More Bazaar Knitting

 Knitting for the upcoming bazaars continues.

This week I'm focusing on creating Christmas gnomes.  I'm sure I'll share photos when I actually get a few finished.

The making is going slowly because the house selling ordeal continues.  No acceptable offers yet but interest in the house remains high and it feels like we have to leave the house almost daily for showings.  And yes, I am aware that I shouldn't be complaining.... but .... I'm starting to complain..., pretty loudly.  

Meanwhile...

Quack, quack, quack.

Hayden's duck feet worked well.  She went to a local trunk-or-treat event this past weekend and had a blast.  She remembers being a ladybug last year but she doesn't remember getting candy.  She is Quite excited about the Halloween candy this year!

Bizarre results

The bazaar was bizarre.  There was no one there.  No one!  I was expecting 25+ vendors, there were 6, including me.  The shoppers were even fewer.  Not counting the bazaar's employees & other vendors, there were four families that stopped by.  Three of them bought something, so my sales percentages were great, but four shoppers over a five hour period ....  rather depressing.  I did make my entrance fee back, in fact, I made two additional dollars!  Of course, that's not taking into consideration the gas it took to drive 224 miles to and from for setting up on Friday and the actual sale on Saturday.

But all whining aside, I got quite a bit of knitting done, I had fun chatting with Traci, and I did learn a few things.  First, I learned how to use my husband's GPS.  He calls it The Bossy Bitch, otherwise known as his wife away from home.  Nice.  But she is rather insistent.  There were several times I considered running the red light at very busy intersections just to get her to shut up about making that left turn.

I also learned how important it is to ask the right questions (in writing) before sending in my vendor application.  Things like, how many people attended the previous year?  How many vendors are already signed up?  How much advertising are you going to do?  If you can't produce the expected number of vendors, will you be refunding my money & canceling the bazaar?  And the one question that's sort of bothering me most, if you charge a vendor extra for an electrical outlet, are you going to make sure the other vendors do not have access?  For some crazy reason, that extra $5 fee is bothering more than anything else.

But at least it's over with.  I can stop worrying about it and stressing over it.  I can now chill out and enjoy the Christmas season.  Just as soon as I get those custom orders taken care of.  They seem to be piling up faster than dust bunnies.  Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining.  Just saying.

But before I return to frenzied knitting, I think I'll eat some more spinach dip.  I had it for breakfast.  And now I think I'll have it for my afternoon snack.  In case you couldn't tell, spinach dip is like crack to me.  But hey - it's spinach.  It's good for me.  Let's just don't mention what ever is in the creamy part.  But I'm sure that's healthy too.  Sure of it!

Counting down

I'm counting down to lots of things these days.  Of course there's the Christmas count down, but I don't even want to think about that.  That counter thingy over there on the side says 24 days.  Yikes!  How can that be?  Think I could postpone Christmas by deleteing that counter?

I'm also counting down until December 26th when I'm going back to eating healthy.  My diet has been beyond horrible lately and it shows on my body.  I won't go into how much weight I've gained or how sluggish I feel.  Let's just say I'm looking forward to 12/26.  I know I could start now and probably feel a lot better about the fact that there's only 24 shopping days left, but....  it's just too hard to eat clean during the holidays.  I am, however, trying to make an effort to only eat the good, tasty junk and not to eat junk just for the sake of eating junk.   Judging by my recent binge on stale candy canes, I'm not making a lot of effort however.

Then there's the count down to the AAR Holiday Bazaar this Saturday.  It will be my first time participating in a bazaar as a seller and I'm a little nervous.  My friend Traci is participating too so I know we'll have a good time even if neither of us sells a single thing.  Of course, we'd have more fun if we sold everything, so come on out & shop with us.

I've been a bit obsessed lately with creating things to sell at the bazaar and have done no knitting for myself in ages.  Actually, I haven't knitted for me since I opened the Etsy shop.  I decided that it was time to start and saw the Hitchhiker scarf pattern mentioned on Wendy Knits and instantly fell in love.

Ok, so it doesn't look like much there, but I LOVE the pattern and the way the yarn is creating those stripes.  I'm using Patons Kroy Socks in the Clover colorway.  It's a very simple pattern which creates a loooooong, thin triangle that curves so it will easily wrap around your neck, scarf-style.  I think I'll probably make a zillion of these scarves before I'm done.  Because you know I need a red one, a green one, a blue one, a purple one, maybe a creamy white one, and of course, they'd also make great gifts for both the men & women in my life.

So, I'm signing off of here and going back to knitting.  And doing laundry, which is another thing I'm counting down.  Can anyone tell me  how one family creates so much laundry?  It's not like I have 18 kids.  We are a normal, four person family, but if you looked at our pile of dirty clothes, you'd think we had 24 kids.  Sheesh.  So, I'll go toss another load in, then I'll start knitting.  Knitting after I turn Buffy the Vampire Slayer on.  Have I mentioned that's my new passion?  How did I not know about this show?  Well, I knew it existed but I always thought it was the dumbest thing on earth.  But that was before I ever watched a single episode.  Now, I'm obsessed and it's all I want for Christmas.  Buffy DVDs.  Well, and yarn.  Buffy and yarn.  What more could a girl want?

Well, maybe a laundry maid.  Buff, yarn and a maid.  That's my Christmas list in a nutshell.