(Re)Open for Business

After a long absence the Plumm shop is re-opening for business...I have taken essentially a year off to really be home with my boys. Running Plumm was just requiring SO much more of my time than I had anticipated at it's launch...and that was on top of actually making all the bags and hats to stock the shop with!

But! Now! The boys are in school FIVE days a week and I really, truly have the time to give to my business WITHOUT taking it away from anyone else. It feels very good to be at this place in my life that I have been telling myself I would get to...but never really beleived I would reach. In the past six years my life has gone from being all about me, to all about the boys...and now we seem to have achieved a nice balance, somewhere in between...let's see how long I can maintain it!

Above are a few photos of the Fall/Winter 2009 line...The Hanna and the Harper bags are in the shop now.

Vintage Hangers

 Imagine these displaying treasures in a nursery....or corralling vintage paper in your studio. What a unique way to display art in a hallway or entry. The possibilities are endless.

I use mine to display fabric swatches in my studio.

Vintage Scale

I found this fun vintage scale while out thrifting the other morning...It's so cute.

It's up in the shop now.

A Boy and a Girl...

These little sweeties are up in the Plumm shop...

Tricycle

mixed media on wood

Red Coat

mixed media on wood

Sweet Vintage Finds

(Teapot Sold)

(paper towel holder sold)

I just put these sweet Vintage goodies up on Etsy in the Plumm Shop

New Hat...Off to Finland...

Kai Models a New hat style which was the brilliant idea of a sweet customer in Finland. She ordered a Whimsy hat in a "girly, but not too girly" stripe and requested ear flaps and ties. She left the color/design up to me and this is what I came up with.
All I have to say is thank goodness for my customers and their great taste. This is my absolute favorite hat of all time....and it never would have come to be without the magical process of working with a customer to come up with the perfect product for them.

A Custom Whimsy Order...

Complete.

On to another.

Soon I will close up the Plumm shop so I can focus on
crafting gifts and decorations for our family and friends.

Only 2 weeks left until the Christmas.

And

11 days until winter Solstice.

Because, for us, the Holiday Season is primarily about celebrating the change of the season...
we'll give the kids a gift on December 22 to celebrate the Solstice.


Pajamas...if I can finish them in time!

Whimsy...

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For the holidays this year I created a new listing in the shop just for custom Whimsy hats.
I get a bunch of custom requests every year from folks with great color ideas...so I hope this will help streamline that process.
It will allow anyone to purchase the 'custom hat' listing and then tell me exactly what colors and sizes they want when they checkout.
No need to buy one of the existing listings and then wonder if I will know to make it custom...

If anyone is interested, because of their popularity, the wait for hats right now is 7-10 days. I'd like to have my last Christmas order in no later than 12/14... just to be sure it will arrive in time.

So if you're considering an order...don't delay!
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Our sweet friend Hanna models a Whimsy hat...

The Lucia....

In Red.
Over in the Shop right now.

Can there be too much Cute...?

I was browsing around over on Etsy this afternoon, in between stirring and chopping, and found these. I gasped. The cuteness...it is overwhelming.

The entire Fantastic Toys shop is full of small things I must have.


I have a little snowperson collection for the holidays...and I am allowed to add ONE new little friend every year.

As soon as I sell a few more hats I will be treating myself to a little Snowgirl Softie.

A New Everyday Bag...

So, my good friend Rachel asked for an everyday bag for those outings when she has her little guy and needs more than her purse...
but doesn't need her entire diaper bag.

The Everyday Bag is the answer.

It has six internal side pockets large enough to hold diapers, loveys, burp cloths, bottles, and such...
plus a cell phone pocket snuggled up inside the strap where she can actually find it (and reach it).

She chose the fabrics herself from my Hancock's of Paducah catalog.

Do you have one of these?

It is one of my most used tools for creating custom bags. I get an updated one every few months in the mail with a bunch of new fabrics. Then, when a customer needs fabric choice help or inspiration, I pull it out.

H. of P. also sells their fabric is 1/2 yard increments which I LOVE. A few other sites do this, but most don't, and it's really practical for me.

I made one of these for myself a while ago, but ended up literally selling it off my back while was out and about one day.

Adrift in Yarn...

I'm buried in yarn.

I have a couple of hat orders which, together, total 7 Whimsy hats. So, I'll need to knit a hat a day between now and next Monday.

This is great news for the Plumm Shop.

But...

Did I mention I'm hosting two Thanksgiving feasts this year? The first is this Sunday.

I'm going to have to teach the boys to knit.

A Little Internet Love Today...

So, my little shop is/was featured in a couple places out in internet land...

My knit hats will be featured over at at Shopgirlz for a week and they were also up at CraftBoom yesterday, accompanied by a tid-bit of small business advice I had shared. I linked the photos to the actual web pages so click over to see it all live and in person.

Thanks, universe, for aligning the planets and making it all happen on one day!

Doesn't it always seem to got that way?...

I've been building my Plumm business/blogg for almost a year now and it really seems to be a feast or famine gig. I can go a long stretch without anyone taking much notice and my sales trickling in. Then...the winds will shift, or the planets align,and I'll get a steady flow of interest.

For a While.

So, I have definitely learned to enjoy it while I have it...In the beginning I had a bit of luck with getting my bags and hats noticed and I naively assumed that it would stay that way.

Now I know a bit more.

Posy Pouch...

So, once I got myself to stay in the studio for more than a few minutes...

This little gem practically created itself.

I'm thinking there's value to stepping out of the creative process from time to time and letting your ideas fully form in you head.

I generally start in on a new idea very early in the 'figuring out' process. This means a lot of redoing and undoing. But, with this pouch today, I had spent so long living with it that it was like my hands knew just what to do. Easy peasy.

I'm finding that 'living with' my ideas for all sorts of things, from cooking to parenting, helps everything crystallize...Often resulting in a much more satisfying result. This is a creative process I had never really tried prior to having these kidletts, but am now forced into occasionally.

Of course, we don't always have the luxury of mulling every thought over indefinitely...
but, next time my creative production is ebbing I will try to see it as a positive rather than a negative. Kind of like stocking up the creativity bank account instead of the Etsy bank account.

A new Whimsy hat. for Jacob...

How cute can one baby be?!

My sweet little nephew Jacob needed a new winter hat...a custom Whimsy was the obvious answer. This was my first go with this many colors of yarn...and I was a touch apprehensive. Would I be able to keep all of the yarn tangle free and tidy? But, in the end, it was easy peasy. Everywhere I went I carried this project in my big knitting bag which I had loaded with the various skeins of yarn ( in a very particular order of course). I just started on another for our good friend Cole...

What we've been up to...

We've been easing gently into Fall around here. I picked up my knitting again, found some cozy reading spots for rainy days, gotten all the board games out, gathered some seasonal treasures for our nature bowl, and created a new studio for myself. Every thing's just rolling along.

One of our great reading spots...get's alot of use by the boys.

My new friend...A 1950's Necchi, made it Italy. She's amazing. I named her Bella.

My new Studio space.

A couple bags I have in the studio.

My old (sorta) reliable machine on her desk. That's Sylvia the half lady.

The boys playing Candy Land on a rainy day.

Our Nature Bowl...we fill it with seasonal treasures. Leaves and pumpkins in the Fall, flowers and seed pods in the Spring.....etc.

Yesterday's Art project.

My most recent Thrift store score...and most favorite chair of all time...
sitting nicely with our magazine rack full of two of my other favorite things...
Dwell and Atomic Ranch Magazines.


Hope Fall is finding it's way into your space as well.

The Sweetpea...

So, I am incorporating a new hat silhouette into the shop inventory for winter this year. It has the classic look and feel of a hand knit cap, but with a fun twist. A sweet pointed top that finishes it off like a little dollop of whipped cream. My hats were my top sellers last winter so I have been a knitting machine recently as I gear up to keep the shop stocked for the chilly months.