The Bring & Brag event at The Lab at Velocity Art and Design here in Seattle last week was fantastic. The Lab's site will have a list of all the bragees soon but two that really stood out for me were Suspect and Fugitive, a year long project combining edible or temporary materials with fantastically bad puns, and Good Stock, custom books made from family photographs and writings. I suspect we'll be seeing Good Stock will be in Martha Stewart Weddings magazine before not too long.

Also! You can listen to the recordings of past Labs here. You can also sign up to receive the Lab podcasts on the main page.

The next Lab is this Wednesday, August 20th and it promises to be very interesting. It's a grown up version of show and tell so people who have creative endeavors will be given a few moments to tell us all about it. I'm looking forward to this one, and I have inside information that we'll get a closer look at the rings of Dave Sheely Designs. He's started to embed jewels inside of resin and the effect is that the ruby is floating over your finger. Though, I totally have a soft spot for this one that contains beach glass possibly from an old Rainier beer bottle.

Heidi Kennedy of My Paper Crane will have a show opening tonight at Schmancy. She's come all the way from Pennsylvania, I hope I can make it. Schmancy is at 1932 2nd Ave, Seattle, WA 98101, event starts at 6 p.m.

Crystalyn Kae will be selling her bags at a rooftop garden trunk show on Saturday. She'll have bags you cannot see anywhere else, all on a pretty roof in Wallingford. I think a some ice cream from Molly Moon's is the only proper thing to do afterwards. Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at 4032 Stone Way North, Seattle, WA 98103

Urban Craft Uprising is now accepting applications for the December show, the deadline is September 8th and you can find applications right here.

art, craft & design is the new (to me) blog of Andrea who owns Bluebottle Art Gallery here in Seattle. It's full of stuff I'm crushing on already.

Lauren and Emira, whose recent book The Boss of You I've talked about here before, will be featured at The Lab this Wednesday. I'm so excited:

The Lab presents “The Boss of You” authors Emira Mears and Lauren Bacon

July 23rd from 6-8 at Velocity's store 251 Yale Ave N.

Please welcome Emira Mears and Lauren Bacon, veteran business women and authors of the new book, “The Boss of You,” to share knowledge and inspiration to help you start and run your own business. They’ve turned their hard-won experience from 8 years of running Raised Eyebrow Studios – a mission-based web design business –into an informative, easy to follow, and encouraging manual on what it takes for women to become successful entrepreneurs. Bring your questions, stories, and take notes - this should be a delightful, truly informative evening!

Want to win some amazing knitting stuff? Susan from Martha's Vineyard Fiber Farm (and the incredibly-good-idea Fiber CSA) that I talked about last year is holding a raffle to raise money for somebody who needs our help. She's raffling off her entire yarn stash and including skeins from the farm (yarn which I've had the pleasure to touch, and it's ever so nice). Not just that, lots of prizes, some individual, some included in the grand stash prize, have been added. There is loads of scrumptous hand spun and dyed yarn, stitch markers, knitting patterns, roving and knitting kits from people all hoping to help -- the list is really something to behold.

In the hopes of helping out as much as I can I've donated a prize as well, one of my Portable Knitting Needle Cases for DPNs that I make as The Organized Knitter.

You can purchase as many raffle tickets as you like by donating through Paypal. Each ticket is $10 and well worth it for a chance at all the great stuff.

You can read the story behind why this money is being raised, it'll break your heart, see the huge list of prizes and buy tickets here at the MVFF blog. It's a good cause for some people who have given their entire lives to helping others, and I hope you will buy many tickets in the effort to help them as much as they deserve.

I'm a little late to hear this news, so buy raffle tickets quickly as the drawing is taking place on Sunday, July 13th, just four days away.

The next Lab is this Wednesday, June 25th from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Velocity showroom in South Lake Union here in Seattle. This month the guests are PNW crafty ladies Kristen from Schmancy and Plush You, Moxie of Made By Moxie and Hansi of Hansigurumi. Kristen mentioned that the people at Craft have donated a box set of their first year of CRAFT along with their latest issue to give away. I'm looking forward to finding out more about how all of these ladies do their work.

The talk about blogging at The Lab last night was a lot of fun. I didn't feel nearly as deer in the headlights as I thought I would, though I'm afraid my style of blogging meant I didn't have very helpful answers. (Example: What is your most popular post? My answer: I don't actually know. (It's the bacon cups, duh, Megan.)) Also, I got to buy my blog anniversary present, the Gro Bal Baby.

John was a fabulous host for the evening, and I want to thank him for being so generous as to have the events in his store and allowing people to mill around with food and drinks. Thank you John. Velocity is a fantastic store, online and in real life, and I always find myself trying out lots of furniture while I'm there.

Thanks to Paola (MirrorMirror), Elaine (Decorno), and Mary (Shelterrific and Straight from the Container) for being such wonderful girls. I do hope our different styles and goals for blogging gave a varied perspective. An extra huge thank you to Paola for getting this event started and inviting me to be part of this night.

I got to meet Jessie of Cakespy and Tula of Whorange and a bunch of other people. Thanks so much to everybody for coming last night. I ran into Eliza Truitt, who ran a small photography workshop I gratefully attended last month. If she starts starts having regular classes I'll be sure to let you know, a class focusing on "So, you just bought a DSLR..." would be helpful to so many people I know.

A thanks goes to Dry Soda for providing food and beverages. I've begun associating the flavor of Kumquat soda with an evening of learning new things from intersting people.

The next Lab (June) will feature Kristen Rask, owner of Schmancy and creator of the Plush You event and book, Moxie of Made By Moxie and Hansi of hansigurumi. They'll be talking about the Plush You! show and crafting in general.

The Lab for July will feature Emira Mears and Lauren Bacon talking about their book The Boss of You. If you have or want to run your own business these two have a lot of wisdom to share as they have owned Raised Eyebrow Web Studio for a very long time. I've mentioned this before, but I used to read their site The Soapbox Girls way back in 1999, so I'm very excited they'll be coming through town. (I missed them when they were here on the book tour.)

You can join Velocity's mailing list to hear about future events.



See Mary's notes over at Shelterrific.

Here are my notes on what I can recall from what we talked about last night:

(more...)

So, after talking blogging platforms last night, this morning I discover my own Wordpress won't allow me to post anything longer than a few hundred characters. Why? I have no idea. But, I have a long wrap up with notes on what I can remember we talked about last night that is ready to be posted as soon as my Wordpress stops throwing this hissy fit.

I bought myself the GroBal Baby! Happy Anniversary, my website.