Happy New Year!

Since The Sunny Attic officially opened its virtual doors on November 13, 2011, my little shop has accomplished the following:

• 1,057 shop views
• 43 favorites (meaning specific items in my shop or the shop itself have been added to other users' "Favorites" lists on Etsy)
• Inclusion in three Treasury lists (check 'em out here, here, and here if you're curious)
• Twelve sales

Since getting the shop up and running, I've also experimented with search ads, coupon codes, and the Etsy Showcase tool, and I've fine-tuned my shop policies in order to both a) protect my reputation as a seller and b) provide better service to my customers and prospective customers. I still have a lot to learn and tweak, but on the whole the experience has been extremely positive so far.

Goals for 2012 include exploring more cost-effective shipping alternatives (for both me and my buyers), updating this blog on a more regular basis, and, of course, listing more awesome hand-crafted and vintage items for sale! So stay tuned... 2012 promises to be an exciting year for The Sunny Attic!

Holiday Sale Time!

The myths of "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" seem to persist like that fifteen-year-old fruitcake languishing in the back of your freezer, but most everyone knows that the most profitable shopping days before Christmas for retailers usually tend to be sometime during the last couple of weekends before Christmas, or perhaps the Thursday and Friday before Christmas if Christmas itself falls on a weekend day. So with that in mind, everything in The Sunny Attic is going on sale!

Between now and Christmas, use coupon code HOLIDAY11 at The Sunny Attic and take a whopping 25% off your entire purchase. I've got all kinds of cute things on sale right now, just waiting for a new home. I'm taking custom orders for those bucket hats, too! So don't delay, wrap up your last-minute holiday shopping in the Attic!

I'm also celebrating the fact that The Sunny Attic was featured for the first time in one of Etsy's renowned treasury lists. Check this out!

Flea Market!

My boyfriend and I headed up to the Flea Market at Exchange Park in Ladson, SC on Saturday. We didn't go up there to shop, but to sell. Between the two of us, we had a lot of things to get rid of, so we decided to shell out $10 for a table and see what came of it. I had a bunch of things that weren't a good fit for The Sunny Attic (they don't fall into the vintage category, nor are they handmade) and lately I've been working hard to pare down the amount of stuff I have. As a result, the flea market seemed like a great thing to try. On top of that, my boyfriend had done it before and knew the ropes, so his willingness to lend the benefit of his experience was an added bonus.

I spent big chunks of last week compiling a mental list of things I could take up there, and by the time Friday rolled around and I assembled everything in one place, it just barely fit into the back of my boyfriend's SUV along with his stuff. We went to sleep as early as we could on Friday night, and were up by 4 a.m. on Saturday in order to get to the flea market early to claim a table. We made the unpleasant discovery when we arrived that many people had arrived even earlier than we had (perhaps even the night before) and placed boxes or crates or other items on top of tables as a way of "claiming" them. For a few minutes, it looked like we weren't going to be able to get a spot at all, let alone one of the "good" spots near the entrance, but we did eventually find a vacant table and hustled to get set up. It was pretty chilly, even for South Carolina, and I was extremely grateful to be bundled up.

A couple of flashlights proved to be indispensable at that hour of the morning, enabling us to see what we were doing, and allowing us both to show off our wares to a few of the super early birds who came by on the prowl for good stuff at good prices. I sold probably $25 - $30 worth of my stuff within the first 90 minutes, much of it before I'd even had a chance to arrange everything on my side of the table!

As the sun got higher in the sky and the temperature started to warm up, people started arriving in larger numbers. We made it a point to stand next to our table and greet everyone that came by, and I'm sure many people who stopped to look at our stuff wouldn't have stopped at all had we not been so friendly. At one point, I headed over to the main building (where all the permanent vendors are located) for some hot cocoa, and I have to admit that I enjoyed seeing what other people were selling as I went -- but I managed to resist the temptation to spend any of my profits on other people's wares!

Flea markets attract all sorts of people from all walks of life, and I observed a bunch of different "types" throughout the day. Among others, there were the bargain hunter/scavenger types who would haggle over a $1.00 item, the fresh produce buyers, the quirky folks looking for unique treasures, and the jewelry scavengers with their loupes on the hunt for gold and silver.... not to mention a handful of random folks who seemed like they might qualify to be profiled on the A&E show, "Hoarders."

My favorite visitor to our table, though, was a hilarious Vietnamese woman. She didn't end up buying anything from us, but she hung out and chatted for a while and gave me a great tip for using lemongrass in a meat marinade. As we were talking, a bee buzzed by and startled her. She shrieked that she was allergic to bee stings and grabbed her lemongrass to swat the bee away. She managed to disable it to the point that it fell to the pavement, and she stepped on it with an emphatic, "You die!" Although I try to avoid bee or wasp stings as much as the next person, her ferocity was pretty hysterical and I had a good chuckle.

By the time we packed up and left around 2 p.m., I had made $120. I was pretty happy with my take, but less happy about the amount of unsold stuff I was toting home. But I'm taking it as a sign that I'll need to do the flea market again soon.

POST SCRIPT: I almost forgot to mention one of my more interesting sales. I had brought five of my crocheted bucket hats with me (basically my entire inventory minus one that I put aside for a friend) and was trying to sell them for $7 each. Since it was such a chilly morning, I pretty much asked every hat-less woman that passed by if she thought she needed a hat to keep her head warm. No one bit until I went away to find hot cocoa -- I returned from that expedition to the news that an older gentleman had offered my boyfriend $20 for all five hats. My boyfriend demurred on the offer, suggesting that the prospective buyer return in a few minutes, at which point I'd be back and able to talk to him personally. That's what he did, and when I met him I talked him up from $20 to $25. That pretty much allowed me to break even on the cost of the materials, at least, and I was happy to be moving some merchandise. Apparently this guy had five ladies he needed to buy gifts for so he was happy to take care of all five of them in one fell swoop!

Back to Basics: The Granny Square

The legendary Granny square is one of the first things a burgeoning "hooker" usually learns to make. It's a simple enough pattern -- a sequence of double crochets and chain stitches worked, counterintuitively, in rounds until the square reaches the desired size. More advanced hookers may blow off Granny as too basic or too unsophisticated, but I'm a firm believer that Granny is what you make of her.

For instance, my mother once made a blanket for one of my childhood dolls out of some leftover yarn by simply making a large Granny square that was maybe two feet by two feet. It was a perfect doll-sized blanket and "Cindy" and I never went anywhere without it. I also had a couple of sweater-vest/pullover thingies as a kid that were basically two Granny squares sewn together with little cap-sleeves attached.

As for me, I spent the holiday weekend crocheting about a dozen Granny square dish cloths in coordinating colors to put up for sale at The Sunny Attic. I found I could churn one out in under an hour, even if I included a final row of single crochets as a border. (I had ridiculous quantities of lovely cotton yarn to use up, so I went to town, as you can see from the photo below):

Variegated and self-striping and solid, oh my!

 

It was great fun choosing different color combinations to come up with coordinating sets of dish cloths, and, as always, I loved the instant gratification. I'm in the midst of a pieced afghan right now that involves many, many hexagonal Granny squares (Granny hexagons?) but despite the fact that that one's going to take me a while, it's proving to be a wonderfully portable project. I can throw two or three balls of yarn in my bag and work on the component hexagons pretty much anywhere. And that's the intrinsic beauty of Granny, in my opinion: the versatility. If you stop at one, you've got a nice little dish cloth or baby-doll blanket, but if you keep making them, you can put them together into something bigger. So don't count Granny out!

Make your Black Friday a Sunny Friday!

Now through Monday, November 28th, use the coupon code SUNNYFRIDAY at The Sunny Attic and take 20% off your entire purchase! I've got some more things to add this weekend so stop by often!

Giving Thanks

For me, Thanksgiving triggers one word: kitchen. I grew up in a home where a home-cooked Thanksgiving feast was a foregone conclusion. I still have vivid memories of the way my mother used to literally write out a schedule for her Thanksgiving preparations, complete with corresponding grocery lists (multiple shopping trips were a necessity) and a timeline for preparing the turkey, side dishes, and desserts so that everything would be ready in time for dinner on the fourth Thursday in November.

As an adult, I've celebrated Thanksgiving in a variety of ways... there was the year I'd just had my wisdom teeth out and had to stick to soft foods and liquids on Turkey Day... the year I went to Newport, RI and took advantage of one of the buffets being served at a nearby hotel... the years I've gone to the homes of friends or family... the years I've hosted and cooked the whole dinner myself (and found myself writing out a schedule much like my mother does)... and quiet years when I've spent the holiday by myself. Thanksgiving 2011 will be a quiet, home-alone-with-the-cats holiday for me, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm looking forward to the downtime and the pleasure of simply being able to do whatever I feel like doing.

But regardless of how I spend Thanksgiving, the association with "kitchen" is still strong. Although I don't always have a lot of time for cooking or baking, it remains one of my favorite pastimes and I seem to have cultivated a love over the years for all kinds of vintage housewares and kitchen-related items. A few months ago, while browsing at Goodwill, I came across an old Corningware pie pan in the famous Cornflower pattern and I had to have it. (Not only do pies turn out better when baked in a ceramic or glass pan in my experience, Corningware just can't be beat as far as quality and durability. For $2.00, that pie pan was truly a steal!) I love retro china patterns, too. I was the lucky recipient of a late great-aunt's wedding china in the discontinued "Rutledge" pattern by Lenox, and my maternal grandmother used to sell Frankoma pottery in her flower shop. (There are boxes of Frankoma dishes in the Mayan-Aztec pattern sitting in my parents' garage just waiting for me!)

And then there is Tupperware.... glorious Tupperware. And Bakelite. And Whirley cow creamers. And highball glasses and martini shakers and swizzle sticks. And bundt pans and jell-o molds. All of these things set my heart a-flutter. I not only love finding great old housewares and ceramics at bargain prices, but I especially love finding something old and usable, like that Corningware pie pan. Good quality kitchenware never goes out of style!

I still remember when I got my first apartment, my mother gave me a few of her kitchen hand-me-downs: some Pyrex measuring cups, old measuring spoons, Tupperware, tongs, and other random things, most of which I've held onto as the years have passed. All of these implements still serve the purpose for which they were intended, and although newer, better, and non-stick-ier items are hitting the marketplace all the time, I cherish my vintage tools for one simple reason: they belong to Mom. Although we live on opposite sides of the country and see each other perhaps once a year (with phone and email to bridge the gap), having her stuff in my kitchen keeps her closer to me, and I treasure that.

Here's to a joyous Thanksgiving full of goodness from the kitchen and the love of family and friends! (And a special birthday shout-out to my amazing mother, B., who has a birthday this Friday. Miss you, Mommy!)

Confessions of a Hooker

My name is Jeanne and I'm a hooker.

No, silly, not that kind of hooker. Hooker as in "crochet hook." (But I bet the first line of this post caught your attention, didn't it?)

My mom taught me to crochet when I was about ten years old, and I've been doing it on and off ever since. It's a fun hobby, easy to learn, and a great way to express your creativity within the framework of an established pattern. I've never considered myself to be a particularly "artsy" type, but give me a nice crochet pattern, some great yarn, and a crochet hook and I will churn out something pretty within a matter of hours, days, or weeks, depending on the size and complexity of the project and the amount of free time I have on my hands.

When someone uninitiated sees me crocheting something, the first words out of their mouth are usually, "Oh! What are you knitting?" I explain, patiently, that what I'm doing is actually crocheting, not knitting. Knitting is accomplished with (usually) a pair of long, pointy needles, whereas crocheting utilizes a single hook. There seems to be a bit of a rivalry between knitters and hookers, too -- personally, I like the fact that crochet projects tend to work up faster and I love all of the fun patterns one can create with a crochet hook -- everything from seashells to the delightful popcorn stitch. (I also know I'm not coordinated enough to manipulate two knitting needles. There are times when a crochet hook is challenging enough!)

The photo at the start of this post is a cute purse that I made from some deliciously soft Caron acrylic yarn, a 99-cent flower pin from the local fabric store, and some wicker-wrapped wooden handles. I found the pattern in my personal crochet Bible, Debbie Stoller's wonderful book, Stitch 'N Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker. It is chock-full of awesome projects and is also a great reference for those times when I forget how to decrease, or need to remind myself of the steps involved in executing a perfect triple crochet stitch.

Last Christmas, I made a bunch of hats like the one pictured here for my friends and family. These were easy, one-ball-of-yarn projects, and I found the pattern in a small booklet for sale at a craft shop near my home.

One of my crocheting challenges, though, is that I tend to get bored easily. If I'm working on a huge project, it's a safe bet I'm going to be working on it for a while because I'll get so tired of the repetition that I eventually have to put it away for a while and work on something else. I'm also a sucker for instant gratification, so making a hat or a dish cloth in a couple of hours is often much more appealing to me than working on an afghan for weeks and weeks on end. These little "chrysanthemum" dish cloths were made from another free pattern I found at the craft store, and they're super quick to make. They also have just enough variation and complexity to them that they keep me interested from start to finish. Can't ask for more than that!

Another way I stave off boredom is by using variegated yarn -- that's yarn that has been dyed multiple colors throughout, so as you stitch, the colors change and neat patterns emerge. The fun and visual interest of working with variegated yarn keeps me engaged as I watch the colors play together. I recently discovered self-striping yarn, too, which is a variation on traditional variegated yarn. When you use self-striping yarn, especially in a project worked in rows, you get the advantage of a finished piece that looks like you created the stripes using different colors, but without the hassle of actually having to change yarns during the course of your project. Here are a couple of shots of a self-striped dishcloth I made recently, for example:

And just to prove that I am capable of taking on a bigger project from time to time, here's a picture of the afghan I made for my boyfriend last Christmas:

He loves it but insists it's "too nice" to use and seems to be a bit fearful of wrecking it somehow, even though it's totally machine washable and I could easily repair it if necessary, also. I know where he keeps it, though, so whenever I'm over at his place, I go get "my" afghan to keep warm while we watch TV. It's better than a Snuggie!