Where Have I Been???

I literally have not done a blog posting in 6 months. SIX MONTHS! My world had been very topsy turvy for a while, but here I am!
We moved from our New Haven apartment around September 1st. We were suppose to stay with my roommates father, who was rarely in the state and happy to help. But then his brother moved in, trying to get clean and sober, and the nightmare began.
We moved literally 6 times after this from various hotels, family members and friends.
Now we're settled into a temporary residence, and things are a little easier. Rob - my fiancee, and I are planning on one final move. Hopefully this will happen over the next 2 - 3 months.
While all of this was going on both my health and business have suffered. I've made it my New Years Resolution to improve the both of them.

So what am I doing now? Working on making Ms. Kitty Fantastico better. Working to make the Connecticut Etsy Team more active and a smoother course for the team. And starting a new venture with my friend and roommate Matt. We have started working on paper crafts. I had no idea how cool and fun it was until I made some items for the team!

I'll be at The Space 12/21/08 for the Last Minute Craft Bash. It runs from 10 am - 3 pm. The Space is located at 295 Treadwell St. Hamden, CT. There will be a few vendors, free swag bags, a raffle table chock full of Etsy items. The show is a fundraiser to help The Space. If you're around stop in and say hello!

Indie Craft Shows and Events

Brought to you by the Connecticut Etsy Team! Have any questions? Want to be in one of our shows? Drop me a line: CTEtsyTeam@gmail.com

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 6TH - Flea Market @ The Space 9am - 3pm
295 Treadwell Street Hamden CT
The CT Etsy Team and The Space are combining forces yet again to bring you one stellar flea market event! OUTDOORS will be tons of cool and unusual flea market vendors bringing you the coolest items in vintage and tag sale this side of Connecticut! INDOORS the CT Etsy Team will have featured crafters from their Traveling Green Show featuring rad earth friendly art. Not to mention the Space's awesome on site cafe and vintage shop!
This is a no brainer folks! Cheap goodies and good times!

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 11th - Crafters on the Green in Waterbury 11am - 3pm
Part of Brass City Harvest Farmers Market and The CT Etsy Team Traveling Green Show
Come and check out a bevy of local crafters as well farm fresh fruits, veggies and whole foods. Music and entertainment will be featured through out the day!

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 14th - Etsy , CT 06755 10am-3pm
Merwinsville Hotel 1 Browns Forge Rd. New Milford CT
This is a unique shopping event put together by Jen Grant and Jillian Lyons of the CT Etsy Team. Artists from all over the state of Connecticut were hand picked specifically for this event to bring you the best and coolest products possible. Taking place at the historic Merwinsville Hotel, right on the train tracks, this is sure to be one Hell of a whistle stop show! Music and entertainment through out the day! http://www.freewebs.com/06755

Please visit : http://www.freewebs.com/ctetsyteam for more details and events!

It Just Wouldn't Be Ms. Kitty Without the Weird Wild World

Well nothing is ever easy in the world of Ms. Kitty. For we all know even kittens have claws, and this kitty is getting cranky.
Moving has been grueling! We need to be out of here in about 10 days. I am packing like mad. My roommate has done *nothing*. His parents cut him off this week, so he has no income. Still he does *nothing*. I am revolted by this. I don't really know what to do. And we are suppose to be staying at his father's house. So now I am cranky and nervous. Hopefully things go smoothly and we just get the Hell out of here.
I have been trying to balance my move with building new inventory for both Ms. Kitty Fantastico and Tiny Bubbles Soap while having my hand in planning about 5 different shows and events. Ha ha! We learn Ms. Kitty is a fan of self torture.

For Ms. kitty Fantastico, my goal this Fall and Winter is to try and bring my knitting up to the next level. I have started working with yarns made by fellow artists like The Crafty Scientist and Catherinette. Yarns that are hand painted or hand spun, art yarn of all kinds. It's fun, but time consuming. Pictured above is a creation I like to call the Jokers Girlfriend. It's an acid green and purple scarf with fringe all down the side. (You can see better pictures of it on Etsy!)

And here is a hat I made with art yarn handspun by the Crafty Scientist.I call it Ping Ping *POOF* . I know weird name. Someone told me it looked Japanese and I was listening to the Ping Pings (I think that's their name.) And the poofball on top stood out to me. Hence, Ping Ping *POOF* .You can see both on my Etsy site : http://www.mskittyfantastico.etsy.com
Soap has been less than satisfying for me lately. I made an almond oatmeal scrub that no one seems to interested in, but I like it. I goofed when trying to make a solid sugar scrub. Instead I ended up with a super fatted soap that smelled like cookies. Actually that was an awesome awesome mistake! Long story short I made a poor substitute choice, but it worked out in the end. And when I tried to make an idea I called Chocolate Covered Berries soap, my roommate told me it smelled more like PB&J. I think he might be wrong. I guess I can't win them all. But I'd still like to try.
Here's that cookie soap. You can see my soap here: http://www.tinybubblessoap.etsy.com

Right now I'm just going to try to keep knitting and soap making and just *BREATH* . Moving has never been so frustrating.
MEOW!

Moving Madness and Mayhem

I am moving on September 1st. It's been a complete ordeal. Let me see if I can break this down without getting too complicated. Rob, who I just recently got back together with, got a promotion. Yay! He is now a manager for the Bow Tie Cinemas company. Great movie theaters, if you've never been. So when he got the promotion he was transferred to Trumbull, which is about 20 - 30 minutes from New Haven. So we'd planned to move closer to it. The cost of getting Rob to work and back was FRIGHTENING. I think we spent about $300 in a two week period, maybe more. We found a place we liked and started to set our move near Trumbull in motion.
THEN the New Haven theater called him and wanted him to come back as a manager. Rob said yes, because that's where he'd always worked, he liked it there. So that put us back here in New Haven but with no where to live and less than a month to move. Oh and the money we had to move, gone, since we had to back out of this deal. We're pretty broke. Our bank account is currently negative $375. NOW he's working in both Trumbull AND New Haven. As Trumbull wasn't ready to give him up. So we're going to stay with our roommate Matt's father until we can save money to find a permanent place to live. And until Rob knows where he'll be permanently. For a while there I was sure we'd have to live out of Matt's car, so that's a huge relief.

SO in an effort to raise money to move I am having an Open Studio and Tag Sale this Saturday 8/16/08 from 10 - 3 at our apartment (76 Mechanic St. #2 New Haven CT). I hope people come. I am getting rather anxious about it. We really need the cash and we have to be gone in about 2 1/2 weeks. I'm going to serve wine and cheese and yummy stuff. Hopefully it will be nice.
Honestly, I am just looking forward to getting out of this place and taking September to regroup, save money and take our time figuring things out. It will also be nice to put money aside to start new promotions for my businesses which have grown to 3 little indie shops. Ugh, I am pooped.

Getting to Know my Crafts

Hey There!
I recently got an email from a fellow Ct Etsy Team member and all around amazing lady Cathleen McClain. She has been reading my blog and had a lot of really great advice for me. I know, I know sometimes people say they have great advice for you and you think shut the hell up. But this was really great. I needed to hear a lot of what Cathleen had to say. It made me feel very comfortable in my own skin to have both constructive criticism and validation for what she had read in my blog about the state of my life and relationship. (BTW Rob and I are giving it another whirl. So far so good.)
Cathleen also said that a lot of people are not entirely aware of what it is I do as far as my craft goes. She said I focus a lot of time talking about events and even other people's craft, but very little time on my own.
So I am going to try and give a little spot light on what I do from time to time.

Most recently I have been all about making soap and knitted wash cloths!I have a little emerging business on Etsy called Tiny Bubbles Soap. I also have been traveling to farmers markets around the state with my organic bath and body. It's been very cool so far.
Initially I started doing this because I was finding my sales dropping and I thought a lot of it had to do with 1) I am primarily a winter knitter and this is no season for that! 2) The economy is total ass and everyone is shopping more carefully.
I had started doing these farmers markets as part of the CT Etsy Team's Traveling Green Tour. It occurred to me that having a consumable product might be helpful. It made perfect sense for me to go back to soap making, a hobby I'd started while I was in college.

It's been so fun! I love cooking, so this is very close to that for me. I also am pretty knowledgeable on the uses of a lot of herbs and plants. I'm a vegetarian with super sensitive skin, so making soap formulas that I can use was like a quest at first. A lot of my soaps are made with Goats Milk for that reason. It's very gentle.

Pictured is my Goats Milk Goddess Soap. This was the first one that really worked for me. The recipe came out to perfection. The mold is gorgeous. And it feels like such an ancient empowering symbol. I love it! It's kind of becoming my old stand by. Everyone who uses it seems to really enjoy the extra creamy recipe. My fellow crafter, Dana from Designs by Dana calls it the booby lady soap.
But sometimes it goes the other way too! This is the same basic recipe as the Goddess bar, but it's a soap with chamomile flower and oil in it. I made it thinking ti would be a great combination of gently exfoliating, creamy, gentle, and smell amazing. It did do all of those things. AND MORE! I always test new bars in th shower. Make sure it's safe, and lathers well and what not. Well I showered with this one for a few days and broke out in a rash. The soap is fine. But I am allergic to pollen. I had NO CLUE that chamomile flower is very close to pollen. I had been wondering why I was sneezing like mad! Can't win them all.

The chamomile soap. Gorgeous to look at but stay away my allergic friends!

The SAVE MY BUM SALE!

I just took a trip to see my kid sister get married. I live in CT and she lives in North Carolina. I hadn't seen her in a good 8 years so I was going to get there come Hell or high water.
Right before I was about to leave I ran out of money. I had to cut my stay short and literally stayed for the wedding and left. Rather than spend time with my fam, I had to hitch a ride to see my father in South Carolina who was camping, take what little money he'd had left after paying for wedding stuff, and try and get back home with it. So after much driving, panicking and being stranded, I am now home.
SO I have no money left and am getting very worried.

Lol, so now I am having a big sale! 35% off all items in my shop! Buy more and save! Spend more than $25 and take a mystery percentage off on TOP of your 35%. Anywhere from an extra 5 - 15%!
I'm calling it the save my bum sale.
FROM NOW UNTIL JULY 29th.

A Crafty Way to Save Puppies

Puerto Rico, go ahead and Google it. Metacrawl all over it. You'll find that it is a tiny island about the size of Connecticut. You'll view loads of pictures of the bluest water, lush palm trees, and beautiful cultural events. Ok, now look up Barceloneta, Puerto Rico. You'll find headlines that scream "Pet Massacre" and "Animal Cruelty". (See http://nytimes.com/2008/03/09/us/09dogs.html) Bet you weren't expecting that.

Unfortunately acts of animal cruelty are not a rare occurrence in any part of Puerto Rico. For example, in October of 2007 over 80 pets from a low income housing development were seized. Owners were told there was now a no pets allowed rule. Dogs and cats would be placed in a shelter and await adoption. Instead the beloved pets were thrown off bridges to their deaths. This act brought about global attention. People began protesting Puerto Rican tourism.
Heading west to Yabucoa, P. R. and you'll find a place called Dead Dog Beach. Dogs poisoned by locals and hoteliers litter the beach, ridding them of these unwanted street dogs or Satos as they are known in Spanish. You'll also see dogs sliced by machetes or who've had hot oil poured on them, or have simply died of mange and starvation help to give this beach it's namesake. Sadly, these stories go on and on.
The island only has about 7 animal shelters that service the entire region. Euthanasia rates are at 98% since these shelters receive close to 100 unwanted dogs a day.

In March I took a trip to Puerto Rico. I must have seen 50 strays while visiting. I'm still haunted by the number of dogs that need help. I was able to save one. A little Bichon Frise who had been kept in a tiny dark hole who had obviously been neglected. But this just wasn't enough to sooth my breaking heart. Upon my arrival home I contacted my long time friend CT Etsy Team leader, Jillian Lyons aka Ms. Kitty Fantastico, to please use her gifts to organize a fund raiser. So here we are , and more importantly, here YOU are.

We have created a small grass roots organization called Project: Puppy. Our goal is to raise as much money as possible to help get as many of these dogs healthy, kenneled and adopted. We are working in conjunction with The Amigos de los Animales out of Puerto Rico, our contact being Elizabeth Kracht, director of The Amigos. ( http://www.amigosdelosanimalespr.org )

On Sunday July 13th, our grass roots organization Project: Puppy will be holding an Indie Craft Show at The Space 295 Treadwell Street Hamden CT from 10 am - 3 pm. Free goody bags will be handed out to the first 150 attendees through the doors. We also have several raffle items that have graciously been donated by artists and small businesses from all over the world. Raffle tickets are available for only $1 each. There will also be a table representing our organization with hand crafted items from both myself and Ms. Kitty Fantastico as well as information on how you can further donate or get involved. The show will feature both artists from the Ct Etsy Team as well as local crafters, many of which will be donating some of their profits to our cause.
100% of our proceeds will be going to the search and rescue efforts of The Amigos.