take another wife so he could have male children. (Yes, obviously he never took a Biology 101 class!). The woman eventually started an embroidery business, and it became so successful the power in the family switch over to her because she was bringing in so much money.

Now, I’ll warn you that the article is pretty long, but even if you just read the first page, I think you’ll be inspired. The rest of the article is also inspiring in places as well as disturbing, so that’s another warning for you.

Kalmbach Publishing (who publishes Bead & Button, Art Jewelry, and BeadStyle magazines) has a new venture on-line called Jewelry Classes on Demand; it sounds sort of like movies on demand that you can get through your television. The site offers a variety of jewelry classes such as making chain, making clasps, polymer clay photo transfers, and so on. When you purchase a class through the site, you end up receiving a downloadable pdf file with all the instructions plus you are able to view a demonstration of the technique. So you can watch it from your computer and you still have the instructions after viewing the video. Most of the classes look like they cost $19.95 each.

When I was busy with the local art and craft show circuit, one of the tasks involved that my husband (who used to come with me and help) and I got pretty good at was setting up our booth and breaking it down. I say “good” meaning we were very quick because we were always running late, and when it was time to go, we really wanted to go.

Now that I look back on it, I realize we probably could have created a much fancier set up, but time was also money, so it just didn’t make sense to either of us to spend hours setting up when we knew that these small shows we were doing and the income we brought in from them just didn’t justify all that extra time. Some shows we did very well at, of course, but still, when you add it all up - making all the jewelry, pricing it, tagging it, storing it, displaying it, traveling to the show, setting up, breaking down - well, let’s just say you probably don’t want to add it all up!

Trade shows are well above the little local craft show level, and that means more time and effort to set up your booth. In both cases, though, you are basically setting up a temporary shop in a way, so even if you want quick and speedy like we did, you still have to think things through. And with trade shows, you need to really create a professional image because you are selling to other professionals who will retail your products.

Pam Corwin, a professional crafter who also writes about the business of crafting, has an interesting video posted on her weblog documenting the work she typically puts into setting up a trade show booth. The video is only 4 minutes long, but it took her over 7 hours to create the finished booth. Wow! It’s a lot to think about if you’ve considered taking a step towards some of the larger crafting outlets when it comes to selling your craft work.

Quilting Arts has a new free e-book your can download called How to Make a Quilt - 67 Machine Stitching Tips and Motifs. It includes info on free-motion embroidery, variegated threads, drawing with thread, plus lots of basics about necessary equipment.

I have loads of amazing links for your today from my crafting blogging buddies.

Cross Stitch at About.com
Sometimes, you’ve just gotta go against the grain. Find out when and share your comments about stitching against the grain.

Mixed Media Artist
Have you ever tried using heavy watercolor paper to make a peeled paper collage?

Stefanie Girard’s Sweater Surgery
Relax! A Toilet Paper Cozy never looked cuter then when embellished by embroidering with ribbons to make a plaid square on a recycled sweater using a tutorial from the book Ribbon Embroidery by Natalie Bellanger-Clement.

The Artful Crafter
A reader asks, “What are the pros and cons of selling crafts online?” Eileen answers.

The Crochet Dude
Drew gives good advice on how to handle the non-crafty people (muggles) in your world.

The Impatient Crafter
It’s time for back to school fashions and Madge has whipped up a fab tiny Moulin Rouge inspired top hat headband project for your discerning teen…or any gal who likes a little splash of whimsy in her accessories!

Vickie Howell-Craft.Rock.Love
Make cute-as-a-button frames to match with your favorite picture!

About Family Crafts
Find out how to can make a story sack for the book, and soon to be movie, Cloudy With a Change of Meatballs.

Aileen’s Musings
Aileen’s created a quirky copper bird pin,,,,stop by and check it.

Alexa Westerfield a.k.a. Swelldesigner
Alexa revisits and reconnects with a craft from her childhood

Craftside-A behind-the-scenes peek at a crafty world
Craftside has a sneak peek into the soon to be released book; Who’s Your Dada? Redefining The Doll Through Mixed Media, free graphics of good angel/bad angel birds with a tutorial for using them as T-shirt iron-ons, how-to’s on bleaching and cutting photos to create windows, and a mosaic chicken project. The book and bobbin winder contest continues, leave a question on any topic and you are entered to win!

CraftyPod
Sister Diane’s new podcast compares two ways to publish a craft book: the traditional print and publisher method, and the ebook method. If you dream of writing a craft book, this is useful information.

I’m taking a few minutes today to look back on my summer, including a few accomplishments, almost-accomplishments, and just general fun times. School starts back for me full-time and then some on Monday, so that means my leisure crafting will become much more limited. As the typical book-nerd, part of me is excited to be back to the school grind. I get a chance to teach two sections of a totally new class for me (a technical communications class), and I took a class I’ve been teaching for many years and completely changed my approach. All this newness also means more work, but it means not doing the same ‘ol same ‘ol, which can become stale both for me and my students.

It’s been fun to be home so much, spending time with my menagerie as well as cranking out a lot of jewelry and crocheted items. I even got some sewing done over the summer. Earlier in the summer, I cleaned out a lot supplies, packed them up, and donated them to a few groups. This lead to some reorganizing and at least a brief period where I had an amazingly neat and organized studio.

All this does not mean I will be cutting out crafting. It just means that crafting will just take on a different, less-leisurely feel. For example, I won’t be sitting in front of my PC, cat sitting on either side of the computer, crocheting for an hour or more as I listen to crafting podcasts. Basically, the change means crafting turns into more of the job route as I craft projects for my site and other side jobs. This is by no means necessarily bad versus good; it’s just different.

Anyway, I know I’m not the only crafter headed back to academia next week. I hope all of you crafting princesses and princes enjoy the new school year and still manage to carve out time for your beads, yarn, or whatever it is you enjoy.

For all you doll lovers and/or fabric fanatics out there, here is a call for entries to consider: Momiji Couture Contest. Also known as “message dolls” these dolls carry secret messages in the base of each one. The idea for this contest is for participants to create one-of-a-kind fabric Momiji dolls. The 10 finalists will be exhibited at Royal/T, a cafe/art/shop space located in Los Angeles, California. The winner will be featured in Selvedge magazine. The deadline is late October, and you can find out the details for creating your doll as well as how to enter at the contest’s web site, which also has a pretty cool (though new) weblog.