Hankering for Yarn

May 9th, 2008

Artsy bloggers roundup for May 9-2008

A quick and easy market bag to crochet for ‘WOW MOM’s!
Noreen Crone-Findlay designed a quick and fun market bag in honor of all the Wow Moms out there. And it’s good for dear old mother earth, too!

Decoupage a Byzantine Cross Pendant
Eileen shares instructions for a decoupage Byzantine cross pendant made from cardboard - of all things!

Digital Photomontage Demonstration
Links to a simple photomontage tutorial.

Glorious Gourd Decorating
A quick review on a great resource for gourd decorating.

Layers Upon Layers
Take one cheap piece of felt and transform it into “leather”!

Gadget Wish List for Quilters
Mary Emma at Quilting and Patchwork wonders what you have on your dream list of quilting gadgets

Spring-time felt flowers
Inspire kids to start sewing with this easy felt flower from Tangled Thread

Wooden craft boxes as wedding favors
Chloe from the Creative Bride suggests painting charming & inexpensive wooden boxes to give as wedding favors

Image Source: Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright) 

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May 8th, 2008

Quick- crochet Mom a Wow Market bag!

Need a quick and easy mother’s day gift that is also good for the earth?

Tell your mom, or tell the world: WOW!

Yay, MOM!

Here’s the link to my pattern:  WOW MOM!

Image Source: Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright) 

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May 8th, 2008

Butterfly Effects-Update on the Crocheted Lorenz Manifold

OH!!!!! I am just delighted! After reading my posting about Hinka Osinga’s spectacular crocheted model based on the mathematics of the Butterfly Effect,  Kristi found the actual pattern for it!

I’ll never have time to do it, but I love it that now I COULD!

Here’s the pattern URL: Crocheted Mathematics of Chaos Butterfly Model   by Hinka Osinga and Bernd Krauskopf

thanks so much, Kristi! Wheeeeeeeeeee!

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May 8th, 2008

Yarn Storage

A constant question for yarn aholics yarn afficianado’s is: ‘ACK!!!!!!!! My stash has eaten my house! HELP? ‘ um…. ‘How do I store my yarn so it’s easy to get to but out of sight of cats, dogs, friends and relations?’

Here are a few pics of some of the ways that I deal with my stash of yarns and rovings:

Rule #1 for yarn storage: Any piece of furniture that is high enough to have yarn stored under it is fair game in our house.

This pic shows the old family tin picnic basket that is now used for storing yarn. (see pic below) You can also see the corner of a folding yarn bag. (Stuffed to overflowing with sock yarn. One year, I spent all my birthday and Christmas money on sock yarn. I will be knitting socks for many a year from that stash!) also see pic below….

One of my favorite storage solutions is the good old fashioned knitting bag:

and then there’s the….

picnic baskets that are great for yarn storage. (and roving and fleece).

another picnic basket and a wooden box that I got at the second hand store for a dollar or so.

I really like folding yarn bags. I even used this one in several puppet shows.

Here, you can see a whole bunch of my yarn storage solutions. The black and white boxes are tidy, cheap and cheerful. I bought them at my local fabric store for a couple of dollars each and they hide a multitude of sins store a LOT of yarn and fleece.

In the lower left hand of the pic is a really ugly white plastic 2 drawer thingie that I got at a garage sale. Ugly, but oh so handy for storing yarn!

Speaking of plastic, the clear plastic boxes that salad comes in are great for small project and yarn storage.

In the middle lower part of the pic are more ugly plastic baskets. Again…. ugly, but oh so handy.

And in the upper right hand is one of the folding knitting bags that I built last winter. Won’t be doing that for a long time! LOL! Those things are evil to build! So simple looking but nasty little tricksters. Good thing they hold a lot!

I’ll post pics of more of my yarn storage later.

So, how do you store your yarn?

Image Source: Noreen Crone-Findlay (Copyright)

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May 7th, 2008

Three doors down - And three up!

The Three Doors Down project on b5 is so neat! It’s giving me a great excuse to enjoy some of  ‘blogging neighbours’ on b5.

Here’s a link that explains what the ‘3 doors down’ project is.

This morning, one of my neighbours UP the b5 blog list (Jennifer at De Clutter It) wrote a posting about hankering for yarn.  She posted a pic of the most Zen yarn storage solution I have ever seen.  You really have to check it out!

Zen yarn photo at De-Clutter It 

She also posted about some other really great yarn storage solutions.  Brilliant. and useful, too! thanks, Jennifer!

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May 7th, 2008

Three doors down - 1- Jewelry and Beading

The Three Doors Down project on the Lifestyles Channel is under way! I am really enjoying this! (click on the link for an explanation)

My first ‘neighbour’, three doors down on the list of fellow Lifestyles bloggers at b5 is Cyndi at Jewelry & Beading.

Cyndi does a great job of finding really useful info on the web, as well as writing absolutely terrific tutorials. You’ll want to subscribe to this blog if jewelry making and beads are a passion of yours!

I sent Cyndi a list of questions about Jewelry & Beading, and here is her response:

“I love making stuff and I love writing about it, so being the writer of a
couple of arts and food oriented blogs is heaven to me! I have never
minded the “create on demand” aspect of this type of art career, but there
are times when I have so many projects going that I feel like I need a
personal assistant to follow along behind me and help me keep organized.

Jewelry and Beading is a mixture of projects, inspiration, and industry
news. I love to share my own projects with readers, as well as share the
work and techniques that they send me. I also love to find wonderful new
artwork that needs to be seen and to share that with everyone. And I
think it’s important that people who are working hard to improve their
skills have the information about new books, contests, calls for
submissions, and workshops that will stretch their current repertoire.

One of my favorite types of posts to share are the in-depth “Artist
Profiles”. Often I meet people online who just have amazing stories to
tell about the path their career has taken or about their own creative
process. It’s great to be able to share more than just a paragraph and a
couple of pictures from these amazingly creative people.”

I LOVE Cyndi’s blogs, including Layers upon Layers, which is one of my faves. I subscribe to it, and you should, too!

Image source: Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright) 

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May 7th, 2008

Butterfly effects in crochet

Lately, there has been a lot of attention paid to crocheted mathematical models.

I am passionate about butterflies. I am constantly designing homages to them in crochet, weaving, knitting, (see yesterday’s entry for a knitted Butterfly Bag), spool knitting, tatting, sewing, you name it. The picture above is a butterfly that is part of a workshop that I teach on ‘Building Butterflies’.

Normally, I think of butterflies as being metaphors for transformation, renewal, restoration and the journey of the soul. (see my workshop:

‘Yarn’-ing the Song of the Soul:Butterfly Memories & Reveries

So, when mathemeticians, physicists, weather forecasters and Terry Pratchett talk about the ‘Butterfly Effect’ it gets my attention.

Hinke Osinga is a math prof who works with the Lorenz manifold computations that explain the weirdness of weather and, yes! The Butterfly effect!

She has crocheted visualizations of the manifold model. It is just gorgeous beyond belief.

You can see pics of her work here:

math poster

Wow. what else can I say, except…. wow….

Actually - there is one more REALLY neat thing to say!

Kristi found a link for the pattern for actually crocheting the Butterfly model!  Yay, Kristi!  Butterfly 

Image source: Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright)

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May 6th, 2008

Inspiration - Ancient weaving

Ooooooooooh I love it when they find remains of weaving in ancient ruins!

Hopefully, this link will be a permanent one, so you can go read about the ancient woven fragments that have been unearthed:

ancient textiles 

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May 6th, 2008

Knit a Butterfly bag for Mother’s Day

Last year, I designed a Butterfly bag that’s knitted  with crochet edges. It’s spring again! (finally) and time to knit something up (quickly!) for Mother’s Day…….

Don’t have any thick yarn? Easy. Grab 3 or 4 strands of  worsted weight and big fat needles and go for it!

Here’s the link to my pattern:

Noreen Crone-Findlay’s BUTTERFLY BAG 

Image Source: Noreen Crone-Findlay (copyright)

and happy butterflies, and happy mother’s days, too.

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May 5th, 2008

Call for entry:Virtual Scarf Exhibition

Terri at Salt Spring Weaving

found this wonderful site: Virtual Scarf Exhibition 

I am thinking: Is there any way on earth that I can find the time to enter? hmmmmmmmm

Oh, I really really want to….. and…. I have promised a special scarf to someone….. ooooooooooh…………

sigh, for now, I better get back to painting.  (house, not art)

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