Due to the nature of our product (crafting supplies) more often than not I’ll see someone walk into our store wearing something totally unique and 100% handmade. Less often do I find out that I TOO can have that wicked awesome item; until recently. A trend is emerging. Esty is seeping into everything!

For those of you who are unaware of what etsy (www.etsy.com) is:

Etsy is an online marketplace for buying & selling all things handmade.

Our mission is to enable people to make a living making things, and to reconnect makers with buyers.

Our vision is to build a new economy and present a better choice:

Buy, Sell, and Live Handmade.

The items shown above, as well as the item show below are all available online from the artist’s persona etsy shop. Above are the works of a local Northampton artist, Kathryn Swanson. I noticed her wearing a pair of these beautiful felted earrings the moment she walked into the store. From afar they seemed to be peacock feathers with strung beads; which was lovely, however upon closer inspection I realized that they were not feathers at all but rather life-like needle felting. Needless to say I felt very envious, until much later I was talking to my colleague Christa Hughmanick (ItKnits) about the customer. Long story short: Christa is close friends with the artist/customer who makes those earrings, among many other very cute items, and she would arrange the purchasing of a pair for me. ^_^ In the conversation she also mentioned that Kathryn made change purses with an image of Obama screen printed on them along with the phrase, “Change”, ergo, “Change Change Purses.” The idea tickled me in a highly erudite way. These items are not only on sale via esty, they can be purchased at Guild Art Supply (100 Main Street Northampton, MA). I picked up a few as gifts immediately. The pun pleases people.

I absolutely adore the necklaces that another colleague of mine, Malea Rhodes of Celadon Studios, (I know it’s sickening how talented the staff here is!) is making. She initially put out a few necklaces on her desk to promote a staff class version of a class she will be teaching at the store this coming school session on how to make ceramic beads. Instantly there was a flurry of snatching and dibbing and soon there was hardly an unclaimed one. It was like watching people pick puppies; they knew they wanted one, it was just a matter of which.

I’ve been long obsessed with Tree of Life pendants, but have never been able to find one that I really like. When I saw Malea’s version I was struck. To explain why we’ll have to have a little religion lesson, don’t worry, it won’t be boring!

The tree of life/world tree in Norse paganism is known as Yggdrasil. It’s branches reach to the heavens and it’s roots dig deep into the earth, to locations not known to man. Upon this tree the cheif god, Odin, hung himself by one foot for nine nights, while he was pierced with his own spear, which by the by, was made from Yggdrasil. He did this in order to learn the wisdom of the ruins, which would give him power in the nine realms of existence.

In essence this tree of life, which is still meant to be a symbol of the interconnected nature of all beings, is a gallow. There is an interpretation of the etymology where “Yggdrasil” refers to the word “Yggr” or “terror”, making the tree’s name “tree of terror.” I think this is an important part of the world tree’s image. Much like the Ying Yang, the World Tree should show the juxtaposition of it’s mythology. All the plastic, silver, intricate, whirly, girly Tree of Life pendants I’ve come across and passed on were because they weren’t able to attain that duality. Malea’s pendant encapsulates that for me. The soft colour of the porcelain is like snow quietly contrasting it’s stark linear black branches all akimbo reaching to the heavens. There’s a subtle yggr there, but it remains a peaceful symbol of the sacrifice for knowledge. Thank you so much Malea. I really adore this piece.

Finally I’ll cut out on an inspirational note: Inspired by all these lovely handmade necklaces I made the piece below by sewing a bird bead onto a lovely bed of needle felted cashmere. I even strung it with yarn (if you have a good eye you’ll know that’s Berroco Seduce!) It was for Christa’s birthday this weekend.

Phew, I can’t believe it’s already been a week since we’ve been back from Stitches West 2009. Between the stressful flights back (a foot of snow fell on the east coast the day before our flights!) and the throat cold I had while I was there I’m only just beginning to feel recovered. The cold I blame on having to shakes hands with all the children at the fencing tournament I attended the weekend before we left; luckily I was too busy at the event to even have time to experience the cold. It was a lot of fun to get to see all of our west coast customers, get inspired by new yarns, eat out at fantastic restaurants and show off my latest designs. I absolutely love these events and can’t wait til the next one, for which I will be dosing up on vitamins and wearing gloves the week before. No more test bunny at the conventions.

It was nice to sleep in yesterday, as I badly needed it. I never got time to recover from the west coast jet lag because, although I took the day after we landed off, I had a television shoot that day. I’m very excited; my friend Ed Patterson, from Go Ask Alex, hooked me up with a class at UMass, where the students are creating vignettes and shooting them live for public access. However, they don’t have actors! This is a problem I can surely fix. The piece I worked on this week was, Liquid Courage, directed by Mike Trainor, about a down on his luck guy who tries a magical approach towards finding the perfect girl. I play the perfect girl. ^_~ I’ll ry and get a video of it up on the site asap, if possible. I’ve already been asked back for this weeks story, Mr Hyde Goes to Therapy, directed by Spencer Peterson (Wet Paint Productions). I play the therapist; well they can’t all be type casts. hehe.

It was also nice to sleep in because I went to the midnight premiere of Watchmen on Thursday (technically Friday) night. I couldn’t help myself. It feels like we’ve been waiting for this moving to come out forever. I remember checking imdb frantically when Jeremy told us they had images of the Night Owl in costume. I loved the film. I can’t possibly say enough good things about it. Despite rumours of bad casting (Keanu Reeves as Dr Manhattan >_<!!), all the acting choices were superb. I couldn’t get over how much Malin Akerman looked like Laurie Jupiter, especially considering that she’s a bleach blonde Swedish babe. And I cannot go without saying that I loved Jackie Earle Haley as Roschach. Then again, I might be biased as he’s my favourite character from the novel. What really amazed me the most about the mastery of Zac Synder and Larry Fong (DP) was how my mind kept schisming into the visuals I knew from Dave Gibbons (original illustrator) and the film itself, only to then be drawn into an eeiry concordance of graphic match deja vu, where my mind through the cell from the novel up onto the screen and it fell seemlessly ontop of the frame from the film. This happened so much so that I could see the word bubbles, and fonts (particularly for Roschach) popping up and matching what was being said. The two scenes that this sticks in my head the most for this are the inital meeting between Roschach and Dan Dreiberg: there’s a pan out leaving Dan on the steps, Archie in the lower left corner, and Roschach is walking away down the tunnel; and the entire series of images where Roschach is telling the therapist about the night Walter Kovacs died. The latter of the two is so close to the novel that it feels like a scene for scene fleshing out of the novel’s cells. This isn’t bad, in fact it’s fantastic, however, it does send the mind down a weird sensory path.

I’ve been trying all week to explain to people what this movie is about and why I’m so excited, but I really haven’t been able to. To say that it’s a movie adaptation of a graphic novel written by Alan Moore is simply factual. To try and go further and explain that until then people hadn’t been questioning the actual lives of superheros, and that this novel moves towards asking questions that allow us to see the moral ambiguity of mask vigilantes, their psychological disorders, and the blurring or “good” and “evil”,  leaves you trying to go further and further into the topic until your friend’s eyes have glazed over and you find yourself simply shouting, “The Dark Knight?”, “Arkyum Asylum?!”, “V for Vendetta?!”… SIN CITY? And so I’ve come to resign myself to simply knowing that if you don’t know why you should see Watchmen, then you probably shouldn’t. Read the graphic novel and then rent it on DVD or something.

I’m off to Stitches West tomorrow morning, but before I’m away from my base of operations for a week I wanted to share my newest piece, “The Pink Pullover.” I know exactly what you’re thinking; “That coat is chartreuse.” Okay, perhaps you thought green, never-the-less, this piece was given it’s name because of it’s inspiration.

A “pink”, is eighteenth century slang for a traditional red hunting coat. It’s derived from the name of eighteen century London’s most popular field-wear tailor, Thomas Pink. When I first set out to make this sweater I was intending to make a fairly close rendition of a traditional hunting coat with added texture. That being said, free form knitting took the best of me and this piece began to design itself.

The yarns are two recently discontinued colours of JoSharp Silkroad Aran, which showed the stitches and cables exactly as I wanted them. I couldn’t be more pleased with the yoke, which simply happened by accident. The layout of the cables were done free form as I knitted and are loosely based on a cardigan by Melissa Morgan-Oakes called, “The Radiance Cabled Jacket.” I liked the way the cables down the back of that cardigan flattered the figure by making an hourglass shape. I tried to do the same in this design by making the distance of the cables across the back like that most desired female shape: heavier at the top, cinching in, and almost as wide again at the bottom.

It took me quite a while to figure out what to do with this neckline. I knew that I had wanted to add in the slate blue here; It was the sight of these two colours together in the warehouse that initially inspired me to dream up this coat, but I had no idea where to add it in. So I cracked open my copy of Barbara Walker’s Knitting from the Top Down and found an image of a key-hole neckline. I chose crochet because of it’s three dimensional nature, which I thought would make it easier to sculpt the neckline. In fact, I crocheted the neckline on the garment while it was still on my dressmaker’s dummy. It was quite the sight. Me, crochet hook in hand, straddling a dress form and crocheting madly into the night. The drops on the right breast are also crocheted on, again for the three dimensional quality. I didn’t want them to be simply on top of the knitting, but rather above it to juxtapose the inward (purled) cables on the back of the garment.

And in a final homage to it’s inspiration I added a welted (lord I love welting) and split cuff with tiny silver bird buttons.

At the end of my previous post I spoke about how I was using the “Noro Technique” (”…using one colourway of a variegated yarn in a pattern that requires colour stranding. Where the pattern would normally call for a different colourway of the yarn you simply use the same colourway but at a different point in the colour transition.”) to make ShiBui’s Transition Gloves. Well it’s finished! I love the way it came out, and very much enjoyed knitting with the yarn. Even though it was a single ply wool it did not split as badly as one would imagine, however, it does have the fault of all single ply yarns: Pilling! The yarn pilled as I was knitting it and the gloves had a halo before even being worn. This being said, I still like the yarn and am very please with how it came out. I would not, however, use it to knit socks as it is intended for. I just think with the way it handled the pilling from simply being handled, it won’t be a pretty sight with all the friction on one’s feet.

Valley Yarns (aka- Webs) has published one of my patterns! ^_^ It’s pattern #262 - The Annabelle Head Wrap. It’s available for purchase in the store for $2.49 + tax, or online for $1.99 + tax. This is basically a simple ear warmer that I made for days when I’m rocking the pompadour and cannot wear a winter hat. It’s knit out of only ONE skein of Valley Yarns Deerfield ($6.99) a DK weight alpaca and silk blend. The yarn is so airy and light that it doesn’t mess your doo up, however it’s still warm enough to keep your ears toasty!

Honestly, this is a very quick knit and makes a nice gift because the triangular lines made from the ribbing make it look more complicated than it is. All you need is the ability to knit a K2, P2 rib and be able to increase/decrease.

Awhile back I knit the Side Slip Cloche from Laura Irwin’s Boutique Knits. Well here’s another great design from that book. It’s very rare that I find a pattern collection where I like over 80% of the book, this is definitely one of those rarities.

Variegated Strand finished this beautiful version of it out of Cascade’s Eco Alpaca, a DK/Sport weight 100% undyed alpaca. Since nothing has been done to this alpaca, except the spinning of it, it is so soft and beautiful. I was lucky enough to try this garment on in the store. It look fantastic, falling nicely around the hips with the cut away lace that is very flattering; not to mention it felt like wearing a warm airy hug! You can’t see in this picture, but it also has cut little pockets incorporated into the front blousing, and as far as I’m concerned there are not enough pockets in women’s wear. Probably because they’re all unnecessarily on men’s PJ bottoms. ^_~

And one final cool thing. I’ve made a tattoo gun out of a Crest Spin Brush and the E string on an acoustic guitar. This is my simple face on an apple. Expect more cool things to come.

P.S.- THIS IS NOT FOR TATTOOING LIVE* THINGS.

*except fruit, which is evil and deserves the pain.

Last night I finally finished the lace dress that I started knitting in June of last year. Somewhere around August I had finished the skirt and wandered away into a different project before finishing the rest of the bodice. I blame this mostly in part on the fact that the smallest size for the pattern was for a bust of 36 inches. I’m not saying that’s large, if anything medium, but you’re VOGUE knitting magazine, you should size down to a 32! So, needless to say, I had to size down the pattern (by cutting out repetitions of the lace), and this constant game of mathematics kept me from finishing for far to long. In fact, I took away my internet privileges for the last two days until the dress was completed. What can I say? Facebook sucks away hours of my life.

The yarn is Louet Gems fingering in the ginger, and it took only five skeins (925 yds) to make it in a smaller size, which is almost half the yardage needed for their “small” (1,644 yds). I really love this yarn. It was very easy to knit with; it was very smooth since it is after all a superwash “sock yarn” (ha ha, as if I would ever put this in the washing machine), which slid nicely through my left hand making for quick knitting and on project like this quickness is necessary. You have knit fast enough to beat your knitter’s ADD- the desire to move onto a quicker, instant gratification, project. Sometimes called a “tv project.” Also, the colour is just everything I wanted and more. I actually feel in love with this yarn when it first arrive in the shop because of the ginger colour. When Vogue came out with their summer lace editorial it was just serendipity.

Along the back runs fifteen faux diamond buttons. I adore the look of these, normally gaudy, buttons. Somehow they just seem to fit this fanciful dress, however, they don’t hold the picot edging well enough. I’m going to go back and install a small bit of grosgrain ribbon onto the inside of the left placket, onto which I’ll put fifteen snap closures. These will hold the dress shut, while the buttons remain doing their beautiful superficial thing. It’s not that the dress is too tight, it’s more that the amount of negative ease in the garment makes it necessary for the buttons to be much larger than the picot edging. They recommended a 3/8″ button, and were probably right in doing so. I made the impulse to use these instead because of their charm.

This is my new favourite piece of jewelry. It’s title “Melancholy Lashes” and it’s the creation of the fantastic minds at Untamed Menagerie:

Untamed Menagerie is a collection of the combined works of Penny and Nikki (mother and daughter). We are inspired by nature, vintage illustrations, and anatomy. We strive to create whimsical accessories that will bring a smile to your face.

Normally a necklace of this size would hang terribly, since it would have to weigh near a ton. However, their handmade silhouettes are cut out of light-weight and eye-catching acrylic, allowing pieces of this magnitude to seemingly float on the neckline. And an absolute must of a kudos for the asymmetrical drape; it creates a wonderful diagonal, forcing the eye to travel from top to bottom across the wearer’s chest, adding a nice dichotomy to all the curly fine lines of the silhouette.

It also doesn’t hurt that they’re a wonderful company with great customer service. The item shipped very quickly and I received confirmation emails promptly throughout the experience. So far I’ve given out their shop name to more people than I can recall, and very quickly given out the business cards they sent. It won’t be long before all the ladies in the office will be sporting their Untamed Menagerie jewelry. I think Jess has already ordered the very sweet Breakfast at Tiffany’s earrings. She was ogling them last week and they just recently sold. I hope to see them in person soon! As for me, my next love is a toss up:

There’s nothing too special about this baklava recipe, except that it was given to me by a man who claimed it to be the recipe of his grandmother, a Russian aristocrat, who had an affair with Pushkin, hence the title. This dish is very simple to make as long as you’re not afraid of phyllo dough, which you shouldn’t be! Its available pre-made in most Stop & Shops, usually by a company called Athens. Its just as delicious as if you made the dough by hand, but that process is so incredibly time consuming that its not worth it. Its a great crowd pleaser and can make even a novice chef appear to be a pâtissier.

Adulterous Baklava

Ingredients
1/2 lb pre-made frozen phyllo dough
1 cup butter (melted)
2 cups chopped walnuts
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 cup honey
2 tsp lemon juice
1 cup water

PREHEAT: 400 degrees

Remove the phyllo from freezer and allow time for dough to reach room temperature. If you try to unroll it frozen it will simply crack into unusable pieces. Take a 9 X 9 round pan or a 12 X 8 pan and brush melted butter around the entire inside of the pan. Place single sheets of phyllo dough over the buttered surface, brushing edges with butter to seal. Coat all the phyllo dough you just placed down with more butter and repeat the process of laying sheets of phyllo dough and buttering them until you have used about half the package of dough, ending with buttering the final layer.
In a seperate bowl mix the walnuts, sugar, and cinnamon so that the nuts are completely covered. Pour the mixture on top of the buttered layers.
Repeat the process of laying and buttering phyllo dough to make a crust on top of the nuts and sugar mixture, again ending with buttering the final layer. Use a sharp knife and score the top layers in a diamond pattern (this will make it easier to cut into pieces after it is baked.)
Place in oven and cook for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile combine the honey, lemon juice and water in a pot and bring to a boil. Lower heat and let simmer for 20 minutes.
Remove baklava from over and allow to cool for 5- 10 minutes. Pour the honey/lemon/water mixture evenly over the top of the baklava and serve.
This dish is best served immediately, while the pastry dough is still crisp and has not sucked in too much of the sweet mixture.
ENJOY!

What a mouthful. My original intentions in working with sweet potatoes was to create a naturally sweeten potato bread. First attempts at the bread included walnuts, but excluded eggs. Definitely a good dense bread. And then there was the same dough, except I made a pouch of 70% dark cocoa, cinnamon, sugar and butter on the inside of the loaf. That… was insane. These muffins are the calmed down children of both those experiences. Since I used the banana/sweet potato puree I was able to exclude the 1/2 cup of vegetable oil I usually put in a muffin recipe. So I’m lead to believe these muffins might be good for me. I mean there’s a vegetable and a fruit in there. There’s also mini M & M baking pieces, so maybe it just cancels out. Either way they can’t be bad for you!

Sweet Potato, Banana, Ginger, M&M Muffins

Muffins:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 egg
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 tsp melted butter
2 tablespoons ginger powder
3/4 cup half and half
1 medium sized sweet potato
2 bananas
1 cup M&M mini baking pieces

Topping:
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon

PREHEAT OVEN: 400 degrees
Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Peel the outside of the sweet potato off, cut into smaller sections and cook it in the pot, covered on medium, until a fork easily penetrates it.
Meanwhile, in a large bowl mix together the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder). Once thoroughly sifted make a well in the middle of the bowl. Pour the following ingredients into that well: egg, vanilla extract, ginger powder and butter. Mix with a spatula. The mixture will be very dry and clumpy at this point. Mix as best you can.
Once the sweet potato is cooked to the correct consistency drain out the water and add in the two peeled bananas. Using a potato masher combine the sweet potato with the bananas until an even smooth mash is created. Add this to the bowl with all the other ingredients in it and mix well. Pour in the M&M mini baking pieces (don’t worry about the colours as they immediately run in the mixture. it’s very ty-dy). After the everything is mixed together evenly spoon out amounts of the mixture into either a silicon muffin tray or a muffin tray with liners. Sprinkle with topping mixture.
Bake for 33 mins. Remove from trays and let cool.

YUM! Any excuse to eat more sweet potatoes