hello pineapples

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

Etsy Time and other news

Hooray me! I managed to list something on Etsy! My shop has been empty lately. I decided to focus on selling monkeys through Love, Me, rather than Etsy. But since money is tight at Chez Pineapples, I thought I'd try to get my act together and sell what I do have made (only two sock creatures). Hopefully I'll manage to make a few more things to add to my listings.

In other news...

Sock monkeys will be at the Telethon on Sunday! My friend J.Lau (it's my nickname for her, sounds like J.Lo) got the socks last night (apparently stripes aren't popular this year. And Hannah Montana really doesn't work well for sock monkeys). We're going to try to put together the pieces tomorrow and Saturday. And there is always a possibility that the monkeys will be spotted on TV. You never can tell.

Still no socks in the mail box. There was a package in my box yesterday and I got excited for a moment, but alas! Not socks. It's funny. Normally I'd be excited about unexpected packages arriving, but since I was hoping for the death knell, I was a little let down when I saw it was not my socks. Instead it was this:





Yes, that is Shakespeare as a rubber duck. To be specific, he's the Shakespeare CelebriDuck.

And if you think that it is odd for us to receive that in the mail, you should see what the Downstairses gave us for Christmas:



Seriously! It's the Pope John Paul II CelebriDuck! (Hard to explain, but friends sometimes buy us stuff having to do with the late Pope...we both grew up Catholic, so I think that is where our fascination with him comes from. The comic book we were given a few years ago is a riot).

We now have an accidental collection of CelebriDucks. The sender of Shakespeare has never met, nor heard of, the Downstairses, so this was not a plan. And while we enjoy them and think they're pretty funny, I hope this does not become a trend. Because I still hadn't figured out where to put our Pope Duck, let alone two CelebriDucks. (Also, what an odd idea...making celebrity inspired rubber ducks. They sort of creep me out, since they have people faces with duck bills in the middle of them).

Posted byHello Pineapples! on Thursday, May 29, 2008 0 comments  

filed under: etsy, in the mail, sock creatures, sock monkeys, sock wars iii