The holidays are fast approaching. Last year I found garden gnome holiday cards at IKEA and purchased them to give to co-workers. I had planned on making cards, but this was too perfect. I don’t particularly like garden gnomes. You can thank a Goosebumps TV show episode, Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes for that. Those gnomes were creepy. Anyhow, I decided to embrace the gnomes and get the cards. To top it off, I decided to make little gnome hats for all of my coworkers. I made felt cones and used scrapbooking brads as decor. For the Christmas folk, they got “Christmas” colors of green, red and gold. Hanukkah folk got “Hanukkah” colors of silver, blue, and white.

This year, I’m not sure I will do anything. There is a lot of new staff and they haven’t quite learned about my quirky need to craft. I will probably need to break them in easy. But, I may also be inspired and do something after all. Rip the craft band-aid off quickly.

Anyone have any inspiration for their holiday projects? A theme for this year?

OK, folks, more links.

Sewing:

 Woven needle books. You could use swatches for these!

The Eddie Cap tutorial is for a cute little train engineer type cap. Cute.

Knitting:

Zetor is just an awesome lace shawl!

A knit chocolate bunny pattern. I may knit this for my soon to be niece.

A Jelly Baby knitting pattern  for those Doctor fans out there

If you loved Blush on MagKnits (before they closed shop), never fear, the designer has posted it on her site where you can find her other patterns as well.

Crafty:

Instructions to make your own round knitting loom.

Make bowls from magazines.

Parsnip cupcakes. I lurv carrot cake. The original apparently called for carrots, but was changed to parnsip. I wonder if I could just swap back the carrots.

DIY kilt. Oh fun.

A quick correction to the Burridge Lake Afghan that I hope to one day knit.

A craftser post about a little bit of passive aggressive payback when the neighbors tick you off.

Ask and ye shall receive! Knit an Adipose from the season premiere of Doctor Who Season 4.

If I hadn’t decided to start painting the dining room, I’d have started already!

Ravelry user mazzmatazz has been behind the awesome Dr. Who knitting patterns. On their website, there are patterns for a knit Cassandra, a knit Ood, a knit Face of Boe, and a knit Tardis. Cute! I’m hoping that I see a pattern for the adorable Adipose sometime soon.

I think it is interesting that there is already a petition for folks to sign. They are attempting to get the BBC to make Adipose plushies for sale. While we crafty folk can probably come up with a plushie pretty easily, there are probably quite a few that can’t. I would be interested in buying one if it was squishy. I’m talking about wanting to buy squishy fat. What’s wrong with me?

On my way home from a frightening large scale print quote, I decided to stop in the hospice shop. I walked in and it was full of shall we say, VERY elderly people. I was extremely tempted to walk out. Then I saw the buckets. The hospice shop always puts buckets of yarn in the same spot. So I started looking through. Believe it or not, there wasn’t anything I wanted in the buckets. What I did find was right next to the buckets. It was… A Gocco. I have been seriously thinking of getting one for over a year now, but could never justify the price to myself. However, this one was $4.00!

Needless to say, I picked it up and carefully held on to that sucker. I went through it and it has everything. It even has the original receipt from November of 1995! The owner used two of the master sheets and eight of the bulbs. There is still ink, extra master sheets, the blue filter, paper, the pen and of course instructions. Essentially it has everything but eight of the ten batteries.

There is a dealer not too far and I can of course buy anything I need online. I’ve got enough stuff for now. I won’t have time until after the holidays to do anything. Even then it might be a few weeks after the holidays are over before I can start playing. For now I will just be happy that I have it.

I’m lacking motivation, due mostly to me being sick. My husband is sick as well, so that isn’t helping anything. I was motivated this morning. I managed to paint one side of a door (it is outside and on tables) and sand a wall. However, I have other things on my list of things to do.

Josh informed me today that he would really like me to finish his second glove for flying. I’m suffering from second glove syndrome and haven’t had the motivation to do it. He wants to go flying with his dad and the weather at his parents will be cold enough to require the use of gloves.

I think I might feel motivated enough to take some yarn pictures for my ravelry stash. That doesn’t require too much thought from me. Right?

I wound the yarn I dyed the other day and took a picture. I think it looks great. I re-washed the darker skein and managed to get more dye out. It is a little lighter, but still distinctly darker than the two matching skeins. I’m going to probably dye the remaining four skeins with the same dye. I need to buy more blue though.

Today I dyed three skeins of LionBrand Cotton-Ease I purchased about a year and a half ago. They were a very, um, vibrant shade of yellow. I purchased some fabric dye many months ago and finally decided to use it. I used the smallest of Josh’s stainless steel pots and set to work. I mixed in the blue dye and stirred the water. It was nice and bold. Good sign. Next I wound the yarn around two chairs* and tied the loops with some acrylic. Then I put it in the pot. It took a few seconds for the yarn to suck it in, but when it did I almost freaked out. It had turned a deep and dark navy blue. Then I squeezed and some of the dye came out. Pheew.

So, I went on. In the end, the first skein came out darker. It was in the longest, so it was to be expected. The other two skeins are a slightly variegated mossy green and are simply gorgeous. The first skein wasn’t bad at all. But it can’t really be used with the other two. The color difference is just too great.

I have three or four more skeins left and I am going to dye them soon. There is still dye left, though I may need to add more powdered dye to it to add a little more intensity. Then again, it might not need it. I’ll post pictures once they are dry and I can wind them.

I have another pound of cotton yarn as well. I don’t know how that will dye though, but I kind of want to do it in a red, orange, and yellow. I need to think it through a little more first.

*Note to self: Don’t walk around the chairs so fast. You literally made yourself sick going too fast.

I do believe this cute cat post has inspired me to make the cat a couch. How much the shiznit would I be if I made one for my kitty?