elingeling = migration + rhinofluff

breathing room & birthday parties

It's been even quieter around here as usual, I know. If you follow me on twitter or instagram (both are @elingeling), then you know that I've been quiet there too. While trying to stay caught up with any deadlines I committed to in 2012, I've been very deliberately not committing to too much so far in 2013. Call it burnout or time to figure things out, but I've been doing just that.

Working on ideas that have been percolating for a long time (because they've been on the backburner), sketching, cooking, baking, reading books (with real paper pages!), hunkering down & hibernating... and just slowly getting out of that mode now. It took longer than I expected to emerge from my post-holiday head space, but I promise I'm not going anywhere. Just regrouping & plotting exciting new things. 

One thing I knew I would never avoid committing to was getting to take part in the celebration of my favorite fabric/yarn/pretty things shop, Gather Here. Virginia & Noah have made their shop into a beautiful, highly inspirational place that makers, crafters & creative folk love & depend on. I have never been in without finding many new things to ooh & ahh over, and I've never left empty-handed, even when I swear I'm on a budget.

Anyway, Gather Here is turning two!, and I'm so very excited to be at the trunk show this Sunday.

I'll be bringing some of the new things I've been working on, plus rhinofluff & other classics. I'll have sneak peeks on instagram too. Hope to see you there! 

bazaar bizarre boston this weekend!!!

It's almost here!!!  Unbelievable excited for this years BazBiz.  Full of vendors I want to shop, and just an excellent show put together by excellent people who really love & believe in the power of craft & community.  

Still make make making things for this weekend!  

I'm going to be in booth #23 between some of my favorite makers -- Made in Lowell and To Boldly Fold -- along the right side wall when you enter the Cyclorama.  Vendor map here. And I'm participating in the Night Owl Program too, you can save 10% with me if you shop in the last hour!

Please stop by & say hello! Hopefully I will have gotten enough sleep to be mostly comprehensible :) 

xoxo Eling

studio holiday shopping hours

Just a note to any local folks who would like to do some in-person shopping.  My studio (and a number of others in my building) will be open during the listed hours below:


Please visit www.westernavenuestudios.com for directions.  Also, please do not judge the current state of my studio if you do stop by.  It's a little crazy this time of year! 

make make make. repeat.

Sorry for the radio silence around here, friends.  I am realizing this year that as my inventory demands have increased (not a problem I'm complaining about, btw) there is a real limit to how much I can make in an amount of time because of how my products are designed.  

EVERYTHING I make is hand cut, by me, with scissors.  Then every detail is hand appliqued, stitched, embroidered, beaded, attached by hand, by ME. Finishing, me. Tagging, me.  Packaging, me. Photographing, listing, shipping, me.  I do have a nice post office helper sometimes, who also, more importantly, picks up the slack at home during the holidays.  You know, with buying groceries & toilet paper & making dinner and those sorts of things.  But the making?  Still all me.

Hence the quiet.  I'm desperately trying to find the time to properly update here & also in my online shops but between making enough inventory for shops & my holiday events, well, I'm almost always just cutting out pieces of things or sewing them together.  Sometimes I sleep too.  

I hope you'll forgive me.  I'm already working out some alternate products & have big plans for 2013!  ALL THE THINGS should be much more readily available to everyone next year.  In the meantime, I'll leave you with a pretty picture of last weekend's show set-up, and a few things I've been working on during afore-mentioned make marathons.  Will try to be back here early next week with a big online shop update & some last-minute holiday specials.   







Hope your holiday season has been far less chaotic and/or better organized!  :D 

at SOWA Holiday all weekend!

In booth #14 in the lobby (2nd floor)! Hope you'll come by, this is a great show!

Click on either image or visit www.sowaholidaymarket.com for more info! 

hello, december!

Jumping full-speed into December-madness this weekend with the first two holiday events of the season!

First up! Saturday, December 1st from noon - 5pm :: Holiday Open Studios at Western Ave!



This is actually the only day of Holiday Open Studios that I will have my studio open.  I'll be at other events the other three days. 


And Sunday, from noon - 6pm in Cambridge:


The Handmade Holiday Show at Gather Here!  Super excited about this one, I am really hoping to check off a good portion of my own holiday shopping list on Sunday... You can read more about the artists/makers who will be at the show here.

I've got lots of pudgy bear incognito ornaments on hand, and I'll be debuting a collaborative project with my studio neighbor Eyeformation: Lil' Fuzzy TV ornaments! as well as prints (!!!) this weekend.  Sneak peeks below...

Please say hello if you stop by either of these events this weekend!  Happy December! (Seriously though, where did November go?)

2012 ornaments in the shop!

oh, hey!  I haven't gotten them all in the shop quite yet, but there are ready-to-ship AND made-to-order ornaments in the migration shop!  toast & incognito bear trees + pears.   

more coming soon! and yarn and fiber too! hope you had a lovely weekend!  

giving thanks.

I said this on Thursday morning and I stand by it.  I am so very thankful to be doing what I do.  Thank YOU for being a part of it.

Something I do a lot of, which, if you follow me on instagram or flickr (or hang out with me in real life) you probably already know, is eat a lot of things and take pictures of them.  Nothing fancy.  More like record-keeping (the pictures, anyway).  

Anyway, since I made an effort to clear our calendar in order to have the time to make extra food this Thanksgiving, I wanted to share some of the recipes we used & really enjoyed. 

Made these (Joy the Baker) creamy pumpkin bars the night before Thanksgiving.  Our 8x8 runs a little small & we liked the filling so much that when I make these again I'm going to use a bigger pan & double the filling while keeping the crumble/crust the same.

I think this potato mash casserole (with leek confit & LOTS of bacon!) was the big hit of the meal.  SO. GOOD.

We also liked the Momofuku roasted brussels sprouts recipe, even though we were running behind and they didn't make it to the table until everyone was stuffed.  I'll reduce the fish sauce in the vinaigrette quite a bit & increase the lime juice a lot next time.   

We made two soups this year from leftovers.  This turkey enchilada verde soup (Homesick Texan) was AMAZING, not a drop left in the pot. 

And our standard "last leftovers" soup that is a family tradition of sorts.  No recipe, just rich turkey broth made from the roast turkey leftovers + napa cabbage + glass noodles.  So tasty but not crazy filling like the 6 plates of turkey/mashed potatoes/stuffing/etc that have been eaten for several days. 

It's a little anemic looking, I know.  But trust me, what it lacks in looks it makes up for in taste.  

I'm not going to make this food thing a regular feature here on the blog, but you can follow my food food food board on pinterest if you're so inclined.   

Lastly, I've finally finished updating the "upcoming" calendar in the right sidebar.  It now shows all the events I'll be at for the remainder of the year.  I'm excited to shop as well as show at these places.  Hope you got a chance to support small biz this weekend!  

Gather Here fundraiser & trunk show!

Have I mentioned how much I love Gather Here?  Aside from the obvious -- excellent yarn & amazing fabric & supply selection plus awesome classes & super staff -- owners/makers/dreamers Virginia & Noah are huge supporters of handmade, local artists, and COMMUNITY.  

Most recently, they've organized an ambitious fundraising raffle for Hurricane Sandy relief, with a goal of raising $4000 for Red Cross disaster relief.  All you have to do is make a donation to the Red Cross, and you're automatically entered to win a one of the fantastic prizes that Gather Here has, well, gathered.  Each $10 you donate gets you an additional entry.  

More details on the fundraiser here.  Droolworthy list of prizes here.  

Here are the two prizes I donated.  One skein of hand-dyed sock yarn and two skeins of handspun:

 

And speaking of yarn & fiber, for all those who have been waiting very patiently for me to finally update the webshop with all the stuff I was hoarding for Stitches & Rhinebeck, the time is very near!  I just have one more local yarn & fiber event left, also involving Gather Here:

Their 2nd Annual Fiber Trunk Show is this Sunday, November 11th from noon to 6pm.  Full details here.  I'll be there with all the things I've been dyeing & spinning lately:

If you're local to the New England/Boston area, I hope you'll come down & say hello!  It's getting cold out, and I know *I* need more knits to stay warm!  If you haven't been to the shop yet, this is a great excuse to do so!  

Non-local folks, I will be updating the webshop as soon as possible after this weekend.  And local or not, if you haven't already given to Sandy relief, I hope you'll consider donating soon.  Whether or not you want any of the awesome raffle prizes!  I know how chilled I felt during last night's nor'easter in my heated, undamaged home, and I can't imagine not having heat/power, or worse, a roof.  Stay warm, everyone!  xoxo, Eling

october rewind...

hellooooooo! I've been trying to figure out why it feels like I've been on the run/behind/so out of touch for the last month or so... then I realized that I've been on the run & behind & out of touch since I last posted. It's been a bit of a whirlwind (to say the least); so I'm going to try to run through it in pictures for you.

Indie Spun booth @ Stitches! a few shots of all the awesome handmade in the booth:

Note the first Halloween things I've made in a long while in the bottom left corner of the last photo.


Close up of one of the Halloween tea roses here:


Right before Stitches, I finally upgraded my eye gadget. And after I got back, my fancy new filter case had arrived!

I LOVE IT: 

I must have lost my mind earlier in the year, because I agreed to sell at Rhinebeck (through a friend's booth, thankfully, but still) the weekend after Stitches.  Also, I had to make inventory for Craftland AND ICE's Pop-up Shop before & during Stitches.  Then pull together stuff for Rhinebeck immediately after Stitches ended.  Um, deadline organization fail for the month.  But I managed to pretend I wasn't totally sleep-deprived & exhausted, and actually had a really fun weekend with friends.  

Yummy taro & sticky rice dessert @ Crazy Weird Thai Place the Friday night before Rhinebeck: 

And of course, Rhinebeck itself. Animals, fiber, food... what else could a girl want? 

PUPPIES!!!!


Gorgeous loop fiber bumps:

Fiber friends!! 





I think I decided to have a mini-breather after Rhinebeck.  And I made my first quilted thing ever!! in a class at Gather Here. It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but I am pleased with it & I needed a gateway project to make me less scared of quilting.  It worked!  I want to cut up all the fabric into little pieces & then sew it back together! I give you: 

Halloween candy corn mug rug:


Oh, and with the rest of my "breather" (ie the last weekend of October) we went to California for the weekend for my dear friend's wedding to her Irish fella.  

Look at how little luggage there was!

I'm a big sap, and love weddings. Dressing up is fun.
Us on our way down to the wedding:



The weather was gorgeous.  Sunny & in the 70s.  
Check the mountains! and yes, IKEA was right by our hotel:


But Hurricane Sandy was brewing at home on the East Coast, and our flight home was canceled before the wedding reception even started.  

We booked a couple extra nights at a hotel near the airport (in case there was a chance we could get out earlier) and were surprised to find this in the room:

With extra unplanned "vacation" days, we did what we always do.  We ate.

Yunnan bridge noodles. NOMS.



And we went to Half Moon Bay for the day.  It was foggy, but beautiful:




And we ate some more.
XLB & steamed mantou (buns) with condensed milk. Yup.

I also bought fabric & felt & scissors to do some work, and then shipped the scissors home (no checked luggage). And I finished the book I brought with me, so I bought another: 

Haven't finished this one yet.  I slept most of the way home.  And when we finally got back, October was just about over, and I was back to playing catch up again.  More on November stuff & happenings coming up soon!