A Frock By Friday

Tonight I'm going to play catchup on this...

A Frock By Friday

sewing something for myself- won't that be nice for a change?

Art Star Recap

Well we are just about recovered from the events of the past few weeks (the prepartions, the traveling, the show). Aside from the insane wind on the first day, the weather was amazing last weekend. I was really happy with my booth by about 4:30 on Sunday when I finally had everything set up the way I wanted it. You'd have to ask my SIL to be sure but I think I was asleep for the entire first day. I sort of let her communicate with the customers as well as recieve any complements that rolled in. Sometimes it's hard for me to do that stuff especially if I haven't slept well in a week. Mostly a lot of sloppy silly sentences would have spewed out of me if I had opened my mouth on that first day.

After the show was over we had tons of great food on both days. Saturday we stopped for chinese food- which is something we have given up on lately because Lancaster/Pittsburgh have really bad vegetarian options. But China town is awesome. We ate at Singapore Vegetarian and I can't wait to go back there again when we are in Philly this July. Yum! I got the Pepper "Steak" and it was so good. On Sunday we stopped at Govinda's on our way out of town for the "Chicken Cheese Steak". Also very tasty, although I probably could have eaten five of them-
I was hungry Ok? Long weekend.

The biggest let down of the weekend was not being able to put up the whole display the way I had imagined it. It was just too windy to have the wall of my tent up, so i couldn't put up my cute little sweater gallery display that I was planning. Someday

I'll have that all up and running to show you.
The best part of the weekend was meandering around the bazaar with my little M2. She was having a meltdown extraordinaire so I took her for a little walk. We got to see all the other vendors and pick out all of our favorite treasures. She was so nice to spend time with once she calmed down a little from all the excitement of the trip.

For most of the time Whatshisface took the kids around to see all the sights of the city like the Liberty Bell, Old City, Museums. He even got C3 a little Betsy Ross hat so she wouldn't burn in the bright sunlight.

C3 Snuggling with her new Tigerflight squirrel "Sophie"

We made some purchases. M1 and C3 got some sweet new plushies from Tigerflight.
M1 with her new owl.

M2 got a little Timmy the tadpole from So Softies complete with his own sweater. Of course M2 then proceeded to ransack my inventory and dress Timmy up in one of my Dolly Seamonster Hoods. Evidently I now make Timmy the Tadpole gear knockoffs?

Timmy the Tadpole in his octopus costume.
And of course the weekend wouldn't be complete without a surprise visit from my parents. M2 was especially happy for some quality Popop time.

M2 with Popop behind the booth overlooking the Delaware River

Many thanks to all our friends and family who came to support us this weekend. And of course thanks to all the wonderful Philly customers. We had a really great time.

ART STAR

Tomorrow morning I will awake at 3am and depart on a 5 hour drive to Philadelphia with three little girls, my SIL and WhatsHisFace. Not to mention a Caravan loaded with Lumpkins!

If you're in Philly this weekend come see Lumpkin at the

ART STAR Craft Bazaar

Saturday and Sunday from 11am-6pm

at Penn's Landing Great Plaza

ASCB 2008 from the Art Star flickr page
There will be 100+ of the best artists and crafters around,
tons of live music,
and best of all- BEAUTIFUL weather all weekend!

I'll be at booth #23... See you there!

New Hobby

I have become obsessed with researching the history of my neighborhood lately. I'm really hoping to find some old pictures of my house somewhere out there but in the meantime I love searching for old pictures of Pittsburgh in general and comparing them to Google street view pictures. I thought I'd post some here on the blog from time to time. I used this website to find the historic photos. It's really addictive.

This first installment shows my neighborhood 82 years ago. Garfield still has lots of wide open space back on that hill today but it's amazing to me how rural the old picture seems. In actuality there is still not much going right there in the present as you can see.

It's funny because I keep wanting to scroll around the old pictures and change my view as if I'm looking at the Google version. If only I could.

Pittsburgh City Photographer Collection, 1901-2002,
AIS.1971.05, Archives Service Center,
University of Pittsburgh

Progress

I'm not usually a Saturday blogger so I'll make this brief.

Here are some shots from the week and my progress so far.

1. Knitting and dying with organic cotton...

2. Made a new paper doll friend...

3. Finally got a serger lesson at the dealer
and got some rolled hems done...

And I managed to do all that while this one was a clingy snotty little mess all week.

She actually chased me down with her little "sack" {sling} and gestured for me to wear her on several occasions. Now that's just pitiful- how could I say no? Especially considering it won't last much longer- I mean look at her she's huge!
But it sure is hard making dinner with a little monkey on your back.
Luckily we have Spak for days like that.

see you soon:)

tiny apple tutorial

So, I ordered some mini wooden apples (1/2") recently from American Woodcrafters Supply Co. These will be used in my little Lumpkin hobo bags. In the past I've bought them already finished from the craft store and they were rather expensive. I opted to buy the unfinished apples from AWS and saved a whopping $2.55! Amazing. Well just imagine if you were making a million of these!
Then you could save... $25,000!

And when the time comes that you need to finish 1 million tiny apples you know where to turn for a tiny apple finishing tutorial that actually provides very, very little information at all.

{Feel free to send that check for 25K on over to Lumpkin... your welcome.}

the end

I was going to write about something else... I swear

Since my last post the dog fur has begun to inch up the walls here in LumpkinLand. Clearly I have not stopped Lumpkining just yet. Surely this weekend will be the time for that. {Yeah right, my family is like a tornado on weekends- I spend most Monday's in my PJ's clearing out the aftermath}. I really have no idea when the house will be clean again. And I hold out no hope, for now.

There is just too much excitement around this little factory here. My order from Spoonflower is shipped and will be here in a matter of days. Happy, Happy, Joy Joy!
Here's another little snippet from that order...


That will be used for a lovely little surprise I hope to reveal soon after my fabric arrives on my doorstep. ( I know, I know, my resident etiquette expert already informed me that the silverware is misplaced.
What can I say? Lumpkin's aren't fussy?)

Also on the front burner- I'm hoping to do some fabric dying this weekend for use in some updated Maezy dresses. Remember those?



The new version combines organic cotton knit with my batiked organic cotton. I'm planning on making them in micro batches of around 6 at a time. Hopefully I'll have more on that towards the end of next week {ahem, by year's end}

I really was going to write something different tonight. I was hoping to post a ridiculous tutorial about finishing tiny wooden apples. It's such a ridiculous tutorial, in fact, it almost a tutorial parody. And I wouldn't for the world want you to miss out on that {sarcasm}. So I'll post it on Monday.

In the meantime I'll leave you with this link to a video produced by the local PBS Network (WQED). It's a half hour all about my neighborhood here in the 'Burgh. Just in case you want to move here someday (you know who you are) or maybe you're just curious.