Monday, July 24, 2006

I need another vacation!

Hey guys

Just came back from my whirlwind tour of the west coast. What an adventure! I need another vacation just to recover from that vacation. We drove up from Tucson up to Newberg, Oregon for a wedding with a stop overnight in Stockton, California. We spent the weekend in Oregon at a wonderful wedding and visiting museums. Then it was back down to San Diego, with another stop to sleep in Stockton. We visited with family, went to the beach and visited more museums. Along the trip I sold almost all of my dolls! YAY, but now I need to restock.

As you know, I had intended to spend the 5 days we were driving making more dolls. Well you know the proverb about best intentions. We left Tucson at 3:30 am. Before we got to the freeway I remembered that I had left my box of dolls I was going to show off and some custom orders for family back at home. We turned around and ran back for them. So at 3:45 we were finally on the freeway and on our way!

I went to grab the yarn to start creating some new dolls. I reached behind me only to find that since my work yarn was the first thing loaded into the van so I wouldn't forget it, it was now buried under the luggage! Oh well, I could reach a bag of yarn I had been using to make a granny afghan. I could work on that until we stopped to get breakfast.

Well, things never work out the way you want them to. At 6:30 we stop on the far side of Phoenix for breakfast and I realize I have left my box of buttons, beads and other random small crafty things back at home!!!! Well crud! I figured I would continue to work on my afghan and when we got to San Diego I could spend a couple days making all the pieces of dolls to be assembled when we got home.


In Oregon I got to deliver these two super cute turtles I made custom for my Aunt. She is married to a Naval Officer so when she saw my Military turtle she wanted to know if I could make her a Naval Officer turtle too. She wanted one in Dress White and one in Dress Blue. She was very pleased with these little guys!

When we got to San Diego I sold half of my stock in one evening! I needed to make more dolls. I sat down with all the supplies I had with me and began to create. We weren't the only family members staying with her, so after a few minutes I had an audience of teenagers watching. They wanted to learn how to crochet too, so I passed out all my hooks and some balls of yarn I had been using for my afghan and spent the afternoon teaching them how to use them. I figured I would have the rest of the vacation time to work on the dolls.

In the evenings there was too little light to work with, and we were busy all the other days. So I ended up spending more time thinking of new ideas than working on the old ideas. I have come up with a new type of baby for my shop. It will be introduced as soon as I can recover and get my head on straight. It will be quilted instead of crochet. I am so excited about them, that it is hard to do my chores around the house! I want to sit down at my machine and start sewing right now!! I will have to restrain myself for now, but come back and see what I come up with!