I've really been enjoying the summer--lots of visits to the beach and playing outside--so it's sad that I'm already thinking about the fall. But I'm cleaning out my projects drawer so that I can begin to stock it with new knits for the fall and winter. I'm offering up everything in my projects drawer for huge discounts. I will no longer be offering in stock crocheted longies and soakers anymore, so all of my in stock crochet items are on clearance! The sale starts today at 2pm and continues until they're all gone. Visit my store here: Pumpkin Pie Baby.

Here's a peak at one of today's offerings:

Market bags for little farmer's market shoppers

A customer who ordered a wool play food set from me this week asked if I had any ideas about what to put the foods in. I had thought about this since starting to sell the play food. But this weekend I sat down and worked on a few ideas. I came up with a darling market bag for the fruits and veggies. It's crocheted, stretchy, and the perfect size for little shoppers.





My daughters now want a market bag too for our weekly trips to our farm share. This is our first year participating in a farm share and it's been an adventure for us. We've been introduced to all kinds of new veggies--from kohlrabi to chinese cabbage to beets--and I'm getting reacquainted with my love of cooking. I'm having to search out new recipes for all these veggies. Here are some of my favorites so far.

For kohlrabi, try it roasted with butternut squash: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/ROASTED-KOHLRABI-AND-BUTTERNUT-SQUASH-236414
For swiss chard, try this roasted, creamy dish: http://beyondsalmon.blogspot.com/2006/07/technique-of-week-how-to-cook-swiss.html This was so good, I'll forever be buying swiss chard!

Birthday cake

I recently made a bunch of play food for a swap and one of the items I made was a birthday cake for a 2 year old girl. Here it is:

I just love it, especially the 2 little lit candles. I've added birthday cakes to my list of play foods now and another custom set will be available at my next stocking on July 8th.

What a great birthday and our newsletter!

So Pumpkin Pie Baby celebrated our first birthday on June 10th and it was a huge success. I had a wonderful time collaborating with other women on Hyena Cart and I'm proud of the beautiful sets we made. In fact, three of our sets made it into the Most Spotted list on Hyena Cart! And, we had 902 invidivual visitors to our store on our birthday! If you missed it, you can see some of the sets on my Flickr gallery.

But I wanted to write about Pumpkin Pie Baby's new newsletter. Starting July 1st, I'll be sending out a monthly newsletter with store updates, previews, and information about our products. Most important, though, our newsletter will contain exclusive discounts for subscribers! To join our newsletter, simply visit our homepage, scroll to the bottom, and fill out the "Join the Mailing List" box. You'll then be receiving our newsletter soon.

Turtles

Tomorrow is the big anniversary stocking and this past weekend has been very exciting for me. On Friday, I had 441 people visit my site. And the Woodland Animals set, pictured in a blog post below, was one of the most spotted items on Hyena Cart this week.

I wanted to write about another set that will be stocking tomorrow. It is my favorite of all the sets being offered tomorrow. It's a 3 piece set for turtle lovers! The shorties were knit with Purewool's "Warm Ice" colorway. It worked up so nicely and is a beautiful blend of oranges and blues.



Samantha of My Beautiful Girl made this amazing fitted diaper from Kumquat's "Sea Life" knit fabric. The diaper inner is bamboo terry and the snap in doubler is topped with organic bamboo velour.



Carson of Fuzzy Britches appliqued a turtle T-shirt to match the turtles found on the diaper. She did an amazing job with this turtle--he even has stars on his back!

Lobsters!!

I love lobster. It's my guilty pleasure. I feel so bad for lobsters. Every time we're in the grocery store my daughters want to say hello to the lobsters in the tank. They want to know what they're doing in there, and I'm always tempted to say "Well, they're piled on top of one another in this tiny little space waiting for someone to come along, boil them, and eat them." But I don't want to say that to them. My oldest is still trying to figure out where food comes from. As in, is chicken really chicken? Does it really come from a chicken? And what kind of animal does a strawberry come from?

All that morbidity aside, we've put together the cutest little lobster set. The set includes an embroidered 12 month T-shirt by Rhonda of Closet on Queen Creek and a small pair of knit shorties. The yarn for the shorties is "Prize Fighter" on BFL by ...a time to dye. I really love knitting with BFL. I haven't knit with it for a while, and I really think it's one of my favorite yarns. It's soft and it is on the heavier side of worsted, so it just really makes for a beautiful knit.



Rhonda also embroidered 2 cotton flour sack towels with lobsters and I'm offering them as a free for shipping lottery starting Tuesday. Go enter!

Previews are up for my first anniversary!

I'm really excited to start previewing some of the sets that will be available next week for my 1 year anniversary. I had a lot of fun collaborating with other WAHMs.

I'm really happy with how this set turned out. It's a collaboration with Andrea of Lollipop Tree. This set started with the yarn. I fell in love with this colorway, it's blends of reds, blues, golds, and tans. It's Midnight Spectrum's "Sunrise Over Pike's Peak" colorway. I wanted to stay with the idea of the outdoors and mountains and forests. I found this Japanese fabric online and sent it to Andrea to pair with a T-shirt. She found this perfect red T.

So I'm calling this 2 piece set Woodland Animals. The fabric, T-shirt, and wool all coordinate perfectly.