Don’t you love her tag line? I knew I liked Tara as soon as I met her. She’s feisty. And funny. And the first thing she said after I gave her my card at The Creative Connection was “You have a boy? I have two boys at home. I know EXACTLY what you need.”

Meet Little Evan's new best friend: Snake

She was definitely right. Tara makes these adorable 5 foot long snakes out of bright fabrics and minky, so they’re soft and cuddly. You can order them in boy-ish, girl-ish or either-ish colors.  And since she understands kids, they’re even machine washable.

Hitting Mommy with Snake is Little Evan’s new favorite game. AND THAT’S TOTALLY OK, because getting whacked with a soft fabric snake is a thousand times less painful than a plastic sippy to the face. I speak from experience. I think Brutus appreciates the soft-snake-as-a-weapon even more than I do.

And when one gets all tired out from the playing, Snake also makes a nice cuddly friend.

If toy snakes aren’t your thing, Tara also makes wallets, card holders, burp cloths, passport covers and more (as she puts it) artsy fartsy stuff. And she adds to the shop all the time, so put her on your favorites list and keep an eye out for the perfect gift this holiday season.

And to help you on your merry holiday shopping way, Tara is very generously going to give one of my readers a $30 credit to her Etsy shop!

All you have to do to enter is check out Taradara on Etsy and leave a comment telling me which item is your favorite. That’s it! One comment per person.

Giveaway will be open until November 3rd, winner will be chosen using Random.org and notified via email, so make sure you use a real email address when you comment.

Giveaway is now closed!

You should also check out Tara’s blog (especially what she did to this china cabinet) and follow her on Twitter, because she’s funny and creative.

Disclaimer bit: Tara sent me the snake in this post for free so I could review and photograph it, but no additional compensation was received. Opinions are all my own and were not influences by her gift in any way. Except for the fact that I got a full hour’s peace and quite to WRITE the damn post just by giving Little Evan the snake to play with. IT HAS MAGICAL POWERS.

p.s. She also sent me this beautiful camera strap cover as a gift:

Isn't that print fantastic?

But since she doesn’t have them in the shop (yet), it’s truly a one-of-a-kind item. You’re the best Tara!!

Day 1 is open until November 1st! Allora Handmade
Day 2 is open until November 2nd! Uff Da Designs

You would not BELIEVE how many perfectly good, brand new wool sweaters I’ve ruined in my washing machine. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. Until I started knitting and learned to actually appreciate fiber I always saw those “HANDWASH COLD ONLY” and “LAY FLAT TO DRY” rules more like…guidelines. I was too lazy and forgetful to separate stuff before throwing it all in the wash. And yet I was always shocked and devastated when my previously human-sized sweaters came out of the dryer doll-sized and stiff.

That shrinking process is called “felting” and this week I did it on purpose so I could turn wool sweaters into crafty felt flowers.

Since all the sweaters I’ve ruined recently are black, I went to Goodwill to hunt through the racks.

Score!!

Cardigans are a double score because you can repurpose the buttons in your flowers.

The trick is to find sweaters made of 100% WOOL. Not 70% acrylic, 30% wool or some other synthetic blend. You also want to watch out for items that have “machine washable” on the tag or say anything like “Super Wash” or “No Shrinking!” That sort of defeats the whole purpose here. In theory, you could use other animal fibers – the light pink sweater is actually 100% cashmere – but I found it didn’t felt up as nicely as the wool ones.

I did pretty well with what I bought – the white one in the front didn’t have a tag and I suspected it wasn’t real wool so I wasn’t shocked when it didn’t felt. But it’s clearly hand made and was only $3 so I’ll just wear it. The scarf didn’t felt either, but again, not big loss. New scarf for me!

Now you’re going to shrink the sweaters on purpose to make felt you can craft with.
Follow these steps:
1. Throw sweaters in the washing machine with a little detergent.
2. Set machine to Hot Wash/Cold Rinse and push start.
3. Walk away.

And you’re done.

I found a lot of instructions online that wanted you to put the items you were felting in a mesh bag or pillowcase or toss in a tennis ball or some other heavy item but I had the best luck with the straight up washing machine. Since the goal here is to make the fibers as dense and stiff as possible so you can cut it up, you can even toss the whole mess in the dryer on high when they’re done washing. If you’re not happy with how felty they look after 1 wash, repeat the cycle.

If your sweater wasn’t wool to begin with it will become very clear right about now, because they will not look like this:

Post-felting. You can see how they've shrunk.

Now comes the crafty part. If you’re creative on your own just stop reading and go do something awesome with your new wool felt. The rest of my project isn’t that impressive. But if you want some ideas, read on.

My first thought was to cut out actual flower shapes and sew them together. I found flowers to use as templates online, traced them onto cardboard, and cut out the cardboard shapes to trace onto the felt:

Why yes, that is the box from a cereal that is kid tested and mother approved. It was the only thin cardboard we had in the house.

Unfortunately, tracing the shapes onto the felt was WAY too much work for me, especially with a toddler trying to crawl across the table every two seconds. If you can think of an easier way let me know (Maybe I should pin them? Maybe I can cut with an X-acto knife to avoid the tracing?) but I recommend stick to shapes you can free-hand. I have the cutting skills of a second grader so flowers and stars come out as lopsided blobs – but since you’re a grown up you can definitely do better.

Luckily, I can do a lot with just one or two fancy shapes and a few easily cut circles and leaves.

It helps if you have some buttons hanging around - these are all from the Goodwill sweaters or my stash of lost buttons on the dryer.

Cut out different shapes in different colors...

Stitch them together with a little thread and one of those buttons...

If you're feeling lazy, just stick to cutting out circles...

Or if you're feeling REALLY lazy, use a little yarn to make a loopy flower on a leaf (the button makes it fancy!)...

And you're done! Now you can glue them to pins, barettes, headbands, or sew them right onto a boring purse or scarf.

I’m sort of ridiculously pleased with my flowers. For the record, I made all these from just the bottom part of one sleeve from each sweater – I still have a LOT of felt left over. You can use it the same way you’d use acrylic or nylon felt from the craft store, just remember it is wool so it might be a little scratchy on bebeh parts.

Happy Crafting!

p.s. These are the stretchy cuffs from a couple of the sleeves. I’m thinking they’ll make great headbands for a tiny baby girl – especially with a little felt flower sewn on.

To be continued...

If I had known I was going to The Creative Connection months ago rather than just a few weeks ago, I would have done the smart thing and started staving up my pennies. Instead, I had to borrow money from my mom to make sure I could do some shopping. Because nothing says “independent, grown ass woman going on a fancy almost-business-related trip” like begging your parents for cash.

And if I had known just how many gorgeous things would be for sale at the Handmade Market I would have borrowed A LOT more. Or maybe sold a baby kidney.

Pretty Things. Do you spy some ruffles?

I must have walked through the room a dozen times before I could pick my jaw up off the floor long enough to stop and choose a few things to bring home. Here’s what I ended up with:

Adorable headband, Chatty Gus & Lovely Gus pouches from Gussy. One of the above may turn into a giveaway for one of you lucky readers, if only I can shut up the voice in my head that keeps screaming NOOOO!!! MY PRECIOUSSSSSSSSSSS! MIIIIIINE!!!!!

And in case you needed me to tell you, yes, Gussy – I mean Maggie – is absolutely totally 100% as cute in real life as she seems on her blog.

Beautiful lock & key necklace from J. Jewels Designs. Julia was super sweet and nodded patiently while I tried to explain The Twitter and how much I loved it. You should follow her just to prove me right.

Rosette headband from Allora Handmade. I sort of stalk-followed her up to one of the panels and she let me sit next to her and mutter about the interwebs without once asking me to please put a sock in it. I’m going to leave her Etsy shop up on E’s computer every day from now until he takes a hint and buys me a matching necklace.

I couldn’t resist this onesie. I bought it at the Red Shoes 26 Design booth & she had adorable prints and illustrations too. Her Etsy shop doesn’t have the onesies available right now but I may send an email begging for at least one more.

Necklaces from Lisa Leonard. The one on the left was my very first purchase at the market and I’ve been wearing it ever since. The one on the right was the gift from the gala dinner.

The actual yarn maker wasn’t there – I grabbed this from one of the shops because how could I possible go somewhere that sold yarn and not buy any?!?! It is SO SOFT I just want to roll in it. I can’t wait to turn it into something beautiful – I’m thinking a scarf.

Beautiful minky lined camera strap for my Nikon. Again, I fail at naming the actual maker (if it’s you, or if you know, PLEASE sent me a link!) but I picked this up at the Oh Sweet Sadie booth. They had a HUGE selection of gorgeous stuff from baby gifts to jewelry to these camera straps in a dozen pretty fabrics.

I could have easily spent $5000 and an extra week just wandering around buying headbands and necklaces and flower clips. I’m such a sucker for the handmade stuff it was hard to pass up a single one. And because I am a selfish selfish person, I spent every cent on myself and didn’t do a lick of Christmas shopping. I hope all my relatives like fruitcake.

After going through a short period where I wanted to stab my eyeballs out with a pair of needles (really really sharp ones), I’m enjoying knitting again. I got inspired from the oasis needlepoint studios so I’ve built up quite a little stash of projects and patterns and have big plans for a whole holiday full of knitted gifts this Christmas. Making stuff is just so SATISFYING, even if the stuff is riddled with errors and the ends are done all wrong and it costs me twice as much to make on my own as just going to Target an buying a stupid sweater. But these are ONE OF A KIND and HOMEMADE and SOOPER SPESHUL so I don’t even care.

Want to see what 10 months of knitting experience looks like?

(Warning: lots of dorky knitting details ahead! Feel free to be bored to death or call me old and lame. I know.)

Green shrug

This is the first adult-sized article of clothing I’ve ever made. I had issues (the stab myself in the eye kind) with the lace pattern, but it turned out all I needed to do was take a chill pill and adapt my counting skillz. The yarn is Serendipity Tweed by the Brown Sheep Company (60% cotton/40% wool) purchased from my awesome friend Megan’s yarn store*, Mothers of Purl Yarns. The pattern is available for free online here.

A better view of the pattern & the shape – I swear I’ve worn this EVERY DAY since I finished it.

Baby Evan’s Toddler Sweater

I’ve had this pattern and this yarn since the week I started knitting, but my plans to start it were always undermined by not having the right needles or not having a button or not understanding how to pick up stitches. I finally got over it, used the needles I had and started, only to realize I was going to have to knit it in an actual big-kid size instead of the baby size, which ended up taking FOREVER, but it totally worth it due to cuteness.

I’m actually happy it’s big, so he can wear it longer. Also, I totally think he looks like a Jedi in the hood, which I think is super cool. Because I’m a dork.

The pattern is the Baby Tunic from Knitting Pure & Simple (and it was a GREAT pattern, everything was explained super well and was easy for even a novice to follow). I’m almost embarrassed to tell you the yarn is Caron Simply Soft Heather in Denim (100% acrylic). Cheap craft store yarn is the bane of “real” knitters everywhere, but whatevs, it’s for a kid and I wanted it to be a)inexpensive b)washable and c)indestructible. Acrylic FTW!

Gender Neutral Baby Sweater – made pre-girl parts revelation

I bought the yarn (Cascade 220, 100% wool) from Megan’s de-stashing basket (for $4, what a deal!) and the pattern is the Plymouth Yarn Co’s Top Down Baby Jacket.  I made the same pattern for my niece and loved it so much I wanted one for my own baby. I left it button-less on purpose, in case I needed to go with something boy-like. Now I think I’ll get a pink & brown ribbon to thread through the holes & just tie it closed.

Pink baby shrug

I had a ball of the Brown Sheep Tweed left over after I finished my grown up sweater, so I traded it in for the same yarn in pink to make my first official BABY GIRL item. I found the free pattern online from a blog called The Shizknit (BEST NAME EVER? I THINK SO) and it was so unbelievable easy I had it done in one evening + 1 nap time. I follow the directions for the smallest size but it ended up being sort of big. Baby Girl might get to wear it this spring and then again in the fall, which is actually awesome.

Gorgeous, no?

I bought this ball of yarn Wednesday night at my knitting group (Di’s Delectables, 50% wool/50% alpaca plus metallic thread) and cannot WAIT to make something out of it. I’m thinking a cowl or a scarf, because it’s only 150 yards, and the colors will be fantastic up near my face. Doesn’t it remind you of an opal? I’m going to need a REALLY gorgeous pin or buttons to finish it.

So there you go – all the stuff I’ve made in the past few weeks. Next up is Baby Girl’s teddy bear to match the one I made Baby Evan (And maybe one extra one, to be given to a lucky person yet t0 be determined. Perhaps a hand-made giveaway? Anyone?) and getting started on my Christmas gifts for all my luckiest friends and relatives. Just don’t expect socks. I hate socks.

*I seriously can’t say enough good things about Megan. Not only is she an amazing knitter, she patiently taught me everything I know, lets me and the baby hang out in her shop anytime we want and is a super friend. I don’t buy NEARLY enough yarn from her to justify spending so much of my time at Mothers of Purl and yet she never complains about my freeloading. Although if anyone ever wanted to get me the best gift ever they could call Megan and get me a gift certificate. I might love them forever and ever. AND EVER. ARE YOU READING THIS DARLING HUSBAND?

Disclaimer, just in case: None of these people have any idea I’m writing about or linking to them and I apologize if they stumble over here and discover how badly I butchered their beautiful patterns/yarn.  I spent huge amounts of my own money on this stuff, no freebies at all.