hello pineapples

Free travel advice and pretty downloads

I'm making an attempt to blog again and it's not always easy. It's funny. I suck at posting on this blog, yet I'm managing daily posts over at my other one. Probably helps that I have a partner in crime over at Fashionable People.

I recently travelled to Palm Springs for my yearly dose of sunshine and as always, I struggled to figure out what crafty items are allowed on the plane. It really isn't clear and seems to change with each airport. And when you try to search for tips/tricks on travel & crafts, you get more info and advice than you know what to do with. Which is why I was happy to find Craftzine's advice/interpretation of TSA regulations for crafters. Although, keep in mind that the TSA regulations aren't universal (here is a list by CATSA for when you're travelling in Canadian airports. Knitting needles fall under "Penetrating Objects" and are allowed.). Last year, scissors I was allowed to bring on the plane at LAX were confiscated by YYZ (Toronto) security. This year I didn't have problems, but I also didn't attempt to bring scissors on the plane. I pre-cut embroidery floss to save myself the headache. Although I did get some security hangups from my pencil case. For some reason it showed up as suspicious on their Xray machines. Once they took it out and dug through it, they determined there was nothing of interest (unless of course you are interested in my Stabilo markers and other pens). I packed the pencil case in my checked bags on the way home.

Moving along...I recently found a site that offers links to free downloads of pretty labels and fonts:



The site is iDIY and is all about DIY weddings. While I'm not planning any weddings (I'm about to hit the five year anniversary mark!), I'm still a sucker for pretty labels and fonts. I think the labels are the part of me that wants to organize things. I don't always succeed in organizing my space, particularly my disasterous office/craft room, but a girl can dream. I rarely do anything with the labels I download, but part of that comes from having a B&W laser that doesn't do the label designs justice (but is awesome for printing out reams of essays and academic journal articles).

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Sunday, June 07, 2009 1 comments  

filed under: crafting while traveling, free downloads

What I did on my spring vacation

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was set up at the Halifax Crafters sale. It went fairly well - not as well as the Christmas sale, but that is to be expected. I really love being at the Crafters sales as I find all the other artists/artisans to be so inspiring. I need to come up with a better display for the September sale. Not exactly sure what I'll do, but I'll come up with something.

My favourite guy at the sale (and sadly, I only had my camera phone with me) was this dude:



His name is Reginald and he wore a tutu. I really need to get better at taking pics of my work. But the tutu was an afterthought, so I didn't think to actually get a photo because I was focused on the sale itself. Anyway, Reginald was the first pair I attempted to sew on my machine. I screwed that up in so many ways, I just couldn't manage to make a monkey out of him. But I still had this body and other appendiges that were so goofy, I couldn't just abandon him. So I played around one day and came up with Reginald. I'm going to keep messing around with other sock/plush creatures and monkey accessories (like tutus). Need to keep things fresh.

Something new I'm trying is embroidering eyes on the monkey and then sewing the buttons on top of that. My reason for doing this is that I prefer monkeys with button eyes, but customers with wee ones like embroidered eyes (for the safety of their own little monkies). So this is what I've come up with:



Right after the fair, I headed off to the Palm Springs area to visit with my parents. My mom and I spent some time working on monkeys. My mom is my source for awesome socks. Check out the collection she has for me:



Those are just some of the 75+ pairs of socks. Her cat Deano was a fan of our craft time:



I succumed to a nasty flu on my return, but now that I'm getting better, I'm getting back to thinking about crafts and monkeys. Right now I'm working on one of the red monkeys that the cat is sleeping on. A baby shower is coming up. The red & black monkeys, believe it or not, are a hit with babies. Most people like to buy the more pastel-ish monkies for babies, but the wee ones love the bright contrasting colours. A friend's kid would just stare at hers for ages. And at two months old, that was as much of a sign that she liked the monkey as you could ask for.

Some of the leftover monkeys joined their friends at Love, Me Boutique on Saturday. I still have a few hanging around the house and may look into putting them on etsy in the near future.

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Tuesday, May 26, 2009 0 comments  

filed under: cats, crafting while traveling, sock creatures, sock monkeys

Home again and Workshop postponed

Well, it's taken a few days to get back at this. The last few days in Palm Springs were busy with last minute shopping, hanging out with the parents,and the dreaded packing. I had to borrow a suitcase and my two pieces of luggage each weighed in at 49.5 lbs. Anyway, I've survived my "red eye" flight and the jet-lag. Since getting home, I've spent most of my time sleeping and complaining about the cold and the damp. Happily, today is giving me some much needed sunshine (I think I was in sunshine withdrawal yesterday). I think the worst bit about my travels was losing my wee embroidery scissors in Toronto. I incorrectly assumed that if I was allowed scissors at LAX security, I'd be allowed to have them when I cleared customs. Apparently not. I was given the option of checking a carry on in order to keep my scissors, but they were cheap and I wasn't about to line up again. So there's a tip for anyone traveling with crafts: itty bitty scissors are allowed on flights in the States, but not on Canadian flights. Before Thursday morning, I would have thought it was the other way around, considering security in American airports make me take my shoes off and Canadian security doesn't always do this.

I opened up my Google Reader today to discover that my time away has meant that not only was I not posting in my blog, but that since I wasn't reading blogs, I had 1000+ blog entries unread! That's a bit unmanageable, so there's been a lot of clicking "mark all as read" for various blogs. Although, I'm still trying to read a few of my favourite craft blogs. If only to give me some inspiration (perhaps some motivation) to get some crafting done.

I got good news/bad news last night from Love, Me: the Sock Monkey workshop that was supposed to take place today was cancelled, but, two different people were interested in having the workshop on another day with at least five of their friends. So while today's was cancelled, it's going to be replaced with two! Not a bad deal. And more good news: when I stopped by this morning, I found out that three monkeys have sold! Yay! Time to put down my embroidery and pick up the socks. It's pretty exciting to think that people are wandering in off the street and liking my monkeys so much that they buy them. It's a little weird to think of that. Weird because I still find it odd that people buy something that I've made. Up until the past year or so, my crafts were for me or for friends/family, never for sale. I think I can get used to it though.

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Saturday, May 03, 2008 0 comments  

filed under: crafting while traveling, love me, sock monkeys