Word on the Street: Welcome Fall Edition!

This week, Liz actually has been sorting through crafts, repricing, and thinking about displays in preparation for Applefest.  

Yup.  That’s a crate with stuff in it, stacked on top of a small suitcase that’s stacked on a plastic bin.  What whaaaat.

And here is Liz’s coffee table, occupied by lots of stuff, but most importantly by some crocheting she’s trying to finish up (blue) and a sweet bag that Erica made for Liz a few years ago (pink and burgundy).  If you can spot Liz’s crochet hook (light blue), you win a prize!  Of being happy for Liz because, as previously mentioned, it’s the only crochet hook that Liz had.

Liz is getting to the point where she’s sick at the sight of a lot of the crafts she’s made in recent years and just wants them to sell already.  Come see all the LSC girls at Applefest and be sure to visit our special $2 discount bin that will be full of many crafty treasures.

Meanwhile, there are lots of crafts that Liz wants to make but hasn’t gotten around to creating yet.  She hopes to be better organized next year, creating a “craft plan” of different crafts that she’s interested in making and setting specific goals on how and when to make them.  It all sounds good in theory, but stay tuned to see if it actually pans out.  She hopes to have a few crafty holiday ornaments to sell by the time Applefest swings around.

Erica knit up a storm last week, finishing the baby sweater/hat combo with great swiftness--and then forgot to take a picture of it. It was insanely cute (you’ll just have to take her word for it).

Speaking of pictures, it’s difficult to take good ones when all you have is a phone, but Erica has a secret weapon: CATS! In preparation for Applefest, she’s been working on some smaller knit crafts this week, including tiny knit hearts. Here’s Beezy checking the hand-crafted high quality items.


In addition to tiny knit hearts, she’s also busted out the Gorrilla glue and stockpiled coupons to take to a certain craft store and buy them out of magnets (again) to finish 200 more B’s World Famous Bottle Cap Magnets (tm).

Sam has been a busy little bee, but not as much with the crafting as she would have liked. She started a new job which she loves but it is taking up a lot of her mental acuity.



She calls this the Forest of Sticky Notes and this is it at the end of a quiet day. It’s full of lists of things she needs to learn/do and when she gets home from a day of completing the sticky notes she usually just lays on the couch with a Lacroix handy and watches a few episodes of Downton Abbey (yes, again) to calm her nerves.

But never fear, she has started the project on her craft room (and is just way too embarrassed to show the “before” pictures until there are some really good “after” ones. And she did manage to get a good start on a pretty fall hat:


which is pictured here, modeled by a trusty can of Lacroix.

And that’s what we’re up to this week! What crafty endeavours are you up to now that fall has arrived?

Word on the Street, September 14

Liz hasn’t been crafting much this week.  She’d like to say that she’s started working on new crafts for Applefest, or that she’s even worked on some of the crafting she wants to do for her wedding - but that would just be lying.  She’s got high hopes, as the song goes, but really needs to take the time to find a good balance and create a timeline for getting projects done.

She has, however, finished the afghan that she started working on this summer.  It took many hours and a lot of simultaneous tv-watching, but it turned out great.  Hopefully, she’ll get around to taking some good photos of it one of these days.

A friend contacted Liz this week to commission a crocheted hat in Detroit Tigers colors.  Liz’s mom is going to wrangle up the appropriate colors of yarn for Liz to use to make this - thanks for being a yarn hoarder, Pam!

And because Liz doesn’t have any great pictures to share this week of her craftiness, here is a cool picture and link to powerful information of craft adhesives, put together by Lemon Jitters.  Oh, it’s way cooler than it sounds:

Erica has Been Everywhere Man, from Myrtle Beach to Metro Detroit over the last two weeks. There were vacations and bachelorette parties, planned and surprise wedding showers, but she still managed to find some time to craft. In between tirelessly writing thank you cards to her generous friends and family and wrangling addresses for invitations, she is also working on a baby set for a friend. But before the baby set could be started, the yarn had to be worked into submission. 

 Sam has likewise been semi-crafty. She's designed a slouchy hat and designed a super cool stripey chevron scarf for Applefest. She's working on cleaning out her craft room to maximize crafting and meant to take a before picture to share with you so as to shame her into actually cleaning and organizing, but her brain went on vacation and that hasn't happened yet. Maybe next week you'll get a before AND after picture! Maybe even a whole post about cleaning and organizing the world's messiest craft room! Dare to dream! In the meantime, here's an idea of what is going on in Sam's head:

Which is to say that she's really excited about fall. And pumpkin lattes.

That's what's keeping us busy this week!

We love Sam! Take two

We've all been busy with life and crafting our little fingers off, preparing for Applefest on October 6th in Mt. Pleasant.  Fun fact: This is the Zonta Club's 25th Annual Applefest - and this will be our third year there, woohoo!

We'll post more about our crafty goings-on later in the week, but Liz and Erica have been busy with a second super secret Sam post.  Here's goes!

Sam deserves the best birthday post ever. And even though this real post is a little late, Liz and Erica would like to share some of their favorite memories of Sam in honor of her 29th year.

There was an incident where Sam was cooking something at the Locust House, and Liz and Erica were in their respective bedrooms. All of a sudden, we heard Sam calmly say “Hey guys, the kitchen is on fire.” No alarm, no yelling, just the facts ma’am. Luckily, no one was hurt and the house was just fine.  

Not quite this dramatic, but you get the idea.

Sam also has impeccable fashion sense. From tie-dye shorts and well-loved t-shirts to heels and pj pants, she has given the contestants of “America’s Next Top Model” a run for their money.

What a rockstar!!!

In all honesty, when the three of us lived in the Locust Street house, Sam had the most professional job of all of us and put together these awesome coordinating outfits that often made Erica and Liz say things like, “Daaaaaaamn, girl!” She wore fabulous heels and would often walk to work. Yes, because she really IS a rock star and has super powers.

(Often, Liz wears heels for 5 minutes then starts to cry.)

Despite Sam’s kitchen-burning efforts, she made really excellent food often. We all consumed a lot of her famous caramel brownies (when Liz wasn’t eating all of the caramels), white bean chicken chili, and gingersnaps. And we ate a lot of popcorn too, which we called p-corn, so of course gingersnaps then evolved to be called g-snaps, etc. Abbreviation was our business.   

Wearing multiple layers and dancing/burning candles to keep warm. Heat is expensive, ya’ll.

In hindsight, we probably made and consumed so many warm foods because we were poor chicks in our early 20s, scraping to get by - meaning, we kept the heat in our apartment low in the winter and wore many layers, often wearing entire blankets, just to keep our extremities intact. Abbreviating food names was probably just a survival mechanism we used to not waste our precious warm breath.

One of the best things about Sam, we feel, is her loyalty and integrity to herself. She is so smart and strong that even when she encounters life’s challenges, she powers through and maintains a fearless confidence of self that is enviable and admirable. Sam reads lots of complicated and sophisticated books and can speak very educatedly about a variety of complex topics varying from evolution to forensics to philosophy and more. In short, Sam’s brain is giant and powerful.

One of the biggest lessons that Liz has learned from Sam is this: Nobody knows everything about life and you don’t have to always know what you are doing, because we’re all learning and we need to treat ourselves kindly in the process. Also: stop worrying so much, call your friends more often, and yoga. Just...yoga.

And also, love cats a lot but also love dogs just as much:

Fun fact: Sam LOVES Halloween, probably as much as Erica loves Batman. So, ya know, send her some cool Halloween sh*t, k? Crafts, decorations, fun things you see on Pinterest - leave some comments for her with Halloween stuff and she will love it! Cute pictures of cats and dogs are also welcome.

Ode to Sam

by Liz and Erica

Dear Samantha,

As your partners in craft, we would like to wish you a most awesome and wonderful:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

We didn't really get our stuff together in time to create a real compilation post of how awesome you are and how much we love you, but we hope you'll appreciate these pictures instead, for now, until we get our act together.  We hope you understand.

(Sam loves Shark Week)

Who can resist a kitten in a hat?

"And you know what?  He LIKES the bonnet!"

One of Sam's favorite candies, yummmmm!

And of course, the patron saint of Locust House, Ms. Dolly Parton.

Sam, we love you more than we can say and crafting just wouldn't be the same without you.  You have great craft skills and are a patient and excellent teacher.  Your friendship means so much to us and you are truly a one-of-a-kind lady.  We hope you have a magnificent day and enjoy all of the great things that this next year has to offer you.