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See the list of participants here!

I was totally bummed that I missed Cloth.Paper.String’s Art of the Note Gocco swap. I was going to patiently wait for her to organize another one. Well, I don’t have much patience! So with Sarah’s blessing, I am hosting an It’s Autumn! Gocco Postcard Swap because Autumn is my favorite season! I hope some of you are up for another swap or if you are like me and missed the previous swap, get your Gocco machines ready!

This swap is slightly different in that instead of having individual swap partners, you send your cards to me and I sort and collate them and send everybody back a package. I participated in a swap like this years ago and am totally snagging the idea as it was so much fun! It will be easier for you because you only send 1 package to 1 person. It will be more work for me but I feel it will definitely be worth it!

Here are the details:

• Swap is open to 25 29 participants with a blog and/or flickr account. Sign ups close September 10 or when I get 24 28 participants (plus me) – whichever comes first!
• Print 50 postcards of 1 design (please keep postcards 4 in. x 6 in. for uniformity)
• Send all postcards to me by October 10 and include enough postage inside the package so I can mail your swap back to you! Usually the same amount that it cost to send it to me. Stamps or if you are willing, cash is fine.
• Include your name/flickr name /e-mail address inside the package so I can mark you off the list and contact you with confirmation of receipt and with any questions.
• Please e-mail me at SWAP {at} the bunnylog {dot} com and include Gocco Postcard Swap in the subject line. PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE A COMMENT TO SIGN UP! Include your name and address in the e-mail so I can get a mailing label ready (trying to be organized!). You will get an e-mail back from me with my address to send your package. This e-mail is confirmation that you are on the list. If you don’t receive a reply from me within 2 days, e-mail me again!
• I will do my best to mail out everyone’s packages by October 24 as long as they are received in time. Please try not to be late but I know life happens so just keep me informed if you are running late!
• In your package, you will receive 2 sets of 25 designs. So in other words, every participant in the swap is your swap partner! You can keep 1 set to admire and send the other set out as postcards!

The theme is open and it is not necessary to print on both sides of the postcard. It must be postcards as that will be easier for me to sort and don’t have to deal with envelopes. I think I covered everything but if you have any other questions, please post them here!

Feel free to use this swap button to spread the word around!

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<a href=”http://thebunnylog.com/journal/2008/09/02/autumngoccoswap/”><img src=”http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j312/luluvision/AutumnSwapbutton.jpg”>

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After seeing crafter girlpopcorn in this video on Threadbanger, I was inspired and got myself an embroidery & darning foot for my singer and some water soluble stabilizer. It came at the end of last week and decided to give it a quick try since the weekend was here. I am posting this in the hopes that once I get better with this, I can look back at this and see how far I’ve come. HA! At first I couldn’t figure out how to put the darn thing on! Once I realized that I would have to unscrew the shank that is on there now, I got a little nervous. I don’t like to unscrew things that I’m not familiar with! My manual also said I had to put the feed dogs down to do embroidery/free motion. I didn’t even know they went down! I didn’t know they were called feed dogs! LOL. Well, I still don’t really know if I put it on correctly as there is so much space between the foot and the sewing plate. I guess you need that much space in order to move the fabric around.

that’s a lot of space, dontcha think?

I pulled out some scrap sheets that I saved just for these practicing purposes. I decided to try and do Sienna’s name. I was so anxious, I spelled it wrong! HA!

I fiddled with the tension and realized the higher tension was not the way to go. I think this was somewhere between 5 and 7:

So I moved it lower to a 2. Yves’ name came out the best.

I thought it only fitting that I do Sienna’s name again but spelled correctly!

I certainly need a lot of practice with this and I’m guessing (hoping) the stabilizer will help. Hopefully my next post on this will be more successful!

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Monday I went to craft night again at Etsy Labs. They were doing glass etching and thought it would be fun to do. I’m really glad Etsy Labs are doing these craft nights. It gives you a chance to try out crafts that you might have an interest in but am not sure you want to buy a whole bunch of supplies for! So I took one of my plain pint glasses and headed on over!

You use contact paper to make your design. I was too lazy to cut out a design in the middle of the contact paper so I cut out elements of a design so I had to cover the whole glass with the etching cream. I made a heart with a cut out M (the M wasn’t too bad to cut out) and then 3 bunny heads and some hearts. You plop on a thick layer of cream for 5 minutes and then rinse it off. Since I was doing my whole glass, I had to do each side separately. If you stand there too long, you really start to smell the cream and it stinks!!


The finished project! It only took an hour. The longest process was probably thinking of a design! If you look closely you can see the cream wasn’t put on very evenly. But I’m fine with that, it adds character! I tried to rush home in hopes to catching Sienna before she went to bed. I would have made it if I didn’t forget that I was on the B train (express) and missed my stop to transfer to the Q (local). DOH!

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Last week I had a couple of hours of alone time, well, time without Sienna. Monday night was craft night at Etsy Labs and I was interested in going because it was a recipe slam where participants send in their favorite recipes and we make a little booklet out of it AND Sweet Tooth of the Tiger were co-sponsoring it. You know what a sweet tooth I have! I couldn’t resist their mini strawberry cupcake and peanut butter cupcake. Very rich (I was warned), a little too rich for even my sweet tooth. And since I did not have dinner yet, I ended up with a little tummy ache! Danielle taught us how to put the booklet together and I’m pretty sure I did this before but a refresher didn’t hurt. Everyone was nice and into their project and it went so quickly. They had another project afterwards (stenciling onto a tote bag) since it was so quick but my stomach demanded some food! And I knew there was a Golden Krust by the train! Yves was surprised I was home as early as I was and was jealous I had some patties but was glad I brought him some Ting!

Danielle showing us how to make our booklet as well as a live webcam (which of course I end up sitting right in front of so everyone in internet land got to see my pretty face! HA!)

My booklet!

Then Wednesday afternoon my parents watched Sienna while I went to have some lunch and browse Barnes and Noble on Court Street. I ended up having lunch at Layla Jones and got a chicken and goat cheese press sandwich. YUM! It was quite filling! After checking out the magazines and craft books, I decided to check out the newly opened Yogo Monster on Court Street. They had a grand opening special of free toppings! I was good and got fresh fruit with my blueberry and original flavor yogurt. It was good, better than pinkberry, which is a bit too bitter for me.

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I’ve been making stuff here and there and have not been good about posting them so here they are! Back in June I was obsessed with finding a nice headband pattern to crochet so I can wear it as a sweatband when I exercise. I printed out a whole bunch but did not get very far with a lot of them for one reason or another. I finally made this

I did have trouble with it because the pattern did not make sense to me. The creator of the pattern was kind enough to answer my questions on it but then never replied back when I had a follow up. I was told by a super knitter/crocheter from the craft meetup that I did it correctly and that the pattern was a little confusing! Whew! Not just me! I am also working on a blanket (starghan) for Sienna that is well on it’s way but I have not taken pics of it yet.

Yesterday I finished up the Year of the Pig t-shirt pillow. Most of Sienna’s old clothes were given away but there were a couple of things I didn’t want to part with, namely this year of the pig shirt. It’s a little lopsided but hey, I’m still a sewing novice. I realized after the fact that it would have been cuter and easier to keep it as a t-shirt and just sew up the openings. Oh well!

And last but not least, my Gocco projects. I finally relented and got a PG-11 that came the week after my birthday. I did not play with it until this past Sunday. It was quite humid on Sunday so I believe that made my original stick to the master. I was totally bummed about it. Questions posted to the yahoo and flickr group were made. It was suggested that I rub a little warm water to get the bits off. It worked!

I’m not totally happy with how it came out but since it’s the first print on my own machine, at least I got over the first print hurdle. Later in the week I made another one.

I ironed out some of the carbon in the printout before flashing the master and this time it didn’t stick! I tried 3 different types of paper with the lower right one embossed. It’s a little better technically but still not super thrilled. I’ll get there!

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gocco1, originally uploaded by luluvision.

On the 9th, I took a Gocco class at Etsy labs with Carrie. Gocco is a little screenprinting machine from Japan and I’ve wanted one since college. Somehow I managed to always talk myself out of getting one. Then Gocco seemed to be all around me! Tammy’s friend Stephanie got one and made Tammy’s baby shower invites and Carrie had e-mailed me someone’s blog of gocco’d wedding invites (and it looks like lots of people do this!) Then I saw that Etsy labs were holding Gocco classes, I thought it would be fun to take a craft class and I’ve been meaning to check out Etsy labs for awhile.

Of course I started preparing my image earlier that morning. I had in mind to make ‘mom’ cards to give out to other moms to contact me for playdates. I definitely wanted an image of Sienna on it! Since Yves did not have access to a laser printer at the time, I had to get a photo copy because the image had to contain carbon.

The class was only 1.5 hours and it flew by! What fun it was!!! Had I given myself more time to prepare the image, I might have been more happy with it. But I noticed some tweaks I would have liked to make. Every Monday, Etsy has craft night and if you bring your own supplies (bulbs, screens, inks), you can use their gocco machine!

gocco2, originally uploaded by luluvision.

gocco3, originally uploaded by luluvision.

gocco4, originally uploaded by luluvision.

gocco5, originally uploaded by luluvision.

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Yay! Benny the Monkey has been finished! He’s from Amigurumi Super Happy Crochet Cute. There are definitely some flaws in him (one leg is bigger than the other, his feet are kinda screwed up) but that’s ok! He’s finished! There were some questions I had about his pattern that I e-mailed the author of the book about but I did not hear back from her so I had to wing it. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to stuff his muzzle since it didn’t say to but his muzzle does look a little flat. Oh well. Yves is going to take it to work so Benny can hang out with him. Maybe when Sienna is older, he will come back. I didn’t put his nostrils on very well (I can’t work that invisible thread too well).

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Joy got her the monkey mirror.

Sunday was Tammy’s baby shower held at Alison’s place by Prospect Park. Needless to say, beautiful views! (And also needless to say, stopped by the Christie’s Jamaican patty place and brought some patties home for dinner.) I did not bring Sienna with me, although she was more than welcome. There were 3 other babies/toddlers there.

I got her the diaper changing pad that goes on top of the dresser and the orange cover (of course) that covers it. They were both on her registry. I also got her alphabet links because I love links and they come in very handy. I don’t have the alphabet ones but they are really cute! I also got her a monkey vibrating hanging toy. After she opened the gifts, we did crafts! Stephanie set out plain white onesies, fabric paint and brushes. I got on a roll and made about 6! I was having fun!

Opening one of my orange wrapped presents. 🙂

Let the crafting begin!

Well it looks like I exceeded the amount of pictures for this post! I’ll have to post the pics of the babies there another time!

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Saturday turned out to be a beautiful sunny day and felt like the 60’s. We went to Michael’s since I had a 50% coupon and took the opportunity to go to Trader Joe’s and also try out the shopping cart cover I finally finished!

It works!! I didn’t doubt the pattern, just my abilities to follow it. LOL. If you look at it closely (in person), you’ll see all the character in it.  And I’m not talking about the Elmo fabric I used. This was my first time using bias tape, using elastic (my thumb hurt from threading it through) and the buttonhole feature on my machine. Let’s just say I still need a lot of practice in all those areas. LOL

Since it was such a nice day, we decided to grab some lunch at Nathan’s in Coney Island. Yves got 2 dogs and I decided to get a cheeseburger to share with Sienna. She didn’t really care for it and happily ate her jarred food (which she only seems to do outside of the house!). We did not share the hot dogs or fries with her. Figure there is plenty of time for her to try that junk food! We took a little walk to the rides and she really got a kick out of seeing them and the arcade area.

Sunday was the opening of the much publicized Brooklyn Flea. We were meeting up with Joy and Brenda, who had tickets to see Sharon Jones across the street at the Masonic Temple. The main reason for meeting was to finally try the famed Waffle truck. Which wasn’t in the truck for the flea market. It was good!! Me and Yves got a waffle with maple syrup and then a cinnamon one with nutella. Joy got the cinnamon with dulce de leche and Brenda got the regular with fudge. I think Brenda’s fudge was the best one. Sienna enjoyed some waffle too!

We also ran into Carrie, who was very excited to finally meet Sienna. It was a lot colder that day than Saturday and overcast so we did not really roam around the market. But it’s going to be there every Sunday so I didn’t care.

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Yay! I finished the Flower Power Rug! I actually finished this last weekend. It took about a month of evening crocheting. I think it came out nice! Not exactly like the photo they show in their pattern but it’s got character! It is now in Sienna’s room by her crib.

I also started and finished another project! Can you believe that? I bought myself a set of ergonomical hooks since I’ve been crocheting a lot and I swear, I think I pulled a muscle in my right arm from doing the rug. So the set came in this case that is not my style, so I made a new one from this pattern!

It doesn’t fit all my hooks, like the fatter ones, only because I have my old hooks in there too. I might make another one and just make it wider with a few more pockets. I’m just so happy I did it! My next planned project is a shopping cart cover! I bought the pattern off of ebay and this was the only pattern I found that had a review of it and the reviewer said it was easy for a beginner to do. Still, I’m going to do a practice run first with some sheets. Wish me luck!

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