What I've Been Up To Lately

In which I am both eternally grateful and filled with melancholy in the course of a single post.

It's been awhile, guys.  Over the past month and a half, I got divorced (I mean, pretty much.  I'm just waiting for official decree or whatever.), spent two weeks on the other side of the country for my best friend's wedding, fulfilled a lifelong dream, worked my booty off preparing for a craft show that was an unmitigated disaster, and then spent three days feeling sorry for myself and watching movies.

California was amazing.  I met so many interesting people and had more thought-provoking, nourishing conversations than I can count. The departure from my routine and thinking about things like fruit trees and ghosts for awhile helped me to get some much needed perspective.

This thing was 36"x36"

While I was there, I made a family tree for my best friend's daughter.  It was the first thing I'd made out of felt in a really long time and, for the most part, it was a lot of fun.  The little paper leaves with the names on them were done by a professional calligrapher.  We weren't able to find all of the necessary pictures before this picture was taken but it still looked pretty good.

I visited one of my bucket-list destinations - The Winchester Mystery House.  It was more polished and theme-parky than I'd expected and there were only a few moments during the tour where I really got the feeling anyone had ever lived there, but it was still a lot of fun and moderately creepy, so I'm really glad that I went.

This afghan was my wedding present to my friends.

I chose the colors at random, changing color after each row of half-double crochet.  I then added a few rows of navy border around the entire thing.

Once I found out that I would actually be able to attend this wedding, I had to increase what had previously been a leisurely pace on this afghan.  I worked on it in every spare moment before leaving, in airports on my way there, and even while watching TV with them once I arrived. 

When I got home, I was refreshed and motivated, which was good, because I only had two weeks to get ready for the Valley Fourth Art Market in Harrisonburg, Virginia.  I worked fourteen long days, sewing zipper pouches, crocheting octopuses, making pom-poms, framing art, and running back and forth to Michaels. I spent an obscene amount of money on supplies and definitely missed a ton of sleep.  By the day of the show, I was nervous and grumpy, but I was ready.  A friend and I drove to Harrisonburg and set up my little table inside Larkin Arts.  I am absolutely thrilled with my table.  It's cute and colorful, with my products displayed accessibly. It was neither two crowded nor too sparse, which are two common craft booth foibles.

An adorable disaster.

Unfortunately, not too many people got to see it.  Unlike last year, when the art market saw foot traffic upwards of 15,000 revelers, this year the Valley Fourth organizers divided the festival into two parts - the part with the live music and the majority of the food trucks, and the part with the art market.  The two halves of the party were confusingly far apart and each appeared to be its own, independent event.

Poor planning paired with the fact that it rained right up to the festival's starting time meant that the entire art market suffered. In addition, I was the only vendor set up inside, and people didn't know I was there.  More than half of the people who ventured inside Larkin Arts seemed confused by my lonely little table, and only a handful of them made it far enough inside to see what I was selling. I definitely lost a significant amount of money on this venture.

After three days of melancholic inactivity, I'm ready to get back to work, but I'm not really sure what that's going to mean.  For the past two years, I've been working really hard to turn my art into a business, and my inability to do so has left me feeling discouraged and a little worthless.