snail mail saturday (okay fine, it’s monday)

handmade holiday: evergreen wreath

Gathering up the goods for my holiday wreath making is always such a joy.   This year a number of neighbors commented on my beautiful bundle as I returned from the woods, my arms full of vibrant greenery and berries.My winter harvest was fruitful and yielded winterberry (an especially lovely find as I just saw it selling in a store for $15 a branch!), juniper berries, rose hips, and small brances of cedar and pinecone-sprinkled hemlock.Along with some gold wired ribbon and a little cardinal I had kicking around in my ribbon box, it was more than plenty to dress up the balsam wreath purchased from our local Boy Scout. Despite my best decorating efforts though, it was the weather who really completed the wreath.  Snow.  The perfect touch.

handmade holiday: advent birds

It’s been a busy flurry of handmade activity over in these parts.  A lot of it is holiday card orders, but plenty of it is making the gifts and treats and decorations that are so much a part of our holiday traditions.  This year, Eli and I started a new tradition:  advent birds.  We cut, sewed and stuffed these little fabric cheepies,  numbered them (little squares of muslin cut with pinking shears and stamped with a number) and attached a little bit of ribbon.  Now Eli gets the thrill of adding a new bird to the tree every day.

To continue to implement this tradition of course means that every year from now on we’re going to have to have our tree by December 1st.  But that’s really such a good thing, since we’ll get that much longer to enjoy it.

snail mail saturday

flowers in black, white and red

My friend Harriett was wonderful enough to hire me to make up a whole bunch of note card sets to give as holiday gifts to all the women on her list.  It’s such a sweet gesture all around.  Harriett is giving  a whole bunch of lucky women lovely handmade gifts and at the same time patronizing the growing business of one of her friends.  It’s all so fabulous!

We needed to come up with some designs that would work for women of different ages and Harriett had in mind floral patterns and bold colors.  Thus began my study of flowers in black, white and red.

I’m always grateful for custom orders because they force me to arrive at designs that I otherwise might have skipped right over.  Truthfully, black, white and red aren’t colors that I give a lot of attention to.  At least not together.  But I love how these designs are sort of handsome.  They’re florals that really aren’t too frilly, and that works for me.  Hopefully it will work for all the gift recipients too…

new lacey hat with nest of pearls

This is lacey hat #2.  Essentially it’s the same creation as the original lacey hat although this time it actually fits. Lacey hat #1 went to live with my sister Eliza who loved it and has a bigger head.  Ha.

This time around I skipped out on the felt flower and decided to  feature one of the many little knit circles that I’ve been compulsively knitting.  I filled it with a whole bunch of little pearly buttons and doesn’t it just look like a nest?  A little nest of pearls.

acorn ornaments

I saw these super-cute little acorn ornaments in a magazine and wanted them right away.  So it was particularly auspicious that I had both a tin of little felted balls and a berry basket full of acorn caps sitting on my desk.  These little cuties are going to really dress up our Christmas tree this year!

If you want to make your own acorn ornaments, all I did was hammer a nail through the acorn cap to make a hole for some 1/4″ satin ribbon.  Then I used my trusty glue gun to glue in the ends of the ribbon.  Another little squeeze of glue and I fit the felt ball right into the cap.  That’s it.  And if you’re not up for any acorn fun right now but would still love some of these, never fear.  I’ve seen them all over Etsy.  Check out these shops for similar cuties:  Fairy Folk, Green Baboon, and kbuchheit to name just a few.

love song for november

A big kiss goodbye to November and the last little dregs of autumn.   This summer-loving woman is surprisingly eager for the winter chill of those high, starry nights, the magic of snow, rosy cheeks, candlelight and steaming mugs of hot chocolate.   My focus has turned inside, towards the warmth of home and family, towards those sweet and subtle inner songs that guide me and towards a whole host of crafting projects to keep my fingers busy.  Come on in, December.  It’s so wonderfully full and cozy in here…

snail mail saturday

little knit circles (or pretty procrastinating)

Why am I repeatedly making little knit circles?  I’m not exactly sure yet.  You know when you have a lot of work to do, making up 27 or so boxes of note cards let’s just say, suddenly your head is full of countless creative activites that you just have to do now.  It’s a pretty form of procrastination, but I do believe that these little circles will become part of some extraordinary knitwear at some point in the future.  For now though, I’m content to make them up one at a time and let my stash of little knit circles grow.

If you get a hankering for knitting up some little circles (or you need some pretty procrastinating yourself) here’s what I did:

Using #2 needles and some bamboo silk yarn, I cast on 6 stiches.  I knit an I-cord for about 3 inches or so and then grafted the ends together using the kitchener stitch.  TA-DA!  A little circle!

I’ve actually never used the kitchener stitch before, but thank god for Debbie Stoller’s  good ol’ Stitch ‘N Bitch because that woman can break things down.  Usually learning directions from a book sounds something like this to me, “Just whip it up through here and bring it down through there and then repeat and reverse that and slip this off of here and that off of there and don’t let go of that, you big dodo.”  But it was completely stress-free and painless to follow the Stitch ‘N Bitch directions and now I can do a pretty okay kitchener stitch.  Well, sort-of okay, but it’s coming along…

Well, I’m off to make some cards knit some more circles.  I’ll keep you posted on whatever they might become.