SALE in My Etsy Shop

I'm having a small end of the year clearance sale on felted clutches and pouches in my Etsy shop. I'm clearing out these lines to make room for new ones. Including several different kinds of fingerless gloves.




I also neglected to ever mention how the Flint Handmade Holiday Craft Market went after posting about my panic. I had more than enough stuff--as usual I overdid it. But at least now I have plenty of stock. I had a lovely time at the show. Everyone was super nice and friendly and I sold well enough to make it completely worth my time. I will definitely make it a point to try to get into Flint Handmade events in the future.

New Facebook Fan Page

I now have a Facebook fan page. Whoo hoo! It's very new and I'm still not quite sure what I'm doing, but if you are on Facebook and would like to be kept up to date on sales in my shop and new designs I'm working on, please become a fan.

On the new designs front, I now have felted bowls available in my shop. Perfect to put on your nightstand for storing all the little things in your pockets at the end of the day.

Craft Show Panic

The Flint Handmade Holiday Craft Market is this Saturday so I am having my usual last minute panic about not having enough ready. Which is obviously why I am still up and posting rather than working on more stuff. I don't know if anyone local reads this blog, but if you're near Flint, MI on Saturday between 10 and 4, please stop in and say hi. I will be in the Crim Fitness Foundation near the back. More details are on the flyer I posted a few weeks ago.

I am always intensely curious about what becomes of the supplies I make, so I always ask people who buy supplies from me to send pictures of the things they use them for. In October (and yes, I am just now remembering to post about it), I received a lovely message from Tracy--who bought the beads below--asking if she could mention my shop when posting about the adorable cupcake pincushions she made on her blog. Thanks again, Tracy for letting me see my beads out in the world.

Baby Blanket Addition

I left out an important baby blanket update in my last post. Last year I made a baby blanket for my friends' son, Wyatt. I guess Wyatt has become quite fond of lying under it. And he sure takes a cute picture.

Flint Handmade Holiday Craft Market

For anyone who may be in the area, I will be a vendor at the Flint Handmade Holiday Craft Market on December 5th. I imagine I will be mentioning it again, but thought I'd post this now since I just got the flyer.

(And look at me posting two days in a row.)

Baby Blanket Catch-Up

It's been a while since I've posted regularly, so I'm going to try to remedy that by doing a series of posts about things I've missed posting about. This post's theme: baby/child blankets.

A few years back (before I had a blog), I made Bella, the daughter of friends, a blanket as a gift for her birth. I posted about her love for the blanket two years ago after her first birthday party. I saw Bella and her brother, Iain, over the summer several months before her third birthday. Once she understood that I made her Didi (her name for the blanket I made), she informed me that she needed a "pink Didi" for her birthday. Of course I had to do it after that, so I bought the most godawful shade of bubblegum pink yarn and made a blanket. Which she loved.


I crocheted it from a stitch pattern from A Treasury of Crochet Patterns by Liz Blackwell. I imagine I would have been happier with it had the color not made my eyes bleed while working with it. But it was what Bella wanted, so I guess all is well.

Last weekend I went to a baby shower for Anna, who I used to babysit when she was a baby. And wow, that made me feel old. I made another round ripple--my third. While I love the way these blankets come out, I am getting a bit sick of making them. But it did come out well. And quite speedy to make.

Back From Vacation

(Bet you didn't even know I was gone.)

I've been going to the Outer Banks of North Carolina on vacation pretty much every year since I was in elementary school. I originally went with my family and when I got older, I started going with my friends. Chris and I were there last week. We did pretty much nothing the entire week--it was lovely. I read seven books.

I also started, and nearly finished, my first sock. I used a pattern (more of a formula, actually) from the book Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch. I've been wanting to make something for myself made from my yarn in the colorway Annabel Lee because it's pretty much my favorite--unfortunately the sock doesn't fit me. Still it's really exciting to make socks and easier than I expected. (The color is not super accurate in the photo below.)

Prototype Wrap Design

I've been working on this wrap/shawl design for a bit now and I think I've almost got it the way I want it.


Of course, it's done in a cotton blend yarn since I intended it for spring, but at least I'll have it ready for then. Now to get to work on one for fall that I'll probably have ready just in time for spring. The one in the photo doesn't hang quite right, but I believe the next one will. It's also a bit larger.

And I don't believe you've met my mannequin, Helena, yet. (Her name is a morbid joke based on the movie Boxing Helena, which I didn't even like, but once I thought of the name, it just stuck.) I got her last year on Ebay and I really don't know how I took any pictures without her. I do think she needs something to wear if I'm going to show her whole torso--the black ribbon around her waist looks a bit funny as is.

The Truth is Out There

I made this potholder for a friend's birthday and gave it to him with the first season of the X-Files, a bag of sunflower seeds and a funny little glow-in-the-dark alien from a vending machine. (I really like theme presents.)


I'm pretty proud of it since I designed it myself--and it was my first time doing a chart for anything I've designed. Plus I think he's pretty cute.

Around the House

This is what I found in my garage the other day:


He was a cute little guy. I'm afraid I may have scared him off permanently with all the moving around trying to take a decent picture I did. I hope not--I love snakes.

We planted a very small garden this year since it's our first year here and we have so many other things that need to be done. Everything was going quite well (even with our lack of proper care) until I discovered the tomato and cucumber plants were being eaten.


We figure it must be deer or groundhogs. I don't know if we'll get any cucumbers now since the entire plants are pretty much gone. Which is unfortunate.

We were also excited to discover that we have black raspberries and a kind of sad mulberry tree growing in our yard.




(We also have a pear and, I think, an apple tree, but since we had no idea what they were, they didn't get the care they needed in the spring. Hopefully we can do better next year.) Now I'm imagining all kinds of jam, but I have a feeling I won't get around to it. I guess there's always next year. (Or the year after that.)

New Blog Layout

If there is anyone still reading this, you may have noticed that I changed my blog layout. I now have three columns instead of two--yay! I also changed the colors and a few other little things. I have thinking about doing this for a while and finally decided to just go for it. I definitely like the three columns, but I'm not sure about the colors yet--maybe I just have to get used to it.

I also think I've decided to mix it up a little on the blog and not only post about crafty things. I may post about fixing up our house (which I suppose is crafty) and maybe once in a while about books or movies or other interests. Up until now I've kept it pretty strictly about the crafting because this is a business blog after all, but I'm beginning to feel like the whole blog is just a list of projects I've finished--which I think makes for a boring blog. I'm not going to start posting all of the details of my life so don't worry about that--maybe just a little more about me that isn't craft related. I guess we will see what happens.

Moving and Circular Flower Hairpins

So I guess I'm not doing very well with blogging. We moved into the new house in mid-May and it is taking up tons of my time right now. Which means all of my crafty endeavors are on the back burner to an extent. But it should get better. I hope.

Recently I started making a new flower hairpin design. They are made out of felt that is made by hand instead of being crocheted and then felted in the washing machine. I love making them and I think they are turning out pretty cute.


I made all of these before the move but I'm planning to make some more very shortly. Several of these are already available in my shop and more will be available soon.

An Adorable Baby (and Some Other Stuff)

My friends Sarah and Kim have a new daughter, Maia, who was born in November. So I got to make fun baby gifts. And since I haven't been around to show you anything, I need to catch up.


This is Maia's blanket. I crocheted it with Lion Brand Cotton Ease and it is just random stripes of single, half double or double crochet. Normally I don't like to make things that change color so often, but I thought that it would be fine because I didn't have to weave in the ends since I was just making fringe from them. I realized the stupidity of that as I was rushing to finish the fringe before the baby shower.


I also crocheted these booties from my hand dyed sock yarn (in Collective and Tomorrow Wendy). I used a pattern from Sylver Designs on Etsy called Little Button Loafers. Of course I didn't do a gauge swatch and the booties only fit Maia for about a second. They came out pretty cute, though.


And I saved the best for last. Not the best project, but clearly the best picture--what a doll. (And I can't take credit for the picture--Sarah and Kim sent it to me.) I crocheted the hat out of the same yarn as the booties, but I kinda winged the pattern. Which was obviously a mistake because it's still too big on Maia at three months. But she's so cute that it doesn't really matter.

Back Again

Well, I've been gone for a while. We've been looking for a house since last summer and it felt like I really had no time for much of anything else. I didn't intend to stop blogging, but when I stopped, it was so easy to continue not doing it. But we now have a closing date (which is the third one, I believe, so it may change again) of March 23rd. So I am going to attempt to start blogging again and we shall see how it goes.

I'm in love with the new house, but there's much we want to do to it (and the yard), so I'm sure I'll be posting plenty more about it over time.