Mid-Week Check-offs:

Applied to two shows: Salem Art Festival and Crafty Wonderland (in Portland, Oregon)
Still need to apply: OSU Mom's Art Fair and Corvallis Fall Festival
Pillows completed this week: four
New design line: zero
Posts on FB: one
Posts on Twitter: more than ten (includes RT of other shops)

Still need to bring more pillows down to Mod Pod in downtown Corvallis - the coolest shop in our city! If you live in Corvallis or the surrounding area, check out the Mod Pod on second street for funky, retro, super cute home decor.

What can you check off this week? How many shows do you do a year? Do you like pizza?

Have a wonderful day!

What does a pillow mean to you?

I'm surrounded by pillows every day. Some I've made, some I've purchased, some I've been given, some I've lived with for years. People sometimes ponder the question, what does life mean to you? Well, I'd like to hear about your favorite pillow. It could be a little travel pillow that's been riding with you on vacation for months or even a nighttime pillow you sleep with each night. I'm really interested in office pillows and how they hold up during deadlines and customer visits. I'm talking about any pillow, not just Zillow Pillows. Please, in at least a sentence, tell me, what does a pillow mean to you?

Goals

Goals is a funny word. I guess it's strange to me because I'm horrible at making them, keeping them, talking about them, well you get my drift. I've got no problem wanting to do anything, it's just the final walkthrough I'm struggling with. This month, I'm working on a new line of Zillow Pillows, trying to get into the fantastic Corvallis Fall Festival, and juggling my Etsy shop along with keeping the ultra fancy shop Mod Pod stocked with Zillow Pillows. Okay, these things sound suspiciously like goals. Wants. Needs. Aren't they all the same? Am I actually good at saying what I should be doing, you know, like tending to my blog, but I need to do some mental reconfiguring to finish the tasks I create.

Pillows are the perfect "get-me-on-track-with-my-goals"

Using the squeezability of a retro-themed Zillow Pillow, I can fuel my creative energy into completing the goals I set for myself.

Below: a list of my goals for May - Please leave a comment if you have goals you'd like to attain, agree that goals is a funny word, or just simply want to type some letters because you used to own a manual typewriter. Writing, of any kind, is so Very.

Blogging daily
Four sales a week on Etsy
New pictures on Etsy
Write three short stories in two weeks
Buy my top five necklaces on Etsy (I have a love for necklaces like you may know a shoe lover)

To write or to sew, that is the question

I wasn't even trying to come up with an answer on this one. Yes, I need to be working my creative mind toward my MFA in creative writing. I love it. Writing is more than just an outlet for me, it's like weeding my brain each time I write a story. Getting rid of the clutter, the overgrown thoughts, the sticker bushes that impede the growth of deserving flowers. But I've always loved the blackberries, stickers and all. And who am I to designate what's a weed and what isn't. Heck, can't they all just grow together? I think so.

I'm off to finish a story...

Long before Zillow Pillows - One year for Christmas I made little 5 in x 8 in felt pillows for my entire family. I started with my mom, who (at the time) loved chickens and my brother who loved guitars. Then I made some holiday ones with lights and trees. A pig for my friend Jorja, a cat Pez dispenser for another friend. My grandma loved angels, so I made her a white and golden pillow with a triangle bodied angel and a small round head. But I didn't know what to make for my grandpa Hugh. Maybe some background on him before you understand why it was so important to make him a very special one: he was the best person I've ever known. If you'd met him, you'd believe the same thing. So this pillow was more than just a decoration for his chair, mind you, this is the same chair that he allowed my cousin Aubrey and I to curl and hairspray his not too long hair. We played barbershop on his head and he never complained once (in fact, we have pictures!). He paid for braces when I was seventeen, made me an exact replica of a coffee table I saw in the Pottery Barn magazine and I couldn't tell the difference. He and my grandma delivered groceries to my house right after my son was born and when I came out to help, saying "Hi grandpa, how are you?" he looked right at me and said, "Don't get nosey." So he was a comedian too.

Finally, with an idea from a close friend, I ended up cutting out a hand saw from a piece of yellow felt and a handle from some brown felt. I sewed it on and wrapped it up. Christmas eve we opened our gifts at my mom's house and my grandpa Hugh was sitting beside me. When he opened his pillow it was upside-down, he turned it around and began laughing- a grand laugh, both deep and high, almost to tears. Every few minutes between opening other presents he'd look down at the pillow and laugh again or smile. Right before the evening was over he leaned over and said, "Some people have to buy things at a store to give as gifts, some people can't make something as special as this."

I have his pillow again, safely tucked away with other memories I bring out on the occasion of needing a tangible item to squeeze, just to make the memory come to life. Zillow Pillows came after my grandpa Hugh's passing, but the idea of making a pillow and knowing someone will enjoy it or give as a gift reminds me of how lucky I am to have known a man who knew the power of a handmade item.

Here's to kindness...

Studio Madness

The studio is a mess. Zillow Pillows scattered, fabric in stacks and a few starts to my next short stories. I've been writing another Vera story. She's not much of a pillow hound, unlike me. She's thirteen now (having already celebrated nine, eleven, fifteen and forty-three in previous stories) and of course she's difficult. I'd almost go as far as call her unruly. But does she have to be as predictable as a Zillow Pillow? Can't she surprise me by being ugly (inside of course) and breaking at the seams? Does she really need to worry so much about her father and argue terribly with her mother?

Well, Vera's not going to clean the Zillow Pillow Studio and frankly neither am I. Let the creative magic of words and fabric sit and sulk. Good for them.

Off to sew a pillow...