Two Cowls Are Better Than One...

...So I made another one!

Shank Sisters Craftathon

Thanksgiving Eve, my sisters and I got inspired to whip a little something up--not apple pie or green bean casserole--but cowls! A quick trip to the yarn store and two movies later, voilà, our necks were covered in woolly goodness.



Pattern: Lion Brand Scalloped Cowl

China + Jess = Dynamic Crafting Duo

One of the perks of working right next to the largest Chinatown on the west coast is that I have access to lots of weird cheap stuff, like dollies and dominoes and farting pig keychains. I found these napkins in the basement of a Chinatown store, and since the difficult lacy part was already done (thank you, machine in China), I decided to add my own embroidery flair (thank you, Mom who was alive in the 60's to learn this kind of thing.)

A Needle Through a Haystack Garland

This is a very easy project took WAY longer than I thought it would.*

To make this garland, I used a ton of cupcake papers and circles cut from fabric, tulle, burlap and tea-dyed coffee filters. I stopped at 26'. No one needs that much garland.

















(*I guess that could be said about 96% of the things I make.)

Dominotrix

This latest project left left me longing for the the good old days when you could roll up to the general store, park your pony, and pick up a box of dominos and decent bottle of whiskey.

Now days, apparently simple black and white dominos are are not easy to come by. Domino designers had to get fancy and start putting colored dots all over everything, which is fine for game play, but not for my purposes. I didn't need my fireplace mantle looking like a sprinkle doughnut.

I finally found three boxes of plain dominos at "Canton Bazaar" in the depths of Chinatown. (Probably the biggest lesson I've learned living in San Francisco: when you need something weird that no one else will sell, go to Chinatown. If you don't find what you need, at least you'll come home with a wooden back massager or a toy to hang from your non-existent cell phone antennae.)

I simply glued the dominos on a piece of plywood to make an inexpensive, and surprising heavy, piece of art.

So Many Slippers

It was quite the sweatshop around here preparing for Christmas this year. My gift of choice was cozy felted slippers.


These were my first experience with felting (knitting wool and then washing it in hot water to make it shrink) and it was so much more fun that accidentally shrinking wool. If you can get over the temporary wet-dog smell, you can really make some cool stuff.

This is how the gigando slippers looked before I put them in the washer.


And this is how they look after.

To finish them off, I sewed leather on the bottoms and made some gift tags using rubber stamps.