In Person Meet-Up With Heathersmoo: July 2022 (Part 1)

 This past July, I was fortunate enough to meet face-to-face with Heathersmoo of Livejournal, known for her "Keychain Of The Day" posts. Heather had already made plans to visit some family members in Pittsburgh over the summer, and she asked me ahead of time if I'd mind her stopping by on the way to see me. Now, Pennsylvania is a deceptively long state, so my hometown is technically nowhere near Pittsburgh. The fact that Heather was willing to go out of her way just to meet me in person really means a lot.

In the time leading up to Heather's visit, I got to work gathering up and packing the various keychains and other small items that I'd put aside for Heather for Halloween (her favorite holiday), her birthday, the winter holiday season, etc. I figured that, if I packed everything up neatly and gave it to Heather when I saw her, she would be set for the rest of the year and I wouldn't have to pay rising postage costs on multiple, holiday themed packages.

Heather brought a number of fun goodies with her for me as well. Some of them were things that she had promised to make for me or to set aside for me, while others were a complete surprise.

Like these knitted flag keychains. Heather, remembering a previous blog post that I'd written about my ancestry, handmade this set of small, knitted keychains, based on the national flags of every country that makes up my combined heritage. Since I'm not as familiar with my ancestors' home countries as I probably should be, I had to refer to online images when photographing these, just to make sure that I didn't have any of the flags upside down.

While we're on the subject of knitting, Heather also sent me several emails discussing the possibility of making me a knitted scarf. I got the definite impression that all of her family members, her friends, and anyone else who has been part of her life for long enough eventually receive a handmade scarf. Heather had been emailing me for suggestions of what color schemes and/or patterns I might like. Unfortunately, I had a lot of trouble coming up with a scarf concept that I felt would work for what I had in mind. I wanted something that was Disney inspired, but I didn't want the Disney influence to be too obvious. If I wore the scarf out, I wanted other Disney fans to recognize it as the signature colors of a particular Disney character. But I didn't want strangers 'not-in-the-know' to brand me as a Disney dork. I considered having Heather create a blue and black and yellow pattern based on Dory's coloring and markings from Pixar's Finding Nemo films. But Heather was worried that the end result would look "too collegiate". In the end, I gave my approval to the idea of using Figment colors, which was something that Heather had suggested.

For those of you who might not know, Figment is a character from the Journey Into Imagination attraction at Epcot in Walt Disney World. The little guy has quite the fan following among Disney parks enthusiasts old enough to fondly remember the original, 1983 version of the attraction. There have been a couple, controversial refurbishments to the ride since then, starting in 1999. But Figment is still prominently featured on a lot of official Epcot merchandise.

Heather not only made me a scarf in Figment's signature colors. She also made me a matching hat and coordinating fingerless gloves. The hat is loosely knitted, which is nice because it means that, if I ever make it back to Walt Disney World in Orlando, I can wear the hat at the actual theme parks without worrying about getting too warm in the Florida heat. Also, I've learned from experience that fingerless gloves are extremely useful when browsing outdoor flea markets in autumn. The weather then can be too chilly to leave my hands exposed to the elements, but it's very difficult for me to pick items up to check for maker's marks and/or small areas of damage if I'm wearing full gloves. Fingerless gloves are therefore the perfect middle ground. That's a little shopping tip for any of you who buy keychains secondhand.

In addition to the other knitted goodies, Heather also made me these two knitted keychains. One is in 'Figment' colors, and the other is predominantly purple, my favorite color.

Since Heather is an Orlando local, she picked up this set of Disney-themed, souvenir Orlando Florida keychains for me. It is my personal belief that one can never have too many Disney keychains, and Heather knows this about me.

Heather also knows that I do papercrafts, primarily handmade greeting cards, as well as some scrapbooking. In late April, I emailed Heather to request a favor regarding one of my papercrafting projects. I told her how I'd been personalizing some partially filled Disney parks autograph books that I'd bought secondhand, one of which was a combination autograph book and photo album. Since I wasn't the one who'd originally collected the character autographs, I didn't have any corresponding photos of the characters to put in the album. So I'd been filling the photo sleeves with character postcards instead. I'd asked Heather if she could keep an eye out for a couple of specific character postcards, to help me finish up the project, since she lives much closer to 'Disney territory' than I do.

Although Heather wasn't able to find what I was looking for, she did get me a Disney-themed Florida postcard, thinking I might be able to use it in my papercrafts. I actually have a growing collection of Disney postcards, organized and arranged in standard photo albums. So I'm happy to add this one to my collection. I really like the cheerful colors, and the window frame style grid layout.

To continue on the Disney train of thought, in February of this year, Heather told me about a McDonald's Happy Meal promotion featuring Disney Stitch plush toys that could easily be converted into keychains. I don't really keep up to date with fast food toys anymore, despite there sometimes being interesting keychains in the assortments, so this was the first I'd heard about the Stitch promotion. Heather promised to give me "an extra" that she'd gotten. This plush is number 4 from the assortment, "Sippin' Stitch". There appear to have been 8 in total to collect. Heather even taped a spare split ring to the back of the packaging before giving it to me.

(To be continued...)

(Signed, Treesa)