'Crafting' Category
Creative Gifts – Day #5
I’m hunkering down to compose my annual holiday year-in-review letter, and a literacy-related creative gift idea springs to mind. It’s a gift in several different ways, it can be given to countless people, and it can cost little to nothing. This gift often gets a bad rap (oh, and it needs no wrapping!), but it [...]
Creative Gifts – Day #4
This creative-gift-idea-a-day idea is challenging! It was a whim, not something planned, let alone prepared. It feels a little lame to throw out a bunch of ideas sans pictures or tutorials, but time simply won’t allow for daily tutorials, certainly not 24 of them. (Did I really say 24? Was that a typo? Did I [...]
Creative Gifts – Day #3
If you’re giving away any knitted garments–hats, socks, scarves, mittens, etc.–this one’s for you. Items can be handmade or machine made; it doesn’t matter. Make a special gift extra special with the duplicate stitch or Swiss darning. Not a knitter? No problem! You know all those cross stitch charts you have? Put them to use [...]
Creative Gifts – Day 2
Well, can you tell what today’s Creative Gift idea is? That’s an hors d’oeuvre pick! With a longer wire, it could be a drink stirrer. A noodle + some wire + a pair of pliers = hors d’oeuvre pick A less-intricate noodle would certainly be acceptable. Also, I might look into whether that wire is [...]
Creative Gifts – Day 1
Today in the Needlework Nutshell (subscription box in the sidebar), I rant about the hype over last weekend’s kick-off to the holiday shopping season. The whole Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday hoopla annoys me to no end; I think it brings out the worst in our culture and too many people. My [...]
Weekend Site Seeing
Our friend, Harriet, in Norway has designed patterns of Shiba dogs used on hand-knitted hats, scarves, socks, and mittens. Sales of finished items support a Shiba club that offers information, dog training, etc. Harriet’s website is in Norwegian, but we can have it translated to English. Have you ever had a website translated? There are [...]
The Walrus and the Embroiderer
After the last Walrus post, Anna pointed out that there’s far more behind the retiring-designer situation than pattern freebies on the Internet. Yes, ma’am, there sure is. How much shall we discuss? Becca asked what we can do. Well, here’s one thing. There’s been political buzz about Net Neutrality for some time. The Internet currently [...]
Weekend Site Seeing
Check this out! Someone else is inspired by reading and stitching, specifically, poetry and embroidery. I would love to do this, but I’m spread pretty thinly just now. I even have multiple poems and ideas I could pursue. It has nothing to do with the prize; these are things I’ve wanted to do for a [...]
The Craft Whisperer
If this idea catches on (what’s the point of dreaming small?), that will be the name of my new blog or, what the heck, multi-million dollar business: The Craft Whisperer. Until then, maybe we’ll have Fix-It Fridays or something here. Or on the soon-to-exist Funk & Weber World blog. Somewhere. History: I’ve long wanted to [...]
Reading Roundup
Consumer powers…unite! Note: I mention the title of this book three times. Each time, I link to a different review of it. The last link is to NPR and includes an excerpt of the book. I recently read Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, by Ellen Ruppel Shell. It’s a book I continue to [...]
