Plier-ing on

(OK, so that title would work better if I could have reasonably written "soldering on" as my stupid pun of the day, but ... WHATEV. ;) )

Finally buckled down and got some Tool Magic, which basically coats the jaws of your pliers with a thin layer of grippy stuff so that working with wire is easier and you don't leave marks on said wire. Pliers on the left(ish) are newly coated, pliers on the right (minus the bottom one) are uncoated (but duh, right?).

I've been meaning to get some of this stuff for years, and now that I'm using normal (a.k.a. fairly wimpy) pliers to work with fat fat wire, I've finally given in and gotten some in hopes that it will save my poor hands. Plus, it was on sale on the Jo-Ann web site, and had free shipping for Black Friday, or Cyber Monday, or something. How could I resist any longer?

Anyway, back to prepping for this weekend. I'll be at the Atomic Holiday Bazaar for the first time ever, and I have about a thousand skeins of yarn to finish, plus whatever else I can manage off the "if I had a million years and endless energy I would do these things for this show" list. ;)

I did finish a bunch of Zen-esque wrap bracelets last night, though. Oooh, ahhh. Well, I like them. Hopefully other people do, too.

I liiiiiiive! Crafty picture spam and the Tour de Fleece 2013

Yessss! I exist.

So ... I did that "falling off the planet" thing that I do every so often, but I'm back! (For however long it lasts.) For a while there, I wasn't doing a whole lot of (physical) crafting, but I did actually finish one long-standing creative project: writing a novel. Working on another now, but that's not what this blog is about, really. ;)

Anyway, recently I've been back on the crafting thing (mostly for my Etsy shop, but hey, that definitely counts). Look! Proof!


My very first handwoven bow! Tiny, pink, sparkly! How can that be bad? ;)



More handwoven bows, these for a custom order.


Loose dyed wool, cool-colored batch. Eventually these will make it into the shop. *crosses fingers* Since I don't really need more fiber sitting in my stash and staring at me like "Spiiiiin meeeeeeeeeee."


Assorted beaded shawl pins in cool colors. (You may sense a theme here.)


A paper-cut bookmark with the kanji for "silver" on it (hence the silver paper — I'm sooooo clever, I know ;) ). This one's actually for me and not the shop. (Whaaaaaaat???)


...And yet more bows! Bows, bows, everywhere!
OK, enough pic spam. The whole reason I got off my butt and posted here finally is that I'm going to be doing the Tour de Fleece again this year, and this time I'll even get to watch the Tour de France on an actual TV. That's as opposed to watching it streaming on a tiny computer screen. Of course, I may do something odd like turning off the sound for the TV and putting on the streaming video anyway. I've grown rather fond of the Eurosport announcers in the past few cable-TV-less years...

So far I've been terrible about checking in on the usual TdF Ravelry group, but I have officially joined Team Nevermore, hosted by the eternally awesome Threeravens Yarn and Fiber Studio. I'm even on the ball enough to have some shawl pins ready to ship to Christiane (leader of Team Nevermore) as prizes for the team. And rather than loading myself down with a bunch of crazy goals, at the moment my sole, singular, one and true goal is to spin up as much as ever I can of an alpaca fleece that I promised someone I would turn into yarn for them, because I really uber-seriously do not wish to slack on that any more. Yeah ... I think I've entered the Twilight Zone.

And that's where I am right now in the world of craft. Cheers, woo, and all that jazz. If I stay in this bizarrely productive Twilight Zone then there should be more updates to come, but hey! Who's even watching any more, right? ;) I'm probably talking to myself here! Ha, ha ... Awesome. For the whole one person who's probably going to read this, you rock, and I'll do my best to come back and keep you entertained as well as my meager skills allow.

For now ... Toodles!