April 2010

If you live in the North Carolina area (or thereabouts), come on down and see me tonight at the awesome Circa Gallery in Asheboro! I’ll be there starting at 6pm to talk about The Handmade Marketplace and sign books. I can’t wait!

But wait, there’s more! Tomorrow I’ll be at the Maker Faire in Durham with crafty crafter, MegRNC starting at 2pm.

See you there!

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Hello!  Eric here again.  Before I get to the wonders of today, I’d like to touch on the events of last Sunday.   We drove up to Ashfield, Massachusetts and had breakfast at a really cool restaurant/general store called Elmer’s.

Later, we hit the road in search of geocaches.  Here’s the first one we came across.  Can you see it?

I couldn’t either, but after sticking my hand in a pile of leaves, I saw it!

Here’s the cache and the log.

Next, we tried to find a cache at the birthplace of Mary Lyon, but it wasn’t there.  It sucks, but it happens, and you move on.  Down the road a mile or so, the GPSr (Global Positioning System receiver) pointed to these rocks.  I think I see something.  There, between the two rocks.

Wow!  A huge cache!

Inside was a bunch of “travel bugs”.  These are basically dog tags with special geocaching codes on them that let you track where they’ve been.  You take the travel bug, move it along, and put it in a different cache.  This travel bug was attached to a bunch of bottle caps, and asks if you take it, to place add a new bottle cap.  So far, it’s traveled 4,142 miles since it was released in Utah in December 2006.

I dropped off one of our own geocoins, (geocoins are trackable just like travel bugs, but are shaped like a coin) to send it on its journey around the world (the little ghost, two pictures up).  I grabbed a Jeep travel bug.  These are neat since a few years ago Jeep did a cross-promotion with Geocaching.com where they released hundreds of these around the country.  I haven’t seen one in a while.  Kari’s going to North Carolina in two weeks for her book, and she’s going to bring it with her to drop it in a cache down there.

On the way home, we drove by this funky stove store in Goshen, Massachusetts.  I’ve always meant to take a picture of the Tin Man of Goshen, and I luckily had my camera with me this time.  He’s even on Roadside America’s site.  For some reason, it reminds me of the Old Glory Robot Insurance commercial.

Now, onwards to today.  With the summer-like spring we’ve had, this year was the worst on record for maple syrup production.  Today is the last day that any of the local sugar shacks are open and serving breakfast, so we headed out to High Hopes Farm in Worthington, Massachusetts.  On the way, we snagged a multi-cache in Chesterfield.

Alright, and now breakfast!

This sugar shack was a little different than the others.  First off, it’s very rustic (with gravel floors and everything),  it’s a breakfast buffet, and it’s awesome.  The syrup and pancakes were great, probably the best I’ve had this year, and we really liked the maple sausage.  In October, they re-open and change to a Haunted Sugarhouse for four weeks.  We’re definitely going back for that.

After breakfast, Kari’s scarf got caught in a wood stove!  Oh noes!

We put out the fire.  Phew.  Then, we took a long-about route home and found two more caches.  The first was at a pull-off that overlooked a huge dam built in 1948.

Here’s the cache, in a tube-like container, hidden in a big rusty pipe.

The third (and final) cache of the day was near a spring water pump.  There are a few of these around, where there’s a pump at the side of the road that pumps fresh spring water from the ground.  I climbed the steep hill behind the pump to look for the cache.  There’s Kari!

I found it!

And here’s the log.  I like how someone wrote, “This is so much fun!”

That was it for today.  Three for three cache finds (pretty good!).  See you later!

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Hello! Every sentence is ending with an exclamation point! Why?! I’m super excited to be featured on this week’s CraftyPod! Give a listen!

Hooray!

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What a super day I had on Thursday. It started seeing Baxter like this:

…and got better from there. Thursday was the day that I traveled to Brooklyn to speak in the Etsy Labs. I drove to New Haven, Connecticut where I caught a train into the city.

Two short hours later, I was in Grand Central Station. I love being in Grand Central. There is something about the energy and motion that makes me so happy. Plus, they have magic mirrors there and cupcakes. I was hoping a dancing flash mob would break out, but alas, no such luck.

I navigated the subway and soon I was in Brooklyn! Along the way I found this great mirrored building which was very flattering, so I had to stop and take a picture.  The funny thing is several others did the same thing right after I did.

Then, I met three members of the Creative Collective,  Jen Judd-McGee, Liz Smith and Kim Werker for dinner. We ate at a diner right across the street from my swanky hotel and waited for Betsy Cross to show up. Jen and I were sitting next to each other, which is why she is not in this picture.

After dinner, we headed up to Etsy. Luckily Kim was an expert at navigating the subway. Seriously people, I would follow Kim anywhere. She is so amazing. It is like she walks around with a giant, smart light bulb above her head.  She is such a big thinker and I enjoyed meeting her so much. She was the only person I hadn’t met before on this trip, and I felt like I had known her forever.

Here they all are!  I am so lucky that these people traveled so far to be with me on my Etsy adventure. Left to right: Betsy Cross, Liz Smith, Kim Werker, and Jennifer Judd-McGee.

The doorman for Etsy was this giant owl.

Yay! Cupcakes! I wish I could have had one! I was too busy talking and then goofing off to have one.

This is Vanessa, from the community team at Etsy. She was really cool. She had a hot ping pong date later that night and was kind enough to invite us along. Sadly, she was on her way to Manhattan and we needed to stick around in Brooklyn. Vanessa is warm and friendly and she made me right at home. I was so nervous and had wicked butterflies and she was so calm and peaceful, that she made me feel more calm too.

Betsy making a “B”. You can’t spell Betsy without Etsy! This was one of my favorite parts of the whole night. I made Betsy stand there forever trying to make a “B”. This was great fun for me and I hope Betsy likes all of these photos.

The five of us at Etsy. Left to right: Jennifer, Betsy, me, Liz, and Kim.

Me and Betsy posing.

Then, sadly, the time for posing for pictures was over and the real fun began! OMG you guys, I was so nervous! We sat at this long table to give our presentation and the room just filled with people, (I was so afraid that no one would show up), and I was looking at Jen to my right and Betsy to my left and I was looking out at the audience of people and felt like “OH NO! WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE???” and then Vanessa introduced us, and asked me to talk about why I wrote the book and BOOM – I was fine. It was seriously like sitting in a coffee shop with all of my best crafty friends just sharing ideas and chatting. When it was over, I couldn’t believe it. Time really flew. I met so many wonderful people and signed loads of books and had wine and posed for silly pictures and just had a blast. Thank you Etsy and thank you to everyone who came to the event live and thank you to all of you who tuned in the virtual labs.

After the program, I got to meet lots of super cool and interesting people:

Then a freak accident happened where Kim and Betsy were magically transformed into a three-legged twin and me into a unicorn cat-thing. At least they were nice enough to knit me a sweater.

After everyone left and the nice people at Etsy gently locked us outside, we went to a nearby pub and had chocolate covered bacon:

…which sounds so amazing that we couldn’t help but order it, only to find out that it’s actually kinda gross.  The server was super nice, and a fellow crafter!

When I got back to my hotel, I found this on the chalkboard in my room:

I took a photo so I could show Eric. This gives me many ideas for our living room walls.

The following morning, I got to met an internet friend, Erin Bried, the author of the awesome book, How To Sew A Button: And Other Things Your Grandmother Knew. After a wonderful breakfast of the best pancakes ever, we went geocaching in Brooklyn and had a great time. So much fun! Here’s a picture of the log inside the geocache:

Awesome 24 hours in my life complete.

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