busy busy busy

Wow, I am busy. I have a big list of craft items with deadlines coming up before I really want them to, and that's of course apart from my regular household obligations.

Since I'm still in the first year of my store, a lot of what I'm doing is marketing-related. I need to get my name out there and get some word of mouth referrals started. But meanwhile I also have a few non-store crafts, the first of which is a set of Valentine's washcloths. At church, there is a whole pew of widows, and some of us are getting together to make them some Valentine's gift bags. I'm making a dozen washcloths. They are my first attempt at tunisian crochet, and I'm making a heart design right into the stitch pattern. I am finished with the tunisian part on all 12 of them, and now will just have to border them. I should be able to finish these by tomorrow night and give them back to the girl who's assembling the baskets.

Then next on the list is a green scrubby w/ a rainbow border for my mom. I made her a Scrubcloth over the holidays, and she wanted a scrubby by itself as well. I made her a purple one already but during a recent phone conversation, she said that she wanted two. So this green one will be her second one. I haven't mailed the first one yet b/c I'm also still waiting on something to send to my dad. There's no real "due" date on this one, but it'll just take half an hour so I'm going to squeeze it in as time allows.

After that, I am going to make some Easter-themed play food. The site that my store is hosted at has a TON of stores, and several vendors are getting together to make a couple of gender-neutral, one-size-fits-all Easter baskets to auction off. I'm very excited about this project. The due date is March 1, when I will need to send the items off to the person who will assemble the basket.

Also for Easter, for my own store, I want to stock several little beaded headbands. I may just skip that whole project, though, depending on if time allows. But the due date on that one, if I do it, is also March 1.

Last month, I made 60 miniature Scrubcloths to be sent out in a box of samples. Several vendors get together and send their samples to a central person who assembles them into boxes filled w/ random samples, and these sample boxes get purchased. The boxes that I'll be a part of will go on sale the middle of this month. I'm going to try to participate in this box again in April, so a due date to get 60 more samples done is March 15 or so, so I have enough time to mail them off. This is another one for as-time-allows.

I've also been planning on March to be when I introduce tie-dyed diapers into my store, so I need to snatch two days in a row to do the dyeing (one for dyeing and one for washing the excess dye away). I have March 15 as a due date on this one also.

Then in April, I am going to be part of a "conglomerate" ("congo" for short) that has a rotating membership. Each week of April I'll be stocking one or two girly clothing items. The due date on making these items is April 1.

Finally, at the end of April, I may be able to participate in a bazaar at the Regional Sweet Adeline's competition. I've been to this bazaar before, but as a shopper. I'm still working out whether I want to participate and exactly HOW I want to participate (like just taking samples to the bazaar and having people order them, or making up an inventory, or a partial inventory and letting people buy those and then ordering other items, etc.)

Phew, what a LIST! It would seem that I have enough time to do all this, but I'm also still in a "peak" transcription month, so that eats up a lot of time that I could be crocheting or crafting. But, since it's all written down with each of their individual deadlines, I should be able to get it all done. :)