The Buttercup Made Store

The store is live. I still wonder if I should have my head examined. This is not the path I envisioned taking when I quit working as a medical transcriptionist, but there it is. I might not sell anything, but this is kind of like buying a lottery ticket. You can’t win if you don’t play, and you can’t sell anything if you don’t have a way for people to give you money.

Frightfully optimistic, aren’t I?

I have even more stuff to add thanks to a plastic bin full of pillowcases that was stashed in the back of the closet, but I worked on this for five hours this morning and I can’t do any more. At least an hour was spent finding a good spot to take pictures of the aprons, then another half an hour to set up the lightbox for taking pictures of the pillowcases. The lightbox—this one, from Amazon—was an impulse purchase using reward points, but I think it may end up being a game changer. I prefer natural outdoor lighting when it’s available, which is not often in winter in Montana. This way, I get consistent staging. The lightbox is not small, but it does collapse to a slim profile for storage behind a door.

I also started using Adobe Lightroom, which is useful if you don’t need or want to learn Photoshop. Thankfully, setting up this store went quickly, as I learned much of what I needed to know about e-commerce in Squarespace when I did the Big Sky Knitting Designs store. The husband noted that I probably saved a bundle over having to pay someone to do all of this for me. I am glad I was able to host it myself instead of having an Etsy store.

If nothing else, we’ll see what kinds of items the organic food store would like to carry. Or what sells at the Monday Market.

I may be too brain dead for sewing this afternoon. I might just do laundry instead.

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Mice have been snacking on some of our chicken feed:

We keep one bag in the coop, securely stored inside a garbage can with a tight lid. Another 3-4 bags, including these, are on the porch. This is the first time I can remember that we’ve had mice chewing on the bags on the porch. I said to the husband that I don’t find this terribly distressing, because if the mice are eating the feed on the porch, it is less likely they will come inside to find things to snack on. Still, I think we may need to put some traps out there. We have half a dozen traps scattered throughout the basement and the first floor and we catch a mouse or two every couple of weeks.

The weather has been mild enough for people to be out hiking, and hikers on the state land across the road have been reporting sightings of fresh grizzly bear tracks. I would have thought they would be hibernating by now. Our neighbors have also caught pictures of one on their game camera.

The wildlife was here first. As far as they’re concerned, we’re in their space, not the other way around, although I do not feel as charitable toward the mice as I do toward the bears.

A Weekend of Food and Fun

November always fills up faster than I expect, and it seems like the weeks between now and Christmas are a toboggan run of activities. Our church held its annual Ten Thousand Villages gift sale this past weekend. I did three shifts in the kitchen in addition to helping prepare food ahead of time by chopping onions and carrots and making applesauce. That may sound like a lot of work, but there were other people who put in a lot more time than I did and I know they’re exhausted. (Margaret, we missed you in the kitchen; I learned how to make the chai tea but I think yours is probably better.) I did more than my share of socializing and I need some quiet time by myself this week to recharge.

This is the 20th year that our church has hosted this sale. This year, with the help of a young woman in our church who has a background in graphic design, we made a big push on social media. (She has also taken over maintaining the church website, for which I am very thankful.) That focus on newer ways of reaching people seems to have worked, as we saw many new faces and especially young families.

In addition to shopping, people can eat at the Village Cafe, where we serve three different kinds of soups, homemade rolls, homemade applesauce, and homemade pies and cookies. People will come just for the food. This year, we served African Groundnut Stew, Indian Dhall, and chicken noodle soup. It was a toss-up between the Groundnut Stew (it has peanut butter in it) and the dhall. They were both very popular, as were the pies:

Our church is in an odd position. We have transitioned from a church that was started and grew because of a few large farming families into a church where most of us are not “ethnic Mennonites” but people who have come from other faith traditions. And farming is no longer the primary means by which people make a living here. I would call our church fairly progressive. Women are a key part of leadership and have been for a long time. (I’ve been both an elder and chairman of the church council.) Service is a huge part of what we do. We think that the way we practice Christianity would be attractive to those who are turned off by more fundamental approaches, but “Mennonite” still carries a traditional meaning to most people. (Some are very surprised to find out we have electricity and cars.) Also, our church is outside of town and people have to make an effort to get to us. Still, I am hopeful that we’ll be able to continue as a congregation for a good long while yet.

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I always think it’s fascinating how the universe drops little breadcrumbs in front of me here and there. I didn’t get much sewing done this weekend, obviously, but I was able to listen to several podcasts and I picked up some useful pieces of information. Friday’s episode of The Sewing Out Loud podcast was about the creative process. I love to hear how other people approach design. I especially love to hear that there is no one right way to approach design. Everyone’s brain is wired differently. It’s taken me a long time to gain confidence in my designing skills, but every time I see something designed by a person lacking a basic understanding of layout and (especially) text leading, I am reminded that I do know a thing or two.

I was happy that we could have an “old people night” last night, which is what I have started calling the evenings where we sit in our respective recliners and watch TV. We like the Essential Craftsman YouTube channel, and I found out last night that they have also started a podcast. I thought their rationale for adding a podcast was very solid. YouTube has to be heavy on content because most people have the attention span of a gnat. The Essential Craftsman and his son are currently in the midst of framing a spec house, and most of the videos focus on that process. The podcast allows them to dig deeper into some of the behind-the-scenes issues and talk about design and construction choices. The husband did framing for many years before he switched to concrete, so he knows that process inside and out. I ask a lot of questions.

I plan on doing a lot of sewing this week. There is a difference between design and construction that I feel keenly when I am sewing items from other people’s designs. I do not want “just” to sew, as enjoyable as that is. I want to design, too, but I have to remind myself that even when I am making something from someone else’s pattern, I am making design choices in terms of fabric, pattern hacks, and other details. I’m not a factory.

Garage Door Progress

One garage door is up on the new shop:

It’s more brown and less gray than it appears in the picture. The front door is similar but bigger, and I think it has two rows of windows. The guy is coming back to install that one next week. This door exits onto the easement between our properties. The husband will be able to drive trucks and machinery straight through.

I stopped at Kalispell Copy yesterday morning and ordered the “Tom’s Shed” sign for over the front man door. The husband notes that I have a thing for metal signs. I’ve bought several over the years with which to decorate the old garage, and I really have to restrain myself when I go to Hobby Lobby. They have one that says, “Can’t Fix Stupid,” which is next up on the list, although that one may end up in my office. I just think that garages and metal signs go together.

The Architectural Review Committee needs to start thinking about siding colors.

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I had a lovely conversation yesterday with the owner of the organic market in the town just south of us. That store is carrying my canvas grocery bags. She said people are starting to shop for holiday gifts, so I am going to take some aprons and other small items down there next week. The store also has a “Monday Market” from 4-6 p.m. with vendors. I’m not quite ready for that this week, but I’m going to try to participate in that the following week.

And now I have to think about display racks and business cards and mobile payments and a thousand other little details. I have no desire to do the craft show circuit, but I do want to take advantage of some of these holiday opportunities. I’ve missed most of the big shows, which were in October and early November. I think that’s okay, though, as I need to start small and see how this plays out. (Also, I would need much more inventory for a multi-day show.)

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I called the BMW dealer in Spokane yesterday to check on the status of those recall parts. When I was there last month, they said the parts would be in some time in November. Now they aren’t scheduled to arrive until January. The service guy said the car is still safe to drive despite the alarming wording of the recall notice. (“Your car could catch on fire.”)

The door locks have been acting squirrely, too, so the husband did some research and it appears that there is a known issue with the actuator failing. I’m really rather shocked and dismayed at how much we have had to fix on what is supposed to be vehicle from a solid brand with a premium price tag. The husband says he can order the part and fix the locks, but I shudder to think how much more I would have had to spend on this car if he couldn’t do the work.

So I won’t have to tack on a visit to the BMW dealer when I go to Seattle for Thanksgiving, but I am going to try to fit in a visit to the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane either on the way there or the way back. At this time of year, I prefer not to do the drive to Seattle in one day. We only have about 6-7 hours of daylight, so I’d be driving in the dark for at least part of the trip. I have no desire to hit a deer or an elk.

This is the exhibit I want to see:

The description reads:

Selected pieces from the museum’s collection illustrate how textiles convey social status, personal identity, history, and much more. This exhibition showcases a rare 17th century quilt that may be one of the oldest surviving quilts in the United States. In addition, 19th and 20th century quilts, handwoven coverlets, and pieces from the American Indian collection will be on display.

It sounds fabulous. The museum is also offering a 90-minute seminar this afternoon on “Quilts: A Brief History and How to Care for Them,” but obviously, I’m going to miss that. Oh, well. I’ll be happy enough to see the exhibit before it closes.

Fabric Explosion

The upstairs of my house looks like a bomb went off. There is fabric everywhere: remnants I’ve pulled from the stash, pieces too small to put back into the stash but too large for the scrap bin—I’m getting the urge to make potholders—and all the small pieces that will show up in a scrap quilt one of these days. I’ve got all three boxes of thread and bobbins out where I can see them. The fence in the hallway is draped with pieces waiting to be assembled and with finished products waiting to be hung up. It is a good thing that the husband and I are the only people living here at the moment, and that he only comes up there to sleep.

[I am actually very organized—all of my supplies are in labeled plastic bins, but those bins are spread throughout four different rooms. Some time this winter, when the husband is here and can help me, I really need to rearrange some furniture and make this setup a bit more efficient.]

I made four aprons yesterday (the top one on this pile still needs topstitching, but it’s assembled):

I set up my production line so that I was changing thread colors as few times as possible. I use a medium gray for assembly; it’s the topstitching that matters most. Vittorio is performing admirably—I’ve always said that that machine only needs me to operate the foot pedal because he knows how to do everything else.

I am feeling the need to manage expectations. I’ve gotten a few questions from knitters about whether the re-launch of the Big Sky Knitting Designs website means that I am going to start designing knits again. The short answer to that question is “no,” although it is lovely to be wanted. While I am happy to help knitters with existing patterns, I feel absolutely no pull in that direction, which is odd because there was a time when I ate, slept, and breathed knitting and loved every minute of it. Times change.

And yes, this website has space for a store, but I’m still working out how that will happen. I’m trying to live in the space between having all the details worked out and leaving room for serendipity. Part of my brain is screaming “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” and the other half is yelling, “The universe always throws a wrench into the works!” There are also some things happening behind the scenes. For now, I am going to sew—with a loose plan—and see what happens. I accumulated all of this fabric for a reason and I am enjoying working with it.

In other news, the husband tells me that the doors are going up on the new shop in the next couple of days. That will be huge as he will be able to work in there and be out of the weather. The electrician still needs to do the wiring and install the lights, but this is another big step toward finishing this project.

Kalispell just got a Smart Foodservice store. I stopped in there the other day. Holy cow. I need to make a list and go back. I thought Costco was a great place to shop, but Smart Foodservice has food in husband-sized quantities. If you’re not familiar, Smart Foodservice supplies restaurants, although it is open to the public. This is a commentary on how much food the husband consumes that I should have been shopping at a restaurant food supply store all these years.

The Lutheran church called yesterday to make sure I am available to play for their Advent services. How weird to think that we’re halfway through November already.

And the eye doctor appointment I thought I had scheduled for last month is actually next week. I am getting tired of having to switch glasses—or take them off altogether—so often. Hopefully we can get that addressed.

New Technology and Old Sewing Machines

I was paging through the latest Joanns circular the other day and noticed they are now selling these (list price $599.00):

I have no need for a 3D printer and no plans to get one, but I thought it was interesting that they have become mainstream enough to sell at Joann Fabrics.

I follow a woman up in Edmonton who has done some great YouTube videos on sewing machine repair under the name ArchaicArcane. She also has a Facebook page, and she posted there last week about having made a replacement needle plate for a customer’s vintage Kenmore using her CAD program and 3D printer. (I suspect her model is a bit more sophisticated than the ones Joanns is selling.) On that particular Kenmore model, there is a separate needle plate that fits into the throat plate. It can be flipped around for either straight-stitch sewing with a small needle hole or zig-zag sewing with a wider opening. Many times, that needle plate goes missing or it’s so chewed up as to be useless. She successfully made a replacement needle plate for her customer’s machine.

Making replacement parts for vintage sewing machines has long been a topic in the vintage sewing machine groups I frequent. The problem is that even if your mother owns a metal stamping plant and could—theoretically—make just about any part you needed, the quantities are so small as to be impractical. A 3D printer is a way around that, and I expect to see more hard-to-find parts coming to market as the price of these printers comes down.

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Vittorio, my Necchi BF, got a workout yesterday. We listened to sewing podcasts and ran up apron pieces.

I am getting a lot of use out of the two French terry Nancy Raglans I have made so far. The second one is out of some royal blue French terry that I ordered from Raspberry Creek Fabrics. The fabric was a bit of a disappointment, which is always a risk when ordering fabric online. I always wash and dry my fabric before sewing with it, even if I plan to line dry the garment when it’s finished. (Very little of my RTW wardrobe goes into the dryer because I have trouble finding garments that are long enough to begin with.) When this fabric came out of the dryer, it was stiff and rough and had picked up thousands of little pieces of white lint. It was almost too ugly to sew with. I went ahead and made the top and washed it again when it was finished, although I line dried it instead of putting it in the dryer. It came out somewhat softer and much less linty. I probably won’t buy fabric from that line again, however, and that’s too bad because it comes in all the bright jewel tones that I love.

I also bought a length of some heathered pink French Terry from Raspberry Creek. That fabric is by a different manufacturer and it feels much nicer. I haven’t sewn with it yet, but I am not expecting any problems. And I can safely say that while the coverstitch machine and I are not yet BFFs, we are well past the awkward new friend stage.

I am intrigued by this new design from Closet Case Patterns:

It’s called the Sienna Maker Jacket. Do I need a jacket? Not really, but I like this design. And I like the idea of wearing something like this instead of an apron when I am sewing, although it’s rather akin to wearing a chef’s hat while cooking dinner. After all, I am not working in a studio with other creatives. It’s just me and the dogs here. We’ll see. I may put it on the list. I especially like the closure even though I usually have trouble with anything belted. My torso is long enough that my natural waist doesn’t fall at the spot where belts are usually placed. I’d probably have to adjust that. The pattern also includes a cropped, non-belted version of the jacket, but cropped and I don’t get along for the same reason that belts are an issue. The proportions aren’t flattering for my shape.

I managed to find some sew-in industrial 2” wide Velcro, so fixing the husband’s gaiters is on the list for today. We got several inches of snow yesterday afternoon. I had gone upstairs to sew after lunch—and all of our windows are covered with insulated curtains, so I can’t see outside—and when I came down to make dinner, the landscape was completely white. He did say that it is wonderful having a “shed” to store all of his equipment in so he’s not shoveling snow off every morning.

Apples and Onions

I spent several hours at church again yesterday chopping vegetables and making applesauce. Libbie and Valeri are in charge of the kitchen for the upcoming gift festival, but making enough of three kinds of soup to feed hundreds of people is a huge job. Chopping onions is not fun or glamorous. It needs to be done, though, and Susan and I were happy to help out.

[Susan was commenting on my onion chopping skills on Saturday and how fast I was. Everyone thinks I like to cook. I am a good cook, but it is one of my least favorite things to do. I told her it was like the scene in one of the Little House on the Prairie books—or maybe in one of Laura’s memoirs—where someone commented on the speed and perfection of her (hand-bound!) buttonholes. She responded that she hated to do buttonholes, so she learned to do them quickly and well. That’s kind of how I feel about cooking. It needs to be done, but I don’t linger over it.]

Making applesauce is rather fun. Susan, with her master’s degree in botany, is something of an apple expert and loves to tell us about the different varieties. All apples are not the same. Some ripen early, some mid-season, and some are only really good after a frost. Some only keep for a few days and some keep for months. Some make good pies and some make better cider. Susan has 40+ varieties in her own orchard and knows about many more.

She brought New York 12, an old experimental variety, for us to use in making sauce yesterday. We’re way past the early apples that are really good for sauce, like Yellow Transparent or her Summer Rambo apples that we’ve used in the past. The New York 12 apples are a deep burgundy red with red-streaked flesh inside, and they make the most beautiful sauce:

This is not a doctored photo. The applesauce was exactly that color, the color of raspberry sherbet. We added a tiny amount of sugar—because we’re all picky about our sauce tasting like apples and nothing else—and that was it. This sauce, along with homemade rolls, will be served with the soup in the Village Cafe at the gift festival.

I am knee-deep in chasing down punch list items for both businesses now. The new Big Sky Knitting Designs website went live yesterday morning and I’ve already gotten some pattern orders, so at least the e-commerce part of it is working properly. Trying to manage two Instagram accounts is maddening—particularly because I had to add extra software to be able to post to IG from my desktop instead of my phone—so I am trying to move everyone from my personal IG account to the one for Buttercup Made. I need to post to the BSKD Facebook account, and I should probably set up one for Buttercup Made, too. Getting all of these ducks lined up, though, is keeping me from the one thing I want to do, which is sew. (The oft-heard refrain of owners of small creative businesses everywhere.) I did manage to sneak in some time late yesterday afternoon to do some cutting:

We’ve got a farm animal theme happening at the moment. I have an obvious weakness for chicken fabric. That’s only some of what’s in the stash.

I also sewed the binding onto the comforter that Elaine and I tied last week at sewing. Forward progress.

Did You Miss Me?

Well, that was an interesting couple of days. This blog is like visiting with a group of good friends, and when I can’t write, I feel cut off. I spent much of the time in non-glamourous website work, like making sure all of my domain names point to the same place. The husband prefers new construction to renovating old houses, and I am starting to feel the same way about websites.

So….some of the changes will be self-evident. My current activities are different enough from knitting design that they needed their own umbrella. I wanted something that tied into the Suck It Up, Buttercup blog, as that has been my online identity for almost a decade. The name also had to incorporate the making aspect and provide room for a business, if that should evolve. “Buttercup Designs” was too similar to BSKD and already in use in other places. When “Buttercup Made” popped into my head, it just seemed right, so I went with it. And “Made” is big enough to embrace a lot of different activities. Will I write a book? Maybe. Will I start designing custom workwear strong enough to withstand a beating by the husband? Perhaps. Will I open a homemade botanicals business? Who knows. I’ll probably begin by stocking the online store with aprons, pillowcases, and grocery bags.

If I have set this all up correctly (cross your fingers), the blog should now be part of the larger Buttercup Made site. However—and this is important to note—nothing else should have changed. Typing “suckitupbuttercup.me” into your browser’s address bar should still bring you to the site. E-mail notifications of new blog posts should still come to your inbox if that is an option you’ve chosen. The blog format has changed slightly. It’s the one change I’m not completely thrilled with, but I liked this template design more than the one I had been using.

The URL for the Buttercup Made site is buttercupmade.com. I also have an Instagram account set up under Buttercup Made, so feel free to follow me there. (I’ll start posting content there soon.) I don’t really want to set up Yet Another E-Mail Account specifically for Buttercup Made, so for now I’ll be using one of my current addresses. The Contact Form is set up to go to that account.

I am sure there are some bugs I don’t know about. If you run across any, let me know and I’ll do my best to track them down and fix them. And thanks for your patience. I need to do a last couple of checks of the Big Sky Knitting Designs website and that one should go live this week, too.

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I wasn’t completely held hostage to the computer last week. On Thursday, I went to see my naturopath. He has been my primary doctor for almost 14 years now, ever since my thyroid conked out and my previous doctor insisted that all of my symptoms (weight gain, fatigue, hair loss, etc.) were the result of eating too much and not exercising enough. (They weren’t.) He has been working with me all this time to see if we could fix what was wrong. And fix it we did. In the last year or so, I’ve been able to cut down the amount of thyroid replacement I was taking from daily to only 2-3 times a week. We’ll both be thrilled if I am able to get off of it entirely. I firmly believe in the power of the human body to heal itself given the proper support. I had a battery of labs done two weeks ago and he said all of my numbers were fantastic. Yay.

After my doctor’s appointment, I went to church for our monthly sewing meeting. Some of the ladies were finishing up a quilt and Elaine and I tied another comforter.

On Friday, Cathy and I finally got to meet for lunch—soup and salad at Panera. It was good to spend a few hours with her, catching up.

Yesterday morning, we had a short meeting here at my house to plan for Advent and Christmas Eve services, and then Susan and I went to the church and spent three hours chopping onions and carrots to go into the soups that will be for sale at our church’s Ten Thousand Villages fair trade sale this coming Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. If you live in the Kalispell area, please stop in! In addition to shopping, you can also enjoy one of our delicious soups (African Groundnut Stew, Indian Dahl, or Chicken Noodle) as well as homemade applesauce, cookies, and pies.

No pictures today, but I promise that I’ll get back into the blogging groove this week. It’s good to be back.

Going Offline For a Few Days

I had an epiphany yesterday while finishing up the last tweaks to the Big Sky Knitting Designs website. I had almost given up waiting for a bush to catch on fire and start speaking.

I’ve come up with a way to corral all of my activities in one place and have a store for my sewn items without opening an Etsy shop. (Although it can be nice to have a third-party entity handling the niggling details of running a business, the whole Ravelry debacle made plain the real disadvantages of that model.) I also came up with a business name that I liked that no one else is using. I even snagged the corresponding domain name.

When I set up the website for this blog, I did it in such a way that if I ever started another kind of creatively-focused business, this would be its home and the blog would become a subset of something bigger. I’m still not sure if or how this new enterprise is going to evolve, but it needs a place to do that if it’s going to happen at all. Having just finished building another website in Squarespace 7, I am much more familiar with the software and its capabilities. The renovations to this website shouldn’t take more than a few days. Please do not expect a giant rollout with a lot of fanfare! The changes will be small at first. (You should know that I hate to change anything.) I didn’t want to disappear without some explanation, however.

And we’ll all see what happens.