Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving has come around again for those of us in the States. Last year, in addition to the usual things I have to be thankful for, I gave thanks for the small things in my daily life. So while I am indeed thankful for my husband, for my family, friends, for my cats, I am also thankful for other things.

I am thankful for trees. Trees make me very happy.

I am thankful for surprise flowers. I planted these flowers in the summer of 09 and they came back this past summer. Surprise! Nature took care of my flower boxes for me.

I am thankful for Paperbackswap. They let me trade books I have for books I want. The only cost is shipping one of my books to someone else. What a beautiful, beautiful idea.

I am thankful for destashing and receiving beautiful items I might otherwise have never known about.

I am thankful that I live in a country that makes it possible for me to be so poor and yet to have so much. I am spending the next year using up as much of my craft supplies as possible. Do you know how astonishing that is in a world view?! So I am very thankful to be as rich as I am.

I am very thankful for my ETSY supporters. Their purchases ease the holiday burden for us. Because we may be rich by most of the world’s standards, but we are very poor by this country’s. Without your support, the holidays would be a much tougher time for us. Thank you.

And last, but most certainly not least, I am thankful for moments like these.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Enjoy your holiday.

My Shiny New Obsession

I have a new obsession. About a week ago, I was invited to something called The Beading Society. For lack of anything else to do on a Saturday, I agreed to go. I expected to do wire work and general jewelry making which I mostly already know how to do. I was so wrong.

These ladies to bead weaving. Not with a loom though. They weave just using a needle and thread and very, very tiny beads. They sat me down with supplies, taught me peyote stitch, and before too long I had made this.

Pretty eh? But it wasn’t enough. I went home and dug out some larger beads from my stash and made this bracelet.

Then I spent the week scouring the internet for tutorials, patterns, and anything I could find on peyote stitch, brick stitch, and all their brethern so I could make this little dandy.

Which has a peyote stitch ring band.

I spent more time digging through the bead stash I already had accumulated and used more circular brick stitch to make myself a pretty pair of earrings (that still need hooks attached. So right now they’re just little medallions).

So…yeah. I might be a wee bit obsessed. I got almost no knitting done in the past week or so since I learned this. And the two friends I dragged along to that Saturday meeting? They’re just as obsessed as I am.

And to keep with the theme I’ve had lately, here are all the links I’ve dug up from the internet.

Last week, I made a treasury on ETSY featuring beading.

Free beading projects from Interweave’s Beading Daily.

How to read Peyote Graphs.

Here are some general beading instructions from the Swarovski crystal website.

Free peyote stitch patterns.

Free beaded snowflake pattern.

A page with lots of free patterns listed. Including pirates!

Inspiration Beading is a great beading blog to read and she has a whole page of beading tutorials.

Another snowflake pattern.

Lots of free peyote stitch patterns.

Now go! Make shiny things!

Christmas Shopping

I’ve been working hard this week getting photos ready for a big shop update and it’s done! Head on over to my shop and you can find goodies like

The Happy Happy Snowman! Like Nadine says, “He’s just so damn excited about that snow!”

Also brand new and available are Marshall University Christmas ornaments. Display your Thundering Herd pride on your Christmas tree.

And in an effort to support local artists, be kind to the Earth by reducing the carbon footprint, and give unique gifts for the holidays, I’ve made a Huntington Etsy Artist Treasury. So if you’re in the tri-state area and reading this, please consider giving one of these talented local artists a try. Why go to a big box store and buy something there’s a billion copies of, made in another country, and flown across the world? Instead consider buying local this holiday season.

Lake Woe

It’s been a rough week here in Lake Woetome. My car is currently posing as the world’s largest paperweight and my left arm is still full of hurt if I move it in this direction here. So I haven’t been feeling very chatty or bloggy lately. My apologies. I’ve been working steadily on teeny baby knits for a couple friends though who are due soon. I hope to have photos of those later this week but I won’t be sharing them until the mamas-to-be have had a chance to see them.

And so without any real blog fodder for you, here are some crafty links to fill your afternoon.

I think these felt snowflakes from the Purl Bee are pretty adorable.

After seeing this tutorial, I want to head to goodwill and buy every extra large t-shirt I can find. I love me a good, comfy skirt. And with basically no sewing, even a sewing machine novice like me can manage.

Want to make your own funky pillowcases? There’s a tutorial for that.

Don’t know what glue to use for a project? There’s a website for that.

Looking for great stocking stuffers for that knitter you know *coughmecough*, try this site. Thanks Nadine for showing me this one! I’m especially fond of the sugar skulls stationary set and the knitting narwhall set.

My friend Aimee pointed out this new yarn site to me called Mr. Yarn.  My friends, they only sell Malabrigo. Mmmmalabrigo. And at really great prices.

This gorgeous, ethereal wreath? It’s made from paper doilies and clear christmas lights. Yes please!

Hope you all are having a better week than me!

The Prettiest Thing

I love flowers. All flowers. Fresh flowers warm my soul and make me so happy. But I also have allergies which means fresh flowers aren’t always possible. So on a wing and a prayer, I decided to make a giant felt flower out of one of my favorite flowers, the dahlia. They have such giant, cheery blooms, how can you not love them? 

I (and Justin) cut out 3 different sizes of petal shapes. Then I painstakingly folded each one in half and sewed it down to a piece of fabric. Then I spent 2 days, TWO days, sewing about 200 red, shimmery seed beads to the center. The result?

Breathtaking. If I do say so myself.

Each of those folded petals took about 12 minutes from cut out to sewn down. Do the math…

This photo shows the color of the beads perfectly. They’re red but they shimmer with yellows and golds as well. I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.

For the back, I sewed on a circle of felt on which I embroidered my initial and the year.

Stunning, eh? You can buy it at my shop and bring it home just in time for the holidays.