Not terribly much to report of late, hence the lack of, well, reporting of stuff. A few things, though.

• The “Vet Home” thing I meant to mention, but never got around to it: no need to now, really. Suffice it to say: bitches be crazy.

• RQM is coming along nicely. A few weeks ago, the owner of Uniquely Yours, which sells handmade items, most from Michigan artists and the like, in Canterbury Village in Lake Orion, contacted me via Etsy to see if I’d be interested in selling bottles in her shop. I finally got the merchandise shipped out Monday, and went out Wednesday with my BFF/sister M and her mom, just to poke around Canterbury Village and the shop itself.

   
  Uniquely Yours itself is fantastic, as is its owner, Terri. The sheer gamut of items is daunting; there’s quite a lot to browse through, and it was great to see the talent and creativeness of other Michiganians.

  Canterbury Village is a hell of a hidden gem: from Enchanted Cottage (full of faeries and handmade jewellery and a tea room!) to the massive Always Christmas¹ to the oh-God-I-want-it-all Sweet Lane Fudge Factory, to the side-by-side Scotland- and Ireland-theme shops. To find such a wonderful little place tucked away in Lake Orion that I’d only heard of in passing maybe once or twice was more than a bit… well, kind of sad, really. How could such an awesome place — complete with enclosed carousel in the centre, closed-for-the-winter though it may be — be so… unknown? It definitely needs to do more advertising for itself.

  I didn’t end up buying anything while there, for two reasons: 1) by the end of our around-the-Village walkabout, I was fucking tired, and 2) I’m making another trip soon with my mother and Aunt (and M and her mom, if they want to go back; the more the merrier!), so it’s not like I won’t have another chance soon. I especially want to pick up some things from Uniquely Yours — I had my eye on some cupcake-shaped bath bombs by Sudsy Treats Boutique, some lip balm (alas, I can’t remember the creator!), and an adorable cupcake-shaped necklace (again, I didn’t see a tag with a creator’s name/credit on it), and maybe one of the gorgeous flapper garters.

  If you’re ever in the area — or even if you’re not; it’s more than worth a trip! — you have to stop by the Village, and Uniquely Yours itself. My own bottles should be floating about inside somewhere!

• In a similar vein to the above, I need to start using the Twitter account and Facebook page I set up for RQM. So, all follows and likes appreciated and stuff. Fuck-all I hate those people who solicit likes and follows and why am I suddenly one of them?!

• In Knitting News: Still not done with my latest scarf attempt. I’m still doing super-simple stuff: this one’s a simple stockinette with garter stitch border and slip-stitch selvage, with fringe at the ends once it’s done — if it ever is done. I seem to have misplaced my first for-real, garter-stitch scarf², so I’m trying to finish this one ASAP, because I have developed an aversion to scarves I didn’t make. (Stupid, I know, but now that I can Knit Things, I want to wear Things I’ve Knitted, y’know?).

Aaand… that’s about it for the moment, really. Told you there wasn’t much to blog about.

1. Seriously, this place is ginormous. We must have said “Does this place ever end?” four or five times, and even got lost when trying to leave. [↩]
2. by “misplaced” I mean ‘left at the Vet Home and it went missing.’ Fuckin’ people… [↩]

Oof, long time no pointless posting. Been busy and junk, with… busy-ing… junk. And stuff. A few things of note, though.

I haven’t had much time to knit lately, but when I have, I’ve been working on a scarf. I started it in early December with the intention of finishing it before Christmas/Yule, using Hobby Lobby’s Christmas Sparkle yarn (I know, I know, not great quality, but it’s pretty!). I’m about, oh, a quarter of the way done with it, but fuck it, I don’t care if I finish it in goddamn March, I’ma wear that sumbitch when I’m done. It’s just a straightforward stockinette scarf with a garter border and slip-stitch selvedge, but it’s the principle of the thing…

I’ve also gotten into polymer clay recently. I kept seeing polymer clay things on Etsy and making googly eyes at them, so I finally caved and picked up some clay. After tinkering for a few hours and realising that, yes indeed, this is a Fun Thing, I spent way too much on some tools: acrylic roller, craft knives, an extruder, a box each of ceramic and marble tiles for work surfaces… and I’m still comparison-shopping to find the best pasta machine/conditioning machine and toaster oven. The clay itself is cheap as hell, but the rest of the stuff you need to actually make Things, that shit gets expensive fast.

Expensive but fun! I’ve been at the Vet Home (another post entirely, that) almost every day, making it almost impossible to get to a craft store to acquire more clay, so I’ve been tinkering with the red and white I initially bought. So far I’ve done nothing of any note except make little heart canes, one of which I sliced up, tossed in a bottle, and listed in my Etsy shop.

Speaking of the Etsy shop, it’s coming along quite well. Almost forty sales since my first on November 9th, which, given that aside from pinning things to a dedicated Pinterest board I haven’t done any promotion for the shop, is pretty neat. Despite the “Miscellanea” name, it’s still just bottle pendants/necklaces, but I do intend to branch out into clay thingies soon, as soon as I, you know, acquire more clay and make more things. I have a hundred ideas for things, but whether my fingers and hands will cooperate with my imagination I don’t yet know. I also need to figure out how best to suspend said “things” in bottles, as some of these ideas are quite tiny indeed. The mix of glues I use for the liquid-y bottles — Virus, etc — doesn’t work: my Test Things sink to the bottom every time. I might have to venture into resin territory, which is a daunting prospect, seeing as I don’t think I’ve ever used a bloody resin in my life…

Taking a look at my to-do list for this week, I just noticed that almost all of them are craft related. Get more clay, look into how to age metals, get a larger set of round-nose pliers, look into resin, find boxes big enough to fit bottles for shipping but small enough to actually ship in the mailers I like to use… when in the blue hell did I become crafty?

Fucking bottles. I knew they’d be a gateway hobby.

Chicks w/Sticks & X for Dummies.

A few weeks ago I blogged about my new interest in needle/yarn-crafting. At that point, I was still waiting for my needles and hooks to arrive, so the yarn could stop taunting me.

Well, the yarn has stopped taunting me. Now it just laughs at me.

Read More ⇒

So as I said in the last post, I snagged another VoxBox this week, the “Beauty Blogger” VoxBox. As always, it’s full of a bunch of awesome stuff, free but for reviews. Same old disclaimer: I’ve not been compensated in any way for said reviews, other than the free products themselves. Blah, blah, blah, the full disclaimer’s at the bottom.

Reviews ahoy!

Read More ⇒

Beauty Blogger VoxBox!

Back in May, I qualified for an Influenster VoxBox — a box of awesome stuff, entirely free (though Influenster, the the sponsoring brands, ask for reviews in exchange for said awesome stuff) — and posted reviews of the things in it. All was well, and I hoped that maybe one day I’d qualify for another box.

For the uninitiated, Influenster is pretty straight-forward: one signs up at Influenster.com and unlocks as many badges (and gets as high a score) as possible. These badges, and your score, determines your eligibility for the VoxBoxes — boxes of products offered to selected users free, provided they agree to review the products — Influenster occasionally offers.

They finally redesigned their clusterfuck of a site in the fall of 2012, for the better… mostly. I like the new reviews section and how badges are earned and scores improved, though I’m a bit confused as to how one unlocks/gets more “keys” to unlock more badges. I unlocked them from the top down, so I haven’t been able to unlock ones most relevant to me. Not thrilled with that. Actually, I’m also not thrilled with the fact that one can’t edit the reviews one posts; I accidentally posted a review of the Spin Pins on the Beauty Blogger VoxBox product page, with no way to edit/remove it. Granted, it was a derp on my part, but I’m sure I’m not the only one to have made that particular mistake… right? Probably. Right?

Anyway, there have been several VoxBoxes since the Spring/Beauty one I qualified for — the Latina box, the Bride-to-Be box, the Naturals box — but my demographic information didn’t qualify me for any of them. Apparently, though, I did qualify for the “Beauty Blogger” VoxBox, because it arrived on my doorstep yesterday. What made Influenster think I was/am a “blogger extraordinaire,” let alone that I regularly blog about, well, beauty, I’ve no idea. But no complaints, right?

Reviews of the actual stuff Monday or Tuesday, after I’m actually done, y’know, using it. Viva la Influenster!