Hello Again!

Hello, I'm back! I've got some Taiwan posts coming up, but those take longer because of all the pictures and descriptions. So I thought I'd post some crafts :). I've had quite a bit of down time the past few months where I've been kept away from my little computer here. In situations that require waiting, I come prepared with anti-boredom, namely a book and/or a crochet project. (You can see what I've been reading here. ) May I present to you Ernie and Totoro! Also please excuse the shitty photoshop job on Mr. Ernie up there. I hate to post a blurry boring photo, so I jazzed it up a bit. Yeah, it's sloppy, whatever.

I only brought one skein of blue yarn with me, which was just enough to make most of this Totoro pattern without his tail. Since they don't sell this particular yarn here, Totoro will have to wait until I return stateside to be truly complete.

I'm leaving Taiwan in a few weeks, and I wanted to use up some of my yarn stash. I had just enough orange yarn left to make this ernie glasses holder. Pretty funny, eh? It's an easy pattern. I did quite a bit of it while simultaneously riding a stationary bike in front of our tv. (It makes the workout go much faster.) See the lamp below? I love that lamp. It came with the apartment. It has a dimmer switch, too. I think I might miss that lamp.

Airplane Crafts

I'm in Taiwan! I arrived about a week ago after some stressful issues regarding travel visas, plane tickets, finding storage for my car, packing up, moving, and among other things, a failed attempt at obtaining a Washington drivers license. The grumpy woman at the DMV could use some customer service training. Well, all that is done, and I am now getting somewhat settled in my new home for the next few months. The plane ride was long, but I easily passed the time, nearly 24 hours, from Seattle to San Francisco to Tokyo to Taipei by crocheting a turtle and heart for my mom. I left Seattle early Thursday morning (many thanks to the wonderful James and Aileen!). The entire trip to Tokyo was daylight, so I didn't feel the need to sleep...not that I could have slept much. I don't think they could have gotten away with any less leg room in coach. My knees touched the seat in front of me, and I don't consider myself unusually tall.

This was only my second time making amigurumi, so I was still quite slow. But I did manage to finish both the turtle and the heart before I landed in Taipei, which was all that mattered anyway. During the first week, I made a second turtle with different yarn. Cute, eh? The pattern is free here.

In other news, I have some more photos that I will post when...um, later. I'll be in Taiwan for several months, so that should keep things pretty interesting. My etsy shop is closed for the time being :-( In the meantime, I've started taking a picture (when I remember to) at the top of every hour of what I'm looking at. It's an experiment; we'll see how long it goes, but for now it's kind of fun for me to document some mundane everyday activities that normal don't normally get photographed. You can view them here. It's not live blogged because I don't have a mobile phone, but I'll upload the photos daily.

Meaty Christmas

Anyone need some Christmas cards? My Meaty Christmas cards are in the shop now! Oh, and if you want some, don't procrastinate. I'm planning on leaving the country come beginning of December.

My shop is getting bare, must restock! I've got errands to run tomorrow and a custom bag to finish. Hopefully soon I'll have the shop restocked with crafty goodies. I got my hands on another Holly Hobbie bed sheet...which means I'll be able to make some more Holly Hobbie tote bags! Unfortunately, I made up that bag as I went and didn't keep a pattern for it. Not a big worry, just kind of a pain. I'll have to do more work with the tape measure than I care to, but it's cool.

My First Amigurumi!

I finally learned to crochet! I was visiting friends in Ohio last week and spent a good deal of time with my friend Becky's crochet books. Thanks, Becky! It took a while, but I finally figured it out! I'm happy to have a craft that's easy to travel with. I've tried knitting, but haven't been able to stick with it long enough to finish anything except a tiny ipod case. Making amigurumi suits me better because the projects are small, and they turn out so flippin' cute! I made this little fella from this free pattern. Mine's blue because I love blue penguins. I saw some when I was in New Zealand and Australia...see, they're not much bigger than the one I made!

Autumn Projects

Working on a few a more things for the shop...

Another cute bag!

I made a new bag! What do you think? Isn't it cute? Should I make more? The pattern is from KeykaLou. I totally love it! I don't usually carry purses, but I think this one is adorable.

Holly Hobbie Tote Bag

I just added this tote bag to the shop. I love how it turned out. I want to keep it, but I have too many bags. I'm trying to organize my fabric stash and use up some of my scrappy bits...because I have a mess of fabric scraps. After making my first bed sheet skirt, I had some oddly shaped bed sheet scraps left over. I kind of made this bag up as I went, but it turned out so well! I had to do some strategic cutting and piecing of the fabric because there wasn't much of it left. I like this simple bag. If I find some more awesome bed linens, I'll make some more. I'm kind of missing the Strawberry Shortcake sheets of my youth.

More Tinys

I'm nearly done with tiny pouches for now. I only have a few tiny zippers left in odd colors. Hmmmm....what to make next? The wiener dog pouch is for myself. Does anyone who knew me at university recognize where this fabric came from? Hmmm? I won't go into detail, but it's from a piece of clothing I've had for years, but couldn't bear to get rid of because of the little dachshunds. I ♥ dachshunds.

Tiny Zippy Pouches

New Tiny Zippies in the shop! Aren't they cute? I had a small stash of various colored zippers that had been sitting around for a while. They were just asking to be turned into tiny zipper pouches. Once I find my stash of D-rings I'll make some pouches that you can attach to key rings, fobs, clasps... I have a few more tiny pouches to add to the shop, then it's on to the larger pouches and perhaps some more boxy bags. The shop is pretty sparse, I know. I'm working on it!

Urban Craft Uprising

Sorry for the lack of posts! I've been having some troubles with my laptop :-( It appears the fan needs to be replaced, repaired or cleaned. Hmmm....so in the meantime, I only use my laptop until it reaches a certain temperature before the fan kicks on, which seems to be an hour or so, longer if I rest it on an ice pack. it's low tech but it works. And doing any flash or video is a problem. sucks sucks sucks!

Anyway, this is way late, but three weeks ago I went to Urban Craft Uprising at Seattle Center. I had a fabulous time! So fabulous, I didn't leave for three hours! I didn't take many pics, but I found a few on flickr. The picture on the left is from a felting workshop by the lovely ladies of Feltique. Well hey! That's me! (look for the white hat) I've never done any felting before, except by accident when I tried to machine wash my wool sweater in college. Um, so needle felting is very cool and terribly addicting. I recommend it to anyone, especially those who like to poke and stab things. See more photos here.

See the apple I made!


I also sat in on a kansashi fabric flower workshop by Diane Gilleland. It's a great way to use up small scraps of fabric. There are some more pictures on her blog. Hey! I'm in some of those pictures, too! (in white hat)


There were so many wonderful things I wanted to buy! There's so much amazing talent out there. Unfortunately, I'm still on an extreme budget diet, so I was not able to purchase much. I did allow myself two small purchases though, a sketchbook (from ex libris anonymous) and some flavored salt (from Secret Stash). I actually did need a new sketchbook, and I got attached to this penguin book. I think it suits me :-) It's made from an old children's book. I love it much. and flavored sea salt...YUM! I humored myself and only bought a small vial. Afterwards, I spent the rest of the day wandering around Seattle Center, checked out the Arab Festival, got a kebab, found a spot under a tree and relaxed. It was good.

New Tomato and Mushrooms!

I have a tomato and mushroom to add to the shop! Sorry for the lag in posts. I took some pictures today, but they didn't turn out that great. I was trying to avoid going up to the loft to take photos because it's just so hot! Tomorrow may very well reach 100°F, and most of us Seattle folk don't have air conditioning. I would love to take the pillows out to a big green lawn and get some pics (perhaps inspired by the shrooms in this post), but I don't believe we have any green grass around here these days, only yellow. Oh well, maybe some day.

I made a smaller version of the tomato. This one is the same size as my Angry Blueberry. I didn't have enough red to make a large one, so I shrunk the pattern. Heehee! I quite like the size of it. I did a test wash of the blueberry to make sure I can label it machine washable. It was a tight squeeze to get it through the door of our front-loading washer, but it washed up perfectly. Yay!


I made the button mushroom first. What do you think? I think it turned out well for my first try. Generally first tries turn out rubbish, but I don't think I'll be altering this pattern much at all! This is actually made of pants material. The body is twill and the gills are corduroy. So if I ever find myself with a load of khaki and corduroy pants, you know what I'll be making...

Guess I didn't get a good picture of the red mushroom. Here's a shot of the underside. I shortened and widened the stem to make it more super mario-ish. Hopefully I can get some better pics tomorrow and add them to the shop. Only two items left in the shop as of today. Yikes! Time to bust a move!

Cat on a Tomato

Over the weekend, I was sitting on the couch having my morning coffee and toast. I had my plate sitting on top of the tomato next to me when Ava came hunting for crumbs. She loves bread. If you leave a loaf of bread or package of cookies out on the counter, be assured that pretty soon there will be a hole in the package and chunks of your food missing. There were a few instances when I came home from the store with groceries, dropped them inside the front hall while I ran to fetch the mail, and in that minute while I was at the mailbox Ava had already burgled my grocery sack and found the bread or seafood. Thanks to plastic, she doesn't get very far, but I do like to watch her try! She's also bitten into bags of tortillas and dried soba noodles. Maybe she loves carbs just like the rest of us.

So back to the tomato...Ava stepped onto the tomato looking for my toast. In the many months since I created the big tomato, neither of the cats has ever ventured on top of it. I was thrilled to pieces when Ave discovered how comfy the tomato was! She stopped looking for my toast and curled up and went to sleep. Awww...

Hello, Boxy!

First one's in the shop finally! The rest should come quicker. I'm starting on some more tonight! Whee!!

Three Little Cubes

I wanted to wait until I had some of these in the shop before I blogged them. But I finally determined last night that the dimensions are not quite right. I love the cube size, but the opening needs to be bigger and the zipper a little longer. So, this cube project is on hold until I order my next batch of zippers. On the other hand, I do have the supplies to make some longer boxy bags. They'll be just like these little cubes, but longer.



The pink elephant cube was the first one I made. Turned out well for a first try, eh? The interfacing wasn't heavy enough, so I made another one interfaced with fleece (the polka dot one). Hmmm...the fleece gives it a nice quilty feel, but it doesn't give the cube much shape. I do however love how the polka dots look with the red. I'll have to make some more with this fabric combo. Lucky I have a whole duvet of this stuff! I think I finally got the interfacing right with the blue cube. YAY! On to the next step!

Zakka Basket

After many weeks on the waiting list, I finally got to check out Zakka Sewing from the library. I made this little basket for my clothespins today. Aw, isn't it cute? I'd been keeping them in a plastic bag with the intention of finding something cute to keep them in. It was easy...took less than an hour to make. I made it from two old pillowcases I had in my stash and some quilt batting.

My Weekender Bag

I made another Weekender Bag! This one is number three, after the first and the second. I'm sure this will be the last one for a while. It is a lot of work! This one's for me because I want one for myself, too. And I'll get to use it when I go back to Akron next week!

I had wanted to put some pockets on the inside, but at this point I just want to be done with it. All I have left to do is to sew in the lining, which by the way is some hot pink denim that was 50% off at Joann's. The main fabric is fromAnna Maria Horner's Drawing Room collection. I love it! It's one of my favorites. I couldn't afford to make the whole bag with Drawing Room fabric. According to the pattern, it requires four yards of fabric! Twelve feet of fabric to make one bag, plus five yards of interfacing and stabilizer. I actually had quite a bit of fabric left over because I'm extra thrifty when I cut out the pieces. I'd been looking for a cheaper home decor weight fabric at Joann's, but they didn't have anything that looked good with my fabric. Luckily I found this pink denim that was even cheaper and looks pretty good I think. Nice, eh?





This is what it looks like on the inside. Sewing through all the layers of fabric is the most difficult. I only broke two needles this time, not bad.

Angry Blueberry Dress

I've been thinking I should revisit my giant fruit project. The big ottomans are quite cumbersome to ship, and I've been wanting to try them in smaller sizes. Everyone should have some giant fruit in their home! I just need to package it better, and also to develop patterns for sale. But first, I need to try some alternate sizes.

So, I had this dress... My roommate Joanna had gotten this dress at a thrift shop a few months ago for $1.00. She didn't want it anymore and offered it for my craft stash. A few days ago, I looked at it and decided it should be turned into a semi-large blueberry, and that the blueberry should be strongly emotive. I settled on Angry.



I turned out bigger than I expected. It's about half the size of it's larger fruity siblings. I completely winged the ruffly bit at the top. I just sewed random pieces into a circle and trimmed the edges. Looks fairly blueberry-like, no? It'd be pretty boring without the face though.



Making the face...and that's the remainder of the dress after all the pieces were cut, the carcass of the dress if you will. The fabric is a stretchy knit, which makes for a nice soft pillow. No portion of the dress was wasted! All the remaining fabric was incorporated into the stuffing. I'm thinking of making this a regular reoccurring project, maybe add some to the shop! Would anyone buy a pineapple made from a one dollar pair of pants? Or lemon from a sweatshirt? Hmmm, me thinks my next project will be emotive fruit.