Cat-bomb!

We are all too busy this week to post any crafty business.  Some of us are traveling, some of us are going to doctor's appointments, some of us are going to other appointments, and we're all just trying to keep the mayhem at bay. 

That being said, here are some pictures of our cats lately:

Sam went on a work trip to Atlanta. The cats were displeased but whether it was because she left or because she took her suitcase (aka the new bestest spot to lay down ever in the whole wide world), we may never know.

Regardless, Sam missed Harper and Henry and gave them big hugs when she got home! Which they hated, because they are cats.

Somebody missed Sam: this is her neighbors' cat who likes to come over and pretend he belongs in the house. He'll let himself in at the smallest opportunity and is so enamored of Sam that she has been known to ask him if he is her spirit animal. He is a sweet boy and if he didn't have a home Sam would have most certainly adopted him into Sam's House for Wayward Cats with Special Needs (est. 2003).

Liz didn't travel anywhere, but her fiance, Eric, was in Philadelphia recently.  Lola loves Eric to pieces and really missed him.  She gave him lots of cuddles when we got home:

And she also just spent some time laying in her bed, being a weirdo as usual:

Now that everyone is home and things are back to normal, Lola has gotten into the habit of running into the bedroom at night, jumping onto the bed, and hunkering down just as Liz and Eric are getting ready to go to bed.  Lola isn't allowed to sleep in the bed because she's very restless and has an annoying early (soooo early!) morning routine of meowing for breakfast/attention.  Liz actually had to buy a white noise machine a few years ago to get some peace and rest!  But Lola is so cute that this weird new habit is hard to resist.  At 14+ pounds, clearly this cat doesn't need to be fed any more than her current diet.

Erica's two little furry princesses are best friends. Between her and her husband, there are at least 100 pictures of them being best friends - snuggling, sleeping, playing, and fighting (even best friends fight!).

So excited to choose our new family members that we forgot the cat carrier...

Xena (Warrior Kitten) is a ferocious but fickle little lady who will stop at nothing to hang out with Kevin. Her favorite activities are attacking the fish-on-a-string toy and ignoring Erica. She's also overweight, which looks even funnier with her tiny head and short legs.

Don't tell Xena, but she's never going to fit in that box.

On the other hand, Beezy the half-Siamese/half-Tabby princess loves Erica almost as much as she loves belly scratches. She loves to wake Erica up every morning by slapping the blinds against the window until they are opened. This is by far the most annoying way to wake up, and if Beezy wasn't so cute, Erica might actually get upset about this unconventional alarm clock. When they first brought the cats home, Beezy was a very pale cream color with little grey paws and ears, and a couple of stripes on her face. She became the incredible color-changing kitty, with the pale cream color turning into many grey stripes all over.

 

Baby Beezy

Grown-up Beezy

All the cute that happens in Erica's apartment is almost too much to bear sometimes. How does she get anything done with such cute little faces demanding cuddles?

Best Friends Forever

Don't forget, we will be selling our goods (but not our cats) at the 6th Annual Spring Craft Market in Flint just next week on Saturday, May 4 from 10-4.  Come say hi to us!

What we watch when we craft

Movies.  TV shows.  We LSC girls watch a variety of these.

Erica loves movies. Just loves them. So much she's got 3/4 of a Master's degree in Film Studies. As much as she loves movies, there are just some things that are better than others to craft to. Like the following:

Super Troopers. She probably doesn't actually have to watch it anymore, since she could recite it from  memory. But it's still a good time, and hilarious.
"You have a good day meow."

"I hold a PhD in horribleness." One of the funniest musicals, and accessible at all times through the internet. Erica knows every song, and laughs every time she sees it. 

Always Parks and Rec. One of the funniest of the workplace shows, with great characters and great writing. And Ron Swanson is the best character on TV right now.

And Dirty Dancing never gets old. One day Erica is going to make a shirt that says "I carried a watermelon."

Things that are not good for crafting: Serious business like Mad Men (too much attention needed), horror movies (crafting with the lights off is tough!), and anything with subtitles.


Sam's list includes:

Downton Abbey. British TV is just THE GREATEST for knitting. A lot of the characters even knit! Sam does put her needles down whenever Mr. Bates is on screen because she lurrrrves him and his martyr story line. That face! Kills her every time.

Gilmore Girls. Sam has seen every episode a GAJILLION times.

Once, while doing holiday crafting, Sam may or may not have watched this movie three times in a row. But once it was with commentary so that's... still unacceptable. She knows, she feels the shame. But it's so funny!

Honorable mentions include: Bridesmaids, Parks and Rec, 30 Rock, The West Wing, any John Wayne or Dolly Parton movie, and she just started Call the Midwife. Oh, and Lark Rise to Candleford! And Revenge of the Nerds! Sam watches too much TV and too many movies. It's a problem.

Some shows and movies aren't great to watch while crafting (Liz can't do anything else while watching Law & Order: SVU, or she will miss something vital!), but there are lots of great shows that don't require such attentiveness, such as some of these tried-and-true Liz favorites:

Cheers.  Because sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.

That 70s Show.  Liz actually watched the entire series this past summer and fall, but she'll still watch any episode whenever it's on.  For the record, she prefers Donna as a redhead, but that's neither here nor there.

And of course, Harry Potter.  Liz read the books, she loves the movies and has seen them a bunch of times.  If you're new to the movies, you may want to pay close attention to follow all of the plot and catch the cool graphics wizardry (pun intended), but after that, these movies are great for some marathon crafting - 8 movies worth!

Word on the Street - mid-April, 2013

WORD.  ON THE STREET.

Liz has another plant!  Oh joy!  Her jade plant has been growing well in the plant hanger that she made for it, so she decided to make another one for the new plant - but this time, with a little more color and a little different style.  The plant came with a little tag saying what kind of plant it is, but Liz couldn't pronounce it so let's just call it Happy Yellow Plant.  She really just decided to wing it and see what happened:

Strands of white, brown, orange, and turquoise yarn.



The Jade plant is doing well and growing new leaves!

Both plants together, each on their own side of the bay windows in Liz's apartment.  Home sweet home.

Sam has been toying with some new patterns to great success! It's been one of her personal goals to decrease the amount of waste she creates and money she spends on disposable things. To that end, she started making little puffs to use in place of cotton balls. The first prototype did not come out as expected:

Coffee for scale and for energy.

Puffy, yes. Little? No. Good for dishes but not for cotton ball replacement. Designing crafts giveth (a new product! Dish scrubbers!) and it taketh away (this will not work for it's original purpose). But with just a little pattern know how and determination, Sam made this:

Awww!

Both little and puffy! Success! Now make a squillion more!

At this point the coffee kicked in and logic kicked out. Sam took a picture of them together for comparison and then wanted to give you a preview of the two tone one she started this morning:

Then she added a little more...

All the things!

She looked around for a cat but Harper and Henry had both made themselves scarce (smart kitties).

Erica was very excited about finishing her spiral baby blanket. She's pretty pleased with the results. Since gray is her friend Erin's favorite color, and all baby girls need a little purple to balance out all the pink, Erica thinks that wee little Claire will love it!

Mesmerizing...

She's also been pinning like a crazy woman! The quilt is starting to look more quilt-like every time she gets to sit down and work on it. She's really excited to see the final product, but has loved working on this project so far.

EXTREME CLOSE-UP!

In addition to knitting and sewing, Erica has also been paper crafting (well, as much paper crafting as she can handle), making some adorable cards with yarn. Here's just one example:

Mmmm, coffee

Obviously a much busier B than last week, she and the other ladies have been cracking down and getting ready for the Flint Handmade Spring Craft Market on May 4th. Oh, what's that, you didn't know? You forgot? Well, here is the information again, because we don't want you to miss it!

Locust Street Crafts will be at the Flint Handmade Spring Craft Market on Saturday, May 4 from 10-4, in the beautiful Masonic Temple in downtown Flint. Come check it out and say hi to us!  Admission is only $1.

We hope to see you there!

Word on the Street - April 5

Hey hey! It's Friday! And Friday means an LSC update! What a great day!

Liz decided to try her hand this week at crocheting a rug using a big crochet needle and a big chunk of fabric cut into a continuous strip - a familiar process, the basic chain, but new material.  Here is the result:

Not bad!  Liz was pretty happy with the result.

Now, the only was to really describe this color of this fabric is "dusty rose" (or Maeve Binchy, as us LSC girls like to say).  Liz wasn't too happy about that, so she bought some fabric dye - also a new craft experience for her - to see if she could make the rug a more attractive hue.

Fuchsia, not so different from the original color of the fabric that it would be a disaster is the dye didn't work properly.

Stay tuned to future blog posts to see the update on the magical dusty rose/fuchsia fabric crochet rug experiment.

Sam has been working on prototypes for this year's craft season. Here's the beginning of her pedi-socks:

Eventually this will be a sock you can put on to keep your feet warm while you paint your toenails! How, you say?! Black magic? No, just some knitting trickery. Stay tuned to see the final product.

This is the other product Sam is really excited about: face puffs! It's been a goal of Sam's to replace disposable items with reusable ones. Easier on the environment and the pocketbook! These are hopefully going to replace cotton balls. The idea is you use them, wash them, and then use them again. The only problem is that Sam crocheted this one and then...can't seem to make another one. Hmmm...Crocheting might just not be meant to be, so she's going to try to create a knitted pattern instead.

Erica has been one busy B this week and has no crafts to report at this time. While we'd love for crafting to be our whole lives and only priority, sometimes other things come up. It's a fact of life we hate. And have to accept. And hate to accept.

That's it for your favorite crafty girls this week. What are you working on?!