The newest addition to the Cranky family is, as usual, a Henry. This one is pink, and also a pirate. Arr.

I keep fussing around with the Cranky Pals website and I’ve added topside navigation, so now it is ABUNDANTLY CLEAR how people can click buttons to buy things from me. This is kind of me, I think. I mean, there could be any number of people out there, desperate to give me their money, but unable to do so because of my shoddy navigation.

In other news, I also added the Yodel shirt to the lineup. The Yodel shirt entertains me, because every time Not So wears it, everyone asks him about it. It’s the tongue, I’m convinced. (Yodel’s tongue; not my husband’s.) I made one for one of Happy Fun Baby’s toddler friends, too, but I didn’t take a picture. Too bad, because I bet it’s really freaking cute.

Yes, it’s a Saturday. Time to spiff up the websites. You know how it is.

Oh! And on Monday, check out couldbe studios. We’re going Pink for October. All the cool kids are doing it. I might even do it on this blog, if I can get it together to change the CSS in time. (We’re all a little under the weather here, so don’t count on it.)

Tags: crankypals, yodel, henry, pirate, pink for october, couldbe studios, crafts

(Or, How I Got To Blog While My Kid Watched A DVD)

Today I need to disconnect and return the DVR (only, what, three weeks after we got rid of the cable? Go me), clean the house (since I appear to have volunteered to possibly host a get-together this weekend, maybe), do some homework, crochet, pick up my holds at the library, sign for the package containing the new potty seat (whee!), send back the Netflix, buy some yarn, put away my crafting supplies, e-mail a client, update our business website, drop off a check at the bank, and make some lunch. Note that several of these things involve me being in two places at once. Good thing I discovered time travel!

Naturally I am going to take this time to recap my awesome Crafty Mamas Bazaar experience and wax lyrical about my upcoming Cranky Pals newsletter, whichisreallycoolandyoushouldsignup.

So in case the “awesome” wasn’t hint enough, the Crafty Mamas Bazaar? Awesome. I had a great time, sold some toys, chatted with some moms…bought an Ergo…all in all, a very fruitful experience and one I will most likely repeat next month (sans Ergo purchase, of course).

The folks at Milagros are wonderful, and it’s so great of them to host this thing and make everyone feel so welcome. Plus they have one of the coolest local baby shops this side of LilyToad. Speaking of, that’s another thing I should add to my list: drop off unsold toys at LilyToad.

All the new designs are up at the Cranky Pals website, by the way, including Happy Fun Baby’s new favorite, Lulu Heartbreak. She has a detachable heart! Detachable! This causes me joy.

Another thing that causes me joy? The brand spankin‘ new Cranky Pals newsletter! I spent the better part of Sunday designing it (what? I was on a roll) and I’m so pleased with it I could just burst. And it’s messy, the bursting, so why not sign up and see for yourself? Every name on the subscription list makes me feel that much more validated, and isn’t that what the internet is all about?

technorati tags:cranky pals, crafty mamas bazaar, milagros, lilytoad, lulu heartbreak, ergo

Holy Nap Strike, Batman. The kid, he is so obviously tired, yet does he sleep? He does not. Currently he is ensconced in a blanket nest on the couch, blearily watching Little Einsteins on DVD. (While we were at Target this weekend we wisely decided that some kid DVDs were in order, so the Little Einsteins were procured, as well as All-Star ABCs, which features Stephen Colbert as the letter Z. And is really freaking funny. Which strikes me as somehow very wrong.)

The kid has a stuffy nose, which might explain the reluctance to nap. It seems like every time we go anywhere he catches some sort of bug, because, hello, kids? Wee little disease factories. Just today my child came up to me and enthusiastically wiped his nose all over the shoulder of my shirt. And I didn’t even blink. Just “Aaaw, is your nose runny?” I can think of few times in my life that I wouldn’t object to being someone’s Kleenex, but like they say, it’s different when you have kids. Different, and more gross.

I think I’m doing the Crafty Mamas Bazaar at Milagros this Saturday, so I’m spending this week frantically creating toys. My newest idea involves a shirt with a button on the front, onto which one (or one’s child) can attach a number of interchangable felt creatures. As an aside: who knew that buttons were so controversial? Half the moms I told about this project reacted with chagrin that I would even consider using a button in conjunction with children’s clothes. Choking! Hazard! Am I insane? I am not insane. I am even working on a version which uses a felt button (thanks so much for the idea, K!) for younger kids. But I still think that regular buttons are really not that bad.

I think the kid has finally succombed to the lure of sleep, so I’m going to wander off in the direction of my craft table. Which, uh, is actually the kitchen table, covered in so much other stuff we couldn’t possibly use it for food. Yay, multitasking!

technorati tags:crafts, nap, baby, dvd

The other day Not So and the baby and I went over to our favorite kid shop (they sell kids there! Thank you, I will be here all week) to pick up some black-and-white stripey BabyLegs so I can continue with my master plan of turning my toddler into a wee little goth. I was still sick, of course, because I am stubborn at just the wrong angle and refuse to actually go to the doctor. So my ears were still quite plugged for our little outing. Plugged ears make the world seem somewhat surreal and disconnected, like watching the TV on mute. A lot like that, in fact. As an added bonus I had become completely unable to gauge the volume of my voice, so in addition to constantly saying “What?” I was also, probably, shouting like a crazy person. Fun!

So of course I decided to get into a conversation with the owner of LilyToad about my recent flirtation with toymaking, which led to her expressing a genuine interest in carrying Cranky Pals at the store, which is highly improbable but nonetheless true. So, yay! Also: eek!

My “inventory” (if by inventory you mean a stack of felt remnants and a bunch of batting) is woefully sparse, and I still haven’t figured out the damned sewing machine, so naturally my first instinct was to go out to Bolt on Alberta and touch all the fabric. We picked up some yummy fuzzy something-or-other (one of these days I’m going to keep track of which fabric is which) and then, bolstered by our brave foray into the outside world, decided to walk a mile and a half in the fresh air, which surely held health-giving powers. Yes?

No. I spent the next day sick, exhausted, and weeping, completely unable to do anything in the least bit useful and annoying Happy Fun Baby by my refusal to be fun and/or engaging. Did I go to the doctor, you ask? I did not. But, to be fair, I felt much better the next day.

I have been sewing like a mad fiend since then in an effort to make up for the days I lost to my stupid cold. I’ve been referring to it like that pretty consistently – my stupid cold – and I intend to continue until every trace of phlegm is out of my system. Which might be never. I’ll just be that girl with the perpetual case of the sniffles.

Related: I’m thirty-two, for Christ’s sake. Enough with this “girl” thing already. ::shakes head at self::

So I’ll be bringing a bunch of Cranky Pals over to LilyToad tomorrow; keep your fingers crossed for me.

technorati tags:cranky pals, lilytoad, crafts

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to Make More Stuff. I’ve had Craft Envy for a while now, and when I watched my favorite Maggie knitting in the park last time I visited Santa Cruz I knew I was going to have to figure out how to make something out of yarn.

Knitting baffles me, but my mom taught me to crochet when I was fifteen so I felt a lot more comfortable giving that a try. I went over to Knit/Purl on Monday to pick up supplies…and promptly fell in love. I never thought of myself as the sort of girl who could develop a yarn fetish, but there you go. It’s the Apple Store of yarn shops. Gorgeously laid out, minimalist, and quiet like a library. The yarns sent me into a tactile stupor – so many textures! So many colors! My brain immediately went into overdrive, imagining all the things I could make. Assuming, you know, that I could figure out how. Compounding matters was the fact that there were all sorts of completed projects on display with the yarns. Each project (which looked like it would be equally at home in a designer boutique) bore a tag with a pattern number instead of a price.

On the clerk’s recommendation I bought a simple wool yarn (which I know will shrink all to hell the first time I accidentally throw it in the wash – and it’s not like I have any illusions about that) and a bamboo crochet hook, and I’ve been slowly re-learning how to crochet. I remembered having a lot of trouble with edges, but this time around they at least seem to be managable. I haven’t tried any fancy stitches yet, but every row I don’t screw up makes me feel a tiny iota more confident about the whole thing.

Crocheting is surprisingly Zen. I thought it would make me anxious because I could be using that time to do, oh, any of the ten thousand other things on my to-do lists, but instead it makes me feel wonderfully productive. I’ve been picking it up during my downtime – while a website is loading, or while the baby is napping on my lap, or while we’re upstairs and I don’t have my laptop. Doing something with my hands is a great way to quiet the chorus of “Oh my god oh my god I have so many things I should be doing right now” in my brain. Cheers to that.

technorati tags:crochet, crafts, knit/purl, yarn

Our weekend was absolutely, unexpectedly idyllic. The weather was bizarrely perfect and we took full advantage by going on lots of walks. We went out to Signal Station last night for dinner (so cute, and the pizza = quite good), and on the way home our kid walked two whole blocks by himself (holding either my or Not So’s hand). Two whole blocks! I expected it to be much like trying to walk the cat on a leash (ten months is a bit little for the holding-hands-while-walking thing) but he was so delighted to be walking along like a big kid that he just trotted next to us with a big grin. I’m getting all sentimental!mama just thinking about it. Time to start researching ways to stunt the baby’s growth. I hear caffeine does the trick…

I also – believe it or not – did a craft! I am not exactly a crafty sort of girl, but we went out to Michael’s right after we moved into the condo (what, five months ago?) and in a fit of I-don’t-know-what I was inspired to purchase some felt and batting. “I’ve got this idea for a stuffed animal,” I told Not So, who did not burst into laughter right there in the store. True to form, once we got home I shoved the bag of supplies deep into a closet and barely gave it another thought.

Until this weekend, that is. We unearthed the bag, I made a pattern, assembled and sewed it, and the result: my very first sideshow freak stuffed animal! Ellison named it Dao:

As if that wasn’t enough, I decided I actually like making creepy dolls (…big surprise…) so I’m working on setting up a Shopify storefront to sell them online. Because, yes, I am that big of a geek.

I also found out that my sister and brother-in-law have actual, confirmed tickets to come out and visit us in December. That means they’re going to be here for Happy Fun Baby’s first birthday! Particularly apropos given that my sister was here for his birth. This morning I worked on the Wiki, where I set up a page of gift recs for Ellison, and a little later I’m going to start checking into different places to have a birthday party, since our condo = very wee. I’d love to do it at Sip & Krantz. Not that I’m in a big hurry – December isn’t exactly looming. Except that it is, kind of.

technorati tags:crafts, birthday, visit, wiki, signal station, pizza, walking, baby

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