Another Reason I Can't Use My Camera

This Memorial Day weekend, Sam and I went to his reunion in Oberlin. At Oberlin, they have reunions in clusters, so while Class of '03 was having their five year reunion, Class of '04 and Class of '02 (i.e. Sam) were there too. It was weird (but not a bad thing) staying in a dorm again. It brought back memories of college for me (it smelled like dorm!) and more, I am sure, for the people that actually went to Oberlin.

One of Sam's college bands played. They do punk renditions of Simon and Garfunkel, under a name not suitable to mention on a crafts blog. Here is a clip of a show they played in Boston last year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igMZq37ZOdU

We did a "car share" with two nice Oberlin people (and Andy - who of course is also nice!) on Monday and drove for hoooooooooooours. We got back to Sam's place in Astoria and crashed (as in, bed - not crashed the car!)

Needless to say, I was exhausted and running late on Tuesday morning, so I left all my stuff at Sam's place and have yet to pick it up. My camera was there. (So was my phone charger!) So I have no pictures from the trip (and can take none of my latest star necklace).

I promise I will put one or two of our trip up here...and to prove that I am good on my word, I will finally put up some pictures I've been promising for a while.

Here is the custom bracelet - my first sale in 7 years:
And here is that rowdy (but soft, I' m sure!) alpaca that we met in Australia:

It worked!

My star experiment worked! I think it will look better in natural sunlight, but here it is! (Oh yeah, and a chain. That would help too...)

This weekend

was very productive! Obsessive, yes, but productive.

I had applied to be part of the Etsy Beadweavers Street Team a few days earlier, and on Friday, I was invited to join the group! They add new members' names to the blog on the first of every month, so my name is not quite up there yet, but just wait...because it will be soon! :-) Now I just have to finish going through all my Etsy

My next big feat was making my banner! I still want to change the font, but I'm super excited about it:
I spent Saturday night (see, I told you it was intense!) making this star of David necklace. I had noticed that with a little tweaking, the hexagon necklaces that I made for Angela, Hilary, and myself would make cool stars of David. I also figured out how to make it lie flat.

Sam's parents may or may not want this one for a bat mitzvah to which they are going next weekend. Either way, I plan to make more of these - it's really fun to see the star shape appear as I make them. I am also going to try to make a five pointed star.

Today, Sam came over to use my printer. He and his brothers are planning a 40th wedding anniversary party for their parents, and he had to print addresses on envelopes. The ordeal took almost the whole day, but it was a success!Meanwhile, I spent a few hours cleaning up my apartment, which had recently turned into more of a disaster zone than it already was. When I sat down to take a break, it turned into a necklace.

YouTube

My pieces were in a YouTube video! Courtesy of The Electric Diva. Isn't it awesome?! (If I do say so myself...) :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waMSpgoamLg

I made my first Etsy sale today!! That totally made my whole morning. :-)

On Blogging

I'm sitting here at work after hours, waiting for my evening plans to pull through. Most likely, it will be a movie with Sam and our friend, Adam, but we're not sure which borough yet. So for now, I am planted at my desk.

I've been spending a lot of time on my new business. I still needs some finishing touches (like, um, a banner!) but it has become more and more of an obsession. A very fun obsession.

So I've been thinking long and hard about whether to start a new blog solely about my business (as opposed to my all purpose craft blog). It's the word "knit" that does it. Don't get me wrong, I still love to knit, but I just don't knit as much as I used to. So I thought I about having two blogs - one about all of my crafting adventures, and one dedicated to my business.

But then I thought again. So what if "knit" is in the title?? It doesn't change the fact that this is the blog I have been writing in since 2006! Besides, the resurection of my beading obsession is documented here, and so is the evolution of my new business! So this knitstripedfrog is here to stay! It is my one and only.

And Now....

More on my Etsy obsession....

I have 35 items up now....

Etsy Buy Handmade adinahalperndesigns

I spent the entire day today adding fifteen of them! I didn't realize that adding the entries to Etsy would be so much work! A huge part of the reason for this is probably the fact that my apartment is so small that I have to "change the scenery" for everything I photograph, and this often invloves moving furniture (at least my desk chair) out of the way! I'm also learning what looks good as far as the photographs, and what doesn't. Today, I started to master that skill.

I've read that no flash and direct sunlight are best, and that cameras that have some manual features work best for detail. Needless to say, I don't really have access to any of these things. Having not sold anything yet, I just can't afford to buy an expensive new camera. And living in Manhattan, I have no yard at all to use to photograph. I could go to Central Park, but that would be kind of hard, especially on days like today when I have a lot of things to photograph, especially since I would have to take some of my own backgrounds with me (foam boards). So I open the shades of my apartment and only photograph during daylight hours, but especially on cloudy days like today, the flash on my very automatic camera turns itself on automatically. But I've learned that white backgrounds, ironically, work best to not reflect flashes and therefore to show jewelry in intricate detail and true to what it really looks like (for example, its true color). I've learned how to take pictures of myself in anklets without making them too distorted. I've also learned how to take photographs that will still look good when Etsy crops them to make them square. I will probably learn a lot more over the next few weeks and months, but I know so much more now than I did when I started - and that feels great!