This past Saturday, I was vending at the annual East Village Block Party hosted by City Light church.

It was a great day.  A bouncing castle, open fire hydrant, free hot dogs, free water, smoothie samples and a variation of vendors.

The weather was gorgeous at 80 and breezy.  When Lu from lucrafts.etsy.com and I showed up to our reserved space, we saw the above chalked on the sidewalk.

We promptly set to work and set up our displays.

Got to showcase a few old items…

.. and debut new ones…

.. these have been shown off on the blog but not in person…

.. and some classic items.

Coming to the shop very soon…  Stay tuned!

A few weeks ago, some friends and I made the trip all the way from NYC to Philly (it took as much time as a long train ride to Brooklyn).

If you ever have the inkling, definitely go.  It’s an incredibly creative city.

Philly is known for it famous murals:

and the general artsiness…

… maybe even their sweets (Oh those cupcakes and canolis!)

.. but who knew about the bathrooms?

You may be thinking, “where are the cheesesteak photos?”.  Mm, well, I will give Pat’s one vote but to be fair to the rest, we didn’t make it to Geno’s nor Jim’s.  Next time.

I made this sans pattern for my coworker Jenny.  Let’s just say she has a small obsession with chicken.   :) It’s just like some people are quite obsessed with finding free stuff on Gumtree or a certain band. There isn’t much available for chicken fans so I thought I’d make her this so she won’t feel left out when people are walking around in band t-shirts or with the things they got from Gumtree.

The last “thing”!  I know it’s a bit of a late post.. but hey, I made it on March 1st and photographed it soon after.  I think writing the actual post is what gets me.

This necklace was originally made while on the phone with my friend.  I got some plastic string, randomly grabbed at a bunch of pearls (fake) that I’d collected over the years, made a knot and wore it.  The problem with it was 1) the string ends kept coming out of the beads (where I tried tucking them into to hide them) and were poking my neck 2) even though it was long enough to go 3 times around the neck, I couldn’t since there was no clasp and 3) I wanted to re-randomize the beads.

Hence, thing #28.  Restrung with wire metal, proper clasps and new bead order.

After cleaning up my craft space earlier this week, I rediscovered my beloved compass from childhood.

I used to make these w/my mom which she learned as a child also. It starts off with a circle. Then, take the compass point and place it anywhere on the circle – make a half circle. Then, place the compass point on one of those points and make another half circle.. etc. To get more lines as in this one, place the compass point between the “leaves” that are created. I’m sure there are other versions of this.. curious to see if anyone else made these.