iceland ruled:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thingsarejejune/sets/72157610299053077/

guess who's going to iceland for thanksgiving...!!!

as i mentioned earlier to my friends list, i have recently lost a bit of weight and now have some old clothes i need to get rid of. lots of pants, long sleeved shirts, skirts in sizes 14 and 12. if you're interested, please let me know. otherwise they'll go to salvation army.

hopefully sizes 10 and 8 (with american apparel skirts) will be soon to follow...!

kurt vonnegut dies at the age of 84.

i called in sick today (i was seriously sick last night and got no sleep! promise!) and i decided to clean up my fabric storage. i was amazed by the mounds i had gathered over the years. if you click the photo above you can see everything...and the photos don't even do it justice. needless to say, my back is killing me now.

oh, and i forgot to put a link up of the new stuff i got from dressew...



click on it.

wonderful crafty things i bought in vancouver from heaven.

my new favorite website.

the consignment portion of bitter mittens is officially closed. all items are being shipped back to their owners, and bitter mittens consignment is on an indefinite hiatus. this decision was a difficult one to make, but ultimately i had to do what was best for me. consignment was stressing me out so much that i didn't even want to go in my office, which isn't cool. i haven't sewn a stitch since the beginning of june, and i think the stress of having others rely on me so much wasn't helping that. so, from here i will move on making handbags, selling them on bittermittens.net as well as consigning with shops like my my and little paper planes...but that's it. it's managable, and i'm happy with it.

i am leaving for north carolina in 30 minutes. according to some website, laguardia has some major delays. awesome.

i'll be back on sunday, 7/9. bye!

hello all --

2 brand new bitter mittens handbags are now at MY MY! taryn just did a huge update with all kinds of other good stuff, and to celebrate MY MY's 2nd birthday she's offering:

- free diy jewelry packs for all orders
- free 1" buttons for all orders
- free shipping for all orders over $50
- for every order placed between now and august 1st, you'll entered into a contest to win a MY MY goodie bag over $100!

also, look for a bitter mittens shop update in july! to be in the know, you can join the bitter mittens email list by sending an email to info AT bittermittens DOT net with "mailing list" in the subject line.

thanks!

...will be at my house when i get home! yay!

anyone in need of an old brother model?

earlier this week i got the first part of my joanns.com order. they messed up and gave me an entire 5-pack of 250m white gutermann thread, when i only ordered 1. i win!

(sorry for those of you who are seeing this twice. until i figure out an efficient way to merge my personal + craft journals, this is the way it is)

the renegade recaps are slowly rolling in. i am sort of forcing myself to do this at this point. i'm so exhausted still but i know if i don't do it soon, i won't do it at all. i guess i wanna go ahead and get it over with because, honestly, i am really sick of thinking about renegade. it was my entire life for like 3 months and, although i had a great time, i'm really glad it's over with. that sounds awful, right? but, i can't say i'll miss working 12 hours/day, 6 days/week. i just felt like i was burned out before the event even started. okay, this is taking a depressing turn, let me get on with it:

sales.
this was my first craft show and i had pretty realistic goals set in mind as far as sales went. unfortunately i didn't do as well as i hoped or expected. i think part of it had to do with the fact that we were the 3rd booth from the entrance, and people didn't really want to blow $40-$50 on one item that far into the fair. luckily i had consignor's items there as well, so all was not lost.

weather.
weather is always a huge factor in my level of enjoyment, and luckily we were in a very shady spot. while our location wasn't great for sales, at least we weren't heat strokin' it up. saturday was very cloudy at first, and i was even wishing for a cardigan at times. sunday was a different story. while taryn and i left the boys in charge and went out shopping, we got about 1/4 of the way around the park before we said "fuck this" and turned around. i definitely felt very sorry for the couple of booths that did not rent or bring a tent.

purchases.
since i wasn't making a ton of money i had to be pretty selective in what i bought. i had plans for months to buy a pumpkin plush from my paper crane for chris, so i made sure i did that:



then i went to india*romeo's booth and, even thought i'm SO not a jewelry person (and especially not a ring person), i couldn't pass up this gem:



and well, i didn't buy this, but chris did, for me:



it's a journal from ex libris anonymous, made from an old book. it smells like one too.

people.
the best part of the whole weekend was hanging out with and meeting crafters. i couldn't have asked for a better booth partner than taryn of my my (_mymy). we had met briefly at the bust craftacular last fall and have been IM buddies for several months, but there was always the possibility that we would discover, after spending basically every waking hour together for two days, that we didn't get along. whew. not only did we get along, but it felt like we had known each other for years. she put up with my loud belching, brought me oranges, and her husband, josh, was hilar. he + chris got along famously. i only wish they lived closer!
other people highlights include being booth neighbors with the adorable heidi of my paper crane and meeting the super duper sweet valerie of dear birthday (floridfauna).

other.
i ate a lot of pizza and creamsicle flavored shaved ice. that part ruled.



all in all it was a good experience, but the lack of sales was depressing and i'm not sure i'll do it again next year. i'm sure the exposure would be good, but having a 40 hour/week job plus preparing for this thing just took it all out of me. even days afterward i still feel just exhausted.

oh, and if you click on the picture above you can see all the photos from the event on my flickr.

anyways, handbags not sold at renegade will be up in the shop sometime soon. right now all i want to do is watch tv and let my brain turn to mush.

long time no update! there hasn't been a whole lot going on with bitter mittens up until recently...

many of you may already know this through my personal journal, but bitter mittens was accepted as a vendor to renegade craft fair which will take place in brooklyn on june 17th + 18th (saturday + sunday) from 11am - 6pm. i'll will be sharing a booth with the talented and wonderful taryn/_mymy...and i'm super pumped! the fair is only 12 days away (eeks!) and preparations are slow. however, i work best under pressure so i'm sure i won't sleep during the week before. i'm pretty happy/proud of what i've cranked out so far though! hopefully others (shoppers!) will be as pleased. i'll have several consignors items there...i just don't know which ones yet. i'll probs announce that this week. also selling at the festival will be my "friends" my paper crane, dear birthday, and wonderland q. if you are in the area, definitely come say hi!

the new site, bittermittens.net, is official and will probably be launching this week. many thanks to _mymy's husband, joshua for workin' so hard to get it done before renegade! i'll make another post once it's online, of course.

that's it for now. you should hear from me again this week!

p.s. i am in the market for a new sewing machine...anyone have any recommendations? thanks!

xo.

hey y'all,

just a little note to let you know that bitter mittens vintage fabric brooches + a handbag can now be found at little paper planes!

also, there are still some brooches + a handbag at MY MY.

news regarding the new bitter mittens website will be soon to follow...

xo,
brandi
bitter mittens

bitter mittens is MY MY's featured designer! so fun! she's also offering FREE shipping on orders over $25, and a FREE gift with every order. what more could you ax for?

in other *bm news, i am pretty much having to start from scratch with the website. _mymy's husband is still waiting for me to send him everything so he can get to work on it. i did a TON of it last night, but getting all the photos and descriptions together is so tedious! hopefully i can get that to him this weekend (even though i promised this week), and we can be on our way to having things working again! i gotta tell ya, not having a website to sell things makes selling things very difficult.

i think kelly is putting some *bm stuff up next week on little paper planes, but i'll let you know when it actually happens.

ikea saved my sewing space:



before.


after.
(sorry for the bad camera phone photo)

so while cleaning my sewing room i am realizing several things i need to maximize this space.

a) a new chest of drawers in which to store my patterns/ribbons/handles/sewing accessories:



b) a clothes rack on which to hang all of my bitter mittens creations / vintage finds:



right now i still have my beautiful, vintage (but broke down) dresser in the bedroom. we are keeping it there because, without it, there would be an empty wall (our bedroom is quite large). for now i will be keeping all the vintage stuff in there (it will all go in the "yardsale" section of the site and be sold for bargain prices). this will be replaced by above clothes rack at the appropriate time.

i also need a bunch of little bins to hold small things. many of my consigners sell buttons and other similarly miniture things, so i need to pick up something to hold those.

sorry if this is boring, but it's fun and useful to get it down in words. ikea is seriously saving my life.

bitter mittens is getting a new website! it will be done by _mymy's husband and it is already in the works! it'll have a paypal shopping cart so we don't have to deal with broken osCommerce shopping carts again. yay!

also, i'm selling stuff at MY MY so get over there and take a look!

posted for susie of boygirlparty



hi, my name is susie ghahremani, my email address is susie @ boygirlparty.com, and i just received word from san francisco that six of my pieces from my show at giant robot right now ("let's share" at gr-sf) have been stolen.

i'm sure none of you out there would steal from me or disrespect my work in that way, but if you know anything about it or can spread the word to help return the pieces to me or the people who have purchased them, please help.

susie is one of my favorite artists and owner of boy girl party.
please feel free to repost this.

i can't believe i totally forgot to post here about the site being down! doteasy (whom i do not recommend) decided to shut down my site several weeks before my hosting bill was to be paid. i'm in a dispute with them over this, however, the site will still be down for awhile longer. i will post here and email those on the mailing list when it's back up and running. with 5 billion other things going on in my crazy life, unfortunately, my time working with bitter mittens has had to take the back burner.

i'm very excited and inspired by fall and ms. karissa cove's new fall scarves! check them out.

since i just moved 1.5 weeks ago, things are still a mess around the new apartment! fortunately our new place has TONS of sewing space! i am very excited about getting my area set up again! until bittermittens.com is up and running again, i plan on doing some consigning with friends.

until next time!
xoxo.

hi all,

many of you know that things have been CRAZY here in bitter mittens land. however, i have managed some time for a bittermittens.com update! i still have lots more ready to add to the site, but here's what we've got for now:

* lots of shirts and skirts from hopeful monsters
* brooches and 1 handbag by bitter mittens
* just in time for fall, scarves by sacred spaces
* fun tees by kat lamp!

in the coming weeks, once i fix my digital camera, i will be adding lots more to the site, including all of my vintage/yard sale items that will be cheap.cheap.cheap! rest assured you'll be the first to know about it.

so with all that said, please note:

THE SHOPPING CART IS NOT WORKING! if you see something you'd like to purchase, please email info@bittermittens.com with a list of your hearts desires (make sure you included sizes if appicable).

until next time!

xoxo
brandi
bittermittens.com

SHOP HERE!

buy this one-of-a-kind exclusive bitter mittens handbag here and support a great cause! 100% of this sale will to go the red cross to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

in other news, a bitter mittens update is coming very soon! yesterday i photographed and loaded 29 items (clothing, handbags, and accessories). i'll keep you posted!