I'm a knitter. And I love it. This freehand embroidered piece (10 of 50) is for a mod partner that loves to crochet, knows how to knit...but has issues with knitting. I hope she finds it funny!
I've been admiring the galleries for numerous rounds of hoopla and finally found the courage to join. Embroidery isn't something that I excel at...but it was worth a stab (bad pun intended...) because the theme of silhouette/negative image appealed to me. While I'm not quite sure if my hoop (7 of 50) examplifies the theme, I did try my darnest. Based on my swap partner's interests, I chose to do something with Dia de Los Muertos/Day of the Dead. Day of the Dead sugar skulls are typically colourful and vibrant. I chose to do black on black embroidery on a colourful patchwork background. From a distance, it looks like a silhouette of a skull on patchwork: 
Up close, you see the typical designs of a sugar skull!
And a requisite shot of the back of the hoop...
Last weekend, I had a fabulous time hanging out with CD for our 2nd Annual Crafty in Cincinnati. After having so much fun the first time round, we booked rooms at the same hotel with plans for trying new crafts and catching up.
Friday evening, we played with paper and made a couple of chunky houses!
My chunky house "A Virgin of Yesterday"!
CD's fantastic cat chunky house!
Saturday was a busy day! We went to IKEA (boy oh boy!) followed by a visit to St. Theresa's Textile Trove (an absolute gem!). In addition to a good selection of eclectic fabric (hand marbled, hand dyed, African batik, etc.), they also had all kinds of beads, whimsical charms and general kitsch. I won't gab about my fabric purchases, but I did find quite a few things that I had to have!
Porcupine quills. Yep, sharp and beautiful. I hope to inject resin in the hollow shaft and turn them into hairsticks for myself...soonish.
Okay, I wasn't planning to talk about fabric but this particular fabric has such a neat story to it. Apparently, the design is based on "ladies of the night dolls" that were handed out as, erm, calling cards in Mexico. The designer, Terrie Mangat actually had names for the dolls in the fabric, and these are names of her friends and family. How cool is that! 
Fiber, fiber, fiber!!!
First fiber project for the evening - felted soaps! CD chose a good selection of colours for her bar of soap...and it turned out beautiful! I opted for forest green and hunter green shades. It seemed like a good idea at that time...but in retrospect, I shouldn't have. My felted soap looks like a Brillo pad! 
Next, we embarked on making wet felted scarves. I was too excited and didn't get any pictures of the layout of the dry fibers or even take very good pictures of the process...but here's the progress pictures of CD's colourful scarf!
Prewetting the fiber prior to soaping...
Close-up of pre-wetted fiber!
Soaped and partially felted...
It's darn near impossible to take pictures with soapy hands, but here's my soaped and partially felted scarf. I opted for using white wool roving because I wanted to dye the scarf after I was done felting it.
Scarves hung out to dry!
Close-up of CD's colourful scarf...
Close-up of my boring pre-dyed scarf (which is still undyed)...
And then we dyed a couple of skeins of yarn with food grade acid dyes...because we had a microwave in the room!
Close-up of the lovely dye effect on one of the skeins (I love grape Kool-Aid!)
You'd think we would call it a night after all the fiber crafts. Nope, CD promised that she'll coach me on needlework and she made good on that promise.
Awesome scissor fob that she made for me! 
Here's the sampler she worked on to show me a variety of stitches that I could learn:
Sadly, I was getting too cranky and tired (hey, it was now Sunday morning!) to learn them. I could bearly keep my eyes open at that point :P I stitched this...
And partially got this started...
But finished it when I got home!
I can't wait to do more needlework!
And for the record, my hair had pink highlights (it was purple for last year's meetup)!
I've been crafting in my mind...envisioning what I need to do to make an awesome mug rug (8 of 50) for my swap partner. After reviewing her answers to my questions (more than twice, I might add), here's what I came up with. Gnome...check. Colour match to kitchen decor (since she indicated that mug rug will actually serve as a coffee press rug)...check. Requested size of not to exceed 7" square...check.
Embroidery WIP
Embroidered gnome
As I was embroidering the gnome, this was the story in the back of my mind...
Larry is your average variety garden gnome. It has been rumored that he is a charity shop rescue, but he insists that he hails from Target (or was it Wal-Mart?). He is not happy with life in the chilly northwest. “Ah the cold weather is making me miserable,” he moaned. “There are icicles in my beard and my nose is redder than Rudolph’s!” The harsh winter conditions have taken a toll on his usually sunny disposition. Larry has decided that it is time to make a few changes in his life. He will be a garden gnome…no more! His plan is to spend the rest of his life, snuggled under the warmth of a coffee press (or teapot if it comes to that). He does not mind being squished…not if it means moving down south for good!
Front view
Close-up
Back view
The sewing bit for the mug rug was a breeze (what can I say...I love to sew!) but the embroidery bit was less fun. I kept things simple...but sometimes, simple is good. I hope my partner likes it!
Made for SC, for the geeky themed OTT swap. It's a chubby little thing, measuring approximately 3.5 x 3.5 x 1.25 inches. The cover is an aqua-hued fabric, and I embroidered the octopus based on her selected themes of oceanography and octopus. I hope she likes it! 
As usual, I slacked off in the picture-taking department...but I had a blast meeting up with CD (a fellow crafter I've corresponded with for the past 5 years or so!) for a weekend filled with good conversations, dubious food, neat finds and c-r-a-f-t-i-n-g. Yes, crafting!
After a wee bit of dodgy furniture moving from my room, down the hallway to CD's room, we had ourselves a lovely work space for papercrafting (check out CD's awesome blog for erm, the incriminating pictures). We worked on ATCs, inchies, and I started on a couple of possibilities for chunky houses...but we had the most fun coming up with themes for the inchies. CD kindly offered to help me out with a swap assignment (though I felt guilty enough when I got home to realise I need to get them done myself :P)...so here are the inchies we made:
CD, the prolific inchie-maker's masterpieces:
My meager number of inchies:
And of course, we thought it would be fun to do a collaboration of sorts, so here's my side...
and here's CD's side!
But that's not all! We also found time to work on some wrapped rings (erm, still looking for these because they seem to have gone a-hiding...) and my first punch needle embroidery project!! CD was an excellent teacher. Not only did I learn a few neat tricks about embroidery, I actually enjoyed embroidering! Unreal.
On to pictures of the finished project. Yes, I love me some shroom! The bright colours make it a cheerful piece, and the bobbles and rick-rack (which I happened to have in my stash) seemed to be the perfect finish for the tin.
are a pain in the patootie *sigh* Now I know why I hardly ever take a stab (literally...) at embroidery!
My sister informed me that the wee niece has been chewing on her clippies. OMG. I'm pretty sure there's no lead-based paints on the clips, but one can never be too careful about these things. Here's the latest batch of flower clippies I made for the naughty chickie! Hopefully, they'll stay out of her mouth and stay put on her hair!
Oh yeah. More goodies for the wee niece. This time round, felt hair clippies!! Each clippie measures just about an inch or so. I wish I took the time to create templates for the embellishments, but I didn't. Hence, these will be OOAK clippies. Oh well. Now, all sorts of ideas are swirling in my head. More flowers? Definitely. Animals? Hmmm. A monkey or a panda might be cute. Huh. And perhaps more fruit-themed clippies!!! Oh, the possibilities!!!
I've been blessed...again. Last week, I received another surprise package in the mail. This time round, from my friend CD. CD's forte is embroidery, but she also dabbles in other crafts. You'd never guess that the little box which houses a pincushion is just ordinary paper stained with food dyes. The little charms on that bracelet are items which are I love :) Each item was crafted with love and care, and that's priceless.
