The Boy was so sweet for Christmas – and thoughtful. He heard me and another girl talking about some knitting bag in Anthropologie a few weeks ago, remembered, and then went to kpixie and picked out this way cool knitting bag for me!

He doesn’t know (and I don’t think he checks my blog), but the knitting right there is Squarey from Jess Hutch’s booklet. I was hoping to give him the pillow as a Christmas present. Now I’m hoping maybe I’ll have it done for the last night of Channukah.

He also gave me the new Alterknits book. Besides the fact that it has cool patterns, the book is so nicely done. I love the binding.

I finished the robot from Jess Hutch’s booklet last week.
Upon arrival, he was nice enough to clear the snow from the lights!

Baby Girl chose three colors so I altered the color sequence a little. The intarsia is really tragic, but I fixed it and now only the inside of the robot knows any better. There are some other issues and I realize that I still have a lot to learn.

I think it’s pretty cute though and he’s already getting snuggles!

There is a fabulous website called etsy.com. It’s like the craft version of eBay. I am excited to announce that café crafty has a store there with books and pillows. Check it out and pass it on to your friends!

…while I’m still knitting all the same things here’s the fabulous Oilily bag The Boy bought me for a Thanksgiving Day present. Yea!

Happy Holidays!

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend – with snowboarding and shopping and eating and lights and concerts on the mountain. So much fun!

I did a little knitting, but mostly I made books.

This weekend I have two holiday shows so I have to make enough inventory to cover both. I’ve got 45 books ready to go and about 24 small bingo books in process – oy! Only a few more nights left to make books…

Right now I have three knitting projects in the works…

I have half a bunny from a design by Kate Gilbert. I ran out of yarn though and need to get back to Michael’s (the closest one is 2 1/2 hours away).

I swatched and started the Girlfriend’s Swing Coat Sweater from Wendy at Knit & Tonic. I realized that it was way too stiff though – undid the whole thing and just finished a swatch on bigger needles.

And most likely to finish next – I have a robot from Jess Hutchison’s fabulous new booklet. Jess knits up most of her creatures in Lamb’s Pride worsted. This past summer I knit Baby Girl a dog from Lamb’s Pride and it’s really great for animals. I got the pattern from a book on kids knits (I’ll have to figure out which one) – in the end I think it really looks more like an aardvark.

Just the other night I finished the messenger bag from Stitch ‘n Bitch Nation. I altered the pattern a fair amount so that it doesn’t really look much like the bag in the picture (it was made from the pattern for the orange bag). I wanted the bag to be able to hold something the size of a magazine so I made the bag taller. The pattern called for a zipper – I knew I would never actually use the zipper so I made a flap.

The Boy was fabulous enough to take a bunch of photos as I was close to finishing. I’ve been working on this bag forever. And as I was finishing the bag I was hating it! It was so big and floppy and gross. I hadn’t done a felt swatch (or ever felted before) so I couldn’t imagine what it would look like in the end.

It was around 10:30pm when I finished sewing up the sides. I hated the bag so much at that moment that I decided I had to felt it right then to see if it would help.
I ran it in my washing machine in a zipped up pillow cover. I put it through the pre-wash cycle three times (looking at it between each one) and in the end – I love the bag! It really shaped up. It’s just the perfect size, the edges really squared off and the stitches really disappeared in the felting. I couldn’t be happier with it. I’ve received a bunch of complements at work and I’ve worn it everyday.

So in the summer I have a booth at the local Farmer’s Market with a few friends. That’s a picture of me and family in the booth last summer. We made a few changes this summer, but that’s the basic idea.

The first two summers I sold handmade journals and cards. This summer I added pillows.

For the holidays last year The Boy got me the all eBay all the time cool craft presents – a gocco printer, old letters, photographs, foreign money etc… I was in love with some of the old pictures and really wanted to use them. So I transferred them onto fabric and made pillows with them. I thought some people might want those pillows and then I had cards to hand out if you wanted to customize the pillows with your own pictures.

I’m starting a blog – because I can’t read enough knitting, crafting blogs right now and I feel like I’m missing something…