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 want to take a minute to tell you about something I think is completely awesome and could really change the way our community and the whole internet works.  The concept can be hard to grasp if you’ve never heard of anything like it, so I’m going to explain it as it relates to you, as a craft blog reader, but keep in mind that it reaches much further than just blogs or the creative community (actually, it currently has very little reach in our creative community, but I’m hoping that’ll change!)  So, here it goes…

Right now, this craft/knitting/blog world of ours has two kinds of content: free and paid.  There are free knitting patterns and for sale knitting patterns; there are tons of free craft tutorials, and then there are craft books and ebooks you can purchase (just a couple examples).  If a blogger you love writes a rad tutorial that you use and you want to show them your appreciation, you can comment on the post, share the post with your friends on twitter, facebook, your own blog, etc.  If they have advertising, you can click on the ads, which will help them, but kind of indirectly-ish… If the blogger happens to have a book, or an ebook, or a for-sale pattern or something else to offer, then you can purchase that to support them.  And now enter Flattr, adding a new, easy, direct, genius way to show your appreciation to your favorite creators!

Here’s how it works:

• Once you have an account, you put some money in it, and choose a total amount you want to give out each month (this can be changed at any time) – as little as 2 euros (about $2.50) can be chosen.
• When you read/see/hear anything you like online (Flattr calls them “things”) and it has a flattr button, click flattr to show it some love.
• At the end of the month, your chosen amount will be evenly divided between all the “things” you flattred, and distributed between them.  (If you chose to give 2 euros, and you clicked on 5 things throughout the month, the creator of each thing would get a fifth of the total, about 50 cents, from you.)
• If you have a thing you made/wrote, you can put Flattr buttons on your site/blog, add them into the Flattr list of things, and watch the counter add up as people flattr you.
• The money that you receive from being flattred gets put into your revenue account (separate from your “for flattring” account) for you to keep, or for you to transfer over to use for flattring others.
• You can have an account and flattr people without having any “things” yourself, but you cannot have things for people to flattr without giving back and flattring at least 2 euros total each month.

Make sense?  If you want a more visual explanation, click over to flattr.com and watch the video on the home page.  Obviously, if hardly anyone is using it, it’ll be pretty worthless to us all, but if this really catches on and becomes regularly used within our community, it can seriously help sustain us bloggers and designers – if a blogger receives a bit of income each month from their free tutorials getting flattred, it will allow them the time to make more free tutorials and keep on being awesome!

A bit of a tangent…  Have you heard of the concept of micro-payments?  (I was first introduced to the idea through comics by Scott McCloud.)  I love it so much, but it’s pretty much theoretical because of the way the internet and payment methods work… If a blogger was able to charge just pennies for a tutorial, instead of offering it free, would you buy it?  Imagine an internet alternate reality in which you can buy something for any tiny amount (2 cents, 5 cents, 10 cents) with one click of a button (no being redirected to paypal, no fees on either end) – if your favorite bloggers offered up their awesome tutorials (that they put hours of work into) for 5 cents instead of free, would you pay the nickle?  I’m guessing the answer is yes.  And then, on the blogger’s end of it, instead of putting all that effort and creative genius into the world for lots of non-monetary gain (which is great, but the bills still need to be paid), if 500 people enjoy your tutorial, you get $25, if 5000 people like it, you get $250, etc.  That’ll help you to keep on creating fabulous content, a win-win for everyone!

Sadly, the internet doesn’t work this way, and there are fees, and it’s basically impossible to offer something for 5 cents.  But, dude, you guys, Flattr comes pretty damn close to making this happen!  It’s a whole different thing from what I just described, but what I described was a concept that had been floating around in my head for awhile, this what-if frustration, wishing that when the internet was a baby and paypal was being born, things could have been different from the beginning.  So when I first heard about Flattr a few months ago, I was so excited that this could be our answer to this want for a micro-payments system.

By the way, paypal does offer a micropayments account, though it’s a bitch to get set up, it does help with knitting pattern sales – any purchase under $12 will charge a lower fee than a regular paypal account will.  But, with the fee rate of 5 cents plus 5% of each order, it’s far from a true micro-payments system that I daydreamed about above.  (Charging 5 cents for something is still impossible.)

Anyway, back to Flattr… it’s in beta now, so you have to get an invite – you can either sign up for one on the site, or find someone who just signed up, since every new member gets 3 invites to give out.  It’s based in Sweden and seems to be catching on much more quickly in Europe than over here in the States, and hardly at all in the worldwide craft community (a “things” search for craft brings up 8 results, and 2 of them are me), so let’s get it rolling crafters!  Spread the word – the more people who know about it, the more likely it’ll catch on, and if it doesn’t catch on, well then this thing will never happen and it’ll be a true shame.  Let’s make it happen!!

Comment if you have any questions, I’m happy to explain details further if needed!

I put together this basic photography tips photo presentation about a year ago to share with Craftstylish bloggers, and put it up on flickr so anyone could check it out, but now that there is a lightbox-along happening in the craft community, I thought it would be a good idea to share these few tips here for anyone interested!  For more info about this light box making fun, check out Heather’s post on Croq Zine (with links to multiple tutorials), and also check out Heather’s photo tips for craft bloggers!

So, first of all, I built my light box using this tutorial on Strobist, using a cardboard box, a piece of white poster board, recycled white tissue paper, and packing tape.  The main thing I did that the tutorial didn’t do was to cover the outside of all the tissue paper with a layer of packing tape to make it more durable – it doesn’t affect the function of the light box, and it prevents the tissue from tearing:

I normally use the light box just with natural sunlight through the window – I am lucky to have a nice camera and an awesome lens with a huge aperture (f/1.4) which means my camera lets in a ton more light than most point-and-shoots, or DSLRs with standard kit lenses. I may do a post in the future that gets more into shooting stuff, like aperture (any interest?)… I’m just telling you this now so you know that I have an advantage with my camera that you may not have, so you may need to rely more heavily on artificial light with your light box. Here are a few examples of photos I’ve taken in my box using sunlight through the window:

Now for artificial light… When the sun isn’t an option, set up a light or multiple lights around the box – just be sure to set your camera’s white balance accordingly, and do whatever editing is necessary. By placing a light at the side of the box like this, you’ll get harsh results (not good!):

So if you are using a light box with just one artificial light (mine is a super bright desk lamp from Ikea), placing it on top will give you better results:

Another option – you can add some foil to reflect the light on the side to give the affect of having another, more subtle light to the right:

I don’t have any examples for you, but using multiple lights coming at different angles is a good idea with a light box – or, using the sunlight that you do have, and filling in with some extra artificial light to make it bright enough (just be careful with white balance if using 2 different light sources – you’ll probably need some major editing).

I have some tips for shooting without a light box, too… that photo above was taken next to a window with bright sunlight, plus a secret prop:

(I learned this foil reflector idea from Jared Flood – check out his work for some really great photography using natural light and cheap tricks like this one.) If the same yarn is shot next to the same window, with the same bright sunlight and no foil reflector, this is what you get:

See how the right side is totally dark? If you have a good spot below a window, so the light is coming from above and isn’t too harsh, it can be excellent… this photo was taken on my desk, with no box or extra lights, just the window, and the camera pointing directly down at the subject:

So these were just a few tips… let me know if you want me to turn this kind of thing into a regular subject – I love to talk photography, but don’t want to bore you!  Also, comment with specific photo questions if you have any, and I’ll either answer in the comments, or turn it into a whole post if it’s a major topic.

It seems fitting to end this photography post with a peek at my new stitch set, which I plan to release on Monday!  (some camera nerdery – that’s the same Argus camera that I carved into a lino block, which you can see printed on a couple shirts here, and it’s the camera that took these photos.)

(update: I ended up getting everything finished earlier than expected and the cameras stitch set is ready to order now!)

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!

So I meant to do this forever ago, but I finally made the time to add a bunch of new photos to my free wallpapers page!  I wanted to add some of the crafty shots I took for the Knittn’ Kitten ebook, so while I was at it I made more and more, and I ended up adding a total of 16 new shots!

Well, not new new – they are mostly old photos from years ago when I used to shoot for fun more often, and play with film (yum, film!).  I chose a variety of different kinds of shots and subjects and stuff, so hopefully you’ll find something you like!

I had planned to release new wallpapers in December as kind of a holiday gift to you, but oh well, happy January!

Wow, the knitters’ response to Knitters without Borders and ravelry’s Help for Haiti has been incredible!  I know more established designers have been raising thousands – crazy awesome!  I am happy to say that you’ve helped me raise way more than I expected when I put out the word that I’d donate all pattern sales through the weekend – my donation total to Doctors without Borders will be $235!!

So thank you thank you thank you to Alex, Emma, April, mountgigantic, annecarol, Nicole, JooLee, bunnydozer, Becca, Kate, Anne, Kristi, Jen, Jessica, Sarah, Silver, Elaine, Katie, Jackie, Kit, Amanda, Libby, Rachel, RedSamur, Stacy, Wendy, Ruby, and Melissa.  And thank you ravelry for helping all those donation sales to happen, and for making it possible to link to all those blogs!

I have something fun to share with you soon – probably later tonight – but for now, I’ll show you this mosaic I made of 2009 projects… not anywhere close to all of them, but just an assortment of things I made throughout the year:

2009 was a crafty year alright!!

Want to hear a little about what I’ve been working on lately?  Well, I’ve been designing a mystery something for a secret thing, which ended up not working out for that thing (vague, yeah, sorry) which means I’m going to get to self-release the mystery something, and I’m pretty excited about it because it’s kind of crazy!  It’s like the most avant-garde thing I’ve designed, and I love it, so hopefully I’ll be able to find the time to develop it into a finished pattern and release it soon-ish!

Oh my, it’s been awhile!  I’ve been pretty out of touch with the world since I headed to California for xmas, came back to visitors, then new year’s, and now desperately trying to catch up on everything that fell behind!  Goodness gracious!  As usual, this year I plan to blog more, so hopefully it’ll really happen, but for now I just wanted to give you a quick updatey post… but I do have many more posts planned for the near future, I promise!

So, a bit of news: I am the honored first interviewee of the brand-spanking-new blog Craft Evolve!  It was pretty weird/hard to put my brainstorming process into words, but head over to read my thoughts on project ideation type stuff.

That’s a glimpse at the gift knitting I did throughout December – a hat for Pete and a hat for Pete’s mom, both full of cables!  I’ll be posting more details on each of these later on for sure.

Another reason it took me awhile to get back to the online world is that I got obsessively into creating 2 new connect-the-dots stitch sets (woodland creatures and dinosaurs!!), which you can see a glimpse of on the webpage, and pre-order if you want to reserve a set.  I’ll blog more about this later too, but as you can read on the shop page, the stitch sets are now being printed by Spoonflower, which I think will be awesome!  And there are some fabric choices for the matted sets to choose from now.

Ok I hope you all had a fantastic holiday time, and your new year is off to a fabulous start!!

Busy busy week!  Thankfully, I’m pretty much healthy (though this cough won’t leave me!) but I’m frantically trying to get all this stuff ready for Crafty Wonderland on Sunday, so no time for blogging.  Except to share a few things with you real quick now!  I had this idea way back when we first heard Knittn’ Kitten was having a rough time, but then we started that project series and I put this idea on hold, till now….

For the holiday craft show season (and in the future too), for Portland crafters who use materials from The Kitten in your items – I made a sheet of tags that say:

handmade with materials from The Knittn’ Kitten!
Portland’s craft thrift store
located at NE Glisan + 76th
www.knittnkitten.com!

Print out the sheet (from the full size jpg here or the pdf here) on cardstock or photo paper, cut up the tags, punch holes in the corners, and tie them onto your items!  Or you could print them onto label paper and stick them onto items.  Let your customers know about our favorite local shop of awesome!

Here’s a random holiday-gifting-related thing… Anyone who is buying a copy of Game Knitting as a gift – if you burn the ebook onto a disc to gift it, you can print out this CD cover (full size, which is 5×5 inches) to slip into the case:

Other ideas: you could print out the table of contents to put in the back cover; print out the first couple of pages to fold up and put in the case…

I’m so super duper ultra mega excited about this new project I’ve been working on the last few days; it’s not ready to release online quite yet, but I will be revealing it for the first time ever at Crafty Wonderland!!  I’ll give you a few hints… it’s embroidery-related! it’s game/puzzle-related! it’s cheap (under $10) and great as a gift for crafters!  I’m hoping to reveal it online and release it for sale to all around the beginning of next week.

If any locals are interested in what else I’ll have at Wonderland, pretty much everything that’s in my online shop, plus a bunch of new printed shirts, sweatshirts, and a couple of printed recycled tote bags, lots of photographs (trios of 4×6’s, and 8×6’s in 8×10 mats), plus that one new scarflet pictured above, and possibly some new mitts if I magically have time.  (by the way locals, Trillium has some of my scarflets in their shop!)  I’ll have custom ice cream earmuff/headband kits too – meaning, all the flavor scoops in a bowl for you to put together a custom kit with you choice of flavors!  Still tons of work to do before then, but I’m really excited about it!!

update 12/10:  I forgot, I’ll also have a bunch of hat and ninja mitt knit kits that aren’t in my online shop yet!

Well that was a fun giveaway!  I learned that a lot of you have a lot of leftover yarn – you all know about my quick knits links list, right?  It’s a massive list of patterns that use 20 yards or less, so it might be useful to all of you with bits of leftover yarn and nothing to do with it!  Anyway, the winners…

The randomly generated Craft Leftovers Monthly zine winners are Penny and munch!  So I’ll be emailing you two for mailing info.

As for everyone else, I’ve got something for you too!  Kristin has given all of you do stuff! readers a coupon code for Craft Leftovers!  The code is “leethal” and it’s good until December 15th for 20% off your entire order when you get anything from the Craft Leftovers Monthly category.  Awesome! (Pictured are the September CLM zine/kit and the Clutch Duo Kit below)

One unrelated thing… I haven’t gotten much of a response for the mix swap I’m trying to organize, and I’m afraid it’s because I scared everyone away with too much information and saying it’s a big commitment.  It’s not really that much work, and it’s super fun, so I’m leaving sign ups open awhile longer until there are some more swappers.  Right now, there are just 8, and I’m hoping to maybe double that, but I don’t think you need to fear ending up with 30 swappers or anything.

Oh and in case you were scared off by how much I wrote about it last time – it’s really not complicated (I just like to write a lot).  You sign up, you make a mix cd, you send it to everyone else, and you receive all of their mixes.  Doesn’t need to be a themed mix, doesn’t need elaborate artwork, just some kind of packaging with a track list.  Awesome, simple, you should do it!

Well hello there!  This week has been totally nuts, getting the club packages made up and sent out this afternoon, with 2 other deadlines the same day, and Pete’s parents in town all week… So, I was able to get one of the projects done last weekend, then I worked on the club late into the nights while squeezing in trips to OMSI and the Museum of Contemporary Craft, seeing Sarah Vowell at Powell’s, trivia at Zach’s, and oh-so-much delicious Portland food!!  Oh and I helped out with Twisted inventory for 7 hours on Monday (which was, um, kind of a surprisingly fun break for my brain, really)!  It was a fun kind of busy, for sure, but I’m happy to have a bit of time now to catch up on blogging, knitting, and working on getting my studio in order (finally)!

A few exciting things have been happening with Game Knitting – some rad blog mentions/reviews (and, and) and a super awesome podcast mention (more than just a mention actually) on Hoxton Handmade’s Electric Sheep podcast!  It’s a great podcast, which I’m so happy to have now discovered, so I’m superduper honored to have been talked about!  And thank you so much everyone for all the comments!

There are a couple of active Game Knitting threads going on in the leethal ravelry group – there’s the general Game Knitting topic, and there’s a Game Lists topic in which knitters are sharing their lists for the tv shows they are playing to!  Fun!!  Guttersnipe thought of a brilliant idea of working 2 different game patterns in the same piece, using one list or type of occurrence for one game pattern, and a different list/type for the other – in her case, playing to a hockey game and when something happens with team A, make the switch with one game pattern, and team B for the other pattern.  Genius!

In local news – if you are a newish knitters, scared to attempt my Skoodlet pattern because of the provisional cast-on, short rows, seaming, buttonholes, math, you may be interested in my Skoodlet class happening at Twisted on Oct 25th and Nov 1st.

And other Twisted news – if you like my Ocean Breezes hat and are sad you can’t get the pattern for a year, you can sign up now for 2010’s Single Skein Club!  This is not just for locals – they’ll ship anywhere in the US (possibly further, you can call and ask).  Twisted is a fabulous shop, and the club is super fun, with patterns by local designers and a different skein of yarn to match every other month, all year long!

Lastly, the new Knittn’ Kitten project for this week is by Joey Groendes, of Addie Pearl.  Joey says:

This project is one of the very first things I ever made using felt. I realized that I could make my own templates and ANYTHING could be sewn together! I chose this project because it is very simple and anyone can make their own purse/bag. Knitt’n Kitten is packed with items that can be utilized to make a Halloween cat/devil bag. I believe I whipped out a quick single crochet chain for the strap, but you could use cord or rick rack or add beads to the crochet chain to make it fancy.

Head over to the Kitten for the free project sheet!

Ok that’s it for tonight.  I’ve been finishing this post while watching 30 Rock, which is such a good show that it’s taken me 2 episodes to plug in the pictures!  One of my many favorite quotes:  “Why are you wearing a tux?”  “It’s after 6.  What am I, a farmer?”

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!

Wow I can’t believe it’s up!  2 months+ of serious work, it’s a weird (good!) feeling for it to be done!  Well, not done done, it’ll always be a work in progress, always new stuff to add, but it’s up and you can see it!!  There’s so much going on, I’m dividing it into a few posts throughout the day – first, the new site in general, next will be about the new quick knits section!

You can click around and see for yourself, so I won’t tell you about obvious things (and there’s also the stuff I talked about last week).  Pleasepleaseplease let me know if you notice any typos, errors, broken links, weirdness, confusing anything, something looks weird on your browser, etc.  This was so much work spread out over so much time there’s a really good chance I missed some mistakes somewhere…

One fun new thing – free leethal wallpapers!  I’ll be adding more soon, then whenever I feel like it; there are not many photos yet, so I’m hoping to add more of those over the next few days…  The tile patterns are from photos or scans, made into boxes that will tile seamlessly on your desktop!  They’re meant for personal use only – if you want to use one as a website/blog background or anything else public, please credit me and link to leethal.net, and please let me know, thanks!

Something random you may have noticed – it was always part of my leethal branding (or something, branding is weird) that everything throughout my site and blog was lower-case, but I’ve decided to re-brand that aspect.  There’s still lots of lower-case throughout leethal.net (including “leethal” which I always spell lower-case), but for the most part sentences and names and things are capitalized and the blog will be too, starting now.  More professional, dontcha think?

Moving on, here are some aesthetic comparisons between the old and the new sites, just for fun…

Home page – the new home page not only works as navigation to any section of the site, but it has some featured stuff, my twitter feed, and a search bar!

Shop – after designing the new site, I really hate how the old shop looked!  Most exciting thing about the new shop: click the pictures and see!  Also new, an info section and a feedback page!

Patterns and Yarn – instead of smooshing everything knit-related into one single page, I’ve given patterns and yarn each their own section, with every single pattern getting its own page, and each type of yarn getting a page with big photos!  The only problem is that old links to patterns will direct to the yarn section, and old links to handspun for sale to the yarn gallery (handspun is for sale in the shop now).  But I think navigation is easy enough that it’s obvious where you should go to find what you’re looking for.

Another thing I’m excited about – I’ve added a favicon to leethal!  That’s that little icon you can see in the url bar, or the tab, or the bookmark, depending which browser you’re using.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work for me in Firefox because of the cache or something, but it does show in Safari, and it shows in Firefox when I go to the old leethal.coloredlights.net address as you can see above.  Also, I don’t know how to put it in the blog because that’s php which I don’t know…

Speaking of coding, I feel pretty accomplished to have gotten so far in css!  A few months ago I knew absolutely nothing about css, and now I’ve made a pretty lengthy stylesheet for all of leethal, it’s error free, and I feel like I could totally go into any style sheet and know what it’s talking about! Yeah!

Ok that’s all for now… except, if you’ve ever gotten leethal yarn and knit it into something, be sure to add photos to the flickr pool or send them to me, so I can link to your creation from the yarn page! Woo!

a few fun things for you!  i contributed some thrifting tips to portland blog the handmade experiment - read it and imagine how overflowing with stuff my studio is!  darn you portland and your awesome thrift stores!  i listed all the items i shop for to use as crafting materials, what to pay attention to, and projects you can use them for.  enjoy!

so hey, remember how i told you i was working on an awesome new leethal website like almost 2 months ago?  well i did take a bit of a break, but i’ve thrown myself back into it during the last many days, and i’m really hoping to have to up by this weekend, or early next week at the latest.  i’m getting so close now that i want to show you some teaser screen shots!

there’s going to be so much new stuff, i’m showing you some smaller things now, so when it all goes up i can focus on the bigger, super exciting things! yeah! these two shots (above and below) are of the yarn section, where all my yarns will be divided into types, with links to what they’ve become for the ones that have become something.

this means if anyone out there has made something out of a leethal yarn, pleaseplease add a photo of your creation to the leethal flickr group!  (or you could email me a photo if you prefer.)  then i can link to your project from the yarn page and it will be rad!

above you can see that i’ve vastly upgraded my picture viewing system in my shop!  instead of clicking on a thumbnail image to see the full size as a jpg in the browser window, soon you’ll see the full sized pictures in a much more attractive setting, thanks to lytebox!!  hooray!

and in the shot directly above and at the top of the post, you can see a peek at my new patterns section!  soon, each pattern will have its own page, where you can see photos, info, and buy directly with a shopping cart and everything! (thanks ravelry for that one!)

and lastly, one exciting brand new page – links to all of my tutorials in one place!  on this page you’ll be able to browse through every how-to i’ve done on my own blog, craftstylish, threadbanger, and more!

excited?  i am!

i’m still spinning, by the way, but i’m planning to wait till the end of the week and do a week 2 tour de fleece post so i can group them together and talk about process again.  you can find last week’s yarns in the shop now!  i’ve come up with a new method of naming my handspun which i’m super happy with, let me know what you think!  i think that’s all for now; back to coding!