It’s like getting an extra Christmas present, my dear friend Sarah is here visiting. Her flight arrived late last night. Then we stayed up a little later exchanging gifts.
These are all the goodies in my beautiful package.
We slept in a bit this morning, and are now enjoying a lazy day stitching in front of the fire and watching movies.
Wishing everyone a beautiful holiday week-end and a wonderous New Year in 2012.
In celebration of this time of year I am sharing a fun little snowflake pattern with you. For now it is just a stitch diagram, so my apologies to those of you who can’t read those yet. Maybe a good New Year’s resolution is to learn that skill as it does open the whole world of international patterns to you. If you have trouble reading the chart because of size, click on the photo and it should enlarge it.
Once you’ve stitched up your snowflake and tucked in the ends, pin it out and use your favorite fabric stiffener to make it into an ornament. I prefer to brush the stiffener on once the snowflake is pinned out, instead of dipping the fabric in the solution first. Once one side is dry I un-pin the flake and if needed will brush more stiffener on the back.
You can also sprinkle a bit of glitter over the flake while the stiffener is wet to create a sparkly snowflake.
Enjoy!
This has been a strange Thanksgiving week for my family. No traveling to see extended family and no stuffing our house full of friends and family on Thursday.
Instead this is a quiet and slightly late Sunday celebration this year. And one with many reasons to be grateful.
The month of November has been a bit more exciting than I would wish for. My father was hospitalized with a severe infection in his arm. My sons were evacuated from their school one afternoon due to a near-by house fire. And my beloved husband has been dealing with health issues that his doctor wanted to hospitalize him for.
Fortunately, all is mostly well again. My dad is nearly recovered from his infection. The house-fire did not spread to the school or any neighboring homes and was put out completely less than 4 hours after it started. My husband seems to be making a recovery despite refusing to go to the hospital.
I hope that all my US readers have had wonderful Thanksgivings themselves with time for family, friends and hopefully a bit of crochet or knitting.
As part of my celebration of Thanksgiving week I am counting my blessings again. One that I really celebrate is having so many caring friends in my life. Especially uplifting to me is the number of them that share my passion for all things yarnie.
This past Saturday I was down in Denver for my monthly pilgrimage to The Lambshoppe for Pajamma Jam. On the magazine rack there was the new publication from Interweave Press “Interweave Crochet Accessories” that my design, Isosceles Scarf, is in. This is my first design for Interweave and it was quite fun to have it in a magazine that is available at many LYSs.
It is a special favorite with me as well because I got to use a bit of geekery in the design of it as well as in the naming of it. How often to you get to use geometrical terms in crochet pattern names (well, if you are me, as often as possible).
My wonderful stitching friends were all very excited for me. It is such a joy to have people who believe in me and have faith in my ability to keep on reaching for my dreams. I know that my successes in the future will be in part due to the lift they give me with their love.
If you don’t have yarnie friends that you get to spend time with I highly recommend that you join the online site: Ravelry. For many years I had no-one to crochet or knit with, then I found Ravelry and I have found yarn friends far and wide because of it.
Sometimes I feel very jealous of other designers who don’t have small children sucking their time and brains away. And then there are those who have small children, but wisely had their offspring whilst they were young enough to keep up with them.
I know that my boys will be grown up before the blink of an eye. I know how quickly the past years have already zipped by. Yet, I feel like my life is this constant crazed balancing act.
Finding time to swatch, write, crochet finished pieces, manage the laundry, shopping, meal-prep and the myriad tasks for work and home life that creep into everyday seems nearly impossible. I fall into bed, often at insane hours of the night (technically morning), so exhausted that it seems 5 minutes later the alarm is dragging me out of a deep sleep.
Of course, when I get too far into this jealousy grump I remind myself of how blessed my life is. Coming into the week of the Thanksgiving holiday (US) is a wonderful time to count those blessings. So I will try to blog at least 4 times this week about the blessings in my life.
The first blessing I’m counting is actually feeling jealousy. Because that feeling allows me to contemplate what it is I think I’m missing. Often times it is a wake-up call to see the joy in my own life, or to put my feet more firmly on the path I want to be following.
It is easy to become distracted when one is born with the number of creative brain cells I have. So noticing those little twinges of jealousy helps me see if those distractions are helping or harming the hopes and dreams I harbor.
I have found it very interesting the results of that exercise. Many times I’ve discovered that I’m really okay being where I am and doing what i’m doing.
So my challenge to you my dear readers, look at what you’ve been feeling jealous or envious about and see if it really is something you would want for yourself. The answer just might surprise you.
With all the recent snow here on my mountain it is certainly looking like Christmas– in fact, a White Christmas (can’t you just hear Bing singing?).
Yes, Halloween is over, Thanksgiving is just a few weeks around the corner, and it’s time to think about Christmas. Actually, if you prefer hand-made Christmas presents, it’s already getting to be the last-minute for gift making. Which means you need something quick to make.
My first pattern in my M2H Designs line was Little Christmas Wreath–a fun quick project perfect for the holidays. It makes a great decorative touch on packages and cards, can be made into a fun brooch to wear in celebration of the season, or even works as a napkin ring.
I actually came up with this pattern because of my own need for some quick fun gifts for Christmas. The pattern includes text instructions (US terms), stitch charts and tutorial photographs. You can easily vary the size by working with different yarns, or combining a sparkly yarn with a solid color for a even more decorative touch!
Since today is my Birthday I got to sleep in a tiny bit, and woke up to this lovely gift from my family. In honor of the day I’ve decided it is a good day to share the gift-giving with one of my lucky readers (no, you don’t get the hearts…something better).
At the Greensboro Chain Link on Professional Development Day I won only one Door Prize. This lovely” The Crochet Dude” Crochet Organizer Case created by the Boye company.
Now many of you know of the Crochet Dude, aka Drew Emborsky, and have been following his design adventures on his blog for ages. If you haven’t read his blog before click on the link above and have a look.
Drew generously donated a number of items to the door prizes at Professional Development Day. The tickets that are sold raise money each year towards a chosen charity. This year the charity was the Marcia Rivkin Center (for Ovarian Cancer).
So how do you get a chance to win this lovely organizer case? Just comment on this blog post by Noon on October 20th, leaving your name and why you are trying to get organized. I will then have a random number drawing that afternoon and announce the winner. Unfortunately, I need to restrict the drawing to only folks in the USA, as mailing out of country can get a bit steep.
I leave you with one last photo of myself with the Dude. Unfortunately it came out a bit blurry, somewhat flattering to me as it removed my wrinkles, but I had to take another photo later so you could see that the Dude really isn’t that fuzzy.
I’m sure you all know that saying, “Into every life a little rain must fall.” It has been a very rainy and chilly couple of days here on my mountain and despite missing the warmth and light of the sun I am quite grateful to see the moisture.
Some of you may recall that last year the week following Labor Day was a bit too exciting for my family and heart-breaking for many of our community. The Four-Mile Canyon Fire was challenging fire crews to contain it and all this was not helped by dry windy weather. By the time the fire was fully contained 169 homes and 6000 acres of land had been burned.
So the rain is welcome, despite heralding the end of summer, as it decreases the likelihood of another wildfire any time soon. Proof that every cloud has a silver lining.
I love teaching others about crochet and how to crochet. I love it because teaching new crocheters (or mostly new crocheters) brings me back to my own beginnings playing with yarn and hook, as well as giving me the opportunity to look at crochet with fresh eyes.
During this summer’s school break I have been teaching crochet weekly to one of my son’s school friends and her grandmother (who knew quite a bit already). My young student had been taught some of the basics from her grandmother, like chaining and single crochet stitch. We have been playing with shaping in crochet and working in the round.
It has been so exciting seeing this young lady take-off in her creativity with crochet. She even sallied forth and made a hat without any pattern. I was so happy to see the results of her experiments.
This fall the 3 of us will be organizing a Crochet Club as a weekly afterschool group for other students and community members to play with hooks and yarn.
I hope for those of you that crochet and knit that you give yourself the gift of sharing your hobby with others every chance you find. It is a fabulous confidence builder for everyone to be able to create something with their own hands as well as being a skill that they can pick up again at any time.
Then you too can delight in returning to your own stitching beginnings and gain new excitement and understanding of your craft.
I’ve been such a busy little designer the past few months that I almost forgot I had 2 new designs coming out in the Autumn Issue of Crochet! Magazine.
Back in 2009, when I sold my first couple of designs, I would call one of my established designer friends all excited with each one. She celebrated with me, but told me that one day I would be so busy with design work that I would forget that I had designs coming out in a publication. Funny to realize her prediction has come true only a little over 2 years later.
This shrug was inspired by a Free-Form garment I made for the Fashion Show at Chain Link 2009. I hadn’t created a pattern for it at the time but the lovely Carol Alexander finally persuaded me to create something for Crochet! based on it. I had used yarns that were discontinued for the original, so she and I had a fun time finding yarns that would work. Once Carol and I had the yarns picked though it came together beautifully, and I wrote my first sized pattern.
My house is quite small, and my two little boys tend to dominate it, so there isn’t much use for decorative touches on the table. This is my first ever attempt at a table runner. I’m looking forward to using it on our table at the holidays, the one time a year that I can justify “dressing-up” my table.
The Autumn 2011 issue of Crochet! Magazine should be available on newsstands and in subscriber’s mailboxes soon. Meanwhile you can see a preview of the magazine at the Crochet! website. I hope you enjoy making these designs as much as I did creating them.
Mamas2Hands 