where's my lost shaker of salt?

Sigh. Austin was sultry perfection in every way and I'm having serious withdrawal pangs. The weather was beautiful, the city was fun and low key and welcoming, and chock full of good food and good music and good antiques and books and ice cream and boots and other people with hair that's silly like mine. I was fortunate to travel-and-Renegade with a group of talented, smart, easygoing and dry-witted friends - I highly recommend this if you're going anywhere. I recommend my specific people, actually. I've booked them for my next trip already, but maybe you'll be lucky and they'll take you somewhere after that.

In addition to traveling on the buddy system, I also got to see my sister and her husband, who drove down from Arkansas to go to Renegade, see me and visit some friends. And then it turned out that someone I grew up with also lives there now, and I ran into him. All roads, it seems, lead to Austin.

My camera was doing a weird thing all weekend and seems to have disappeared a number of my pictures. The ones I have are mostly from the antique mall that Shana and I decimated on Friday, and from Saturday evening while we were waiting for the bats. (Yes, bats. More batnews later. Stay tuned to the same batchannel.) In the meantime, here are some of the survivors, and I'll have a few more posted on flickr in a couple of days.

Bethany & Ethan (formally known as Chuckles & Mr. Chuckles,
as indicated on their marriage license...)

Kathy & Nancy

Donovan

Shana found something frightening at the antique mall...

...and here it is.

five more days

There are just five days to go until Renegade Austin, and it's finally set in that I'm actually doing this. Imminently. Any day now. I'm excited and exhausted and nervous and really, really looking forward to being there and having a great time and meeting a whole new group of wonderful people. I know this blog has been sadly silent for the last two months. Here's a little taste of what I've been doing.

Renegade To-Do List:

1. Buy plane ticket and make hotel reservations: check.
2. Make bracelets, necklaces, and @%#(&*! pairs of earrings: check.
3. Apply for Texas state license to collect sales tax: check.
4. Create packaging, displays and signs: check.
5. Do inventory. Ugh, counting: check.
6. Think about what to wear, and decide I need to buy all kinds of new things, shoes included: check.
7. Make sure credit card processing info is up to date: check.
8. Blog entire preparation process, complete with pictures: FAIL.
9. Borrow suitcase: check.
10: Thank friends profusely for driving all my stuff down to Austin: ongoing-check-in-progress.
11: HAVE HYSTERICS: check.
12: Repeat step 11: check.
13: Drop off drycleaning: check.
14: Get through the rest of the work week: to-do.
15: Pick up drycleaning: to-do.
16: Pack: to-do.
17: Get on plane: to-do.
18: Have amazing good times in Austin: to-do.

To my fellow Austin Renegades, I can't wait to meet you. I'll see you there!

Below: Pictures of my trial run-through of setup. My actual booth will have about twice as much space, so this is only half of it, but you get the idea. I don't have enough table space in my tiny apartment to actually set up the whole thing, so I'm just crossing my fingers that it looks good for the real deal.

keep going, we're almost there.

This is my last week to prepare for the Renegade Craft Fair in Austin. I think I have plenty of jewelry made, but I'm feeling the pinch on the technical/packing/planning list of things that remain to be done.

This week's shop update will be my last before the Austin trip, and I may not be able to do another one until the last week of May. So of course I'm not ready yet. The photographs I took yesterday did not, for the most part, turn out well. I forgot to photograph a couple of items. And I didn't do the hanging earring pictures. This morning I thought of one more thing I want to do. And so on and so on...

Rather than rush it and use photos I'm not happy about, I'm going to do my shop update on Friday this week instead of Tuesday. That will allow me to include any last-minute new things I think of this week, and give me a chance to reshoot the pictures without having to sacrifice something else. Like, say, doing the laundry or eating dinner.

So: one sneak peek, above, all red and sparkly. More to follow throughout the week as I work on it.

And as a consolation prize, here's a picture of my brand-new bright purple hair! (Arty fuzzy black edges added because it's a phone pic with my really messy apartment clearly visible in the background.) Now, back to the to-do list. See you on the other side...