Parasol magazine

Just browsing through all the blogs on our list this morning and, via Cicada Daydream, I read that Yasmine at A Print a Day recently launched Parasol, a free downloadable magazine about emerging designers and artists.  Among the many inspiring interviews and features are Spoonflower favorites, Samanth Hahn of Maquette, the lovely Lollychops, and Michelle Engel Benscko (of Cicada Daydream above).  I feel like I've been hit with an inspiration sledgehammer, y'all!  I'm counting down the hours til I can come back from the science museum trip I've promised my ready-to-leave-now-mom! girls this morning and immerse myself in gorgeous design world.  Download your free copy of Parasol here.  And if you'd like your images, articles, or tutorials to be featured, you can email Yasmine here.

Great After the Dress giveaway!

Gwen over at After the Dress is having an excellent giveaway today in honor of her one-year blogging anniversary.  If you leave a comment on her post today, you'll be entered into a drawing for a $45 Spoonflower gift certificate--enough for a test swatch, 2 yards, and shipping--and $55 worth of design services from Miss Black Pepper.  What a great giveaway, no?  Head on over and wish Gwen a happy blogging anniversary!

Gwen is a newbie to Spoonflower herself, having recently printed up her first order with us.  Her design was a colorful print of rock-climbing gear and Beth helped her work it up.  Nice job to both of you and I can't wait to see what you make out of it, Gwen! 

Spoonflower giveaway on The Long Thread

Our friend Emily over at The Long Thread is running a contest for two free yards of Spoonflower fabric AND she's offered to help with the design if you are not design-software savvy.

This is a great opportunity for those who have yet to make your first Spoonflower order: hustle on over to Emily's blog and comment on her post to enter.

Sew Forth Now!

Enough with Stephen's birthday post already, huh?  And thanks to all of you who commented with sweet birthday nothings to him.  As I promised, he was surprised and pleased that people would even bother since he's a grown-up and all.   Y'all are a nice bunch.

Before the weekend begins in earnest, I wanted to share with you a great resource I ran across today via the ever-wonderful CraftyPod.  It's a site called Sew Forth Now  and in just the most recent podcast, there was so much information and so many links about clothing sewing that I now plan to spend my weekend just poking around that one site.  I'm hoping that the charming "Lori" is going to help me with my New Year's resolution to wear handmade and/or vintage clothing every day of 2009.  'Cause y'all should see some of the goofy outfits I've been wearing lately...!

Happy weekend, everyone!

Crafty podcasts

Being crazy busy lately has meant that we've been fitting Spoonflower into our lives whenever and wherever possible.  Stephen checks help emails first thing in the morning and well into nighttime hours these days.  Whenever my two younger daughters are sleeping at the same time, I'm on the computer dealing with help emails, browsing our Flickr pool and your blog posts, and, more rarely these days, composing my own Spoonflower blog posts.  When I'm packaging orders, it's usually on the weekends while Stephen stays home with the girls.  Or it's early in the morning before anyone even wakes up.  I got up at 5:30 this morning to go into work and walked blearily out of Spoonflower HQ with a big post office lug of 30+ packages to mail.   Such is the life of a start-up.  It's mostly fun, often tiring, but inspiring and interesting daily.

I recently found a great new way to pass those quiet hours cutting and wrapping fabric, though.  Obviously, craft blog surfing and rotary cutting fabric don't mix, but craft-related podcasts fit the bill very nicely.  The fact that there are intelligent, interesting women talking about all things sewing- and craft-related on-line is probably not real big news to a lot of you out there, but I confess that this is a pretty new thing to me.  It's WAY better than NPR in my book, and a good Craftypod episode from Sister Diane is the perfect match for an early morning fabric cutting session.  Browse through her long list of episdoes--an interview with Stephen is one of them!--and after you've exhausted all that good stuff, check out her sidebar of other crafty podcasters.  I guarantee you'll find someone--and certainly some new inspiration--that you love.

Another crafty podcaster I ran across recently is Tina Seamonster at Hello Craft.   Her blog is an awesome resource, but her podcasts are what really stand out for me.  They're made by other crafters who call in and make a recording about their crafting lives.  I love these little windows into why other people make things and absolutely plan to record my own once I figure out what I want to say.  Click here for details on how you can contribute your own story of why you make things.  I can't wait to hear it!

Hands

My good friend, Kat, recently turned me onto The Gentle Art of Domesticity, which is such a lovely, inspiring book that I look forward all day to my half hour of nighttime reading while nursing the baby to sleep.  This wonderful book is by Jane Brocket, the blogger behind yarnstorm, an equally well-photographed and inspiring blog.  I have to admit here that with my knitting block, I had previously assumed that this was a blog for knitters only and hadn't bothered to check it out.  Too bad for me!  This blog, and this book, are about nearly all the "gentle" arts of knitting, crochet, sewing, baking, quilting, and gardening.  Heavenly!

There are so many intriguing recipes (for rock buns, fairy cakes, homemade marshmallows...), countless gorgeous photographs, and lots of lovely essays.  One of the most striking to me was her piece on hands, a brief ode to their capability and competence.  While reading it, I remembered myself as a little girl all of a sudden.  I remembered the older women I knew then and admiring how weathered and worn and strong their hands looked.   I thought all those obvious veins and tendons and rough skin meant that those were hands that could do something, that were good at many things, probably.  And I couldn't wait til my own hands were so well-used and capable.

Looking at them now, my hands are pretty rough-looking.  For one thing, they're very dry.  Lotion smears up fabric and makes needles slippery, so I tend not to use it.  The sides of my fingers are stained with green food coloring from the Battenberg cake (from this book!) that I made and decorated yesterday.  My palms are calloused from recent digging and weeding in my garden.   All in all, these are not hands that would win me any hand-modeling contracts.

But they're the hands I've always wanted.

More buzz...

We spotted another nice mention for Spoonflower in a high-profile blog called Apartment Therapy, which is great (especially pleasing to art director C., I think).

--Read Apartment Therapy's post on "Customizable Fabric" --

But the buzz that we're most excited to hear is from the folks planning to use, or already using, Spoonflower for projects. As usual, I'm doing my best to keep up with the conversation here, but today I want to bring particular attention to a terrific design for kid's fabric being developed by Mamma Made. Cool, eh?

Also of note, we sent out another batch of invites this morning and unless we're swamped I'll send out yet another batch tomorrow. Thanks to the over 2,000 folks who've signed up so far. If you're not on the waiting list yet, be sure to add your name here.

[Latebreaking NEWS: A lovely mention today from Holly of the fabulous Decor8 blog. Thanks!]