Every year, I promise myself that I’m going to have a chill week before faire. I promise myself that I’m not going to take on 900 new projects in the months and weeks leading up to it, that I’m not going to make myself into a ball of stress.

Well, at least this year I haven’t turned myself into a ball of stress because of faire I guess?

The past two years have seen me experimenting with a lot of new things. Last year it was some metal stamping, then in December it was mugs (which were a hit with the family for Christmas). I’ve also learned how to crochet hats, which has added to my growing repertoire of fiber skills. This year I’ve been much better about slowly building up inventory for faire but not quite to the point I’d love to be. Case in point: today I made 18 mugs. I decided I was going to bite the bullet and do mugs for faire about a month ago when the blanks were incredibly on sale at Michaels (and if you haven’t tried the Make Market sublimation sheets and blanks, I HIGHLY recommend them–they’ve got a great selection, they’re less expensive than the Cricut ones, and I find that they weed a bit better, too). After mentioning that I was planning on doing them last weekend, I finally dragged things out to actually make them today.

My back isn’t entirely happy with me, but the mugs turned out great. Please excuse my messy kitchen in some of these shots (I let them cool on a pad on my kitchen counter so the cats are less likely to investigate and hurt themselves).

I’ll have all of them with me at GVRen the first weekend in October.

Also with me will be a bunch of new crocheted items that I’ve been making for the last year (along with any crochet items that didn’t sell last year…which is unsurprising because the weather was pretty awful most of the weekend).

Of course, this is not an exhaustive gallery of what I’ve got, just the most recent pieces I’ve made in the last month and a half (the return of some TV shows that I follow and the return of football have been good for my crocheting).

Expect some kind of festival post…at some point. And probably more things to come.

Until then, I’ve got garb to make because I’ve got garb on my list of things that I’m selling and…realized that I sold through basically all the garb I’ve been toting around last year (not that I had much left). Three skirts made last night, but if I can get some shirts done (and maybe make something for myself?) that would be nice.

Until next time!