Busy Little Beaver!

I've been knitting and knitting and knitting....since I sold seven eggs at the rally, I'm knitting some more of those. I sold them for $3.00 a piece or 2 for $5.00. The two for five seemed to really grab attention. I have a lot to learn about the "psychology" of selling things. Some of the vendors at the show were very helpful about what to do when running out of inventory or making other suggestions to buyers. I really appreciated that. I'm still learning how to sell to people with my Tastefully Simple line. My main purpose for selling my knitting is just to recover some of my yarn costs for right now, so I can continue to see what might interest people and practice knitting things. I might put some things up on Etsy and see what kind of response I get there. People seem very interested in my sock yarn cell phone covers. I've knitted two so far and then made one "pouchy" drawstring bag. I think I'm going to line the pouchy bag because it's larger..I still need to put a button closure/loop on the two cell phone covers.

Right now I am making my first knitted, felted purse. Felting is a process where after you have knitted something out of 100% wool, you wash it in hot water and it changes the fibers to a denser weave. In the normal felting process, usually using a washing machine, the agitation and hot water wash shrinks the fibers and "melds" them together, making a much tighter weave. But you CAN hand felt. That's what I did. THAT was an experience!  I read online that if you were going to handfelt, you could use a plunger in the kitchen sink. I could just see trying to explain to Eldy what I was doing in the kitchen sink with a plunger. He'd start worrying about clogged drains! I didn't go that far, just decided to use good old fashioned elbow grease and hand wash. We have to pay to use the laundromat here at the RV park, so that's why I handfelted the purse. My hands are tired from washing, wringing and squeezing the yarn! It took about a half an hour of trial and error as far as time to wash in hot water, rinse in cool, check the pieces and wash again. The pieces are now drying. I have to still stitch the flap on, stitch on the straps and insert the drawstrings. I think I'm going to put some sort of embroidery on the flap of the purse...I was thinking about doing the "Tree of Life" if I can find a simple straight stitch representation for that, because the purse is a beautiful heather tweedy dark grassy green..It was quick to knit out of Paton's 100% wool yarn line. I used size 11 needles to get the gauge right, but I think the stitches are too loose and should have used a smaller size...I say "quick", but it was a lot of hours over two days....I think it would have been faster on two circular needles and not so many seams to stitch. I found the pattern online, but can't remember where. The original photo was of a fuschia colored purse with an embroidered bird on the flap.....In the next day or so, I should have it finished and embroidered. I'm liking the felting idea!

Went to Mesa today to check out another RV park for the over 55 community...While we were in town, we went to Barnes and Nobles for some downloads...I bought a copy of the beautiful Artful Blogging magazine...that magazine is so inspiring. It highlights the most wonderful blogs and the photography is OUTSTANDING! It always makes me want to get back to digital scrapbooking.....until next week....