Monday, December 22, 2008

New Things for the New Year

Thanks for all your support over the years. We are looking forward to 2009 as we truly hope it will be better than 2008! Here are some of the great new things we have introduced.

Gift certificates are now available for purchase online at www.fiberonawhim.com Simply purchase the denomination you want and we will email you the code to use at checkout.

We also just introduced what we are calling the swatch envelope. Are you having trouble figuring out if the color of fabric is going to match? You can get up to 6 swatches for a cost of $1. Simply purchase the swatch envelope and note the fabrics you'd like to receive. If the shipping shows up we will adjust it off so that all you pay is $1.


Deliveries: We will be doing deliveries on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a charge of $3. If you live/work within a 10 mile radius of our location we will be able to provide you with this service if you chose. Simply notate it on your order and the shipping cost will be reduced to $3.

Register to Win section of our website: We are changing this from a monthly drawing to a weekly one. We will draw a name every Monday of the names that have registered that week for a prize. The prize could be a hand-dyed item or anything else we pick up that day!!! So make sure you register often for an opportunity to win. This week's winner is JEANETTE JACKSON!! Congrats! We hope everyone has a great holiday season!

Introducing in the New Year!!!
Hand Dyed/Painted Items
Fat Quarters and FQ Bundles
Ribbons
Fiber Twists
New Roving and Felbi Wool
Australian and African Fabrics
Patterns designed by Fiber on a Whim
More Kits
More Buttons
More Silk Items
More Vintage Items
New Block/Project of the Month Club
Online Classes

What I've been knitting lately.

I've been lucky to connect up with an interior designer that is opening an organic boutique in Sandy Springs. She wanted to carry hand knit items for sale and she is paying me to knit them for her. Here are the few things I've done so far. There are 4 hot water bottle cozies and 7 diaper soakers. I'm now going to start on some pillows and a wine bottle cozy. Add in there finishing a sweater, knitting 2 hats, and crocheting one to the mix. I'm beginning to wonder if I do much of anything else.


I think my sewing machine and I need to get close again. I think I'm going to work on a few things for some of the "call for entries." Trying to get mom to do some as well so we'll see what we can get worked out.

Protection One Update

Well I've yet to receive any copy of a so-called contract. I had asked for it to be emailed to us and they said we should receive it within 24-48 hours. So when we had not received it as of this morning I called back. Imagine my surprise when they told me they dropped it in the snail mail and reflected no request to have it emailed to us.....other than the fact they had the correct email addy that I had given them just on Thursday. So now we will see if we receive it in the next 24-48hrs again. I'm sure they will say that Christmas delayed it as their next excuse for not emailing it!

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Do not ever use Protection One!!!!

Now normally I would not write about something like this but felt I should. DO NOT USE PROTECTION ONE for an alarm company.

As the majority of you know we are no longer in a retail location. We closed the doors back in October and left the building at the end of November. We had a security system there at the shop that was handled by Protection One that was once linked with Bellsouth. When the sales rep was out to take the order for an alarm system we were not told there was a "Contract period". We never signed a contract nor have a contract of any type in our possesion. We have installment papers and a certificate of completion. None of which state a term of a contract!!! So in my mass of things to do I just got around to calling Protection One to cancel the service that we no longer use.

To my astonishment they said they could not cancel the service that we had a 5 year term with 21 months remaining!! Now when I looked at mom after this first call we both were perplexed about any notion of a 5 year term. In subsequent calls to Protection One and repeated requests to get a copy of this so-called "contract" we have yet to receive one. I even asked for it to be sent by email yet to no avail. When I called back I was told it could take 24-48 hours to process an email!!! I've since looked up Protection One complaints online and found numerous ones. Most stating the same problem we are now having where we can't cancel service. Most state never being told they had a contract or that if you didn't cancel 30 days before your ending that it automatically renewed without so much as an okay from you. Many said they had sent in writing their cancellation letters only to be told it had not been received.

This company is nothing but a giant scam!!!! We've had many problems with them other than this in the past 3 years. Like a time where we were unmonitered for 4 months. When we questioned why we were not notified of a problem with the system they tried to say that they had called and were given the okay not to have to call back about the "Failure to Communicate"!! Now who in their right mind would do that? If you are paying for service of a security system you expect it to work......you would not say "oh, okay don't worry about it leave it not functioning for as long as you like!".

Now it is simply a waiting period to see if they can send me a copy of this supposed contract that they say we signed but we don't remember nor were ever given! In the meantime I'll make sure that if I can help it no one uses their service.

Sorry for the very off topic rant. Will try and post some pics soon of what's been going on lately.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Sale of the Week & FREE Gift

Sale of the week: all magazines and books. All are at least 10% off with deep discounts on some magazine issues! In the spirit of the holidays we are including 1 free gift with purchase of a book or magazine as a thank you for all your support this year. The gift will relate to one of the articles/theme in one of the books or magazines. These would make great gifts for some of your crafty friends or relatives.

Some titles include those pictured below:




Saturday, December 6, 2008

Now that a month has passed......

Well now that more than a month has passed I guess I should say something. We are now fully out of our retail location. This past week has been spent running around getting everything in order for the business being in a new county. Let me tell you there are a lot of forms and people to contact. We are slowly but surely getting everything organized. There still seem to be a lot of boxes around.


As for everything else we are getting into......
There doesn't seem to be enough time to work on Christmas gifts but at some point mom needs to make a "horse quilt" for one of the kids in the family. We'll see how much gets done before the holiday. Her studio space looks insane at the moment with absolutely no room to work. She'll have to get enough energy up to straighten everything in order to find a place to start working.

As for me....One door closes and another door opens almost literally. In the final weeks that we were open an interior designer came by the shop asking questions about knitting. As it all worked out she's opening a boutique in Sandy Springs and she wanted hand knit items for sale. Talk about a dream job!! I'm getting paid to knit. Her first order was for 8 items and when I showed her the first completed items she ordered 4 more. As soon as I get a chance I'll take a photograph of what I've been working on and post it.

Now that my guild held their holiday party I'll post the photo of my completed challenge quilt. I really like how it turned out. Didn't win anything but that's alright.

Have a great weekend!

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Houston Full Day #3 & Surviving the Runway

Wow.....today started out quietly in Make It University but ended up with quite a party. I don't think that most know what to do with us in MIU on Saturday at closing time. We were having such a good time that many had to wander over to see what we were up to. Fun thing was that once they got there they stuck around to see the end of it. I've got a lot of pictures on this post but I just couldn't let them go by.

Here's how the day started. Mom had her MIU class of an altered journal at 1:15. The first pic is of someone making it. Once again sorry for the darkness of the photos but I don't have an editing program on the laptop.


Here's mom teaching......


Then at 5:30PM began the party.....Pokey Bolton hosts Surviving the Runway. This show's theme was the 80's and they had to make an 80's rockstar outfit!!! It was so much fun to watch this so here are the photo's I was able to click in between staring in amazement as to how these individuals were able to think of this and laughing. Also you can see in some of the photos that we got a little camera happy. Snapping pics of others taking pics of us!!


Here are the participants doing the electric slide to "earn" more supplies for their outfit.


Here's a close-up of Barbara Delaney and Pokey Bolton leading the dance.



The main ingredient in the outfit was the use of a record. It had to appear somewhere in the piece. Here is one decoration of it.


This is Lesley Riley who was the "Tim Gunn" of the event and encouraging the designers to "make it work".


Now they are dancing to "Come on Eileen..."

Another shot of the dancing.

This is from left to right..Jamie Fingal, Lesley Riley, and darn it call me tired but I just forgot her name. It's on the tip of my tongue.......

Here is Kathy York and her outfit. She earned the bra by dancing on a chair. Madonna influenced her design.



Here's where the camera happy bit comes in to play. Here is Judy Coates Perez snapping a pic of me photographing her!!

Here is another individual who was influenced by Madonna's early stages.

Here's Judy Gula of Artistic Artifacts and Natalya Aikens who as you can see was continuing the camera happy phase of us all and snapping a pic of me.

More of the outfits.

More designers as they slave away.

Preparing for the runway walk.

Judy......you guys will have to tell me if she really pulled off the angelic look she was trying for. I think the hat must be hiding her horns!!! I know she'll have a comment for me on that one!


The runway walk. The designers had to parade their outfits on the main red carpet of the hall outside of the classroom. As I'm sure you can guess Kathy York won first place for her Madonna inspired bra and panties. She even went so far as to pull her hair into a ponytail off to the side. Then she took Golden soft gel and put it in her bangs to make sure she had the right eighties look! Let's all hope she went back and took a shower quickly to get all that out. There was many a mention to the movie Something about Mary. For all those that have seen it you understand completely the fun we were having with that at the end of the day. That's all for now guys. We are hitting the beds to enjoy our extra hour of sleep. See ya tomorrow.......



















Houston Full Day #2 Happy Halloween

Hi guys.....another day is done and boy was today as fun as expected. I told you Halloween and quilters were quite the mix. This year we did not dress up but here's who I found that did......

Pokey Bolton - Flower Power
Jane Davila

Barbara Delaney - Dorothy and her dog Toto


Judy Coates Perez with her awesome apron!!


Things towards the end of the day were not as hopping as we would have liked so I sneaked over to Make It University and dropped my name in the bucket. I got called so I got to take a collage class with Liz Kettle. I have never before done a transfered image. I've printed pics on fabric but never done the transparency transfer so that was interesting. Also learned about Leslie Riley's new product TAP. Coolest thing about that is that you can machine wash it. Hopefully will be able to get our hands on that soon. I enjoyed getting a chance to take a class.....much different than teaching it. Don't know if I'll leave this piece the way it is at the moment or if I'll do more decorative stitching on it. I think it needs a little more whether that's beads or embroidery I don't quite know yet so will have to wait and see.



These four little pieces mom worked on throughout the day. This is some of our hand-painted lutradur, hand-dyed cheesecloth and batting along with decorative stitching. She really enjoyed herself while working on these and it allowed customers to see how it can be used. All of these items aren't up on the website yet but will be going up during the first 2 weeks after we return. We have so much fun stuff to add to the website it's not even funny.










Thursday, October 30, 2008

Houston Full Day #1

Well.....full day #1 is down in the history books. We managed to survive and are happily back in the hotel room with our feet propped up and drinks in hand!!! We saw many faces today again......first let me add that I meant to mention Laura Cater-Woods in yesterday's post. Hopefully she won't shoot me for that. On top of that though we've seen Natalya Aikens, Rosemary Claus-Gray, Pamela Allen, Mary McBride, Sandy Snowden, the Brown Sugar Stitchers(at least a few), a number of SAQA people, and Linda Minton came into the booth we missed an introduction with her though. As you can see it is a star-studded affair.

Today was my day for the Make It University class in which I did a mixed media canvas project. Which amazingly got an endorsement from Pokey Bolton as a good project for MIU. Now who in their right mind would have seen that coming!! Now mind you I don't really like teaching as I get so nervous about talking in front of large groups. Now you might be saying that a class of 25 really doesn't count as a large group. Look at the photos below though as you can see it is an open air classroom right in the middle of the show floor. You have your 25 students and anyone can walk up to the edge walls and listen in to see what is going on so really you are talking to a lot more. So the good news is there was no fainting, no getting sick, no weeping or pulling hair out simply a smooth go. Well not so smooth. The class before was running a little over so I had a short time to set up. I guess that could be seen as a good thing as not a lot of time to psych myself out just to focus on getting all the stuff in place! I managed to get it all out and was ready to start on time. I even managed to block out the hecklers mom managed to pull in to action at the start (thanks Pamela, Rosemary, Mary, and Jane)!! Saturday's journal class is now all to mom!!

Here are the few pictures I've managed.....

Me teaching MIU 10/30


2nd photo my MIU 10/30

This photo is a return favor to Jane Davila for posting us in our costumes last year on her blog!! MIU class 10/29. Guess she didn't realize/like that you could clip the mic to your shirt instead of holding it.....oh well made for a better candid shot!



Booth shot #1



Booth shot #2 with grungeboard and roving.


Booth shot #3 all the hand-dyed items.
That's it for tonight. I'll see what pics I can get tomorrow. Should be good seeing as it is Halloween and there's quilters involved. I can see all the costumes now.......have a good day!!






Houston Preview Night

Well guys am I brilliant......I took photos and then left the camera in the booth instead of bringing it back to the room for posting!!! Oh well, will have to show those tomorrow.

We finished set up at about 3 and had 2 hours to wait for them to open the doors for Preview Night. We sat and read, knit, and chatted our way through. Then the doors opened and people poured through. It was a little slow during their Private Preview time of 5-7 but then once the opened it to Public Preview it started to fill up. Definitely not the number of people that today will bring but quite a number. Make It University got off to a great start with classes by Pokey Bolton and Jane Davila. Lets just say the nice white tables that are in the classroom aren't so nice and white anymore!! Their only going to get more decorated as we go.

It has been so much fun to see all the people coming through and putting faces with names. Once again here's some of the superstars we've seen again this year......Jane Davila, Judy Coates Perez, Frances Holliday Alford, Jamie Fingal, Lesley Riley, Christine Adams, Robbi Joy Eklow, and last but definitely not least Maggie Winfield. Maggie- Hope the tiara for this year is great....wish we could see it at the QA reception but alas we have to work right through it :(

Today being the first full day will only bring more names out and about so should be a lot of fun. We plan on having a lot of fun and laughing (yes, Pokey we will be laughing.....and you can direct people to our booth by our laughs) so that the day speeds by. Yup....you guessed it we've already been told we're having too much fun and laughing too much!! Sound familiar?

Alright I better get off the computer now so that I can finish getting ready. I'm trying to distract myself so that I don't think about the fact that I've got to jump in and do a MIU class at 1:30 today. Talk about nervous.......25 people and then all the ones that come up around the edges......OH MY!!! I think I can, I think I can....... Talk to you guys tonight/tomorrow morning.....if I make it.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Update that is all over the place.......

Wow guys did I fall asleep with the posts.....well not really but this is the first moment I've really had to sit down for any length of time!! We are currently in Houston for the Quilt Market and Festival. Today we went to market to check out all the new stuff. We were slightly disappointed by not finding too much that was cool. On the upside though Michael Miller has found some absolutely amazing designers and their fabrics should be coming in in not too long. We just sat drooling over those. Another booth we got lost in was a Japanese company. Keep an eye out for felt ribbon and really cool Japanese fabrics. They've even taken their fabric and made it into oil cloth!!! I could have stayed in that booth all day long.

As for interesting people we met/saw today.......the usual suspects of Debbie Bates and Liz Kettle of "The Art Tartz" who are published monthly in Quilter's Home. While seeing them we met Mark Lipinski the editor of that magazine. He really is the same in person as what you read in the magazine. Betty Blais who all of you should thank for your Angelina Fibers as she is the queen of the company. Jay McCarroll of Project Runway fame was there introducing a new line he just designed. It was quirky little creatures that made a quite whimsical line. Kinda makes me want to carry novelties but alas we have stuck firm so far.

We have a day and a half off to finish getting ready for set up at Festival. We are very excited about this year and all the stuff we have.

Sorry for the darkness of the photos but the laptop I'm on doesn't have a photo program so I was not able to lighten them. These are pics of our booth at the Gwinnett, GA show and the Shop Hop Challenge Quilts.



1st Place Rebecca Keeble


2nd Place Elleda Rule


3rd Place Julia LaBauve


Paula Coplon



Kristin Rodriguez




Tammy Silvers


Janelle Girod

Lois Benedict

























Wednesday, October 15, 2008

The Start of a New Adventure

Well guys yesterday was the last day of the brick and mortar. We closed the doors at 5PM and now we start our new adventure. Today is set up for the show in Gwinnett. I'll try and post some pics later. We are sharing booth #912 with Quiltin' Time from Canton, GA. We are sad about the end of this chapter but excited for what the future holds. We appreciate all the support that many of you have given to us. No one in our family is sick, as many of you have asked about, simply someone going through a very rough time that needs extra support. This allows us the ability to help give that extra time without having to have sporadic hours at the shop. Now we will be open 24/7.......lol. Well not the phone lines anyway!!

We are going to be exploring many new paths for us in regards to this phase of online only along with shows. Keep an eye out on the website www.fiberonawhim.com as we will be revamping it as soon as we get back from Houston. Also don't count us out on the classes front......we have many ideas up our sleeves for continuing them. We'll just have to see which is the right way for us on that. It is our hope that this time will lead us back to another "incarnation" of a brick and mortar but only time will tell on that one.

Thanks again to everyone for all their years of support at the shop and we look forward to working with all of you through the website and shows!!

Monday, October 13, 2008

Only 2 Days Left!!!

We only have 2 days left here!! Of course we are not going to be out right away so we will still have use of the basement. Good thing based on the pics below.

At 5PM on Oct. 14th we will close the doors on the brick and mortar switching to online only. We are both excited and sad about this. We are looking forward to the new experiences though. So if you wanted to stop by one last time this is it.


Here's what we were working on late on Saturday. Look at the rainbow. Can you believe this is over 200 pieces of cheesecloth!!!



Here's some silk and velvet pieces.



Volunteer help is absolutely great. Here are Gabriella and Katie working away helping us prepare for the shows.






Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Hard at Work & New Items In Stock

First, we now have received in some of grungeboard like was talked about on Quiltart earlier this summer. We also have several of the Idea-ology mixed media accessories in stock. They are so neat. I can't wait to use some of them. They are available online at the moment.


Second, we have been dyeing up a storm! We have been having so much fun as we are preparing for the two shows. Here are bundles of cheesecloth and old lace. These items will be at the shows and then I'll work getting them online.


Here's what the studion looked like at the end of today with the second batch coming ready. This is cheesecloth and burlap. Then there are some painted laces hanging in there.






Here's some of the mess.......we are going for round three tomorrow. It's mom's birthday tomorrow so she should have fun playing!


You can see why we are going to miss this space. Having this separated wet studio/classroom has been amazing.