Purple Chair Crochet: Etsy

No. 02 in The Flower Pot Series: Portulaca

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

The Flower Pot Series No. 02: Portulaca

I'd never heard of portulaca until I moved to Illinois. I got out of my car and noticed low growing ground cover popping up where my tulips had recently wilted. A few weeks later, small blossoms appeared in a variety of colors (pink, yellow, orange, white! woohoo!!). Investigation was required. I stooped down and snooped through the tangle of winding stems to discover that, contrary to what I thought, this was one plant - not a multitude.

Since that time, portulaca has become a favorite. My window boxes are crammed full of them. The pot hanging outside my house is stuffed as well. And even the terracotta pots, left over from the herb garden, are filled with portulaca.

If you're a fan (or maybe I just convinced you?), check out...

Color me happy. :)

Have a Lovely Day!

~Jess
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Check out the pattern by following this link! C'mon, do it!

Friday, September 21, 2012

The Farm Bus Produce Bag (New Pattern!)

The Farm Bus Produce Bags (sold exclusively at Farm 2 Family) is now available all over the world wide web! I finally made writing this pattern a priority and it's now happily listed in my Etsy shop.

Check it out, world.

Have a Lovely Day!

~Jess
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Tuesday, September 4, 2012

It's a Start (Inspiration)

Back at the tail-end of spring we had a mishap with my laptop. One minute, we were goobering it up in front of Mac's Photobooth, me and my bedtime bidden boys. And then the computer froze. I attempted to restart it, and finally did a force shutdown. And then: blue screen.

The diagnosis? Dead hard drive. Good bye, videos of my children (all the ones that didn't make it to facebook). Pictures, too. Good bye all those crochet patterns I'd been working on. At least 10 in-progress patterns were lost. ~~I could have cried.~~ I cried. A lot more than I should have. For a couple of days. I obsessed over the whole thing. Kicked myself for not backing things up on our external hard drive. Was upset I never uploaded all those baby videos to facebook (I mean, who wanted to see a 5 month old baby playing with blocks for 8 minutes? Besides his parents, of course).

And despite getting my lappy back from the lovely people at the Apple store "fixed", I couldn't bring myself to write more patterns. Not the more complex ones, for sale on Etsy. I distrusted the daggon thing (I *still* do, if I'm honest. The screen's getting wonky. I need to shop for a computer...). And the idea of starting over with my pattern template, with my pictures, with my folders, with my Purple Chair Crochet in general made me queasy and reminded me of the loss of everything. Honestly, losing the patterns was the sprinkles on the cupcake (I don't like cherries. And I suspect I'm misusing this metaphor).

So, I gave myself a break. I put the etsy shop on vacation mode (despite my PDFs being safely stored in my gmail account). I blogged a bit, here and there this summer. The inspiration struck to start crocheting for charity. But the designing? Nope. Didn't happen.

I gave my break a deadline of Labor day for no other reason than it seemed appropriate. And now Labor Day's come and gone (gulp) and I have to get back into designing. I started sketching a few things in my notebook earlier today. A cowl I want to make. Very basic. A wardrobe staple. I'll start back small. But it's a start.

Have a Lovely Day!
~Jess

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