I got a super nice message from Parisa of LightingLittleFires blog a while back, saying that I’d helped inspire her to start a blog and put together a blog “festival” of projects, which sounded like a fun idea!  She asked if I’d be interested in contributing something summery, so I put together a how-to for one of my favorite summer treats – cold brewed coffee!

Along with the coffee instructions, you’ll also find a pretty wordy interview… be warned, when I’m asked about my business and stuff, you can’t shut me up!  So head over to day 10 of the Midsummer Day’s Dream blog festival – and check out the festival home page to see all the projects for all the days (including some free knit and crochet patterns, recipes, and more!).

In other news… did you know this year’s Tour de Fleece has started already?!  My, how time flies!  I’m taking the year off, sadly, too much going on, but I did participate the last 2 years – see my posts about 2009 and about 2008, or the flickr sets, for some inspiration perhaps?  It’s such a fun way to spin a bunch with a huge group of people all spinning right along with you, yay!  (Head to the ravelry group to get involved!)

I’ve been meaning to mention this since the Summit of Awesome, where I met the creator of this amazing new website – unanimous craft!  From the site:

Unanimous Craft is a tagable, sortable index of resources for crafters, artists and indie business owners. We submit our favorite resources and welcome the community to do the same.

It’s still super new, and the awesomeness of it is dependent on how much it gets used… I haven’t been able to spend any real time there yet, but I plan to for sure, and you should too!

I got an email from 9-year-old Hannah pointing me to this video she made about Hats for Hunger – seems like a great charity to know about if you’re looking for a place to donate hats, or want to buy some hats for a good cause, or especially if you have kids in your life who might be into loom-knitting (or regular knitting) up some hats for the cause, since it’s all run by kids!  Pretty rad!

And one last thing to tell you about – Google voice has recently come out of beta so an invite is no longer needed to get an account!  It’s a great service (watch the video to learn about it) and I now have a new number that I can share publicly since it’s all screened and stuff…  (971)-leethal will reach me via phone call or text! Yay!

Well I’m finally almost not sick anymore, and catching up slowly on everything after a couple weeks of rest… oh, my poor blog, hopefully I’ll be seeing more of you!

Ok this post was supposed to happen sooner, but sickness delayed it… there are a ton of photos, so I’ll be keeping the text brief… if you want to read more about the Summit of Awesome and how truly awesome it was, check out posts by my buddies Diane, Kim, Susan on Craft, or Hello Craft’s posts, and see hundreds more photos in the flickr pool!

So, the story of the Summit in photos and links… Got there Wednesday to sign in and pick up this fantastic program bound inside a custom made journal, with plenty of blank pages in back, love it!

Also got a swag bag with this excellent knit swatch poster and lots of fun buttons and cards and stuff:

Then I stitched up my name tag – since I arrived a bit on the late side, I kept it simple, just some embroidery on felt:

On that first day, I attended a couple of great learning sessions – Getting Press for your Business with Kari Chapin and Christine Ernest, and Green craft: sourcing materials and business practices with Becky Striepe, Stephanie Weber and Christine Claringbold:

Then Pete joined up since it was his day off and we ate with a bunch of rad crafty people…

(photo of us by Christine) At the welcome party that night, we got to screen print our own Summit tees – so cool!

Day 2 was the longest day – 5 sessions of awesomeness!  Since I did just learning sessions on day 1, and I was going to be teaching on day 3, I decided to make day 2 my fun day of making, so I chose to attend only workshops!  First up, Encaustic Painting with Bridget Benton!

I knew absolutely nothing about encaustic painting going into this session, and was SO glad I decided to try it out!  Holy crap it was fun!!  The photos above and below show other workshoppers working on their pieces – here is a photo of me working on my painting by Hello Craft, sort of.

And my finished piece!  Still hot and super foggy, then cooled:

Next was Mighty Ugly: Challenge Yourself to Make Some Ugly with Kim Werker!

The above photo is by Susan, and here’s our “class photo” by Kim (or someone holding Kim’s camera actually, since that’s Kim in the middle there):

My mighty ugly creature!

And below is Vanessa’s fabulous preppy creation, Blane (or is it Blaine?), and Heather working on hers:

After Mighty Ugly was Glass Etching with Amanda Siska, which I was super excited about since I’ve been a fan of Amanda’s work for some time!

Above is another etcher using the dental drill, and the photo of me etching above is by Hello Craft.  So, we got to use that dental drill to freehand etch, which is how I made this glass:

(You can see other views here and here, and Amanda shot it before round 2 of etching, before I added more details and made it look less kindergarten-drawing-y.)  And then we also got to make vinyl stencils and use a faux etching paint stuff, which I used to make this candle holder:

Next up, Craft Throwdown Hour with Kim Dorn and Christine Ernest! It was fun, but super stressful, making things with a 15 minute time limit – first a Viva Las Vegas themed towel (photo of me making it below by Hello Craft), then a garden themed headband, and last was mythical creatures themed bunting, which I forgot to get a photo of…

The crazy flower headband was definitely my best out of the three objects, but it was not well put together – I want to fix it and turn it into something wearable…

Last for day 2 was Book Making with Mark Montano – I chose this one because I’m a huge fan of Mark’s books, so it was fun making something instructed by him:

I was bummed out by the details of the project though – this book-making project could be so easily done with 100% recycled materials, but instead we made the books with new scrapbooking paper, new cardboard, and new copy paper… Oh well, now I know how to make my own books (with ALL recycled materials!) at home on my own:

That night at home, I finished prepping for my classes, including making a new light box (since my old one got destroyed and tossed in the move) – here’s a photo of everything I made throughout the Summit!

Day 3… first, I taught Photographing your work with your own camera (photo by Hello Craft):

Then I let my brain rest a bit by sewing up a Cup Glove with Becky Striepe – fun!

(Above photo by Hello Craft) Here’s my glove… I really enjoy hand-sewing, I should do it more often!

During lunch, we got to hear Mark Montano speak about his career path (I didn’t know he started out in the fashion world!) and tips for success and stuff (like: no days off and no tv without multi-tasking, both things I already do!)… Then I taught my learning session on Publishing your own patterns, which I think went super well!  Hooray for self-publishing!  (below photos by Susan and Hello Craft)

To end the awesomeness, we all gathered in front of the Kennedy School to take a class photo!  The actual photo isn’t up yet, but here is one Kim took while we were getting set up…

And the photographers shooting us (shooting me shooting them, silly!)…

A few last notes – having the Summit take place at the Kennedy School was GENIUS!  It was so great to have free good coffee whenever we needed it, good catering, the built-in hotel for out-of-town summiters, and bars and restaurants right there in the building where everyone could hang out together at the end of each day.  And, I love that now I can say I was a teacher at the Kennedy School!

Hello Craft is planning to do the Summit of Awesome every summer, in a different city each year, I believe… so if they take it to anywhere you can get to next year, I recommend so highly that you go!!  As we all agreed, it was total summer camp for crafters!

I just got some bummer news earlier this week that my run of Threadbanger weekly roundups has come to an end.  It’s been over 2 years (109 roundups) of posting every single Friday, so it feels really weird today that I’m not collecting awesome projects to share with TB readers.  But, coincidentally, this gig ended exactly on my 2 year anniversary of leaving my day job, which makes it feel like it was time – I was starting to get kind of restless with the roundups being the same thing for so long, trying to figure out a way I could mix it up and feel less static… I realized that my Craftstylish blogging run ended right around the same time last year; it’s like the universe closes a door every 1 year of self-employment on purpose to make room for new paths and keep me moving forward.

So, enough reflection… I’ve completed my list of roundups over here – all 109, categorized, linked, dated.  A pretty massive source of craft projects (tutorials, patterns, inspiration, etc).  For a pseudo-110th roundup I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite roundups from over the last 2+ years…

Some of the best fun/funny roundups were ski masks, knit and crochet cephalopods and tentacles, Nintendo knit and crochet projects.  A couple of my favorite technique-based roundups were artful embroidery and printing on fabric:

I definitely made use of a lot of the links I found in the drinks for winter warming list, I think there were some awesome ideas in the gift wrapping roundup, and I had a lot of fun collecting links for rainbow pride projects:

And a couple great crafty lists – so many fabulous tutorials in the pincushions roundup, and I love a bunch of projects I rounded up for spring sewing:

There are so many more memorable ones, but you can just see them all on the full list if you’re interested.  I had a lot of fun finding inspirational ideas every week, so I just might start doing occasional roundups here on do stuff!

Just to kind of close the Threadbanger door, a few more links for you…  my first TB post ever was in April 2008, kind of a pre-roundup post of cardigan reconstruction projects.  In May I officially started doing the weekly roundups, but I also continued doing other kinds of posts for TB for awhile, like an interview with Cosy, this post on revolutionary knitting, mini-tutorials like this shirt patch and kid-friendly freezer paper printing, book reviews, cool website alerts, and other fun posts like these.  Fun times!

Oh yeah, how did the Make-a-Long go?!  I’ve had to dive head-first into packing this week, as our moving day quickly approaches, so I kind of forgot to blog about it sooner…

I think many of you had fun with it!  I followed along on twitter and facebook a bit througout the day, but didn’t reply much since I was busy making!  Looking through the flickr group now, fibrouspics’ lemon ginger cheesecake looking amazing, I love notfroggiknit’s yellow/orange bracelet, and all of her food looks awesome, and esea’s soft ruffle top looks fabulous!

Plenty of blogging happened too!  Read about make-a-long fun at Craft Evolve (with the ruffled shirt), Big Girl Feet (love the colors in that granny square! and the tiki quilt is awesome), That Yarn Store, and again (about the cheesecake), Genuine Mudpie (shirt reconstruction!), Designed by Diana (cute PJs and apron), …Beachcombing Day, and Green Stockings Crafts & Design.  Hope I didn’t miss any!

As for me, how about first I’ll show you what I made, then I’ll tell you how it was and lessons learned… I got up around 8am, made some coffee, and started on an embroidery project first:

I worked on that till finishing around noon (more on the project later, which is related to my April club, with its fruits + veggies theme):

Sometime during the morning, I made myself a breakfast quesadilla, with asiago cheese, yumm!  I’d planned on food being a part of my make-a-long day, thinking I’d make a supergood dinner, and maybe bake something, but that ended up not happening because I was too immersed in the crafty stuff, so this is my only food photo:

After the stitching, I headed into the studio, got it cleaned up, and finally did the sunny photoshoot I’d been needing to do forever (more on that later).  Once it was clean, it was time to mess it up again!  I dug through some old stash and pulled out a collection of partly done projects and to-be-done clothing repairs/reconstructions (these are some, there were more):

I decided to start with this top that I’d started sewing maybe 4 years ago – it was being a bit of a fail, so I’d set it aside with plans to fix and finish later.  Well, make-a-long day was later!  Ok so it’s still in the fail category, but I still plan to try to make it work, after which I’ll blog details (if I can’t, I’ll have to blog about it over here instead):

So after giving up on that, I moved on to a black skirt I’d started sewing maybe 8 or 9 years ago and forgotten about – it’s the one in the top left corner of that photo above.  It’s super plain, I don’t know why I wanted to make it in the first place, but eh, it was still fitting, so I decided I may as well finish it.  I did so successfully, but man was it boring!  Definitely needed to be spiced up… Crochet Adorned to the rescue!  I’m not doing a project directly from the book, but I am using a pattern from the back – pretty pineapples…

This is as far as I got that day, and I’m sure I won’t have time to finish it till after the move; when it’s big enough (one pattern repeat maybe) I’ll hand sew it along the bottom edge of the skirt, and possibly make some more crocheted embellishments up the side or something.  See how boring the skirt is?  This is the back of it in the photo, with the zipper, since the front is just plain black (of course, once it’s all done, I’ll blog the finished skirt!):

After crocheting for a few hours, I moved on to what would become my only completed sewing project of the day.  Shirt sleeves skirt!  This one will get its own blog post later – I love it!!

When that was done, I was well caffeinated and still getting so sleepy.  I had this in my to-do pile for like a year, so I decided to get it done, then crash.  It’s the alpaca applique I ironed onto a sweater back in November ‘08, which was fine as it was, until the edges (especially the legs) started to come off.  So I needed to sew it on, but hadn’t ever gotten around to it – so happy it’s done now and I can wear it!

How did the whole 24 hours thing go?  Well, my main lesson learned was never to schedule a make-a-long for 2 days before a club mail-out day!!  I had been trying to get all the club stuff done early, but things took longer than I’d hoped and I stayed up later than planned Friday night trying to get more done, pushing my sleep schedule so I slept later than planned on Saturday morning.  But, much worse than that, being stressed about getting the stuff done right up until sleeping resulted in absolutely terrible sleep that night, so my intended 8 hours was more like 4ish decent hours and 4ish hours of tossing+turning half-sleep, or laying in bed not sleeping at all…

So, my main problem was sleepiness all day – if I had a full night’s sleep and wasn’t stressed out, I would have no problem at all staying up 24 hours.  Then on the other end of things, all for the same reason, I knew I had so much work to get done on Sunday (and really didn’t want to be working on the club during the make-a-long because that would be against the whole point of it!) so if I stayed up till 8 the next morning, I didn’t know if I could do it.  So I crashed around 6am, slept till 10, and finished all the club stuff on 4 hours of sleep.  Better than no sleep at all!

Those were the bookends of the day; as for the middle, there were some interruptions there as well… in between the crocheting and the sleeve skirt, there was a bit of a gap.  I took a nap for about an hour and a half, the only way I could make it into morning, and then Pete and I went out to dinner with friends – it wasn’t planned, but I didn’t want to say no to the invitation because of the making.  I knew I was already failing at the 24 hours straight plan, especially after the nap, and I had to eat something, so I got coffee with my food and had some social interaction thrown in there.  So from about 7:30 to midnight, the make-a-long was paused.

The only other problem I had, which wasn’t a huge deal, but I’ll be better about it next time around, was that my plan to not have any plans didn’t work out so well.  I thought, just planning to make stuff nonstop the whole day, and leaving what that stuff was up to whatever I felt like doing in the moment, would be the best way to do it; but it ended up resulting in all those still not finished projects, and gaps of time throughout the day that were wasted trying to figure out what I was in the mood to make… Next time, I’ll have a pile of projects ready to go, and I can still choose what I feel like working on, but with some limitations, there won’t be so much indecision, maybe…

Ok that was a lot of babbling, sorry about that.  In about a month and a half, something like that (maybe May 22nd?), I’ll arrange another make-a-long, on a weekend with no deadlines in front of me, and hopefully the date will work well for you too, and we’ll all give it another go!  Yeah!

Ok this Make-a-Long (tomorrow, Saturday!) is getting a MUCH bigger response than I’d expected! Exciting!!  A couple of things have been asked about several times (and some fantastic ideas have been shared), so I thought it would be a good idea to do one more post about the event before it starts… First, exactly how do you participate (especially if you don’t use twitter)?

I’ve just set up a facebook group, a flickr group, started a ravelry forums thread, and then there’s the twitter hashtag, and there’s this blog, and the blog-world in general.  If there’s another place you think I should set something up, let me know… I’ll address each thing…

The facebook group is here; I’m not super facebook-literate (I kind of hate it, but eh, everyone uses it, so there I am), so I’m not sure exactly what you can do on the group.  Post messages to the wall, and share photos for sure – facebook people, you can go further if there’s more ways to interact through groups…  So, go ahead and post stuff there throughout the day, share photos of what you make during and/or after, and post later about how it all went!

The flickr group is here; it’s up to you how you use this group.  I will be waiting until a day or two after it’s all over, then sorting through and editing all the photos I took throughout the day and uploading them to flickr.  If you want to, you could post photos to flickr all throughout the day.  There’s also a discussion board over there, so feel free to use that!

If ravelry is your discussion board site of choice, I started a thread there where you can post your progress throughout the day and talk about making.  Of course, if you have another forum (on ravelry or elsewhere) where you talk about making, get some members to join in the make-a-long and chat about it there!

You can also post about your making progress, links to photos, etc here in my blog comments, or do short posts throughout the day on your own blog!  If you are posting on your own blog, be sure to post a link to it either here, or on one of the other message boards – next week, once all photos are shared and everything, I’ll be writing a post with lots of links!

For me, I think twitter will be my main outlet to all you makers throughout the day, with the hashtag #makealong.  If you don’t know how twitter hashtags work, it’s very simple – a word with a hashtag (#) in front of it becomes a link to a search of all tweets with that same word.  To view all these tweets, without clicking on a hashtagged word, you can go to search.twitter.com and search the word (makealong, in this case).

If you happen to use TweetDeck, you can search the word using that little magnifying glass icon at the top, which will create a column for all tweets with the word, so you can keep track of make-a-long tweets throughout the day!  Of course, when you tweet about what you’re making, or anything make-a-long-related, include #makealong somewhere in the tweet!

The other question I keep seeing pop up is “what should I make?” – whether it’s meant to be hypothetical or literal, I’ll try to help you out!

Personally, I plan to use a bunch of the craft books that I fall in love with, purchase, then let sit on my shelf collecting dust because I only design my own projects and never do crafts just for fun!  I also might be going back to some online tutorials that I’ve favorited and wanted to try out.  So, you could try the same – look at your bookshelf, bookmarks, or wherever else you have project ideas stowed away for later use…

As I said in the first post, making can include anything, not just crafts, and I’ve loved reading some of the things makers are planning on doing!  I hadn’t even thought about food!  It looks like many people will be cooking/baking during the make-a-long and I think I might join in!

Some other thoughts for genres of making besides crafting:

• gardening – it’s Spring!
• home projects – like furniture hacking, room makeovers, wall decals, painting a mural?
• art projects – maybe you majored in art like me, but haven’t touched a drawing pencil or paintbrush since you graduated, like me…
• computery – like redesigning your blog/website, or backing stuff up with the Archive-Along!
• writing – or zine making, or book-making
• photo-related – organizing old photos and putting them into albums, perhaps

I’m sure there are many more I’m not thinking of… And how about some craft genres?  Maybe you’ll see something on the list that will remind you of a project you were forgetting!

• clothing reconstruction
• clothing embellishment
• home decor projects
• jewelry making
• yarn making (spinning, dyeing, recycling)
• weaving
• crochet
• knitting (finishing old unfinished objects, perhaps?)
• paper crafts
• print-making (stamp carving, freezer paper printing, to name a couple varieties)

Ok those are some, but there are so many more, of course!  Just trying to get your creative juices flowing, or something…  I did a roundup on Threadbanger today with Spring sewing projects, and I also linked there to some other sewing roundups I’ve done.  Threadbanger is a great resource for project ideas, if you want to find some tutorials to use during the make-a-long (all the roundups I did in my first year are here, but I haven’t updated that for the last yearish because I suck! sorry!)… Here are some other great online places to find crafty tutorials:

• One Pretty Thing
• Craft: blog
• Whip Up
• Cut Out + Keep
• Craftster
• Instructables
• Make: blog
• CraftStylish

(If you have other favorites, share them in the comments!)  Ok that’s enough listing!  If you’re making something that I didn’t mention here, or have more ideas, tell us in the comments to help out those having a hard time figuring out what to make!

Now I need to try to get sleepy, so I can go to sleep early, wake up early, and get making!!

So all the house-buying stuff has been going super well, and now our moving date is exactly one month from today!  That means many things, a major one being that I need to de-stash!  I also would like to make an extra bit of moving-expenses money, so I’m kind of combining these needs into a leethal giveaway sale!

I’ve created a giveaway page in the shop (which you can click to from the top of the shop home page, or the photo box on the leethal home page), full of various pieces of recycled sweaters and other fun crafty gifts, and if you place any order from my shop (that totals at least $9) you get to choose one – I pay shipping on the gift, you get some fun materials to craft with!

Want some ideas for how you could use these sweater pieces?  Here are some projects/tutorials I’ve made!

Felted sweater jewelry! For this project, it’s best if the sweater pieces are very felted (technically, fulled) to avoid any unraveling.

Use sweater pieces in bigger recycled sweater projects, as buttonbands and/or pockets, like the ones in my cardigan or vest.

No tutorial for these, but coffee cup sleeves are easy to make, functional, and have tons of room for creative embellishments!

I’ve made tons of hats with felted and un-felted sweaters – this hat tutorial for the one above shows how to make a kitty hat with a sweater that doesn’t felt (only difference between a felted sweater is that there can’t be raw edges that will unravel).  I did a post on craftster many years ago (pre-blog) with a bunch of recycled material hats… Here are a few more examples below – the triangle top fabric on the left is one of the giveaway options:

And one last how-to by me – also a looong time ago on craftster, I did a silly little tutorial for these felt boots:

You can find more recycled sweater projects in a Threadbanger roundup I did awhile back… I know I once saw a how-to for making a purse with a sweater yoke (which would be perfect for light pink piece three down on the right) but I can’t find it – if anyone knows what I’m talking about, you could post a link in the comments…

And then my other crafty giveaway option is a baggie of beads, which came from Knittn’ Kitten!  I have an alternate motive with this option of sharing a piece of my most favorite craft store with a few of you far away from Portland who aren’t lucky enough to be able to shop there.  Each baggie has a bunch of beads, mostly glass, all in pairs, so they’re great for earrings.  The reason I’m de-stashing so many of these beautiful beads is that I keep buying bags of them, use 2 for a pair of earrings for myself, and the rest of the bag sits there since I don’t really do any other bead projects, so now I get to spread the bead goodness!

I did a tutorial for these simple 2-bead earrings, a good beginner project… Each giveaway baggie also includes some cheap earwires to play around with (the same kind I used in this pair and these) and a few eyepins.

If you were being observant at the top of this post, you may have noticed some books in the back of that giveaways photo – that’s because leethal’s month of giveaways will include some raffle-style blog giveaways as well!  This week, Monday through Friday, I’ll be posting a book a day to give away!  4 are knitting books, one is another kind of craft book, all ones I’ve been given and haven’t used, so I want them to go to new homes where they’ll be appreciated and used!

And one last thing, for you, my dear blog readers… I’m extending the shop giveaway to pattern sales (on leethal or ravelry) for anyone who reads this and contacts me about it – if you purchase $12 or more worth of pattern pdfs, through April 17th, email me (leemeredith at gmail dot com) with your gift choice and your mailing address, and I’ll send it your way!

I just found out from Heather this morning that she declared April Stashbusting Month!  So, I didn’t know it when I planned my giveaway month, but I’m totally participating in busting my stash (though I doubt I’ll be doing much stash crafting this month!) – play along and make things with your stash stuff! Yeah!

I almost forgot – I added a bunch of new leethal recycled, printed shirts (and a couple sweatshirts) to the shop!  They were made back in December, finally online now… I’m working on more shop updates, so throughout the next couple of weeks I’ll be adding more stuff for sale, and probably adding more to the giveaways page too (I’ll let you know about both here on the blog), but then after the move, I’ll probably be taking certain things that haven’t sold out of the shop for good.

I think that’s all for reals… Happy giveaway month!

Ok, it’s a fact: I am a terrible blog host when it comes to comments.  I love getting them, as all bloggers do, but I just suck at responding, so I’ve done something to change that!  The main reason I’m awful at replying is that the way my wordpress commenting has always worked made it so email-replying was the way to respond… so the comments get mixed in with the rest of my emails and I just can’t keep up with it all… excuses, excuses…

So I’ve installed Disqus comment system!  The most significant thing that this means is now I (and you, and everyone) can reply to individual comments right here on the blog!  Replies automatically get emailed to the original commenter, and show up for all to read, and you can subscribe to get notices about comment threads you want to follow… it’s fabulous!

I’d thought about doing this for awhile, figuring it would be more work to get set up than it actually was (easy peasy!)… I finally made the switch partly because of the issues I’d been having with wordpress comments not getting emailed to me lately, but mostly because of the excellent conversations that have been happening on Make & Meaning, started by Alice’s post here.  Just scrolling through the comments on that post shows how these kind of threaded disqus comments can turn single blog posts into conversations, really turning a blog into a community!  Rad!

And speaking of great conversations, and Make & Meaning, I have been super inspired following Diane + Paul’s talking and writing about Free.  I highly recommend the latest episode of Craftypod, especially if you are a blogger and/or trying to make money off of handmade things (or anything like that), and then there’s Diane’s follow-up post here, Paul’s original post, and Kim’s fantastic response post here.

A few excerpts… Diane:

In the creative community, because information is abundantly shared, we all learn more. We grow in skill, yes, but we also grow in interconnection to each other. Because of Free, we know more about each other, and this knowledge helps us to respect and help each other – despite geography or personal differences.

That interconnection has way more value (and future potential) than mere money transactions. In the podcast, in fact, we talk about the idea of there being different kinds of currencies in the online community. Web traffic is a currency. Goodwill is a currency. Connection is a currency.

Kim, writing about how the money part will “work itself out”:

The money doesn’t really just materialize, though. There’s one thing you have to do to get the money: seize (the right) opportunities when they come around. You don’t need to have an air-tight business model if you don’t want one. Free involves deliberately winging it. With a good emphasis on the deliberate AND on being comfortable winging it.

I, like Kim, started putting things out into the world for free (and some for no-profit cheap) without any plan to make a living and without thinking about the money end of it much at all, and it’s kind of magically transformed over the years into a rent-paying career.  I try never to stop with the free, and sometimes I do find myself distracted by the money part, realizing it’s been awhile since my last free pattern, for example, but there is plenty of free coming your way this year, I assure you!  “Woo-woo” for free, I say!

Oh my how quickly this month is flying by!  Crafty Wonderland on Sunday went super well – it was great to meet a bunch of you, thanks for saying hi!!  The new stitch sets were well received, I got some neato gifts from other crafters, met some new people, good day!

I’m making some holiday cards for the Scrap sale on Saturday, and since I won’t be selling them online I wanted to have some way to spread them outside Portland a little, so how about a last minute holiday giveaway?! Yeah!  I don’t have any pictures of the cards right now – they are holiday/winter themed connect-the-dots pictures, sealed onto recycled blank cards.  Since the cards are recycled, they don’t come with envelopes, but they’re great for attaching to a gift or giving to someone in person…

So, the giveaway will go through the weekend and I’ll mail the cards to the winners on Monday – I’ll pick 3 winners to get 2 cards each. (Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee you’ll get them by Christmas, but hopefully you will!  If not, they could be used as New Year’s cards…)

To enter, comment on this post before Sunday 7pm (west coast time) with an idea for a picture or a theme you’d love to see in connect-the-dots form!  (Could be a stitch set idea – something there could be 5 of – or just a stand-alone image, or anything else.)  I’ll email the winners around 7:30, then get back to me with your address by Monday at noon-ish so I can get them mailed out; US only because of shipping, I think that’s all the details…

Remember my Haka hat pattern?  I decided it needed to be rephotographed, so Pete and I took my favorite version of it with us to Twisted the other day and did a quick photoshoot in front of their sock yarn wall.

Haka is a fantastic last minute gift knit!  Using bulky yarn (texturey handspun like this one works fabulously) and big needles, you can knit it up during a movie or two (maybe three if you’re slow like me) and have several done in the next week!

Haka is also a super fun hat to wear in the wintertime, as it can be worn 4 different ways!  Buttoned under your chin for maximum warmth, as in the top 2 pictures, hanging loose as you see above, or fastened behind your head to keep the strap out of the way – along the bottom of the hat so the earflaps still cover your ears and keep you warm:

Or fastened up behind your head, holding the earflaps up:

The Haka: strappy flappy eared hat pattern is only $2 on my site or on ravelry, since it’s such a quick and easy knit!  Because I’d love for there to be more projects pictured on ravelry, I’m offering another giveaway deal!  If you knit a Haka hat and post it (with pictures!) as a ravelry project anytime throughout the winter (how about through February to be specific), I’ll send you a free pdf of your choice, out of either: Double Scoops, Ten 10 yard cuffs, Ninja Mitts, or Bad Movie Bingo!  To claim your free pdf, send me a ravelry message once your project is up letting me know which pdf you’d like.  Yay!

As for other last-minute gift ideas… well, if you’re looking to knit, there are my quick knits patterns (all using less than 15 yards of yarn) and my huge quick knits links list, with tons of patterns by other designers using less than 20 yards.  My 10 yard cuffs would make great gifts, and then I have several free patterns that are quick – gradient mitts, big bulky bucket hat, mary jane style booties, or a 35mm film strip cuff could all be done in less than a week, easy!

Ok and this isn’t just about self-promotion, I promise!  If you need to find a great gift for someone who wants to learn to knit – maybe your mom/sister/brother/friend tried to teach themselves and couldn’t grasp it – Diane wrote a fantastic review of Blonde Chicken’s new Learn to Knit Kits.  It sounds like the perfect substitute for a super patient one-on-one teacher, and you can learn on your own time with the kit instead of sticking to a class schedule.  Go read Diane’s review to learn more, as she goes into detail and has actually used the kit to learn!

As for a knitting-related gift for a loved one who’s already deep into the craft… Twisted’s Single Skein Club is still taking members for 2010!  This is the club that I contributed the Ocean Breezes hat to this year, and next year is sure to have some amazing patterns!  The club will ship to you (US only I think, but I could be wrong) so it’s not just for locals – it’s pricey since it’s a whole year of awesome yarn and patterns, but it could be a great gift for a family to go in on together!

And how about some good last-minute non-knit handmade gift ideas?  I’ve done tons of tutorials in the past for quick projects, like those 2-bead earrings (super quick and fun!) – so you can browse through all of those on my tutorials page.  The newly redesigned Craft: site has lots of great tutorials, including some superdelicious looking food posts lately (like Chocolate Chestnut Mousse Trifle!) if baked gifts are your specialty!  And their Quick Crafts section is a good place to browse for last-minute gifts to make!

Also a reminder in case you missed this bit of info – my connect-the-dots stitch sets are available as pdfs too, which means you could buy the pdf and print the set onto fabric to give as gifts for as many people as you want!  (A stitch set, plus an embroidery hoop, floss, and a needle would make a great kit gift!)  The pdfs include a how-to for printing on fabric; or you could print the designs on paper to make a little mini-zine of connect-the-dot puzzles for the game-lover on your gift list.

I’m feeling guilty about not having time to do any new gift tutorials like I’d planned to do throughout the month, so hopefully I gave you a few ideas here, even if they’re not newly written for you…  Maybe I’ll have a chance to write up a quick one I’ve been thinking about on Sunday, we’ll see… Anyway, happy gift crafting, and don’t hurt yourself knitting too much this week! (that advice is for myself as much as it’s for you!)

Yeah it was a fun weekend!  I didn’t take tons of photos, but those are a couple highlights… Walking around the luminary panel room before it started, I was stopped by the friends of that sock monkey and asked to pose for a picture for something ravelry-related.  It just so happened that I had my mask in my bag (because I’d forgotten to bring it to the ravelry party the night before as planned), so since that’s my ravatar, I went for it and slipped it on!  I’ve now learned the the monkey was traveling from Northern Ireland!

And then the other shot is of Star at the rav party demonstrating our awesome new dance move we invented!

Ok so moving back to the beginning of my Sock Summit adventures… As I mentioned in my last post, I went over on Friday for the book signing – got books signed by Barbara Walker, Judith MacKenzie McCuin, Clara Parkes, and Cookie A.  They were all super nice and friendly (though I couldn’t say anything more than “Hi… Thank you.” to Barbara Walker).

I hadn’t even been planning on going over on Friday, but I was following the #socksummit tweets all day Thursday and wanted to be a part of it all!  So glad I did!  Besides the authors who signed my books, I also got to sort of be part of a conversation with Meg Swansen (Elizabeth Zimmermann’s daughter) – she is SO friendly and nice and cool!  And I met Amy Singer who recognized and hugged me!  Knitters are so awesomely friendly, yeah!

Then I started wandering around the marketplace, and Star found me and told me all kinds of crazy stories from the teacher dinner and other festivities – famous knit designers are full of silliness!!  So rad that Star got to be a part of that!  And she scored a pair of socks knit (and worn) by Barbara Walker (pictured above) – insanity!  That other photo above is just somewhere inside the convention center that reminded me of the Bellagio in Vegas – not Sock Summit related, but I only took the one Star sock photo that day.

So then on Saturday I headed back over to the marketplace and hung out and saw some people, then we hopped on the MAX which took us straight to the ravelry party! (Such great planning to find a fabulous venue that happened to be a perfect MAX ride away from Sock Summit.)  The rav party was so great!!  As you can see above, delicious (free) food – all vegetarian, 4 different dips/spreads, plus yumm cookies – and (much cheaper than expected) Deschutes including Green Lakes Organic!

I was so happy to get to meet Jess and Casey and tell them in person how much ravelry means to me and my design career – hope I didn’t come off gushy, but I really don’t think I could be anywhere near where I am if it weren’t for their awesomeness!  And by the way, they are all (MH too) super awesome in real life!

We had a fantastically silly time, staying all the way to the end to help clean up a bit.  We really wanted it to turn into a dance party towards the end, so we just did, even though it wasn’t really spreading beyond our little group.  Didn’t take tons of photos like I’d planned to because I was having too much fun, but Star laughing below and that dance move at the top pretty much sum up the night!  Those ravelry folks sure know how to throw a party!  Thanks rav team!!

After that, then the after party too, it was tough to get my tired self back to the convention center for the luminary panel yesterday, but I managed to get there early enough to buy one souvenir (wanted much more, but could only allow myself one thing) before the marketplace closed.  Got stuck over with a bad view of the panel, but besides that, it was amazing!  Lucy Neatby, Cat Bordhi, Deborah Robson, Anna Zilboorg, Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, Meg Swansen, Barbara Walker, Judith MacKenzie-McCuin, and Nancy Bush, addressing topics like the changing knitting business, self-publishing, copyright/respecting intellectual property, and Elizabeth ZImmerman.

I thought it was really interesting hearing about how the business of knitting has evolved from being about the finished product to now being about the process, with value on the designs/ideas and intellectual property rather than finished items.  This is all obvious when you think about the knitting world, but it’s a conversation I’d never really heard before.

I (so stupidly) didn’t think to bring knitting with me (I know, what the hell?) so to occupy my hands I took note of quotes I liked.  I saw today that Blue Garter did the same, so I’m actually combining what she wrote down and what I wrote down for the first one (read the other good ones on her post)…

Just as the bird’s wing evolved to fly, the human hand evolved to manipulate.  An idle hand is not a happy hand.  We really need to use our hands; they’re not happy if they’re not doing something. -Barbara Walker

If knitting were widespread, we probably wouldn’t have wars. -Cat Bordhi

In the context of starting an independent business: All you have to know is the one next step. -Deborah Robson

Responding to the question “How did you end up in this business?”  I was brainwashed. -Meg Swansen

I had no income, which is kind of liberating, because if you haven’t got anything, then you’ve got nothing to lose. -Lucy Neatby

When asked what was the most important knitting thing she learned from Elizabeth Zimmerman: You are in charge of your own knitting. -Meg Swansen

and my favorite… Question: Do you think that was easier or harder because you’re a woman? Answer: I don’t know. I’ve never been a man. -Meg Swansen

Such amazing women!  I feel SO lucky to have been there – even if there is another Sock Summit, I’m sure that panel will never exist again.  Oh, and it happened to be the 99th anniversary of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s birth, so the event ended with all 1000ish people singing happy birthday and eating cake and tarts!  Sock Summit = amazingness to the max!

Anyone wondering how my socks are coming along?  Well I’m just about to the toe:

You may have seen that first shot (taken on Thursday) in my Threadbanger Sock Knitting roundup – I love how the green lightening bolts look on the heel!  Well I’m so close on this first sock, but I’m having to break it up with work knitting, so I don’t know when the second one will happen…  If only I was like Barbara Walker and was fine with only 3-4 hours of sleep each night, I could get so much more done!!

I’m superduper excited that Sock Summit is happening right here in Portland – not being a sock knitter myself, I wouldn’t have enough of a reason to travel if it were elsewhere, but since it’s here, I’ll get to attend the luminary panel, the ravelry party, check out the marketplace, and be a part of the fun!  For any readers who are traveling here this weekend, I thought I’d take this opportunity to make a list of my own personal favorite Portland spots!  We have so many (SO many) favorite spots in this amazing city, it’s hard to condense it, so I’m including multiple choices in different areas for some categories.  These are all places that are seriously worth making it to while you’re in town!

As for navigating – Portland is divided into 5 quadrants (yes, 5, I know) – SE (my hood!), NE, SW, NW, and North – and all addresses have the quadrant in the street name, making it easy to figure out where things are!  Also helping make for easy navigation is the grid system – most of the city has numbered streets running north-south, starting at the river, and counting out.  So, if an address is something like “3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd” you know it’s in the SE quadrant, and the number means its nearest number cross-street is 37th (37 blocks away from the river) – making it super easy to find even if you have no idea where that is!  Just find Hawthorne on your map (I use old fashioned paper maps – if you have a gps thing, then this whole navigation explanation is irrelevant anyway) and follow the numbered streets till you hit 37th.

By the way, I am totally east-ist, so most of these spots will be on the east side of the river.  Also, I don’t eat meat, so all the food places have great veggie options, but they all have plenty of meat too!  Portland is fantastic about food diversity – most everywhere you go has plenty of choices for all eaters!  And, designing hats hasn’t exactly made me rich (yet? hah!) so all of our favorite spots are way on the cheap side or have great affordable options!

leethal’s Best of Portland:

• Breakfast: Junior’s (SE), Gravy (N), Jam (SE)
• Brewery restaurant: Hopworks (SE) (great happy hour menu; see more beer info below)
• Sandwiches: East Side Deli (SE) (delicious vegan “meat” option)
• Pizza: Dove Vivi (NE) (cornmeal crust), Hot Lips (locations in SE, NE, SW, NW) (fresh seasonal toppings), American Dream (NE) (amazing crust and hazelnut toppings), Rovente for take-out/delivery (SE) (cashew toppings)
• Non-traditional mexican food: Laughing Planet (locations in SE, N, SW, NW), Los Gorditos cart (SE) (traditional menu + vegan menu)
• Fast food: Burgerville (SE, NE, and outer pdx)
• Breakfast for dinner: Paradox (SE) (also best veggie nachos), Old Wives’ Tales (East*)
• Other dinner spots: Ya Hala (NE) (Lebanese), SubRosa (SE) (Italian)
• Bar with full late-night food menu: Dots (SE), Beulahland (NE)
• Hot dogs with any toppings you can think of: Zach’s Shack (SE) (open super late)
• Late night desserts: Pix (SE and N locations) (with coffee, beer, and wine), Rimsky-Korsakoffeehouse (SE), VooDoo Doughnut (SW and NE locations)
• Selection of food carts all together: SE 12th + Hawthorne (we’ve only eaten at Potato Champion so far, it was fantastic!)
• Waffles: Waffle Window (SE) (I prefer this one over the Waffle Wagon), Flavor Spot (N) (I haven’t actually been here yet – only had a sample but it was amazing)
• Grocery store: New Seasons (locations in SE, NE, N, SW) (great deli/readymade foods to eat there too)
• Movie theater w/good local beer and pizza and $3 tickets: Laurelhurst (East*), Bagdad (SE)
• Old abandoned elementary school turned venue, $3 movie theater, restaurant, brewery, 4 bars, hotel: Kennedy School (NE)
• Arcade: Ground Kontrol (NW) (w/bar and djs), Avalon (SE) (nickle arcade + $2 movie theater)
• Bookstore: Powell’s City of Books (West*), Powell’s on Hawthorne + Home & Garden store (includes craft books) (SE), In Other Words (NE) (non-profit feminist bookstore – support them!)
• Zines + more store: Reading Frenzy (SW), Q is for Choir (SE)
• Record store: Music Millenium (East*)
• Music store (instruments): Artichoke Music (SE) (high quality new+used), Trade-Up Music (SE and NE locations)
• Local handmade stuff made from mostly/some recycled materials store: Trillium (SE), Redux (East*), Frock (NE), Union Rose (NE) (last 2 don’t specialize in recycled, but there’s lots of vintage reconned type stuff)
• Craft thrift store: Knittn’ Kitten (NE)
• Creative reuse store: Scrap (NE)
• Thrift store if you have some time to kill: Goodwill Bins (Milwaukie/Sellwood – far SE)
• Small but cool craft store: Gossamer (East*), Collage (NE and SE locations),
• Fabric store: Cool Cottons (SE), Bolt (NE)
• Yarn store: Twisted (NE), Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks (Sellwood – far SE)

Non specific locations:

• My favorite Portland beer: Hopworks – 7 Grain Stout is brewed with Stumptown espresso beans, the Deluxe Organic is great, as is every beer they have to offer (Hopworks on tap around town will say HUB)
• Best Portland Coffee: Stumptown – this isn’t a personal preference thing, it’s just a fact.

*The border between SE+NE and SW+NW is Burnside – if an address is on Burnside, it’s either E Burnside or W Burnside.  So these spots are in the middle of the east or west sides, between north and south.

(Italics means I added it after first publishing this post.)

I highly recommend picking up a copy of The Zinester’s Guide to Portland, which you’ll find at any Powell’s location, or any bookstore that carries zines (which means any Portland bookstore that’s not a national chain) for about $4 I think.  We grabbed one of these for our first trip up here, and I don’t even know what we’d have done without it – it does a great job of getting you oriented (explaining the quadrants and neighborhoods, etc) and lists tons of great places with reviews.

Portlanders – please feel free to list some of your personal favorites in the comments, so travelers can have more variety in recommended spots!

And in other Portland news – I dropped of a huge box of leethal stuff at Twisted last week!  These 7 handspun skeins:

…plus 11 bracelet mini-kits in all different colorways! I’m so excited to have my yarn for sale now in my favorite local yarn shop!  If you’re visiting PDX for Sock Summit, definitely don’t miss Twisted!  Not only are they super supportive of local designers and yarnies, but they have the nicest staff ever, an awesome tea bar with custom teas like the Dr. Horrible blend, and if co-owner Shannon’s Hazel happens to be in the shop, you’ll get to meet one of the sweetest tiny people in the whole world!

Oh and speaking of Twisted, I’m teaching a Skoodlet class there in October!  And then lastly, speaking (a second ago) of handspun yarn, 4 more yarns are now up in my shop, including 1 skein of spun recycled (pictured above)!  Ok that’s all.

Let me know if you visit any of my favorite spots!  I’d love to know if I introduced you to a new place that you love!  I might be adding more to the list if I think of any I forgot… if I do, I’ll put them in italics so you know they’re new.  Oh and if you want to know about any of the photos, just click through to the flickr pages.  Yay Portland!

Just a few things I want to share with you…

First, Amanda of Bread and Badger’s new ebook: Crafting a Modern Press Release, for sale in her etsy shop!  I was lucky to get to take a press release workshop with Amanda through Trillium a few months ago, and now everyone can learn from her PR experience and success with the ebook.  If you are a small business owner, this is a great resource, and makes the maybe-scary term press release much more friendly and manageable! (That’s Amanda above with one of her mustache mugs!)

I was super excited to hear about the launch of The Creative Life – the new website project by crafty superheroes Kim Werker and Betsy Greer!  A fabulous blog for those of us who work independently in creative fields, reading the dialogue that’s been taking place is inspirational, comforting, and so much more! It’s hard to pick just one bit to quote from everything that’s up so far, but I’ll just give you this piece from the first post:

Our hope is to start a giant conversation with you about all sorts of things that boil down to this: What’s it like to strike off on your own into a creative field, where do you find support and community when you do it, where do you turn when it seems everyone in your life thinks you’re crazy? We’re not into compiling top-10 lists or giving advice on how to find an accountant. We’re very much into striving toward waking up each morning feeling at peace with the tasks we have to accomplish and the comfort of knowing there’ll be food on the table.

I recommend scrolling down to the bottom and reading the posts in order (bottom up) to understand what’s going on.  And comment to be part of the conversation!

One of my absolute favorite craft sites/shops, Craft Leftovers, is having a fabulous summer sale through the end of the month!  Really, fabulous, go see for yourself!!

And I’ll leave you with me looking silly holding my Kanzashi flower, made with the help of Kanzashi In Bloom author herself, Sister Diane, at Twisted the other day, yay!  It’s a fun craft – different from the kinds of things I usually make, so mine has its own creative personality (some may call it messy or amatuerish, I call it fun and cute!).  I love the wood button, really makes it work!

Finally, that new thing I’ve been hinting about for awhile – leethal quick knits!  The new section is a major pattern resource, containing links to around 70ish free patterns, which will continue to grow as I add more, and my brand new club!!

I’m so excited about the club!  It will be monthly, at least for now; it’s in its beta phase, so you can just get a 1 month membership for the August package, then in the future there will be multi-month memberships.  As you can see on the site, each month’s package will include:

• a 15 yard mini-skein of recycled hand-dyed yarn
• a 10 yard mini-skein of spun recycled yarn
• quick knit pattern exclusive to the club
• any crafty bits called for in the pattern (e.g. buttons)
• extra mystery leethal goodies and/or bits of crafty fun

As for the exclusivity of the patterns – my plan is to group club patterns into sets for sale after 3+ months pass.  So, club members are the only knitters to have access to the patterns until after 3 or more months, at which point non-members will be able to purchase them.

The August membership is for sale until August 5th, and packages will be mailed out on the 18th.  I’ve started planning the pattern and yarns, and it’s all a secret, but I will tell you something about the colorways – if you like the colors in my new site design, you’ll love one of the club yarns!  See the club page for more details, and as it says there, things could change in future months as I see how it goes.

A note to bloggers:  To encourage word-of-mouth club promotion, I will be giving membership discounts if you promise to blog about your club package once you receive it.  Comment here or email me for details if you’re interested!

Then there’s the leethal quick knits patterns page, with all patterns I’ve designed that use no more than 15 yards of yarn – including free, for sale, and published outside of leethal.

But the most exciting to you might be the link list page – around 65ish links (and ever growing) to patterns by other designers that use less than 20 yards!  Most are free (I only have 1 for sale actually) but I want to add more for sale patterns when I find more, to encourage supporting independent designers, so let me know if you know a good pattern I should add!

Patterns are divided into accessories, useful stuff, toys and decor, silliness, and crochet – I know it’s called quick knits, but I am not anti-crochet!  If you’ve released a design that uses less than 20 yards, you should see if you’re on the list!  I didn’t contact any designers because it would take waaay too long and I figured everyone would be happy to be linked…

I tried to be a bit picky when choosing patterns to put on the list – I want it to be a quality resource, so I didn’t add every single under 20 yard pattern I found.  (Though I’m sure there are lots I didn’t find at all, so let me know if I missed any!)  I think it’s a great collection, a lot of interesting/cool/funny stuff that I would totally knit!  Hope you enjoy!!

how was your wwkip day?  not that we don’t all knit in public all the time, but it’s always fun to have an excuse to go knit with a friend over coffee + ice cream (in my case) instead of staying in and working all day like i normally do on saturdays.  i met my awesome buddy star at pix for an americano and some fabulous blood orange ice cream – no shots of me knitting since i was working on a supersecret project!  (but there is this super awkward one the barista guy took when he misheard star asking me to take one and thought we wanted him to, haha)

we got to talking about designer fairness issues, a subject that was going around on knit designers’ blogs a few months ago after annie modesitt bravely addressed a major problem with vogue knitting’s designer contracts.  unfortunately, the subject came up because of a potential problem star might have with a design contract, reminding me that i never wrote about the subject here like i’d planned to.  basically, if you are a knit designer, aspiring to be one, or are a buyer of patterns in any form, i encourage you to read one or all of the posts by annie modesitt, ysolda, or knitgrrl. (these are just the ones i’ve read – let me know if there are more good ones.)

personally, i am more and more confident that self-publishing almost exclusively is the route i plan to continue taking as a designer.  i may someday submit a design to a magazine, if i have a pattern i think would be a good fit, but if/when that happens i will be reading my contract thoroughly and i will not be signing unless i’m ok with everything.  and i’ll know that there’s still a chance something will happen with my pattern that i’m not happy with, because sadly, that’s just the way it goes, it seems to me.  (usually this means it gets edited down to fit the layout, but it could be worse.)

if you are a new designer, aspiring to get published in a magazine or book as soon as the opportunity arises, i urge you, please, read those posts and don’t accept any contract that isn’t fair to you.  by signing a contract that doesn’t value your work, you would not just be hurting yourself, but you’d be making it harder for all other designers to get fair treatment.  with magazines fighting to stay in print, paying more attention to their websites as marketing tools, trying to cut corners whereever possible to stay afloat, we really need to make sure we’re not sacrificing our own well-being as designers to help them.  i want the magazines to survive as much as any other knitter, but designers deserve fair treatment dammit.  like ysolda says:  The only way things are going to change for everyone is if we stand together.

one last way to look at it, if you don’t understand why it’s important for designers to be treated fairly… imagine a knitting magazine minus the patterns… well, that’s just ridiculous… how about, think about what you like about knitting magazines and knitting websites out of everything there is (patterns, articles, book reviews, ads, etc) – now think about what percentage of the value for you comes from the patterns… now read this excerpt from annie modesitt’s post:

Designers earn just a hair more now for a pattern than they did in the mid-80’s. Factor in cost of living, and we’re earning less than we did 20 years ago. Add to this the latest slap in the face – 90% of internet sales revenue will go back to the magazine – and we, as designers, realize exactly how much we’re valued. T E N P E R C E N T.

not cool. right? right.

ok moving on to fun fiber-related stuff… black sheep is friday!!  i’ll be heading to eugene with caitlin, star, and kate, and i’m suuuper excited!  it was a great time last year, and i got tons of fibery goodness!  this year, i’m bringing less cash and buying only a few specific things i have in mind, but even though my spending it limited, it’s just so fun to look at all the pretty fiber and yarn… mmmmmmm… and then there’s the animals! yay!

and lastly, for this knit-tastic post, i made this hat for a birthday present for my brother ben:

ok that’s all, just wanted to show you.  i have a feeling i won’t be posting for a little while because pete’s parents are in town so we’ll be hanging with them a bunch doing fun portlandy things.  if you see me at black sheep, say hi!

a couple days ago i realized that i missed my 1 year anniversary of being self-employed – kind of a big deal, pretty freaking awesome!  i honestly didn’t think i’d make it a year without getting some kind of part-time job or taking work i didn’t want, but i did it!  so, in traditional blog-related anniversary fashion, i made a massive (2-part) photo mosaic of images taken from my blog posts over the last year…

it was fun reading back over all i’ve done! that’s a smattering of worky things, designs, fun (craft-related) events/outings, etc…  so i’ve been doing a lot of reflecting the last couple days, and it’s funny that it seems my state of mind now isn’t too far away from where it was a year ago.  i’m so happy that i’ve made it here, but this whole freelancey self-employed career is just as scary now as it was then!  it’s also amazing and exciting and totally worth the stress and constant working and any other downsides!  but yeah, i’m still just doing a few solid things that i know will bring me a little rent money, and the rest is up in the air, just like it was a year ago.  the big difference is now i know i made it this first year, so i don’t see any reason why i can’t make it another!

moving on, diane is doing a craftypod giveaway for my ten 10 yard cuffs ebook!  to win, you just have to comment on the post with your thoughts on ebooks – there are some interesting comments so far.  i feel similarly to a lot of people – i love to hold a book in my hands and flip through the physical pages, but buying ebooks saves paper, ink, other resources, shipping, and money, so it’s a trade off.  as a self-publisher, pdfs are soooo much easier to sell than anything physical that i have to mail out (especially knitting pdfs thanks to ravelry!!), and they save me so much time and money that i can sell them so much cheaper and everyone benefits.

i do make a physical version of the cuffs book, but only for the kits – i give the option of getting a kit with a pdf instead, but i don’t give the option of getting a real book instead of an ebook alone.  this is mostly because of my own resources (time and money) but also because each book i make up uses paper (even if it is recycled paper) and ink and i try not to be wasteful.  but, it’s all very hard for me to make decisions like this (ebook vs real book) because of my love for real books, so i totally understand the people who say they don’t buy digital.  i think it’s this major adjustment we’re all going to have to slowly get used to because it just makes sense (economically, ecologically) for both self-publishers and buyers to go in the digital direction.  and as far as publishing companies go, well that’s a whole other subject, but i think more and more writers will go in the self-publishing direction, and therefore end up going digital.  generally speaking.  what do you think?

and then this topic leads to another of diane’s recent posts – how to kill your favorite website.  this is a fantastic post about the financial demise of craftstylish, as it followed many other craft publications in its inability to successfully monetize and keep up its awesomeness.  you should go read the post – it’s a tough subject and diane did a great job of concisely breaking it down.  basically, this world needs to evolve, because what used to work just doesn’t anymore.  as for what you, the reader, can do, i’ll copy diane’s conclusion here: “For now, when you watch TV, read websites, or flip through magazines, consider asking yourself these questions: ‘Who made this? Did I get value from it? And if so, how can I support the people who created that value?’”

and she inspired me to create yet another mosaic, this one featuring my favorite craftstylish projects from my 8 months of tutorials over there.  and i’ll quote her again because she said it best: “I think it’s good to point out: all this content was brought to you by them. There’s no way I could have created the time to make so many how-tos if they weren’t paying me for them.”  so true.

so now that i’m going in this new direction for my own career path – trying to be a bit more self-sufficient instead of relying on the continued success of outside sources (like i was doing with craftstylish), i do plan to devote some time once in awhile to quality tutorials here on do stuff! but, of course, this is part of my “job” and unfortunately it does all come down to money (hey i may live in a cheap apartment in portland, but rent and food still cost money).  i think it’s obvious that this blog’s purpose is, in part, to help crafters and potential shoppers become aware of my stuff and patterns for sale.  but i don’t plan on ever putting ads on my blog and i hope that i’m able to make ends meet doing what i’m doing, so that i can afford the time to put valuable content here for you to enjoy, cost free!  (one thing i did just add while working on my site redesign is the little share this page! button at the bottom of each post. sharing any of my posts that you like, via twitter, facebook, email, or a ton of other methods offered, is an easy and free way that you can help support me!)

which leads me to yet another craftypod topic, from the latest podcast which i just listened to - craft blogging: what should you write about? the part that spoke most strongly to me was about writing your passion.  when i first started brainstorming about making a zine, which then branched off and became this blog, i was so excited to think up the concept/title do stuff! because, as silly as it sounds, that it my passion!  doing stuff!  my whole life i’ve always hated the idea of boredom – i’d get angry at my brothers for saying they were bored – i’ve always had a million projects going on at once (even as a little kid), multi-tasking whenever possible.  so instead of just starting a craft zine/blog, i wanted to start a “stuff” zine/blog, so i’d have the freedom to write about any stuff that i like to do!  sure, i’m passionate about knitting and knit design, and crafting in general, but i’m also passionate about photography, and i also have bursts of passionate phases in printmaking, cooking/baking, sewing, web design, dyeing+spinning, art, music, beading, home decorating projects, and who knows what else in the future!

so, i created do stuff! and sometimes i lose sight of the point.  so i need to remember my passion: doing stuff!  i can’t let myself blog so often about things i’m selling (i try really hard to keep that down to a smallish percentage of my posts) and i need to remember to blog more often, in general, because there’s always some fun stuff going on in my life!  it may not be craft related, which is why i might not think to blog it, but if it’s doing stuff related and i’m into it, then hey, it’s blog material!  so i’ve come up with a few different blog topics that i hope to make regular quicky posts – things that i can get up here without so much time and writing required, so that i’ll be posting more often, and with more variety.  i’ll leave the topics a secret for now, but you’ll start seeing them soon!