Some Interesting Craft Sites

In my post about National Craft Month, I said Craftplace had a fascinating page of blog links and that I planned to check them out and post a few favorites during March. As I made my way through the list, I realized that how a reader is attracted to a blog is a personal thing, partly based on interest in the content, partly on the writer/reader chemistry of the blogger. To find blogs you might prefer, check out for yourself the rich offerings on this Craftplace page. You're bound to discover some new voices and fresh resources for your crafts.

As for me, I'm naturally attracted to embroidery, crochet, and jewelry making. Consequently, I was less attracted to scrapping or knitting blogs (that's what I mean when I say attractions are so personal). If you're interested, here are some sites I especially like for various reasons:

I'm not that taken with contemporary embroidery (or stitchery) designs, which often are more simplistic and therefore not challenging for me. However, I like Kelly Fletcher's designs on her blog, materialistic. They have a crisp, contemporary look but require more than back and stem stitching and some French knots. Fletcher has an online shop where you can purchase her patterns as downloads; she also publishes The Stitch and Thimble, which she describes as "a quarterly digital hand embroidery publication in PDF format." If you're interested in especially attractive modern hand embroidery designs, take a look.

A "spoon" brooch I just sold on Etsy.

J Vacanti's The Studio8eight Jewelry Beat includes 29 interesting jewelry projects created with found objects. Several involve spoons, which attracted me right away because I've been experimenting with my old souvenir spoon collection lately, cutting them up into charms and pounding out bowls to use as pendants. She also offers a project incorporating the metal typeface from an old type block, something I can't wait to try.

Finally, I rediscovered CraftGossip on the Craftplace blogger's list. When I worked on staff as associate editor for Krause and North Light books, I checked CraftGossip every day for all the latest in the craft world, from needlework and polymer clay to edible crafts. Exploring the site, and keeping up with daily updates, will put you in touch with other great sites, as well. Personally, I plan to reactivate my CraftGossip habit immediately.

Wall Hangings for St. Patrick's Day

I love it when I can combine crafting with needlework, especially when I can create a collage by pulling together random items carefully chosen.

A couple of years ago I made two Irish-themed wall hangings for St. Patrick's Day, one for me and one for my mother. I split a fat quarter in half so each hanging was compact (I think I wanted something I could hang on my cubicle wall at work). The needlework part involved hand quilting, embroidery, crochet, and some hand sewing. I digitally altered some St. Patrick's Day antique postcards and printed them out on fabric, and I combed through my stash of weird odds and ends for items I could use on each hanging.

The hanging I made for my mother (upper left) featured several vintage buttons, both green plastic and metal; a square of orange and green from a vintage quilt block, which I quilted; a brown plastic buckle I thought had a swirling Celtic feel; an Irish crochet motif with a rose center; two of the postcard appliques; and a crocheted shamrock edging along the bottom.

An Irish rose, antique buttons, and crocheted shamrocks.

For my own hanging I included a Guinness bottle cap, an antiquated-looking jewelry box key, and a stray key from a musical instrument, as well as a variety of vintage buttons of all kinds. I embroidered shamrocks in the corner of the hanging to contrast with all the 3-dimen-
sional items I'd glued or stitched to the hanging.

Embroidered shamrocks combine with 3-dimensional items.

Even a little commercially embroidered trim works with the theme.

I think the key to finding items to work in collages like these are to go for a "feel" rather than being too literal. There's nothing Irish about the embroidered trim with its yellow blossoms, but I liked the look. The jewelry box key and instrument key evoked aspects of Ireland to me, including the castles with their huge ancient doors and the traditional music I love. Sometimes the buttons were Victorian or from the '30s or '40s; as long as they contri-
buted to the effect, I wasn't choosy about their composition or style.

Although I did use green binding on the edge of my hanging, I left the edges of my mother's hanging raw. Again, I let the look of the piece dictate how I wanted to finish it. These hangings show how imagination can substitute for authenticity when gathering items and images for a collage or similar piece.

I Hate Doing Amigurumi, And Yet...

I really do hate doing amigurumi, the popular Japanese-influenced practice of crocheting cute little animals and other things. First, I find it boring; I prefer complex stitching patterns. Second, I hate doing any stitchery where I have to join parts together.

And third, I don't do little figures well, whether amigurumi or simply lacy little Victorian birds. Usually my shapes are out of proportion and the edges don't match up well. The result is a sweet little example of fiber roadkill.

That being said, I did crochet my sister, The Warden, a '70s owl for her birthday. It's actually a Christmas ornament pattern offered by Red Heart yarn on their website (go here for the pattern if you'd like to make one). The original, designed by Nancy Anderson, is gray with colorful accents. However, since this owl needed to reflect The Warden's love for the gold/avocado/burned orange color scheme, something that usually makes me want to poke my eyes out with a No. 14 crochet hook, I changed out all the colors.

I also used perle cotton and cotton crochet thread instead of yarn. I'm not fond of working with yarn (hence why never attempt to crochet socks or afghans or the like). I had enough bits of this and that in my stash to come up with an appropriately hideous owl The Warden loves. I didn't have avocado green, so I substituted some lime green that was almost day-glow. I also added some purple for the darker features and to give the accents added contrast. (By the way, you'll notice in the photo above that my owl's ears don't mirror one another. It could have been worse, I guess.)

I didn't do direct substitutes for Colors A, B, C, D, E, and F in the original pattern. I kind of eyeballed it. Basically I used orange for the owl's body; orange, purple, and lime green for the wings; lime green, burned orange, variegated yellow, and purple for the stomach patch; variegated yellow for the feet and beak; and purple and variegated yellow for the eyes, with a black bead in the center of each eye. (If you use the Red Hearts pattern, note there's some confusion in the way the feet are explained; I wound up simply repeating Row 2 as needed to shape the little claws.)

The Warden is considering hanging that ugly little owl from her rearview mirror in the van. Whatever. The sad thing is, The Warden has a couple of '70s-ish things I've made for her, and I'm not bad at recreating the proper retro style--a fact that disturbs me no end. I didn't even like this stuff when it was new and popular back in the day.

If you, unlike me, are entranced at the thought of crocheting some darling little varmints, here are some books you can try:

My Sister, The Knitter

Last June, I wrote this post about my lack of knitting abilities, and how my sister, The Warden, took right to it and was knitting away. (She's not really a warden in the literal sense; that's her blog handle.) My last sentence was, "Maybe she can make me some really swell socks for Christmas."

Well, she did! My mother and I each got a pair of the red-striped socks pictured above. Even in this not-so-chilly winter, I've worn them as often as possible. They're my favorite socks. And since The Warden knitted them from a supreme Alpaca/Merino blend wool, they're much softer and luxurious than the socks I'd knitted previously from your basic craft store wool yarn. 

She's continued to develop her skills and fanaticism, and now she's sharing her creations with the less fortunate. She recently knitted a dozen glorious hats to send to an orphanage in Kiev (read about in her blog post here). Not that such activity is anything new. The Warden has donated countless crocheted afghans to such charities as Project Linus. However, now that she's a knitting devotee, I seriously doubt whether she'll ever pick up a crochet hook again.

Am I jealous of The Warden? Hell, yeah. It's rare for me not to become at least basically proficient in a needle art. Even bobbin lacemaking, which turned out to be beyond me, yielded me a blue ribbon at the state fair for a yard of lace. There are several things I do well, such as tatting, that I tend to avoid, and several things I do well but neglect, such as rug hooking, needlepunch, and needle-turned applique. And there's quilt piecing, which I flat out won't do because of the potential for brain damage due to confusion and angst; no harm done there. But I was able to do just enough knitting to know I'd never be accomplished. Come to think of it, I once won a state fair blue ribbon for a length of knitted lace, but still--knitting is a struggle for me.

So, I bow to The Warden's ever-increasing skills in knitting. And if I get a luscious pair of socks out of it once in awhile, I can take my jaw-grinding jealousy in stride.

If you'd like to see more of The Warden's work, explore her posts at The Warden's Log, and also check out this page on the Roving Acres website. Roving Acres sells the gorgeous hand-dyed wool my sister has used in so many of her best projects, especially gifts.

Here's a photo of our mom, Lillian of Lillian's Cupboard, wearing the cowl The Warden knitted for her birthday last September:

Relaunching My Blog for National Craft Month

Since March is National Craft Month, I thought it would be a good time to redesign and relaunch this blog. Unfortunately, I let it become overshadowed by work on my Nudged to Write blog last fall, then came the holidays, then I got busy with some writing/judging deadlines. Don't ask me what happened to February. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Actually, I don't mean to say I was totally inactive. In fact, I've got a raft of new items to list in my Etsy shop, NudgeryFaire, over the next few weeks. In the meantime, I'm aspiring to be a better craft/needlework blogger with more frequent posts.

Have you ever heard of National Craft Month? The Craft & Hobby Association (CHA) blog gives a brief history. CHA created National Craft Month in 1994 to "help people learn about and re-discover the joy of crafting and all its many benefits." CHA also owns and operates CraftPlace, a site filled with resources, projects, and information. Their "Craft Happenings" page includes a calendar of events celebrating National Craft Month by various publishers and product companies. The round-up of craft blogs is so interesting I plan to examine select blogs in future posts throughout March (and probably beyond).

If you love crafts and needlework, this is your month to celebrate, try something new, and let the world know how creative you are.

A note on the new design: Besides tweaking some colors and typefaces, my biggest design change is creating new right and left borders for the blog. Like these? I cropped this photo of a doily I sold in January on Etsy:

I then used a distortion feature in my photo software to transform the cropped center of the doily into this:

Next, I loaded the photo into my blog template and chose the "tile" option. I love the colors and the intricate pattern this creates. I crocheted the original doily from two different balls of Coats & Clark variegated cotton thread, plus terra cotta-colored accents from some leftover hand-dyed cotton thread.