something wicked this way blogs

Ok.
So we all know that I am a craft WHORE.
I admit it. I have spent hours printing stuff from the Martha Stewart website instead of working. Ditto for the Lion Brand yarn website.
Oh, and the Berocco one too. Yes. And if more cross stitch was available online, I would absolutely be printing off patterns.
Today I feel like I discovered a whole new dark side of craft whore-dom:
The Craft Blog.

I was led to one via dooce. She has a post today about a doll that her daughter's pseudo online godmother (or something like that) sent to her, with a link to her blog. I went there and saw a bunch of cute stuff. Well. Loobylu has a list of craft blogs she reads everyday. So I click on one: http://littlebirds.typepad.com/little_birds/ And it is effing cute as hell. I even printed the "wee bunny" pattern because, hey, they'll make great gifts for when everyone and their mom I know has BABIES (cause you know it will happen. I mean, hell, it's already happening with Jam). So then I recall that this weekend is "Crafty Weekend," a weekend planned by none other than EE for the sole purpose of craftiness, with definite drunkenness thrown in there. I started reminiscing about some projects I've completed since my last craft post.

One is this picture:

I made this for my friend, Elizabeth, for her birthday. I made it like, months and months in advance and I was really pleased with how quickly it made up. Plus it uses hand-dyed threads. From now on, everyone needs to know that I am a hand-dyed thread whore. When my boyfriend and I went to Vermont, he so patiently waited as I ogled the entire wall of Weeks Dye Works and Gentle Art threads and fondled, and YES I mean fondled in that WAY each of the colors. What's sick is that I knew half of them. I picked up a green and was like 'oh I've always wondered exactly what the color "Scuppernong" looked like, wow it's green!!' I saw a pink called "Meredith's Pink" and thought 'I should get this for my mom, cause her name is Meredith' SICK!!! I love it though. Loooove it. I also made a picture for Elizabeth's mom, for she invited us once again to Maine. But I'm not posting it yet, it needs to be a surprise. ANYWAYS, this picture may have bought my way into a little "side deal" because a coworker of EE's liked it, and he and another coworker are opening a store and he was like "keep us in mind" (basically, long story short :) ) I would love to sell my stuff in a store, cause it would justify my hopeless addiction to threads, fabrics and patterns. And it would give me an excuse to cross stitch all the time, which is fabulous.

Ok. After that, I decided to knit something for Jam's coworker, who is just the loveliest woman. She and her husband are expecting a girl, and since (literally) 10 out of 10 of the last people having babies in my family/neighborhood/circle of friends have been BOYS, so I leapt at the chance to make this little number:
I was so excited to hear that Jam's coworker and her husband are expecting a girl, as I bought this pattern years ago when my neighbor was pregnant. Of course, she had a boy. Then my other neighbor had a boy. And then my cousin got pregnant. Of course, she's having a boy. I thought that I would never get a chance to actually knit this sucker, but finally, finally, someone is having a girl. I had the yarn for this project and everything. Actually, I had started it, but when people just kept popping out boys, I abandoned it. So I finally got to make it up, and I will admit, it was a bit of a challenge. The lace fringe was particulary irritating to make, and since this is a jaeger pattern, it was full of strange little brit knitting anomalies that required me to sketch things out on a piece of scrap paper and make lots of tic marks, you know, so the slow-witted American in me could complete a finished product. I will say that when I did finish this, it was adorable, and I think Katrina really liked it when she opened it. Just hope the baby does ;)


Finally, my sister and I are working on complimentary samplers for twin girls who were born on April 6th. Now I had many baby patterns in my stock, but Ame and I did not want to make them identical patterns, nor did we want the traditional cartoonish baby pictures either, so we decided on something feminine, yet elegant, something that the girls could really grow into. I love the insect sampler Amy picked, but wasn't as fond of the floral one that complimented it, though in the end, I decided to order it because I could not come up with a better idea. Now that I've started it, I definitely love it, the colors are so subtle and pretty, they really work off each other and look great when put together on the fabric (before I started stitching I had a mess of thread in my hand and was like 'ew, these are gross colors') I think they're really soft and pretty, as are the ones in the insect sampler, though the picture I use here makes them seem a little garish. Wow, looking at these side by side makes me realize exactly how much these will complement each other....cool :D