holiday ornament swap, group 4

holiday ornament swap, group 4:
1. swap packs by nicole, freshly blended / 2. brown flowers by jennifer, swallowfield / 3. elizabeth dye
4. mattie le oobee by leslie, onegirl designwrks / 5. wood walnut evergreen tree from janet, three potato four
6. dachshund combat by caitlin keegan / 7. jessica williams / 8. shoulder bag by emma, showpony / 9. ulrika nilsson

during last week's holiday ornament swap sign up leslie and i decided to make an extra ornament to send to each other. what are the odds that of the 600+ taking part in the swap, we'd wind up in the same group? pretty slim, but it happened. when i got the list of people in my swap group i did a little dance. they'll be glad to know that i've almost figured out what to make them.

i read the news today, oh boy

toys that won't send your children to hospital:
1. squirrel pull toy by matsutaki / 2. elephant by tiny warbler / 3. peony le oobee by one girl
4. choco bunny by girl savage / 5. polly by hop skip jump / 6. felt play food by katie made goods
7. kokeshi doll by run amok / 8. alba the bunny by squirrel of snooze / 9. perry the penguin by cynic the lamb

i leave CBC newsworld on in the background while i work, and the headlines today have been fantastic. first off, that tetrapod girl survived having her parasitic vestigial twin limbs removed after a surgery that took a full day less than anticipated. when i'd first heard about the story i couldn't imagine putting my child through a 48 hour surgery that had a 75% chance of mortality. can you imagine being born with 8 limbs in india of all places? her neighbouring villagers actually believed she was the reincarnated deity of wealth, but strangely were still hoping to sell her to the circus. hopefully this little girl will have a chance at a normal life now. isn't it amazing what modern medicine is capable of?

next up, the canadian dollar hit $1.10 USD today. that's nuts! should i believe the projections that it will go as high as $1.25 and get my paypal money out while i can, or should i leave it in hock until it eventually comes back down? i might have to wait until bush leaves the white house for that to happen. what a drag!

but the real story that blew me away is just one more compelling reason to buy handmade this christmas. i didn't think it would be possible to trump leaded paint in toys, but china managed to do it! aqua dots (or bindeez in australia) have been pulled off the market after being found to contain GHB. that's right, china is trying to date rape the children of the world. so this holiday season, buy handmade, because when you buy from a crafter you get linen and merino, not heavy metals and hallucinogens.

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?

august again

i've always liked the name august. i imagine an august would be steady, thoughtful, contemplative and kind. when i finished this bunny and thought to myself "and what will i name you?" his sleepy face, and muted colours said "august." and so here is august the bunny, a very soft rabbit made with wool, mohair, alpaca, and linen blends. i've just added him to my etsy shop. i love this colour combination so much i'm going to get started on a grey kitten right now.

last night hans and i went to a party at his mother's house. it was a great excuse for me to splurge on a new black dress. i found the most perfect silk cacharel cocktail dress, and i would wear it every day if i could. there's something to be said about clothing so beautifully made, of such gorgeous fabrics. i'm not sure what specifically that something is, but it sure looks and feels good! i am in the middle of a lazy and sleepy sunday, which is just as well because it's cold out and my throat is sore from talking over music last night. i'm not complaining because it's the perfect excuse to make soup, and cozy up on the sofa with this kitten that needs to be made.

thrifted finds

i had such a busy weekend that i didn't get a chance to do much thrifting, and if you noticed the photo of my very sad, stark, and empty white hutch in the post below, you'll understand why this is a priority. so when i had a bit of an afternoon lull yesterday, i snuck out to the two closest charity shops. i didn't find anything for my bare cabinet, but i did find the balls of yarn pictured above. there are two alpaca-mohair blends, and I think the camel brown yarn is linen with some alpaca. they're so soft and they coordinate so well together that i started another little rabbit. you can see its head and ears and the beginning of its body above.



despite the busy weekend, i did manage to make it to the 21st century flea market on sunday. it was so cram packed full of people (and random collectibles) that i couldn't really pull my camera out without either getting trampled or shoved. there were loads of knick-knacky collectible sort of things i suppose i could have bought, but the prices just weren't great. i like a good deal, and there just weren't many to be found. i did find a really cool, old boomerang for hans though. he's scared to use it because this one looks like it's killed a few kangaroos in its time, and he's already almost scalped one person this year with his little kids boomerang. i didn't want to leave without a little something for myself, so i picked up a small paperweight for $4. i'm sure i can find some loose paper to stack on my desk, so it will be put to use even if only decoratively.

ceci n'est pas une souris

i just finished another dachshund, and have added her to my etsy shop if you're interested. her name is mouse and for a little grey dachshund, she looks an awful lot like my black whippet-mix, bowie. bowie looks just like a fruit bat when her ears pop up greyhound-style.

i was reading gracia louise's blog the other day and found a polaroid she'd posted of a strange, but beautiful flower called blushing brides. i had never seen them, or heard of them before, and i'm sure you can imagine that googling "blushing bride" and "flowers" did not yield the results i was hoping for. does anyone have any idea if they're known by another name? i'm usually really good with knowing my plants, but this one has me stumped. i might have to go hunting for them this weekend.

i've been working from home all summer, and while mostly everything about it is great, i've been suffering a bit from cabin fever lately. so yesterday morning i had a meeting with a client at the local coffee shop. i was pretty happy to be out of the house, and got there a little early - just in time to witness a huge fist fight! it was actually more of a clumsy cat fight between 2 slurring drunks. i think that being staggeringly drunk by 9am shows a great deal of commitment. or something... tables were knocked over, faces were scratched, and i retreated into the kitchen to stay out of the way, until finally one guy agreed to give the other guy back the $5 he'd stolen. i didn't think it was possible, but it looks like gastown is taking a turn for the worse(r).

a long story, long

when i was a little girl my maternal grandmother tried to teach me to knit by giving me her scraps to knit squares from. knitting squares is not so fun for a 7 year old, and i decided that knitting was tedious and added it to the list of reasons for hating visits to grandma's. that said, the thing that i learned from visits with my grandparents is how to make things. this grandma married a wonderful man who came from kenya, by way of kashmir. he grew up fairly poor and any toys he and his siblings played with, they'd learned to make themselves. he once bought me an old, red and chrome, non-functioning tape recorder at a garage sale for 10 cents, and fixed it in under a minute. so i believed him when he told me he knew how to make a helicopter from a tin can that would actually fly. now that he's not around any longer i wish that i'd asked him to teach me how to make one of those helicopters! i also wish that i'd let my grandma teach me how to knit more than squares, because to this day my knitting repertoire begins and ends with the scarf.

on my dad's side of the family i have around 33 cousins. i think... you get to lose track after 20! you'd think that with all these grandchildren running around my grandparents would have had some toys kicking about to keep us busy, but they didn't. nevertheless, the house was always full of noisy, but happy kids and that's where i learned to pluck out songs on the piano, play ping pong and darts, and how to make crepe paper flowers, but most importantly how to sew. my grandma had a closet full of scrap fabric and jars of buttons and other things that she'd collected from decades of mending the jackets and darning the socks of her 9 children. this is where i learned how to make sock puppets, and how to sew rag dolls from the old burp cloths left behind by my many, many baby cousins. this is also the house where my uncles would cleverly get me to wrap all their christmas and birthday gifts. gift wrapping appealed to the obsessive compulsiveness that was starting to take shape in my 8 year old soul.

my dad died when i was 8, but before he did he taught me how to draw. all the rainy weekends when he'd stay at home with me and my brothers while my mum worked, he taught me how to use shapes to make people and animals. drawing, gardening, and a love of this old house, star trek, aquariums, and the smell of lumberyards are all things i have my father to thank for. it's amazing how much he was able to influence me in the few short years we had together!

so, fast forward 2 decades later... when i finally decided i could no longer watch bad television without feeling the guilt that i'd also learned from that gigantic catholic paternal side of the family, i decided that rather than cancel my cable subscription i would do something while watching TV. i tried doing jumping jacks, but you can't do those through an entire hour of america's next top model without developing serious charlie horses in both calves. you just can't do it! so inspired by the intense guilt i felt as a result of watching ANTM, i decided to teach myself to crochet so i could start making things like my grandmothers taught me, but in a new way.

and that dear reader, is the long story behind my new etsy shop.