The Gifts, The Graphic, and The Gross

Have been itching to share what I've been working on this week! 

These were such a cinch to make & caused hardly any tears or cursing as I tried to make up my own pattern. They're mini bags or gift card bags. Aren't they cute??? They have small cardboard rectangles in their bottoms to lend sturdiness, and a bit of tissue paper to hide the goodies inside; but since I'm taking these to a craft show to sell, they're only stuffed with my business cards. 

I also made these...

... which are gift card holders for the holidays. These are to sell, too, which is why you can spy my business card within again.

Some of this was spurned by the need to find something else perhaps a little more economical to sell at the upcoming craft sale. I was feeling pretty much like a loser after spending the entire day at my stand last weekend only to sell ONE ITEM..... and that's all day.

The craft sale venue is a new one to me, and thus I was prepared for some sort of learning curve to occur. But when next to nothing sells, well..... then to me that says my items are either really bad or priced wrong, and then again, maybe it's just that we were off the beaten path & apparently there were 8 other craft shows in better locations then us????? 

No excuses, I found myself trying to brainstorm smaller (aka cheaper) items that may move faster with people in general having less to spend on ancillary items. I saw these bags & envelopes somewhere & thought I'd try my hand at making some.

In between all this furious stitching, I've had lots of company from Smokey the badly behaved boy. He likes to dig his big head into my sewing room garbage can. Knowing this, I don't put anything sharp in there (not that I can think of the last sharp thing I've stuck into a plastic garbage bag???) But he's disgusting about finding random tissues, food wrappers, and lately, even more gross, are the used Q-tips he digs out & chomps upon happily. 

Why the Q-tips in my sewing room?? I've never been so obsessed with my earholes in my entire life. Two summers ago I began symptoms which seemed to be swimmers ear. But then it seemed like more of an ear infection. Over the years of having kids I've been through the "we always medicate for ear infections" time period and the "we don't medicate for ear infections" time period. Not having health insurance for myself, I was loath to spend $80 to have a doc look in my ear, proclaim it an ear infection & send me home with instructions to "keep it as dry as possible". So I decided to self medicate. Man, maybe I shouldn't have started this... this is convoluted. Okay... long story short... it never went away, and the ears would be wet & oozy, then dry, then itchy enough to wake me at night, sore, and then they'd do it all over again. Finally this fall I got a specialist appointment. After several appointments, several new & improved medications & several hundred dollars, my ears are STILL doing all these lovely symptoms. 

All that to say I'm often preoccupied with wet, itchy ears & have thus begun carrying Q-tips as if they're akin to chapstick, tampax & my wallet --they go everywhere with me. Sometimes I forget it's not quite a socially acceptable behavior & I'll find myself digging in my ears with a Q-tip sitting at stop lights. I've even resorted to an occasional dig in there, mid-aisle, at the supermarket, like some kind of addict hiding her bad habit unable to wait to get her fix-- sometimes I swear it feels like I could itch them till I ended up hitting bone or brain or whatever one hits when one pierces their eardrum & keeps going. The itch is amazing & maddening!!

I think I went off on a tangent... started somewhere some time ago talking about how Smokey the big bad boy digs in my garbage. Most recently he'd found some extra fleece, dug it up, rolled around with it & then slept in it. And that was actually kinda cute (once I got past thinking how that fleece might have been very cozy with multiple used Q-tips and/or tissues....)