Making Time

I had my first swapping experiences last month. I realize now that I’m a total jerk for not having put up pictures! All of my packages have now been received on both ends. But I must remember that posting photos is an important last step. And I’m very late in it!

One of the most important things I learned is *timing*. One week, I was able to send off three swap packages, but then I had to hold one back because I needed to get feedback on some fabric i posted photos of using Flickr. The timing was crucial because then it literally took me weeks to get back to the post office. I carried it around with me in my bag. Of course, now I have found there is a tiny post office closer to my job, so it should all be smoother now!

This was the lovely pile of fabrics I received from OhBara. Last week I finally washed them, and started using them!

Flickr is a great tool for swapping. I didn’t understand how it was done, until Michelle from Green Kitchen advised me that i should buy fabrics, and post pictures of them online and say they were available for swapping. seems obvious now, but i didn’t know if anyone would even find my pictures. sure enough they did!

These are the pretty fabrics I received from CTeresa.

i was just writing to a current swap partner that swapping is a mix of guilt, fear, anticipation and joy. it’s certainly not as simple or easy as it looks! i think from now on, i won’t jump into too many swaps at once, and i will be very careful about choosing which ones i do join. i’d like to make sure that my partners and i include hand-made things in each swap, rather than just plain materials swaps from now on.

but having said that, lookie at this cool bunch of trim i got from trevo azul. i love what she did with pompoms when she made this mobile.

Yarn for Feather - with flash!

Originally uploaded by whizzme.

i can’t pick favorites since i enjoyed receiving all the packages, but this pile of crewel wool was the most inspiring. a big THANKS to Samantha from Whizzme. i even started a whole other blog: “How can you be so crewel?” for the yarn. The reality is tho, that my first attempts at crewel with out a book or pattern (or even the right kind of fabric) look pretty lame… It’s not so easy. But i like to paw this wool every once in a while. I did use some on a bunny nose.

Next: a group swap

I’d like to join a group swap next, I was sad when I missed the BackTack… but I now see fate’s wisdom is making me set my alarm clock wrong. I would not have had the time this month. And timing is CRUCIAL. I’m resisting the temptation to join the Open Yours Too, but in june I am excited to do the purplepinkandorange.com Stuffed Toy swap which is managed at swapbot.

What i sent

I kinda went overboard, not knowing it was reallly just a material swap, and added in probably WAY TOO MANY things. I can tell I went overboard because at least two swappers mentioned to me that feel bad that there was an uneven swap. Alas. I knew something was wrong when the goodies were going over the price of some of the fabric pieces.

These were some of the packages i sent:

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 11th, 2006 at 10:13 am and is filed under Finished. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.