a peek behind Lark Studio...

What time is it?

I thoroughly enjoyed my vacation in Las Vegas.  In 18 years, the DH and I have never taken a 7 day vacation.  Unplugging and being away for that long was very nice and we have vowed to do it more often.

If you are a reader of this blog you know my motto:  have (good) music, will travel.  We chose Vegas because the original members of The Time were reuniting after some 20 odd years and of course we had to see that up close and personal:

 

Believe it: that's me and DH with the band! For more photos of the trip check out my sets on Flickr.

Speaking of time - I've decided it's time I take some serious time to figure out this whole creative/crafty itch I've got.  I started searching for clarity while on vacation but it hasn't come yet.  In the interim I have decided a good place to start is to clean my crafty house.  I took a look around my studio and literally I have had some of the items there for years (yes, that's plural).  So, I'm liquidating these crafty assets in my Etsy shop.  Everything from fabric to vintage jewelry finds to display items - it's all going.  If you are local, check here first (it will show larger items that I can't ship but are trying to part with).  I'll be adding items in batches over the next several days, so check back often.  And remember, all prices are always negotiable.

Wish me luck on the journey.  Anyone got a back scratcher?

The serious "craft-over"

What is a "craft-over"? It's the crafting equivalent to a hang-over and what I'm still suffering from after 5 days of crafty goodness.  I clearly am getting to old for this....

Last week I had the best crafty week ever!  On Wednesday night around 7:00 pm, fellow Richmond Craft Mafioso Nicole and I headed to the Sewing & Quilt Expo in Chantilly, VA.  The Expo is a 3-day yearly event for home sewing enthusiast with classes and vendors.  This year I took classes in Sashiko stitching, knitting, crochet, nuno felting and pattern draping. I did a little shopping and got some great deals from Sulky, Baby Lock and other vendors.

On Sunday after the Expo we headed to Adams Morgan in Washington, DC to help run the Richmond Craft Mafia booth at the Crafty Bastards craft show.  Three words can describe this show:  THIS SHOW ROCKED!  I believe the estimated crowd this year was around 16,000 people.  We were crazy busy from 10:00 am until about 3:00 pm... I mean "can't even get away from the booth to use the bathroom" type of busy.  Even after 3, it was a very steady crowd of people in and out of our booth.  Folks come to this show to buy - which is always a good thing.  As a group we easily cleared what we did in 2 days at Renegade Brooklyn; several RCM members had their best show ever at Crafty Bastards.

Around 9:30 pm Sunday night, I pulled into my driveway.  Tired, hungry and did I mention tired?  I ate, showered and I'm sure I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.  Unfortunately, I didn't have any more vacation time to take off from the day job to recover, so I was back at work at 8:00 Monday morning.  I'm just now recovered enough to even think about getting back to my crafty life.

This fall I do plan on doing shows again.  I've applied to Holiday Heap in Baltimore and Holiday Parade in Norfolk.  Hopefully I'll get to the 17th Street Farmers Market and Alternative Market here in Richmond this month before the season ends.  Look for the new website and logo soon!