Lots of Work In The Shop!

Things are really getting going around here in preparation for Thursday's Danse du Ventre show and vending in San Jose. I have gotten almost all the steps done for my necklaces that I want to have for the show. They look like a science project in progress on our table:



The house looks slightly like a craft store had a stomach ache and threw up all over the house. I have a custom order of falls being worked on on the couch, so there is yarn and fiber all over. There is a pair of pants draped over the ironing board as well as other cloth that I want to have made into pants before Thursday. There are business cards and labels all over Dan's office making the mess travel from my area and some of the common areas into his domain. There are belt making materials all over the place. Including the living room and this weekend, I even took one with me in the car to work on. The elephant and peacock belt is still being worked on, but it hopefully will be done in time for Thursday:





Needless to say, Friday will be filled with house cleaning and craft wrangling. Today will be filled with hairfall order finishing, impatient waiting for necklace charms to dry, belt making, and a quest for bags that are what I want for packaging people's orders. There are also business cards to be printed. While it was nice taking a break for the Garlic Festival on Saturday and resting to try to kick this cold yesterday, today is full steam ahead to get things done and ready for Thursday!

First Foray Into Vending!

So here is the big announcement for Fabulous Pants that I have been waiting to make. I will be vending at my first real time show: Danse Du Ventre in San Jose, California!



The event is at Splash Night club, and I feel like I have so much to do! I signed up to take credit cards yesterday and have been approved. I have lots of smaller items I am working on to have things to draw people into the booth and also will have lots of my pants goodness there for people to try out and love. It is all so overwhelming. I also had my first international and custom order to actually work out go through today, so there is a custom set of falls in process as well. I hate to cut it so short, but there is just so much to do. I will keep you updated with short postings next week and some pictures. Keep your fingers crossed for some great sales and wonderful dancing that night. This is my first attempt at selling in person, so I hope it all goes well.... there are necklaces to finish, falls to make, cowrie falls to work on, a few belts, ooohhhh more pants.....

I better get to work! I hope to see you all that can make it there! Entrance is free!

Glad to Be Home Cleaing the Tassel Belts!

I know I have been gone for quite a few weeks, and there are great stories and explanations for the hiatus. As I was talking about in previous posts, it was both my wedding anniversary and my upcoming trip to Chaos Wars that would make me have a long absence from the blogisphere. Both of those events have come to pass, and now I am back at home recovering and preparing for the next big thing. More news on that tomorrow.

For our anniversary, Dan and I went down to LA to ride rollercoasters at Magic Mountain. We both love doing this and have often contemplated joining ACES but have never actually taken the plunge. We then took off for California Extreme the next day. It was much more fun this year, and I liked the convention center they picked better this year even though there seemed to be fewer games and less variety. I blame the bad economy and high gas prices for people not being able to transport their games to the convention. After that it was off to the airport and a short plane ride to Salt Lake City to meet up with my friends from Ered Duath. They took me up to Idaho for Chaos Wars, which was my favorite Belegarth event of all time. I had a great time meeting up with old friends and getting to hang with new Hellhammer members that I had yet to meet. The picture above is all my dance gear that cannot be washed being aired out. While I am still sick with a cold that I picked up from the event, I am so glad to have gotten to take a part in all the fun and festivities. I miss everyone so much now even though there is a big piece of me happy to be home in my quiet confines with the plants and sewing machine again.

Things around the garden seemed to do fine with out me under the care of Dan's watchful eyes. Things are flowering again and starting to turn into fruits and vegetables. There are flowers on the chives:



And big flowers for zucchini:



As well as some young zucchini that will soon be ready to eat:



The tomato flowers are turning into small green tomatoes:



And we even have a green pepper or two:



Most surprising of all is that the lemon tree, while already full of young lemons, is already starting to flower again:



I guess this porch is going to be more fruitful than I thought! Well there is a ton to do today to get ready for some big things that are coming way faster than I can believe. Check back in tomorrow for an important announcement on the Fabulous Pants shop front!

4th of July Hike

We took a wonderful hike on the 4th of July in Point Reyes National Seashore. It was an adventure getting back to the trail head for our specific hike as it is at one of the southern most points in the park. There are few roads in the park as is, and this was a particularly windy way around to the trail head. It was a pretty drive through cattle pastures and part of the Golden Gate National Recreation area and a state park filled with really large trees. The trails we took were one of the favorite hikes on Bay Area Hiker. We hiked the coastal trail to Alamere Falls. The fog was in, and I was appreciative for that. I think if they fog lifted, we would not have made it through the 10 mile trip. The first part of the trail was filled with wonderful views of the Pacific ocean.





We then went a bit more inland and passed by several lakes. They were a beautiful shade of blue. It was neat to see some of them extend to almost the ocean to only be cut off by a slender piece of rock. At one of the lakes, there were people using a rope to jump off into the crystal water. If it had been a sunny day, I would have joined them.







Once our mail section of the Coastal Trail meet up with the Alamere Falls trail, I could not take pictures. This is obviously a very popular hike, and the trails had gotten very worn apparently. When this happens, the NPS usually puts the trail on "unmaintained status." That is what this approximately 2 mile section was marked as, and it surely was unmaintained. There was thick brush and brambles. We had to duck under areas where large fir trees had reclaimed sections of the trail as well as hiking with your hands above your head to keep them out of the shorter brambles. The rough trail was worth it to see the waterfall at the end of the cliff. It had three major descents down the cliff face. To see the largest one, you had to scramble down the rather steep cliff face. It was somewhat challenging, but well worth it.









There was a seal on the beach with us. People of course felt the need to get up close to it, which is not advisable, but I just zoomed in with my camera to snap a quick picture.



We then walked around a mile down the beach in search of a less steep way up onto the trail again. This lead us to Wildcat Camp and a very easy way onto the trail again. While doing this turned our initial hike into a 10 mile one from the original 7.5 mile trek, it was fine by me. The extra miles made me feel like I really accomplished something on that hike. While I am still sore today, I am glad we went



In other news, I will be leaving on a few trips at the end of this week. All orders received before Thursday, July 9th will be mailed out before I leave. Anything ordered after I leave on Thursday will not be sent out until July 20th. I have a fun 5th wedding anniversary weekend planned with potential roller coasters and of course California Extreme is this weekend as well. I also have to sew up some clothes for me to wear while I am at Chaos Wars. So I am off to do some extremely fast sewing, so I can be ready for all that is to come. Perhaps more tomorrow... depends on progress today.

Growing Garden

The box that I planted the radishes and green onions in is finally totally sprouting and growing rapidly. It is nice to finally have some success starting things from seed on my own. While my father, mother, sister, and grandmother have wonderful green thumbs, mine is still developing. I think my biggest problems at the last apartment was the over abundance of extreme sunlight. I think I was literally frying some of my plants on the windowsill. The herb box is pure proof to me that some of my issues was the growing place I had at the old place. When I moved it over here there were aphids all over it and the plants were not looking very good. Now:



It was nice to make lasagna on Sunday and be able to walk out onto the balcony and get the herbs I needed right there. It was so nice to have that ability again since I seemed to leave that behind in Illinois. Now it is back, and I am again a happy cook! The only thing that is not thriving in this new place is the rosemary. I think it needs yet a bigger pot than the one that I bought for it. Hopefully it will last for a little while before I start bugging Dan to take me out for more dirt and another pot for the poor dear. Things are also starting to flower, which has me excited to see what will pollinate and start growing.



The jet star tomato suddenly started growing by leaps and bounds and now has several large flowers. I have been supplementing the breeze by also blowing on the flowers to make sure they pollinate. I would love to have some fresh tomatoes at my disposal soon. There is also a flower on the pepper plant:



While the plant does not seem to be growing that tall, I hope that it does fine making some peppers. I would hate to lose a plant due to it blooming itself out. There are also several flowers on one of the cucumber plants that does not seem to want to grow into the trellis. Hopefully it does not break off when it tries to tendril out onto the porch. The zucchini plants are also looking quite robust, and I can see some buds starting to form. Hopefully they flower soon. I am not sure if these are wind pollinators, but I hope so. I don't see many insects or bees around to pollinate these plants here in the city. The beans are turning into quite the bramble as I feared. We will see if they yield anything or if I need to try next year with thinner plantings.



The lemon tree is doing well, even though we have yet to drill the drain holes in the pot. The lemons are starting to grow in size and I hope that we get a good yield from this as well.

Today is filled with trying to hurry to finish the birthday gift for Craig. As it is, I will be pushing getting it to them on time since there is the holiday weekend this week. That means, it must be finished today and walked up to the post office rather than scheduling a pick up for tomorrow. I will take pictures when it is finished for you to see tomorrow... I promise! I also have to run some shoes back to UPS for an exchange for Dan and get some work done for my upcoming trip to Idaho for Belegarth's Chaos Wars. There is so much to do, and I am off to get it done! More tomorrow!