Fresh from the desk: Coin pouches and cat toys

It's been suggested (twice, and somewhat strongly) that I expand my inventory to include items other than jewelry for the shows so that more people are drawn to my table, spend more time looking at the variety, and are more likely to buy something.  It makes sense, and I figured I could do that with some simple crochet projects.

Enter the "hundred yen pouch" pattern.  It's fun, it's easy, it's quick, and they're just plain adorable.  I can get small skeins of 100% USA-grown cotton yarn for a decent price at our local discount/department store in town, so I got a few colors and got to work. 

The first one I made (the green one) took about the length of a movie to make, but once I got the hang of the pattern I managed to cut the time to make one about in half.  I should get some more colors, but I'll just stick with these 4 for now and see how they do at the next show before I make too many.  The mostly white one has flecks of purple, green, pink, and blue, in case you can't tell.  It's my favorite color so far but I liked how the variegated brown/white/blue one turned out with the twist.

My other idea was toys, so I have a couple started.  The bunny pattern is behaving strangely... I always end up with the wrong number of stitches for each round but I think I'm doing it like the pattern says... guess we'll see how it turns out once I finish it or if it ends up horribly disfigured halfway through. 

I did get a couple cat toys finished though, and Cricket loves them!  The first was a "kitty tweet" which turned out pretty darn cute.  It was a little time-consuming for something so small, so the next one I made was just a stuffed disk, and not surprisingly, she likes that one better.  It skids across the floor nicely or something; it's hard to tell exactly what cats prefer other than "the simpler the better."  I didn't put any catnip in the first two, but I will for the next handful I make for the show.  Catnip grows wild out here and my mom has some in her garden so I harvested some of that to dry and put in the cat toys. 

I haven't tried a purse yet, but I'm thinking this one will be a good place to start.  Once I get there, I'll update on how it turns out.  Maybe I'll do that this week when it's too hot to do anything but sit in front of the air conditioner, like today was.  Today resulted in lots of lounging, 2 coin pouches, a necklace that I'll blog next, and a little bit of furniture rearranging while trying desperately to keep the house from getting too hot.  I failed in that attempt, so now I have all of the fans on and windows open hoping the cool air from outside will come in.  There's not much breeze so it's not working as well as usual, unfortunately.  Time for a cool shower!