Long Overdue Update

But then, that is so typical of me, a chronic procrastinator! o_0

My girls have really caught the crafting bug, so I have spent the summer teaching them all sorts of crafty things (not all related to fiber arts). Spoonflower has been particularly addictive for my oldest daughter Deborah, while Rachel has been experimenting with weaving.

However, the latest fiber craze at our house has been felt making of the wet variety. About two weeks ago we spent the entire day making some felted scarflettes for ourselves to get the feel of the process. The girls desperately want to try to make a felt beret, but I have no merino roving left. I'd buy more, but we'll be leaving on a 4 month RV adventure soon, so ordering online is out of the question to get delivered in time & I don't have the time to go hunting down a local supplier.

Since I still have 3 barrels full of lincoln wool left, I'm sorting, cleaning & carding so that we can have some workable fiber available for one last felting project before our trip. Should have some photos of the scarflettes posted here tomorrow.

I started crocheting some squares to go into blankets for the homeless shelter in Moose Jaw about a month ago & will bring enough yarn along with me on the RV to while the drive away. I think I may have already made up enough for an entire blanket so far, just need to check with Donna, the project co-ordinator to see what sizes the blankets need to be. I'm really happy that my girls contributed some squares of their own too - makes me so happy to see them give back to the community :)

We've had the wettest summer ever here & a curiously warm autumn (for the prairies), but the cold weather is just around the corner - I can't wait to go on our trip and head to warmer climes.... and hopefully visit a few yarn shops along the way! :D

Just An Update

Just after making my last post our family got knocked down by a very nasty flu bug that's been hard to shake. With 6 kids & both parents sick at once, it actually wasn't too bad - everybody pretty much stayed in bed & slurped up soup & tea the whole time.

Now that we're all better, I'm going at 90 km/hr trying to get caught up on a lot of projects that got neglected during that time. I've still got until the end of the week to get my crochet pattern for the challenge done. I'm thinking that I might just be a bit late though, as I have a massive cook off that I have to do tonight with the kids in preparation for a 4-H fundraiser that they are participating in tomorrow. Somehow, I always seem to get in over my head with these kinds of things - LOL!

There's also a few vintage crochet patterns that I'm in the middle of making into digital files for sale at the Wee Designs site and my Etsy store. I have so many patterns in my home, it's unbelievable - serious PAS (Pattern Acquisition Syndrome) - and to think, I gave away half of my collection 5 years ago, and I'm back to the same amount again already! Another project I'm doing with vintage is taking some older public domain images (such as botanical sketches, book plates & Japanese prints) and making them into derivative works such as cross stitch charts & knitting graphs.

The Wee Designs site has been updated to function a bit better, but I'm still needing to figure out how to have a reliable way to sell both physical items and digital items on the site with the same platform. Currently, I'm using Mal's E as my shopping cart - it works great with sending the files to the buyer's email, but ideally I'd like to have the download link available to the customers as soon as they pay right on the sight. So far, I've only looked into E-Junkie as an alternative, but I think that maybe I can find better if I keep looking around. In the meantime, I'm selling the physical items on Etsy & now my Bonanzle store too (see link on the right).

There should be a few cross stitch charts coming to the site over the next few weeks as well - I'm just about finished one that my daughter Deborah & I collaborated on. She had painted a cute little ducking in watercolors that I wanted to capture permanently, so with her permission, I scanned it in & interpreted it for needlework. Meanwhile, she is trying her hand out with the cross stitch software again and may be having her first original chart up in the Etsy store within the next 2 weeks. Way to go Deborah! :)

When the Wheels Start Spinning In My Head

It's been fabulously cold for the beginning of January - fabulous because it meant that I was able to play around with lots of wool :)

I have 4 barrels full of wool that I've been slowly working through. After I spent the time cleaning it & dying it with kool-aid last summer, I had a real conundrum of whether or not to sell it or keep it for myself....

Amazing what a packet of Kool-aid can do -
better to go in my wool than the children's tummies!

Then I made the mistake of window shopping on Etsy in autumn & discovered that I really wanted to learn how to needle felt. As a result, I bought a wonderful birthday present for myself - a needle felting kit that had everything needed to get started & a pair of hand carders from Flights of Whimzy...

My stash of goodies from Flights of Whimsy

So even though I had really limited time to work on any felting with the crochet & knitting projects I already had on the go, I still managed to squeak in some time to play with the felting needles with my own wool...

Started off with a few cookie cutter projects, now working on my first miniature teddy-mouse

Obviously this intimate working with wool has been like a gateway drug to me - before i only used to buy my fiber from the store, but with Larry supplying me such a massive load to work with, it has opened up a whole new world for me. So while I was knitting him a pair of mitts with this crazy thick bulky weight wool that another person had spun up for him,

Toasty, but uninspiring

...the wheels started spinning in my head - I should try to spin this stuff! But there's a problem, I don't have the $ or friendly neighbourhood spinner nearby to get access to a spinning wheel. That's where I just love the internet - when in doubt, search for help on Google :)

I thought that what what be a good way to start, rather than the typical drop spindle, would be to make my own box charkha - the reasoning behind this was that I knew that it was a very portable set-up compared to making a spinning wheel, and that it would be speedier than the drop spindle. How surprising to find that I could make a charka (though larger than a cigar box one) out of scrap cardboard! You just have to see this cool one that Rabbit Geek put together here.

Even better was that on his site, he had links to all sorts of DIY spinning machines - whether they be the traditional wheel, spindles, a Mayan spinner, or a hunk of wood with a screw hook in it. Wait a minute - you can spin with just a piece of wood with a screw hook stuck in it? This just boggled my mind, as we always have wood scraps and various hardware bits around the house here, with my odest son's interest in woodworking. So sure enough, I found what I needed to make a somewhat primitive (and affordable) spinning tool:

A 3" x 4" scrap of wood, a screw in hook, some sanding & I was set to spin!

I've never spun before in my life, so i wasn't sure what to expect with my results, but my lil' chunk of wood produced a lovely little bit of homespun wool! How fabulous is that?

Lovely, gourmet wool!

What a wonderful way to start my year - think that there will be more spinning to come in my near future :)

A Happy Ending to the Year :)

As per usual, I have let my blogging lay aside too long. I could get all remorseful about it, but quite truthfully, I just didn't have the desire to put in the time to keep up with it. That's where I love Twitter - I can just fill in those 140 characters & be done with it when I have the time to put into it - blogs are just so much more daunting to me.

However, I still hope to make a post here at least twice a week (at least that's my New Year's goal), but I won't beat myself up over it if I don't. I'm thinking that if I give an update at least once a month it'll still be a vast improvement over what I've been doing (or not doing) so far.

So a recap:
Tote Bag - still haven't had time to put towards it, but we've just entered into winter break for our home school, so expect to get it done during this time.

Larry's wool socks - finished last month. Wish I had taken a picture of them, they were enormous & weighed in at 1lb each! His toes will be nice & toasty when he walks out to the barn. My DH liked them too & so now I have to make him a pair. I've also finished off a pair of crochet mitts for Larry to wear & have yet to make a pair for his partner, Betty.

Socks for Jen - unfortunately, Jen's health deteriorated & her Mom Christina decided they needed to move back to Ontario, so they never got started. I do have plans to crochet a shall or lapghan for Jen to send for her birthday.

New stuff:
I've been experimenting with making different wristlet & fingerless glove patterns, which I was hoping to put into my Etsy store before the holiday season, but after 10 attempts they still aren't turning out the way I envisioned them. Probably best to lay them aside for a week before I start to stress out over them!

We've been doing some major cleaning & de-cluttering around the house as we've moved the girls into their own separate bedrooms and put all the boys into the biggest room. Spent a lot of time sewing new curtains for all of the rooms (& I'll state it again, I'm terrible at sewing), but these have turned out half decent. DH made the boys a very cool bunk bed - it is 3 bunks high and has another bunk coming out at right angles from the second one (like an L).

The great thing about the room change is that is has opened up another room for us which we will be using as an office, craft & guest room. I'm so happy to regain some of my sanity - I needed a place to work on projects without the little guys trying to get into things all the time. And then, as if I wasn't in my glory as it was, I stumbled across some of my own patterns that I thought I'd lost during our de-cluttering, so I'll be checking them for errors & digitizing them into pdfs. What a wonderful way to end the year :)

Many blessings to you & yours and have a Happy New Year! :)

Will Work For Eggs

I'm not getting anywhere with my tote bag - other people's priorities have put mine on the back burner for now. Things like getting my DH's passport arranged for when he makes his trip to Interbike later this month, sleep-overs & pool parties for the kids, unexpected company, getting ready for the new school year & the like. This is not a complaint, just a fact of life with me - my plans often get changed & I just learn to go with the flow, knowing that I do eventually get to finish off most of my projects in winter, when everything slows down.

I am still doing needlework on the side - just not stuff for my own personal pleasure at the moment. Now that I've test driven my circular bamboo knitting needles, I've got two orders from my shepherd friend Larry - a pair of socks for him & another pair for his partner, Betty. I'm using super chunky sized black wool, spun from his own herd. They are going to be very toasty when worn, but that is exactly what is needed for our winters here, where it's typically sitting at -20º Celsius throughout most of January & February, sometimes even dropping to -40º! I don't have any sock patterns that call for this weight of wool, & Larry has a stocky build, so I couldn't just adapt from another pattern - this will all be "make it up as I go" from his measurements. In exchange, I've been getting farm fresh eggs delivered to my door every couple of weeks. If ever I should become homeless, I can just see me sitting on the curb with a sign like "Will Knit for Eggs" or "Will Crochet for Milk".

I need Larry to come over & do fittings for his socks ever week, which has brought about another turn of events. I was coming home from the end of the season party at the local pool with my toddler when I saw his jeep parked outside the cafe across the street from my house. I figure I'd go in & let him know that when he was done eating that he could come over for a fitting, as the timing would be good for me then. The owner of the cafe, Christina, overheard this & asked "You knit socks? Jennifer (her youngest daughter) really needs some hand knit socks!" I replied that I would be happy to as long as she provided the wool. She agreed to this & still wants to pay me something on top for my labour - I'm kind of hoping it will mean a couple of free salmon burgers down the road :)

Updates on the Tote & Other Things

Now I know why I'm a fan of needlework, & not a sewing - I totally cut out the pieces for my tote bag wrong. You would think that with the paper pattern being just squares, that there wouldn't be too much that could go wrong.

Unless you're me.

Somehow I missed the part on the instructions that says that you are to lay the pattern on the fold of the fabric. Turns out that if you fail to do that, you end up with two squares instead of one long rectangle, which apparently you need for the bottom of the tote to be strong. I'm thinking I just may work with it though, by cutting another square the same size in a contrasting fabric, then sewing all three together into an even longer rectangle than what is in the original pattern & having the seam end up in the middle of the tote instead of the bottom. Hopefully this will give a pleasing wide stripe. If not, well, at least it was made from discarded jeans, & not new fabric.

Just read with amusement a post about the K-Tel Knitter (I remember it being called the Looper when I had it), from Noreen Crone-Findlay here. I was quite amazed at how she figured out how to make the loops when she didn't have the instructions included with it. I remember when I played around with the knitter about 10 years ago, how complicated it was to make the stitches, & thinking "Why would anybody want to spend 2 minutes making one lousy looking stitch? Arghhhh!" It stayed within my mind as the bane of the needlework world ever since. Yes, Noreen, it is a pig's ear - & a dirty one at that!

We still have to get things sorted out with Sasktel at Dan's business, but on my end of things, I'll be going back to using Skype. Dan also brought me home a cell phone for my own use, so that I have something for emergencies & when the power goes out. I've never been a big fan of cells, mainly because I have partial hearing damage (unsolicited advice to teens - this is a direct result of me blasting music in my ears constantly with my walkman for 5 years straight - mp3 players & ipods will do the same thing too) which has prevented me from being able to hear the person on the other end of most models, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a phone. Anyway, the cell DH got for me has a decent volume control & the sound is very clear - I could actually hear him when I tested it - Yippee! I only have a calling plan for now, but think I'll be upgrading to the data plan in the near future, so that I can post pics & check prices on Ebay when I'm at the thrift stores.

In the mean time, I've started crocheting a pair of ornamental baby booties in thread. I'm really liking the pattern so far - it's from a booklet from Annie's Crochet Newsletter called Sweet Sentiments. If I'm happy with the finished results, I'll probably put a few on consignment in the local gift shop here - they are always looking for new things, and they've been sadly lacking in baby shower items for some time now - hopefully I can fill in that need. I've also rediesgned the graphics for some of the crafting CDs that I sell through my Ebay & Etsy store - I think they look a lot more professional now & hope that will spark some more sales for me. I really must get some more vintage patterns scanned into ebooks & deal with all that raw wool sitting in barrels in my house too.

And if I'm not busy enough, I'm going to become a Usborne Books direct seller. I had been buying the books for awhile for my children to supplement their home school curriculum. It just made sense that now that I have 4 children being home schooled this year, & with the volume of books I purchase (the kids & I are all major bibliophiles), that I should at the very least get a consistant discount on my purchases. I just have to wait for them to approve my application - it's only been since Friday that I faxed the forms, but I'm already feeling impatient - I wanna buy some books right now :)

On to other things & Cro-tatting

The contest still didn't turn out as well as I had hoped for - I only had one entrant & hundreds of spam messages. Phooey! I'm thinking that I'd be better off doing a contest in winter, when people are cocooning at home & more likely to be checking out other blogs that they don't normally go to.

I've also realized that I'm a terrible blogger - I've had this blog for nearly a year, and I've only made 22 posts - including this one. My friend Kelly, at Crazy Dog Farm , has only been blogging for 3 weeks & has already made 17 posts. I have post envy!

So it's time to get on with it and start making some posts!

Recently I've picked up cro-tatting again. In case you've never heard of it before, cro-tatting is a way of making lace that looks like tatting, but using a special elongated crochet hook instead. A really good site to learn the basics of cro-tatting from is MaryM's. Besides having a great tutorial here, she also has a lot of sweet & wonderful original cro-tat patterns. The clincher is though, that it is very difficult to find other cro-tatting patterns. Annie's Attic no longer carries cro-tatting books, and they were really the ones to set the trend. Of course, you can still find some pattern booklets available on Ebay, but if you're like me, you can never have too many patterns, so what to do, what to do?

With a little bit of experimenting , you'll find that you can convert most shuttle tatting patterns to cro-tatting - it just takes a little bit of a work around. Where in shuttle tatting you can just make a tatted chain, with cro-tat you will have to make some chain stitches & then go back over the chain with enough single crochets to match the amount in the pattern. At times this may require that you make your rings first, then do a second row/round to make your cro-tat chains.

This week, I'll be working on some patterns from an Annie's Attic book called Charming Boudoir, My first project is going to be the towel edging, which I'm going to do in a dark pink. I'm thinking that I'm going to sew it on as an edging onto an upcycled denim tote that I'm going to be making. My scanner has been giving me grief again, so I'll have to ask my daughter, Deborah, if she'll take some pics when it is done. If the summer weather stays as cruddy as it has been, that should be tomorrow!

Contest Extension - New Date, July 31st

Well, I guess I either didn't do things right, or I didn't do things right with my contest - I didn't even get one person respond to it with an entry. I checked to make sure that my email address on my profile page is working. Since that wasn't the problem, I'm going to guess that the two main reasons were that

1) I didn't leave enough time for people to enter

2) I just didn't "plug" my contest enough or in the right places.

If that weren't trouble enough, my ISP had a major service shutdown over the last 10 days, due to something wrong going on with their wireless tower. As I'm located in a rural village, you can be sure that it took forever to get a repairman out to fix things. Needless to say, I was a little bit upset!

So, I'm going to give the contest another go & see if I can entice you all a bit more :) They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some pics of what you would win:

Learn To Crochet Quickly & Easily

If you've always wanted to learn how to crochet, then you'll find this informative manual to be right up your alley

Learn To Knit & Crochet

A good beginner's guide to get started on your knitting journey. Note from me: It has crochet too, though the instructions for crochet are not as good as in the Learn To Crochet Book above (IMHO)

Quick Tricks In Crochet

Consists of 30 vintage crochet patterns that are in the public domain. These projects make great gifts for loved ones and great selling items at your next craft show or bazaar.

Irish Crochet & How To Make It

Updated format of Priscilla Irish Crochet Book No. 1, published in 1912. This book is in the public domain, but it is very rare to find an original copy of it in good condition for less than $60. Instructions are so easy to understand that anyone can master these techniques, even if they have never crocheted a single stitch!

The Art of Manufacturing Soaps & Candles

This book is a digitally remastered version of a soap & candle making book from the 1850's. This book is in the public domain, but it is very rare to find an original copy of it in good condition for less than $80. Learn about the history of soap and candle making, view illustrations of the top machines used in the late 1800's for making homemade soaps and candles, and relive a part of history as you read information shared by some of the leading soap and candle manufacturing experts of the mid 1800's!

504 Bath And Beauty Recipes

Make unique homemade bath & beauty products for yourself or for others! What a money-saver for your next gift-giving occasion. Whip up some of these recipes, put them into decorated jars and voila! You have an awesome, thoughtful gift! You could even start your own homemade bath products business! There's soaps, hand creams, bath salts, lotions, fizzies, scrubs, masks, massage oils, facials, powders and more! This e-book includes 198 pages/504 relaxing bath and beauty recipes.

Profitable Craft Series (5 ebooks in all)

Volume one covers pricing your products for maximum profits, and how to stock your booths for maximum sales.

Volume two covers selling your products on consignment and the proper way to submit your products for publications in magazines.

Volume three covers designing your own products, and discusses techniques you can use with any type of craft from crochet to scrapbooks.

Volume four covers catalog creation and sales, as well as the proper way to recruit others to sell your items for you so that you can create, while they do the selling.

Volume five covers many different aspects of labeling and packaging your products attractively. Making sure your completed products are pleasing to look upon is one important factor that most overlook although it's one that should never be ignored.

Turning Their Trash Into Your Profits

Even if you are not into making arts and crafts, you can still profit in this market and this special report shows you how!

If you can"t paint, sew, crochet, knit or cross-stitch, that's perfectly ok, you can still make money by selling original handcrafted arts and crafts related items without sewing a single stitch or painting a single brush stroke.

475 Gift Basket Ideas

Store-bought Gift Baskets cost an average of $40. And your family and friends may not be entirely satisfied with what they get. With the detailed ideas in this e-book, you will be able to make your own customized gift baskets for your family and friends for as low as $5!! This ebook features tons of gift ideas spread over 105 pages. Included are ideas with detailed instructions and supplies lists for making your own gift baskets for every person on your gift list. Also included are 'Survival Kits' with witty sayings for each item that goes in the kit, ideas for Holiday Poops, Just for Fun gifts, Gift Basket making tips, Candy Gram gifts etc.

You also get the following e-book titles:

Fun Craft Projects - has a lot of general crafts for all ages

Scoobidou® Mega Guide - crafts you can make with the plastic lacing that is popular with Girl Guides & Boy Scouts

The Complete Guide to Wood Finishing

101 Scrapbooking Tips

Scrapbook Pro

30 Lip Balm Recipes

How To Make Your Own Perfume

I think you'll find that these e-books provide a great foundation for starting up a home-based business, or an endless stream of gift-giving ideas that are sure to please anybody on your list!

And if that's not all, I'm giving you some bonus patterns & recipes that aren't mentioned in this giveaway, so this compilation is sure to please you too!

I hope that I've enticed you enough to take a chance to win - just follow the directions from the previous post on how to enter the Mega Craft Collection Giveaway, substituting the new closing date of July 31st, with the drawing for the CDs being made on August 2nd. Please be sure to let any friends that you know who might be interested in winning one of these CDs, so that they can have a chance to win too!

Thanks for looking :)

Mega Craft Collection CD Giveaway

As promised, here's the contest to celebrate my first 100 followers on Twitter!

I'm going to giveaway 5 of my Mega Craft Collection CDs. On each CD is a compilation of craft ebooks that I have bought the resale rights to over the past 3 years - There are about 25+ ebooks in all. Some of the topics are crochet, knitting, scrap booking, wood finishing, kids crafts, soap & candle making, gift basket ideas and how to start up a profitable craft business.

I've also thrown in some extra patterns from the public domain & of my own design (these will be crochet, knitting & cross stitch patterns, as my focus here is on needlework). All of the ebooks & patterns are in PDF format, so you can read them on both Windows & Mac operating systems.

This CD is easily a $20 value - and you can have one of 5 that I'm giving away for FREE if you enter my contest - and when I say free, that means that you are not signing up for a newsletter, I'm not collecting your email to spam you, and I pay the shipping to send it to you. Pretty good deal, eh?

So here's how you enter:

Send an email to me by clicking on my profile, then on the email link.

Put "Mega Craft Collection CD Giveaway" in the subject line.

Tell me what the biggest craft item you ever made was - do try to keep it short though, as I'm just making you do this to reduce spammers & have fun - I'm not grading your story composition :)

Be sure to leave an email address in the body of the message where I can reach you if you win - I'd sure be sad for you to have to forfeit your prize because you didn't get my email or it bounced back.

All entries will be put on a slip of scrap paper, thrown into my black eco-friendly grocery bag & drawn at random by my children. The contest opens today, Wednesday, June 17th, and closes at midnight (in my timezone - CST) on June 27th. The draw will take place sometime on June 28th, winners will be sent their first notice that day.

Privacy Policy: I will collect your emails only for the purpose of this contest - I will not give or sell your information to anybody else, & I won't keep your emails on file after the contest ends either - I only need them to notify the winners.

All the best to all participants, & happy crafting! :)

First FO in a long time...

...and I finished it in less than an hour! It wasn't much of a project - just a little something to keep my youngest son busy.

Nathan, for reasons unknown to genetic scientists, loves cleaning around the house. He is only one year of age, and has a particular interest in stealing the mop and swishing it all over the kitchen floor. This would normally be encouraged, because nobody else here in our house really wants to take up this task, but he's a little dangerous with it - often clobbering unsuspecting victims in the back of their heads with the handle when they are seated at the dinner table.

So I created his own personal mop from an old chair leg (sawed off & sand-papered smooth) and crocheted a nice little mop head onto it from some polyester novelty yarn that I had hiding in my closet.

The polyester yarn is horrible to work with on it's own, so I mixed it with some spare Bernat Handcrafter's cotton to stabilize it.

I started by crocheting a chain around the knob and forming it into a ring. (Hand modeled by my lovely DD Deborah)


Next, it's just a matter of crocheting a long chain and slip stitching back into the base of the ring. I made chains of 30 stitches in length.

Halfway there

Ring is now filled, just flip over and...

....Nathan's mini mop is ready to go.

The smile on his face says it all :)