Tick tock. Time to prepare for Renegade is quickly running out. Do I sound a bit panicked? I AM! I finished up these rugs in the last few days and took some real quick and crappy shots of them to show them off to you and to remind myself that I do have a lot of inventory to take with me.

I feel like I have enough "normal" rugs, but I really want to wow people out east. I have the perfect fabric to make a kiwi rug, but it isn't cut yet and I don't know if it will get done or not.

I wanted to grout yesterday, but it was so humid I knew it would take forever for the grout to dry so I didn't. Cooler and drier air is here today and when I sat down to grout I realized I bought the wrong grout. Grrrrrrrrr. Grouting has been postponed again.

The weather on Saturday was absolutely beautiful for the market. I have an application for a show that requires a booth photo, so I finally remembered to bring the camera to snap a few pictures of my set-up.

Looking at these photos is kind of weird, I usually see my booth from behind my table, not from the front like the customers do. Looks a lot different from this vantage point!

I'm feeling sort of nostalgic today. People sometimes ask how long I've been selling my stuff. Actually, this month marks the 4th birthday of EKRA. I'm so happy I decided to change my career path. For those of you who don't know, I was on the training track to go work for a big pharmaceutical company like Pfizer. I couldn't have done it without the support of my friends and family, I'm so grateful for them! Sending out big blog Thanks to all of you EKRA fans!

I know this is probably going to seem like all I talk about for the next couple of weeks, but I'm working up a storm to get things ready for Renegade. And I'm really on a roll. However, every time I get on a roll, it seems like there is a place in the production process where I get stuck and everything builds up. This time it is grouting. I'm doing a great job of cutting glass, tumbling it, gluing it and getting the frames taped up to grout, but then they sit there. Pretty soon there are too many and it seems like an insurmountable task to finish them all. Well, yesterday I counted 20 frames and one vase to grout. I tried something new with the vase and I really wanted to see how it would turn out so I was motivated to grout. I'd show you the vase now, but I waited too long to take a picture and now it is dusk, it really looks better in the sunlight. Anyways, I was really proud of myself for only grouting 15 of the frames. Any more than that at once and it is just insane. Here is my favorite frame of the group I did. The tiles were cut from the center of dinner plates. They had a pink circle design on them which looked really awesome when they were all cut up, mixed up, and the curve of the circle was going every which way. Also, since they were all the center of the plate, they were all flat tiles and the same thickness and it was a breeze to grout.

I took this picture before lunch and my blood sugar must have been too low because I couldn't hold the camera steady.

Close up of the pretty tiles.

You might remember that before I went to New Orleans, I was complaining about there being a lack of plates for sale for me to break up for my mosaics. Well, I hit the jackpot in New Orleans! Aaron and I had planned to spend an afternoon driving around the 'burbs going to thrift stores. I had done some research to find the locations of some, but it was outdated and many of the stores had closed or moved. We managed to find one that just happened to be newly opened, called Red White and Blue Thrift Store. I was excited because it looked really big from the outside. Inside it was packed with people. Probably because everything was 50% except for one color of tags. I decided to not take a cart because it was so crowded and I didn't know where anything was yet. I browsed the linens and found a few pretty sheets. Then I found the housewares section and couldn't believe my eyes. A whole wall of plates! Stacks and stacks and stacks. All priced for the entire set that was there and almost all of them 50% off! I ran back to the front to get a cart and started piling the plates into my cart. Total jackpot! It made me happy that we drove there and didn't fly, because then I would have had to leave those precious plates there for someone else. I wanted to take a picture of all of my loot to show you, but I wasn't able to practice enough will power to not start breaking them right away. So I'll just show you the patterns instead.

Pretty purple flowers.

Orangy brick-like pattern.

My favorite! It's called Golden Meadow and I've only ever seen one little bowl of it here. I got 8 dinner plates and 5 little bowls of it. I think it is so pretty and it is making really pretty tiles for frames.

We are home from New Orleans! It was a very nice trip, but very tiring - mostly due to the driving there and back. I didn't even drive all that much, but the trip home wiped me out. While we were there we ate po-boys and beignets, shopped in the French Quarter, drank in the French Quarter and even hit a few thrift stores.

I came home to a few consignment checks, a box of 2000 bottlecaps I bought on ebay, a wholesale order for bottlecap magnets, and a reminder that Renegade Brooklyn is just 3 weeks away. So I'm back to work!

I was catching up on my blog reading and came across this interview of the Paper Boat Boutique owners, Faythe and Kim. I was happy to see them getting some blog love and surprised to see that I got a mention as one of their top three sellers at the store! Wowee! Read the whole interview for yourself here.

Wowee. Bottlecap magnets have been selling like hotcakes! Since I've added bottlecap necklaces and now, bottlecap rings to my line, I need more books than ever! I feel like my stock is dwindling and since Renegade will be here before I know it, I went on a hunt for books and more books yesterday. I made a pretty good haul.

Here's one of my new bottlecap rings. They are glued onto adjustable silver-plated rings, so hopefully they'll fit most people and won't turn fingers green.

And with that, I'm signing off for a few days. Aaron and I are heading to New Orleans for the rest of the week. He has a conference there and I'm tagging along for some NOLA fun. We are driving, so I packed up tons of yarn and rattles to make cat toys in the car. I probably packed more craft supplies than clothes!

The Handmade Nation Book for up for pre-sales on Amazon.com. This book is the accompaniment of the Handmade Nation Movie. It is a great documentary about the rise of the indie craft scene. The director, Faythe Levine, traveled many many miles all over the country interviewing crafters and store owners and artists. The book highlights 25 artists and guess what? I'm one of them!!!!! So all you EKRA fans, buy this book!

I had been saving my extra tiles until they were overflowing. Then I stopped and just chucked the extra ones into the glass garbage. I had a big big big bag of extra tiles and I decided to try and use them for some of those little magnet frames I've been making. Well, I forgot what was in there - it was a gold mine!

I found enough red and orange and lime green to glue this frame.

I also glued tiles on 6 magnet frames, another big frame, and two pots! I think from now on I'm going to save all my tiles and sort them by color to make mosaic flower pots.

Anthology, the new craft and paper store on State St where I sell my wares, has been selling lots of stuff for me. It's great, but now that Renegade is on the horizon, I get stressed about how much I should ship off to stores and how much to keep to sell myself at the market and shows. Sometimes I feel like the less I have at home, the harder I work, so today I sealed and labeled some frames I grouted last week and picked out a few to take down to Anthology. Here are a few that stayed home with me.

Right next door to Anthology is Epoch, a vintage and vintage revamp clothing store. I wanted to check it out and I found the most adorable sweater ever. It is a pink wool cardigan with two kitties from vintage tea towels appliqued on. It was a total splurge and totally unnecessary thing to buy now in May when wool isn't the best fabric to wear. Oh well, one last happy birthday to me!

Today is my 31st birthday. It feels a lot like 30 which felt like 29 and so on. I had birthday drinks with friends on Saturday night and birthday lunch with my family on Sunday so by today, on my birthday, I was pretty much all birthday-ed out. But Aaron and I went to a birthday dinner at an Indian restaurant just to wrap it all up.

I got tons of presents! I got two kitties from wholelottalisa's etsy store, a needle-felted daisy from poorlulu, a handtruck, some soap with a kitty on it, a gift certificate for orangyporangy skirts, a fancy bottle of vodka that's made in Milwaukee, and about 30 balls of fabric all cut up and rolled up and ready to crochet. Thanks everyone for the presents, I love everything!

Now I'm all about crafting for Renegade in Brooklyn. Gotta get tons of stuff made to make it worth the long long drive out there.

I had an errand to run that was sort of close to the Dig and Save today, so I stopped in to see if they had finally gotten anymore glassware. You know what was there? A whole lot of nothing. I'm so frustrated, that was my third trip where I've been disappointed with the glass! I went to check out and I asked the checkout girl if they hadn't been getting much glassware donations. You know what she said? She said they had tons and tons and tons glassware, but they just didn't have time or space to get it out on the floor. She said they have been getting tons and tons of donations lately, maybe due to spring cleaning, and that I didn't even want to see their warehouse. I do! I do want to see their warehouse. I want at that glassware! I need plates and they are keeping them from me!

I spend a lot of time packing and unpacking my wares into totes and suitcases. Pack them up to take them to shows, unpack them to sell, pack up what didn't sell, then repack to replace inventory that has sold. One of the things I needed to pack was cat toys. I got out my tub-o-cat toys to pack some for the market and some for a wholesale order and Ezra checked them out to make sure they were top quality.

This week I made two more purses for my "big bag" line. The first one is crocheted from a red and white vintage fabric remnant.

This one was crocheted from blue velour pants.

Now I'm all packed up for the market on Saturday, hope to see you there!