belle epoque

First I fortified myself with early morning waffles

my favorite, maple pecan, which feel healthy because they are made with whole wheat, have nuts for protein and taste wonderful without anything on them. Even so, I only ate one and froze the rest for toasting another time.
Then I dove into holiday gift-making with a vengeance:

Onesies printed with a sweet sledding silhouette using my beloved print Gocco

Totes and pouches made with the fun vintage canvas I found back in July at the flea market.

I put a few extras up in my little shop if they strike your fancy and you’re buying handmade this holiday!

Still busy working on holiday gifts here! I have a little overrun on one of them, so I might re-stock my wee etsy shop with a few of the extras– I’ll keep you posted! But because I really don’t like to be away from the blog for so long, just a few things that I like!
*The Loop-d-Loop Lace Leaf Scarf pattern

The very talented Joyce turned me onto this pattern a few years ago. It is just right for my knitting style– quick (I can finish one in a few hours), and just interesting and varied enough, but not so challenging I get frustrated. This is not the *best* yarn to show off the nice lacy pattern, but I’m very fond of the autumn colors and the soft, squishy heft of it.
*Pumpkin dip

I know there are lots of ways to make it, here is how I make mine
8oz light cream cheese (preferably room temperature)
1/2-3/4 of a 15 oz can pure pumpkin
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 T maple syrup
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t ground ginger
1 t vanilla extract
Cream the cream cheese and brown sugar in your mixer until they are nicely blended and there aren’t any crystals of sugar showing in the cheese. Add the maple syrup and vanilla and blend some more. Add in the spices and mix again until nicely blended, then add the pumpkin a bit at a time, blending between additions. Taste every so often and when you feel it has the right amount of pumpkin taste to suit you, its done! Cut up some tart apples and nosh!
*Spectacular fall sunsets

photo courtesy of Moondoggie
*My grandmother’s teacup collection

My mother recently sent me a few boxes of things from the attic, and this was in one of them, along with a note from my grandmother (who passed away many years ago) to me, about the tea parties we had together and how she hoped I’d enjoy the collection. My grandma and I were peas in a pod, and I know she’d be so excited that I’m not only having a baby, but having a girl! I can’t wait to have tea parties with my own little girl and tell her all about her wonderful great grandmother who gave us these beautiful cups.
*The handmade gift buying opportunities popping up all over the place! I’m particularly excited about an event in Mill Valley that Christina will be participating in next week:
The Love Makers Sustainable Craft Fair
Tuesday, December 4, 2pm-8pm
Ambatalia Fabrics
1 El Paseo
Mill Valley, CA
For more details about all the fantastic vendors, click here. I met Molly, the owner of Ambatalia, at Maker Faire in May, and she is amazing. The selection of beautiful, natural fabrics at her booth was stunning, and I can’t wait to browse the whole store’s worth of goodness, let alone the crafty wonders made by the talented artists selling at the fair!

I know it doesn’t look like it, but I’ve been busy over here, I swear. If you have reason to believe you are on my holiday list, this would be the time of year you might want to develop instant amnesia after looking at my blog, ’cause if I don’t blog about gifts I’m making, there isn’t much to say.

So in the past week I’ve been:

*Decorating my crafty space little by little. Above you can see some amazing glittery lotus “christmas tree” lights that will be a year-round phenomenon, cleverly hanging from hooks that perch on the picture rail (no nails, yay!).

*Cooking healthy, baking whole grain no-knead bread (I’m just going to start kneading, because the quicker no-knead breads I’ve made remind me of just not-sweet banana bread), and yummy grilled garlic chicken with steamed broccoli (not pictured: my HUGE baked yam, which needed its own side plate).

*Designing another softie! I know I promised you a pattern for the giraffe awhile ago, but I haven’t finished fooling with that one. This one came out cute enough to suit me on the first go, so if my scanner works properly, I hope to have a pattern and tutorial for this little guy up before the end of the week. I had fun doing a photo shoot with Ned Nutkin and my absolute favorite Caffarel chocolates. I buy them at Miette Confiserie and keep them in their little mushroom jar. I eat only one at a time, on days when I feel I’ve been a particularly good girl.

I love the idea of embellishing store-bought items to make them more personal and special as gifts. But turning a $40 hemstitched linen napkin into a sachet? No thank you. I could buy something handmade and awesome for the giftee on Etsy for $40. It seems to me that the original point of handmade gifts was not only to be special, but economical too. So for my contribution to the Last Minute Gift Countdown, I set myself the challenge of buying a few reasonable items readily available at the local drug store and combining them with supplies most crafty folk already have at home to make a gift that is not only unique and fun, but also quick and inexpensive.

To make an gift in a hurry for your favorite world traveler, you’ll need:
From the drug store (you shouldn’t spend more than $5-$10):
Foam Ear Plugs
Chapstick
A sleep mask
A pack of gum
A wash cloth or small dish towel
Chenille socks in a cute color

From the Craft Closet:
1 small piece felt
Embroidery thread to match or contrast your dish towel and felt, as you like
2 buttons
1 foot-long piece of ribbon
Embroidery needle

Make the Pouch:
Don’t have time for hemming and lining a pouch? Use a ready-made cloth to save time:
1. Fold up about 4.5 inches of the towel, making sure to leave at least an 1.5 inches above for a flap:

2. Blanket stitch the edges together from the fold to the beginning of the flap:

Repeat to stitch other side together too.
3. Find the center of the pouch and sew buttons on to the flap and pouch, leaving about 1/2 inch between them:

4. Tie the end of your length of ribbon in a knot around one of the buttons and wind the ribbon around the second button to keep the pouch flap closed:

Yay! Your pouch is done, now to give the things that go in it a little bit of pizazz

Snazzy Sleep Mask
If you’re in a hurry, you can buy a sleep mask and embellish it like I did. However, it is also very easy to make your own by drawing a mask shape on a piece of paper and using it as a pattern to cut layers of cotton, linen or silk to sew a sleep mask of your own, then including ribbons or an elastic band to keep the mask on snugly. If you choose to do this, embroider the eyelashes before sewing the mask together.
1. Draw closed eyes with eyelashes with chalk pencil on the sleep mask

2. Using running stitch or split stitch, embroider over the eyes you drew in a light colored embroidery thread

Yay! On to the ear plugs

Shhhh… Ear Plug Cozy
1. Cut a rectangle of felt that is 3.5 inches by 1.5 inch.
2. Fold the rectangle in half and on one half write Shhh… across the diagonal.

3. Unfold the fabric and embroider over the letters and periods using two strands of floss. Small split stitch is great for the letters and French knots work well for the punctuation.
4. Fold the embroidered felt piece in half again and use a blanket stitch or whip stitch to close up the long sides, leaving the top open for putting in the plugs.
5. Pop in the ear plugs.

Assemble your pouch, tucking in the folded face mask, ear plugs in their cozy, gum, chapstick and fluffy socks. You could also include drugstore and travel favorites like a mini pack of tissues, cough drops, a contact lens case, cuticle butter (Burt’s Bees makes a tiny tin that is solid and will not hold the traveler up in security!), a pen and tiny pad of paper, or a tube of homeopathic anti-germ fizzy tablets, whatever your particular traveler likes.

While the materials used in this example are obviously rather girly, this gift can easily be made to suit the manly man in your life — use a darker-colored washcloth, embroider his initials in floss on the pouch itself (and forgo the eyelashes on the sleep mask), and continue the rest as written. Next time you’re at the drugstore, the dollar store, or even the grocery store, just use your imagination, and you’ll surely come up with even more fun and economical handmade holiday gift ideas! And when you do, please share!

It has been quiet around here, I know! I’ve been on the road, visiting my parents in Key West, Florida. They do have WiFi, but with family chatting and NaNoWriMo going on, my blogging time has been more limited than I anticipated. But I did want to pop in and tell you about CRAFT’s Apron Contest. If I was home with my machine, I would be busily making something to enter before the November 12th deadline. As it is, I’ll root for you, and in the interest of inspiration, show you this darling one from a shop here:

All you need to do is send a jpeg of your apron creation and winners will be featured in the Curio section of CRAFT!

There are so many creative, talented artists and artisans here in Key West, just peeking in gallery windows and shops on walks around town fills me with crafty inspiration. The shop House Key contains the amazingly well-contained workbench of owner/designer Johnathon Hoendcheid. I love seeing crafty workspaces, and his is remarkable for the smallness of the space (a single desk) and the scale and number of pieces he makes. He does INCREDIBLE things with shells, found objects, liquid nail (crafty tip: apparently it works like hot glue without the gun and the stress!), mirrors, chandeliers, lamps, you name it. I covet his driftwood chandelier, which looks just like a walk on the beach. I chickened out about asking whether I could take a photo of it in the shop, so I can only point you to the pictures on the site (it is hard to do the pieces justice in 2-D). He even covers the lightbulbs with silicone to give them a whimsical wind-swept quality.

I could go on and on about the neat stuff I’ve seen here every day, but I’ll spare you (for the moment). Hopefully I’ll manage to pop in once or twice before I head home on Tuesday, as I have some travel crafts (made on the plane) to show you too!

How did it get to be November? I had so many grand plans for handmade holiday gifts, and maybe even making a few items to put up in my (gasp! empty!) etsy shop, but how is Christmas less than two months away already?! Thankfully, there are some super-organized crafty types who’ve got my back (and yours if you’re in the same predicament). The lovely folks at both Cotton Spice and Sew,Mama, Sew have put together round-ups of handmade holiday gift tutorials for nearly every day of November.

At Cotton Spice’s Last Minute Gift Countdown a brand new design by a different crafter will be featured every day. Mine will be up on November 14th. I don’t want to spoil the surprise but I can tell you it is super quick (no need to bust out the sewing machine) and costs less than $10 to make.

At Sew, Mama, Sew they have compiled Handmade Holidays: 30 Days of Gifts to Sew featuring a different item, or category of items, each day and providing links to favorite tutorials for those items. I’m very honored that they’ve chosen to link to my Bias Tape Bag tutorial. I think on November 17th for the purse category (but it could possibly be in the tote category tomorrow– we’ll see!).

Even more than being excited and flattered to be included, I’m thrilled about the masses of inspiration provided by the fabulous tutorials they’ve compiled. Surely I can find something to make for every person on my list. The next mission is finding the time and organizational energy to make them all! Especially because November also means NaNoWriMo, and this year marks the third time I’ll be participating in the writing madness! Which also explains the lack of spanking new crafty images in this post, though I promise that will not become a habit.

This is Gina the giraffe, my first attempt at designing a softie of my own! I really like giraffes and have seen a lot of cute stuffed ones, but no patterns that made me take notice. So I broke out the arts section of last week’s newspaper and started drawing and figuring. I’m going to tweak the pattern a little to make the face less camel-like, and make it stand up on its legs instead of resting on its tush. Once I get it the way I like it, I’ll PDF the pattern and write up a little tutorial for any of you who’d like to make a Gina (or Gino) of your own! It will be up either here or over at getcrafty, so stay tuned and I’ll let you know when it is up.

Hope you’re all happily recovering from Halloween sugar shock today!