handmade for the holidays

1. porcelain dishes and trays by kg+ab
2. pattern gift tags by elfrida
3. matchbook jotters by freshly blended

the weather outside is frightful. grey, dark and nothing but sleet, it's days like today that make me awfully grateful to have a home office! so i got myself a cup of tea and started going through my bloglines, hard worker that i am.

it seems like every blog i read has been doing holiday gift guides the past couple of weeks, and i've been pretty pleased to see that many of the things i've bought have made those lists. i like to think that means i have good taste and made wise choices, rather than that i'm just unoriginal.

nicole from freshly blended was kind enough to feature my softies in her list today, along with some other beautiful gift ideas. yay! i completely fell in love with the work of another artist nicole profiled: kg+ab, maker of hand painted, handmade glazed porcelain pieces. i have added some of her work to my wishlist, and even if it's too late for christmas maybe i'll get one of her trays for my birthday next month. or maybe i'll just get one for myself!

nicole also featured some spirograph-patterned gift tags from elfrida, and if they can make it here in time i'm getting the multicoloured ones. they'll beat the neon post-it notes pictured in my post below!

now back to work!

snowy mountains, mushrooms and mistletoe

good morning snowy mountains
one of the best things about vancouver in november is waking up to that morning when the snow line reaches the north shore mountains. the first week or so it melts by noon, but eventually it sticks and that's when it's really winter. people always point to the northwest and say "how can you live with all the rain in the winter? isn't it depressing? i think i'd kill myself." to which i reply "but we have colour, and you have grey and brown, dirty snow and trees covered in burlap." some people get seasonal affective disorder from short winter days. i have seasonal aesthetic disorder. in vancouver the snow's rarely around long enough to get dirty, and the snow that sticks stays up in the mountains where it belongs. everything's green and blue and crisp and clean and shiny. i have the added bonus of all the red of my view across the port. it's very christmassy don't you think? that said, it rained all weekend and i was a shut-in. a very productive shut-in, but a shut in nonetheless. here's what i did:


mushrooms and mistletoe
the past week has been an assembly line of holiday ornaments for the swap, (and gifts for family). i originally wanted to do bunnies because i love bunnies, and to top that off design sponge recently declared that rabbits are the new birds. i told a friend of mine about that and she said that's totally wrong, because mushrooms are the new birds. first i made the wool crochet mushrooms, then i felted some white berries, and then i made crochet alpaca leaves which were embroidered and beaded. and THEN i embroidered and beaded the mushroom tops and used a candy cane striped bamboo blended string to tie it all together. it's a lot of work, and i have a lot more to do.

fiep westendorp

a couple nights ago i was on ichat with a friend who was in the midst of a manic online shopping episode. i told her i'd just been to vancouver's new japanese dollar store supreme where i bought a ton of cute stuff including a spirograph (i've been looking for one for years). she informed me that dutch is the new japanese of cute, and when she sent me a link to the fiep westendorp site i couldn't disagree.

while dutch might be the new japanese of cute, fiep westendorp is far from new. the dutch illustrator who i think would have been great friends with mary blair, began her career in illustration in the '40s. her most famous characters, the mischievous jip and janneke pictured above, are 55 years old but have managed to stay part of dutch popular culture through the decades. like mary blair's work on peter pan and alice in wonderland, and unlike some of disney's other work (sorry mickey, you're out), fiep's characters are timeless.

anyway, said friend was in desperate search of a fiep puzzle for her daughter's upcoming first birthday. no luck on the fiep site, and while there were no puzzles on ebay she did manage to buy an amazing j&j tea set, which i think is quite possibly the coolest tea set any child could ever wish for.

i decided to scour the internet some more today and came across a post about feip westendorp at wee wonderfuls. in the comments i read about the huge j&j line dutch superstore HEMA carries. puzzles! not just puzzles but everything jip and janneke you could imagine, including candies, shampoo, lunch boxes, sparkling ciders, bandages, bubbles, stickers, stamps, dried fruit, juice boxes, sketchbooks - you name it, HEMA has it! AND... they ship internationally.

the holiday craft disaster that is soon to be my living room

lily the pug, originally uploaded by squirrel_of_snooze.

i finished my first custom order this morning, and i think it might be the best thing i've done! when i was asked if i'd be able to do a pug, i knew what i wanted it to look like but wasn't sure that i'd be able to make it exactly how i was imagining it. i picked out some very puggy colours in very soft merino wool, and it turned out even better than i'd hoped! i think there are more pugs and bostons and frenchies in my future...

the next few weeks are going to be busy! yesterday morning i signed up for the holiday ornament swap organized by freshly blended and cake and pie. i just missed the sign up last year and have been looking forward to this ever since seeing the beautiful, amazing, and original decorations everyone made. i rarely get things in the mail so this is something i'm really excited about! take a look at some of the ornaments made for last years swap and you'll see why. now i just need to figure out what i should make...



from top left:
1. liquid paper - home sweet home / 2. emikw - felt ornaments / 3. gasup the zamboni - swaptopus
4. emiee - a pack of monkeys / 5. creative kismet - little birds / 6. fluff life - robin nests / 7. sara - hannah the hen
8. lula louise - hanging strawberry ornament / 9. chat du rouge - pinkville / 10. yukimo - crochet bobbles
11. sarah van wijck - trees / 12. jenn knits a lot - penguins

i also finally pledged to buy (or make) handmade this christmas at buyhandmade.org. it was something i'd been meaning to do the past couple of weeks, but i just have a problem filling out forms and coming up with quotes. what was i supposed to say? "i can't wait!" or "this year it's all handmade for me!" attempts at witty quotes aside, i am looking forward to it, though this means poor hans will have to live with a messy apartment the next few weeks with yarn and batting and god knows what else all over the place. now that i've made it sound so great, would you care to join me? or perhaps you'd like avoid the mess and work in favour of buying something of the crochet persuasion?

pinch punch, first of the month

the beautiful new design sponge is online today. seriously, the new design sponge is beautiful, and grace seems to be updating it hourly! she launched the new site by offering a tour of her brooklyn home, and i am completely in love with that weinrib rug. coupled with the john robshaw quilt? i am so jealous...

and... poppytalk handmade is also online today! jan is acting as the curator of this virtual flea market / craft sale, where each vendor pays for a "booth" where their work is profiled, and then the visitors can buy directly from each artist, designer, or seller of vintage things. it should definitely help to promote their wares, and it's a great business for jan to have started up. in fact, i'm kicking myself for not thinking up that idea myself!! there are really some beautiful things featured, so you should check it out. i love the print featured here by olivia jeffries. you can read her blog sweet as a loon, or just go straight to her etsy shop, restless things. are loons sweet?