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?

A modeling program to help you design your own plushie. Um, so cool!

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!

I’m cleaning off my desktop, so here we go…

A great idea for easter eggs for boys. From Knittycat’s Tips. Just cute and quick stuff for kids.

Knit
dish scrubbies.

Zetor Scarf Pattern. I think I found my first lace project.

English Garden Felted Carpetbag.

Flying Spaghetti Monster Ornament. I’m making a few of these for next year!

I don’t think Josh can ever complain about my yarn stash. It pales in comparison to this stash. I believe that the value of that stash would pay down a substantial amount of my mortgage. I almost dare say that is an insane amount of yarn! Of course this is coming from the person who seriously evaluated the cost of buying essentially a warehouse of good yarns.

When did the knitty surprises come out? Did I totally miss their arrival or am I super cool and spotted them first? Anyhow, Starsky is cute. It might even be useful in my cardigan dilema. Want to hear something really bad?? My mother has a raincoat in the same cut that I refuse to let her throw away. It is too tight across the chest but damnit, I just can’t let her let it go. I just love the way it is built!

Oh how jealous I am… look at the stash and look at that organization. The darn aquifers and our need for clean water keep my from having a basement to put such a wonderful stash!

Oh my goodness… I am posting.

Even crazier news folks, I might actually get to do something crafty! I had been pondering the idea of making Il Cestino, but haven’t had the time. Now I see, the designer of many-a-mosaic patterns, Wendy Wannacott has posted a tutorial(.pdf) on mosaic (or slip-stitch) knitting. Soon to come is a tutorial for knitting them in the round. The little bowl is so damn cute. I don’t know what I would use something that tiny for, but it is tempting.

So, this might be something I get a chance to make. I’m trying to spend as much time as I can studying, but this might be one of those things I can take a break to do!

Now if only I can find a digital camera I like. I was hoping to hold out and justify to myself to buy an SLR, but I’m having a hard time doing so. I did find a nice sony, but I want to do more research. I am attracted to it by the 12x optical zoom. Bad me.