I’ve had yet another crochet fail, so I’m going to drown my sorrows in the fantastically creative work of others:

These despondent little leaves are an example of the beautiful work by Lola Goldstein.  I never thought I’d be in love with leaves that suffer from ennui. Her soft boiled egg set with a little egg shaped salt shaker is pretty cute too.

I’m not much for resolutions mostly because my birthday comes up pretty fast after new years (this friday!) and it’s depressing to take stock and realize you so quickly fell short of all those goals you set just four weeks ago. But this creativity chart by Eerika from rag pets is simple and beautiful and is more about keeping track then MUST SUCCEED! She simply colors in the block if she has been creative that day. You could color code the squares or just go crazy with your box of 64 crayons. Someone in the comments even suggested making a quilt based on the chart when the year is done, which is fantastic and reminds me of Lea Redmond’s idea of knitting a scarf where the color of the row depends on the color of the sky that day (she also does the world’s smallest valentine, which is super awesome and seasonally appropriate).

I have wanted a set of letter cookie cutters for a while, but I am now totally holding out for these helvetica shaped cutters by Beverly Hsu.

and last, but far from least, on the list of things that are awesome on the internet this week is this curiosity cabinet by Suzanne Norris. I think the octopus is my favorite. It’s sold in this amazing shop called the Otherist–in Amsterdam– that I discovered via Kasa at the paperama blog.  It looks like a beautiful shop to visit, but their online shop ain’t too shabby either.

On Friday all my kids’ friends came over for a valentines making party–yes all! have you ever had a party where every person you invited could come and then think holy crap! everyone is coming?  At the last minute a few kids couldn’t make it, so it wasn’t quite as chaotic as I thought it would be, but we are still picking glitter out of our hair (four days later).  The kids are still pretty young, so there weren’t any projects proper, it was a how many different things can you glue to one card sort of deal. My son’s inner glitter lover came out and he used up most of what we had.  Actually after the party was over my kids worked on their valentines almost until dinner time. They would get up from the table every once and a while and help themselves to the leftovers at the buffet. It was a rare day in motherhood where I was aloud to sit back, cuddle with the baby, and crochet as I please.

I got kinda themey with the food. It was supposed to be all heart shaped and red, but ended up rather brown and carby.  I made tomato focaccia from my bakery days and it was pretty good, at least the two dogs who finished it off thought so. These financiers were a total bust: they didn’t taste very good–and financiers are usually super delicious–and the heart effect was fussy as hell and didn’t work in the end.  Everything else was pretty run of the mill: heart shaped pb&js, red vegetables, trail mix. Martha’s raisin heart pockets were my favorite and I squirreled a few away to have with tea later.  I know valentines day is all about chocolateness, but these were nice and wintery, not too sweet and perfect with tea. I used golden raisins in the filling, but I think dried apricots with a little cardamom would be even better.  So go set up a little buffet for your kiddo’s lunch and open the glitter and savor some quiet time, or make some valentines yourself.  Next year we might skip the christmas cards all together and just send out valentines.

This coat has been a long time coming. I started it right after I finished making my son’s coat–high off success I suppose–but it stalled soon after when she tried on the rough draft (umm, what do you call the outer shell of the coat, a mock up?) and said, “ewww, I don’t like it.” So it sat in a pile for a loooong while. Then I started looking around for something to line it with and couldn’t find anything big enough to line the whole coat which bummed me out, so it sat some more. I decided to hell with it I would just patch together different sweaters to line it even if it makes it look extra handmade.

Really I probably shouldn’t have lined it. I wanted to just use fabric from my stash (because seriously the stash has to get smaller) and everything is, but the coat doesn’t hang right at all. The pattern is from Carefree Clothes for Girls, which I was really excited about, but I’m not super happy with this pattern (I combined the short coat shape with the long coat length). It’s raglan sleeve, which I love, but it different from the other raglan sleeve things I’ve done in that it has a seem down the top of the arm. So there are four pieces for the sleeves and they are sewn separately to the front and to the back and then the front and back pieces are joined by sewing down the top of both arms. I think this takes away the ease of raglan sleeves and gives the coat extra bulk it just doesn’t need. Oh and I added in seam pockets, which doesn’t help with the bulk issue either, but they’re handy.

Because I didn’t really like it, but didn’t want to abandon it I slapped on some ruffles a la j.crew so I would like it more. And it worked. My daughter was anxious for me to finish it, but damn if those sew on snaps don’t take forever to sew on.  While I was sewing on all those snaps my daughter danced around excited for it to be done, then she tried it on and hated it. It is a little big and hangs weird, so I don’t really blame her. But still. Maybe next year she’ll like it more. Until then she’ll wear it to church because her mother will make her.

I’m starting to really enjoy these linkydoo posts (awesome name stolen from miss rae) I hope you don’t mind them too much. Since I’ve started to crochet, I’ve been on the look out for crochet blogs. I found this one (sc) recently and though I can fake reading french a little, really I have no idea what she is saying but her work is lovely enough even without the words.

Erika from fox and owl makes beautiful articulated teddy bears (and kitties and dolls too), but it’s this idea that I’m going to steal. Healthy and hilarious!

Another craft project idea on the list to steal (someone has a flickr set called “ideas I have stolen” that I always thought was fantastic) is this painted square set from mer mag.  Part art part toy and super fantastic all over.

From another blog I can’t read comes this project. Perfect for valentine’s day or mother’s day or just to use up the ridiculous amount of random art we have piled up in the house.

have a great weekend!

There have been a few crochet projects recently that I have just had to rip out–that cute and jumpy word “frogged” is just not going to cut it here, because I spent precious time working on them, they looked liked hell and then I had to start the fuck over. Here is one example:

This is what happens when you try and crochet over a paper lantern. I wanted a new light fixture for our bedroom because staring at a cheap paper lantern hanging from a bare bulb starts to looks extra crappy in the wee hours of the morning (when you are nursing and staring at the ceiling, wrecked from nursing all night long) but didn’t have any extra cash to get one, or really even make one. I thought lantern would look nice and cozy with a crocheted cover. I had some extra chunky white yarn from this project, so I quickly got to work. I’ve never really made up a pattern from scratch before and it was a little more frustrating than I thought it would be and it took a lot longer. And then because I was running out of yarn and stretching it just a little too tight literally with the very last stitch I broke the shade. Shit. Yeah yeah, maybe it a good thing, now when I make it again I might be able to write a pattern, but still, shit.

I am working on another crochet project (my sewing machine is gathering dust!) and it has not failed yet.

Hexagons for a bathmat. It’s a japanese pattern and my first project worked from a crochet chart (I found it on ravelry here and here is the original site). I’m warming up because I bought this book and I want to make every single project in it. Speaking of ravelry, it looks like there is a sewing equivalent getting going call The Woven! There are a lot of sewing forums out there that are great (craftster, cut out and keep) but this looks more like ravelry and it’s nicely thought out. It would be a welcome addition I think.