Just wanted to pass on a few holiday things I like lately! Two posts in an hour, woo hoo.

Loving Diane’s beautiful and ultra-simple menorah project on CRAFT:.

And Pam’s yarn stars are lovely too! What a mother and daughter team those two are!

Speaking of holiday crafts to try, I keep forgetting to mention over here that my Red and Gold Button Wreath project tutorial has been featured in the Houston Chronicle! So cool. If you happen to make one, please add it to the Button It Up flickr pool — I would love to see it. I’ll be hanging mine up on the porch this weekend (once it is hopefully above freezing, that is… ugh).

Last, our beloved little Crafty Tree Trimmings ornament e-book is now $3.00 off with the code FORLINUS at checkout, so it’s now $9.00. We are hoping to give the best possible donation to Project Linus and thought we’d make it a bit easier to snap up! A huge thank-you again to those who have supported our book and our fundraiser.

I am not on Twitter myself, so please forgive this probably very rusty and awkward announcement where I’ll probably get the Twitter verbs wrong, but SisterDiane is currently running a Crafty Tree Trimmings sweepstakes you’re entered in if you RT her announcement from 12:00 noon Pacific time:

30th person to RT gets a free copy! New $3.00 off coupon for Crafty Tree Trimmings (FORLINUS) http://ow.ly/KEWe

Thanks for helping us spread the word! On that note, I’m off to do some sewing and button-hairclip-demo prep. See you on Sunday!

If you’re in Portland on Sunday, I hope you’ll swing by the Crafty Wonderland Super Colossal Sale! There will be over 200 vendors selling all things handmade and awesome, plenty of food, a full bar with signature crafty cocktails, and a full day of free craft projects to try at the super-sized DIY table.

In fact, I will be one of the craft demo-ers — so if you’re there between 1 and 2:30, please come say hi and make some Button It Up Hairclips with me!

Here’s the full schedule of craftiness:

11:00am-12:30pm Personalized Fortune Cookies
with Kristen Rask of Schmancy and author of Plush You!

1:00pm-2:30pm Button It Up Hairclips
with Susan Beal of West Coast Crafty and author of Button It Up and Bead Simple

3:00pm-4:30pm Vintage-Themed Glass Tile Ornaments
with Maria Raleigh of Collage

5:00pm-6:30pm Embroidered Holiday Cards
with Diane Gilleland of CraftyPod and author of Kanzashi In Bloom

Cathy + Torie announced something else cool about this year’s sale, too:

DONATE SMALL HOUSEHOLD ITEMS FOR COMMUNITY WAREHOUSE!
This year we are proud to team up with the Community Warehouse, a local non-profit agency that collects and redistributes donated household goods to individuals and families in need. Stop by the Community Warehouse booth (#11) to learn more about their organization and also to make a donation if you’d like. They will be accepting gently used small household items like toasters, pots + pans, utensils, can openers, alarm clocks, towels, blankets + sleeping pillows.

Hope to see you!

Crafty Wonderland Super Colossal Sale
Sunday, December 13th
at The Oregon Convention Center, Hall D
(777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Portland, OR)
from 11am-7pm
FREE + All Ages

I’m so excited that our collection of Kitten-inspired projects has been turned into a snappy new e-book, Crafts for the Knittn’ Kitten (courtesy of Diane Gilleland and her tireless Craftypod Publishing). The beautiful craft supply photos are by Lee Meredith, and the Kitten projects graphic is by Diana Schreiber. So thanks to Diane, the book is all ready to go… and it’s completely free, just click over here to download* a copy for yourself!

The e-book includes all these how-to projects:

Bib-Style Statement Necklace, by Heather Mann
Crocheted Ribbon & Bead Necklace, by Heather Mann
Knit + Stitch Zipper Pouch, by Lee Meredith
Seed Bead Hairpins, by Teresa Sullivan
Dress Up A Dish Towel, by Diane Gilleland
Felt Halloween Bag, by Joelle Groendes
Cupcake Applique, by Christine Blystone
Jersey Doily Scarf, by Bridget Benton
and
Fabric + Button Pincushion, by me!

We’re so happy to share these projects with everyone — all we ask in return is that you support your local independent craft stores. They need you!

And if you make any of the projects, we’d love to see them — please add them to the Knittn Kitten flickr pool! You can also see the photos of our projects there, along with plenty of other vintage and crafty Kitten delights.

*Diane says: When people click on the ebook graphic, the download should start automatically. Some web browsers will display the PDF immediately. For others, the customer will have to look in his or her Downloads folder and click on the file there to open it.

I crossed county lines to visit Oregon City last week so I could check out my friend Kathy Cano Murillo’s new Crafty Chica line at Michaels — so cool to see it in person!

She has a list of all the stores that carry it nationwide if you’re looking for it, too. It’s also on her site and on Amazon.

Here’s the rest of the display of her cool colorful stuff… I snapped up some fun things!

Here’s my favorite project I’ve made with Kathy’s Crafty Chica line — an embellished collage piece for my Day of the Dead altar (how-to here on CraftStylish).

I used her Crafty Chica paints, glitter, cards and glue (along with rhinestones and a small blank canvas) to make the collage — more about it all here.

I had one more cool friend’s-crafts-sighting at the store too:

Yay Amy! I wish I were in Seattle right now…

I hope you had a lovely holiday (or if you are not here in the US, a lovely regular) weekend! Our Thanksgiving was a very welcome break from an overwhelming wave of work, and we had a nice time cooking way too much food for ourselves and Pearl, and then getting to hang out with friends later in the evening for dessert. I even made my first homemade pie crust thanks to my friend Robin’s expert tutoring — my pie looked like this going into the oven with the pretty swirly crust edging,

but it came out of the oven with crazy uneven crust edging.

Regardless of how pretty it was(n’t), it tasted good. I was happy with my first attempt at real buttery pastry dough and I will definitely be baking a pie for Christmas dinner too! Maybe with a little less filling next time.

Speaking of Christmas-y stuff, each of the six of us who contributed to Crafty Tree Trimmings (me, Diane, Kayte, Betz, Patricia, and Linda) are making our own versions of another crafter’s ornament this month — to start things off, I hosted a little get-together in my living room for the Portland ladies and our distinguished Philadelphian visitor. Kayte made my ornament, Diane made Linda’s, and I made Diane’s — the gossamer thread trees!

Diane’s instructions are marvelous — it was super fun to make my little trees. My additional tips are: 1) use serger thread if you have it handy (it winds more smoothly than a small thread spool), 2) if your fabric stiffener is watery, add a little Aleene’s Tacky Glue to improve the consistency, and 3) if you need holiday inspiration, listen to this box set while you are ornament-ing.

It was a very well-documented craft session (as you can see by three cameras in action) — in fact, you will see posts all week from my fellow ornament-makers!

I made a set of three trees in mint green, red and silver and varied the sizes by wrapping the thread lower on the cone on some (red, silver) than others (mint green).

I converted Diane’s lovely hanging ornament version to mantel decorations, I like having my tiny forest out before my Christmas tree is officially up.

I also added a final coat of Sparkle Mod Podge to make mine glittery,

and since I can never resist the siren call of buttons in my crafts, I made a little extra decoration for my trees, a white glittered felt star topper with a pearl button on each one. The little tutorial I wrote to make them is up over here on my button blog if you’re interested!

If you have had a chance to make an ornament from the Crafty Tree Trimmings e-book, please add it to the flickr pool! We would love to see it. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported the project by buying a copy of the book, or posting about it — we are so excited that our donation to Project Linus is growing, and very appreciative of our crafty community!

p.s. The book is only available until December 31st, so if you have your eye on it, be sure to snap it up before then!

My friend Kayte is on a west coast tour with her beautiful new book, Applique Your Way. She’s in San Francisco now and heads up to Portland to see us in a few days too!

If you’re in the Bay Area or around here, be sure to mark your calendars! (And if you’re in San Francisco, head over for cocktail hour at the craft museum tonight — sounds heavenly.)

SAN FRANCISCO
November 20th, 6pm-8pm
Museum of Craft & Folk Art
51 Yerba Buena Lane, San Francisco, CA
(@ Mission between Third & Fourth)
mocfa.org
BOOK SIGNING AND COCKTAIL HOUR

November 21st, 2pm-5pm
Curiosity Shoppe
855 Valencia St., San Francisco, CA (between 19th & 20th)
curiosityshoppeonline.com
WORKSHOP

PORTLAND (yay!)
November 23rd, 7:30pm-9pm
Powell’s Books
1005 W. Burnside St.
Portland, OR
powells.com
BOOK SIGNING

Kayte mentioned that we’ll get to make these sweet little felt ornaments with her athe Powell’s event, and she’s bringing along some of the other book projects to show as well!

More on the book when Kayte and her squeeze Adam are here in a few days! We’re planning a Crafty Tree Trimmings ornament-making session with Diane that I am looking forward to, too.

My friend Nicole pointed me to this beautiful whales gocco print from Kids Haus this week and I wanted to share it over here, too:

Michelle of Kids Haus designed and printed this lovely piece in honor of her dear friend who passed away this year, leaving an 8-year-old daughter. Michelle wrote a very moving post about it, explaining that 100% of the proceeds from “Under Her Wing” will go directly to the little girl’s college fund. I ordered one this week for Pearl’s room, and there are five prints left if you would like to support her very sweet fundraiser too!

I also wanted to say how grateful I am to the folks who have bought a copy of the Crafty Tree Trimmings ornament e-book. Our Project Linus donation is growing daily! And thanks to Diane and Patricia’s arrangement to offer each contributor a share of the book’s sales, I was able to use my first payment this month to buy this print the same day — something that means a lot to me, especially as the mother of a little girl. So thank you, again, to everyone who has bought a copy. I hope you are enjoying it!

Just want to announce (a bit late) that Lee Meredith and Bridget Benton have unveiled their lovely craft projects to wrap up the free Knittn Kitten pattern parade!

Lee designed these extremely cool knitted zipper pouches — they are darling. I love the contrast vintage fabric lining.

and Bridget made a great series of pieces with repurposed t-shirts and crocheted doilies — this shirt she said was inspired by Crochet Adorned, and a scarf inspired by Generation T.

All the project sheets are available at the shop, and even better for those who are not local, and probably very sick of these Portland-only posts — Diane is hard at work on turning our projects into a free e-book, which should be coming soon! I’ll post about that when it’s ready to go.

On another note, I just want to say again how much I love The Sewing Room (fka Sewing Center West). I bought my Pfaff from them two years ago, which has been a dream to sew with. Yesterday it freaked out for the first time ever, and this morning they fixed it for free in less than ten minutes and even carried it to the counter for me while I wrangled Pearl. If you are in the area and looking for a good shop to buy from, or get your machine tuned up (here is a coupon for that by the way), they are awesome.

Also, they are right next to a big giant Fred Meyer, and thanks to the race car shopping cart that Pearl loves to drive around the store for about four times as long as she likes to sit in a regular cart, I got all the ingredients for the sweet potato gnocchi with mushrooms and spinach in this month’s Sunset. Not the worst time my sewing machine has broken down on me, that’s for sure!

I’m very excited to be part of the new Crafty Tree Trimmings ornament-making ebook! I was asked to design something with beads and buttons, so I made a set of Sparkle Ornaments — a super fun way to use some of my favorite glittery bits and pieces.

I made two ornaments, a pink and gold version and an all-blue one. It was fun to bring our little silver tinsel tree out for the photos and listen to some Sufjan Stevens while I made the ornaments — it’s still early, but I’m looking forward to the holidays this year!

The book is a collection of six ornaments to make in all different crafty mediums from some of my favorite designers. The book includes:

* Crocheted Flower Ornament, by Linda Permann
* Felted Gingerbread House Ornament, by Betz White
* Bead and Button Sparkle Ornament, by me
* Vintage Treasure Ornament, by Kayte Terry
* Gossamer Thread Three Ornament, by Diane Gilleland
* Paper Globe Ornament, by Patricia Zapata, who is also the book’s designer

The cover spotlights all the ornaments so nicely, and each how-to has a clearly photographed set of photos and any full-sized templates you need, right in the book’s pages.

Fifteen percent of the book’s sales go directly to Project Linus, an organization we were all eager to support. Here’s a bit more about them:

It is our mission to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children who are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need through the gifts of new, handmade blankets and afghans, lovingly created by volunteer “blanketeers.”

And Diane and Patricia structured their book in a very innovative way: each contributor receives a portion of the sales as well, so we are shareholders in a sense as well as creative contributors — very cool!

You can find the book here and check out a flickr pool of ornament photos here. I would love to see what you make from the collection!

I’m happy to announce that it’s my week to have a free craft project sheet at the Knittn Kitten! The week actually started Tuesday (ahem) but I’m a little swamped right now, so here’s a peek at my project a day after Diane and Heather were nice enough to write about it…

This is an ultra-simple, very customizable little pincushion project — very easy and quick to make. If you buy a half-yard of a cotton print and a half-yard of corduroy at the Kitten you can make 44 of them, believe it or not!

I’ve included instructions for a tufted version and a button-decorated version, but you can also embroider, gocco-print, or embellish them any way you please. They would also make nice sachets if you’d prefer. Okay, now that I’ve finished the hard sell, the project sheet is waiting for you over at the shop, so stop by anytime to pick up some pretty new things and a project sheet (or all of them!).

Last week’s project was Christine’s darling cupcake patches! I got a copy of her instructions yesterday and they’re fantastic. You can still get hers and the other project how-tos — each one is in its own section with the materials you’ll need for the craft.

In other news, I have a new favorite recipe… we ended up with pounds and pounds of green tomatoes before we pulled our garden out

(this is after making three rounds of enchiladas — looks like we’ll have at least two more to go)

and the Oregonian ran this great idea for using them: squash, bean and cheese enchiladas with green chile and green tomato sauce. We’ve made three batches, each one slightly different, and the last one was the best. It’s definitely on heavy rotation around here and it’s so easy to double the recipe and freeze half.

My adaptations are: use half black beans and half pintos, use one and a half chipotle peppers instead of one, and add chopped red peppers to the filling. (Oh, and I left out the cilantro, I hate that stuff but you probably like it so feel free to leave it in, of course!)