Plush You! Show in Seattle

I have been part of the annual Plush You! show before (a Seattle-based show from Schmancy‘s Kristen Rask where artists must apply via plush samples), but I have never actually attended. Until this year! Well, *hopefully*. My health is in teetering mode once again after about 9 days of things actually looking up (gee whiz that was short-lived), so I’m crossing my fingers that it doesn’t get worse and I can drag this ailing body around no matter how difficult.

I had promised myself earlier in the summer, when I was much more sick, that if I wasn’t totally down and out, I’d seize the day and use my credit card like a normal person (I don’t really use it…) and go to Plush You. I have wanted to take a trip by myself for a while now; as much as I love people, and I do, I absolutely love to travel by myself, always have. And traveling to Seattle for Plush You means more to me this year because of what I’ve been through and because I included this piece in the show.

Plush You! kicks off Friday, October 8th with an opening reception from 5pm-9pm. It runs for a month, so check it out if you’re in Seattle! Seattle Magazine has a nice little write-up about the show and Seattle Met Magazine has this piece up on their blog–go press! Now if that weren’t enough fun for one weekend, enter gal-around-town-and-the-internets Jessie Oleson of the fabulously sweet Cakespy, a Seattle-based biz, blog and brick-and-mortar. Remember when she and I exchanged surprise macarons upon first meeting this summer in Seattle? We are throwing a little Halloween partay for Witch Craft the next day, Saturday, October 9th from 5pm-8pm. Games, treats, crafts and surprises are promised.

Witch Craft

Halloween is less than a month away now and our book is doing well! I’ve been visiting it at bookstores around Pittsburgh to make sure, as it’s part of their Halloween displays, all front and center! 🙂 (I especially like watching it get higher on the Amazon charts). I’ve been doing some blog interviews stemming from the book’s publication and they are starting to go live. What’s been both interesting and somewhat emotionally challenging in this process, however, is having to go over “my story” regarding how I got into craft, magazines and now books. Sure I was always crafty and always wrote, but both only “for fun” until I became chronically ill.

I never really thought about how all of this unfolded, the timeline, until recently, when I get so directly asked about it. I also don’t think I ever quite realized how bad life and health were, and for soooooo long, how incredibly ill I was. Which is odd because, of course, I should be the one most in-the-know! 😉 When I go through what days were/are like, peruse things I’ve written here but mostly in journals, look at calendars with everything crossed out except doctor appointments, social activities entirely replaced by food types/bathroom trip tallies and remember making crocheting particular things during particular sick periods, I honestly ask myself a) how the heck am I still alive/how can the body withstand all of that and b) how did I want to be alive enough to keep going when the outlook was and still kind of is not fantastic. It is all so mind-boggling to me. “Live the questions” instead? Who knows…

Anyway! Without further adieu, the first slew:

-I’ve been a member of Cut Out + Keep for a while now. It’s a wonderful UK-based site devoted to crafty how-to’s and they interviewed me for the latest issue of their online magazine, Snippets. Check it out here. What I love about this interview is that I got to correspond with one of the site’s writers, who is also a young, chronically-ill chick and we have energetic illness-inspired-art brainstorming sessions over email that will hopefully lead to some amazing future projects! Gives me goosebumps just thinking about them. Stay tuned…

-I belong to the Steel Town Etsy Street Team here in Pittsburgh and have loved the embracing nature of this crafty group upon moving back. Thank you, Tamara Barker for this Member Feature and book review!

-I also belong to the Pittsburgh Craft Collective–here is a Members News post on me! We are also planning a Witch Craft book/crafty happy hour, details to unfold soon…

-Back when I lived in NYC, I occasionally did some writing for Tribeca Citizen. And it was actually there in Tribeca where I began to work on Witch Craft and made all of my crafts for it, using supplies from neighborhood shops and grocery stores. So, part of the book was essentially born in Tribeca! Erik Torkells is the mastermind behind the site, and, you know, former editor of Budget Travel, Fortune, Travel+Leisure and Town & Country. Yeah, I’m only a little intimidated to have him edit something of mine haha. (“haha” at the end there is all wrong, I know). Kidding kidding, he is one of my favorite email buddies and I look forward to a future lunch with him after our single meeting last year! Here is his Homemade Halloween Q&A on the book and me!

So, um, buy the book and get crafty, okay?