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.

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.