Hooray, the next book in the Sunny/Windy/Snowy and Chinook series is out: Foggy.  I love these books sfm (hello craftlog post from 2003).  The Amazon page had it projected to be out months ago, so I wasn’t sure it was for real.

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Eddy and Edwina posted this cool work-in-progress shot of a necklace she made from some pretty colored beads.  In the comments she reveals they are actually those plastic fuse beads you make designs out of and melt together.  Genius.  A bit o’ Googling also turned up a fuse bead bracelet tutorial by nkitkat.

It just so happens that I have a bunch of these left over from a couple of years ago.

Bracelets on waxed twine threaded back and forth, linked with a loop of elastic so they go over the wrist

Pink/red/white/another pink on elastic

Necklace strung on waxed linen

I think they kind of evoke the colorful glass beads in Ronni Kappos‘s jewelry, which I love (more here).

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Not very successful night of crafting.  I got the December issue of Martha Stewart and went 0 for 2 in attempted crafts.  They have a pattern for cute knotted ribbon wreathes, which didn’t seem to go as diagrammed.  Not sure quite what I’m doing wrong, but there seems to be a twist that I was missing.  There’s also an article about stuff to make with those yarn flower looms.  I have a similar jig that I thought might work, but I was apparently wrong.  The result looked rather ridiculous and I threw it away.

That’s when I put the magazine down and retreated to my old faithful craft, embroidery.  I’d bookmarked this stool and table that had been cross stitched using custom drilled holes.  Then this week noshii‘s awesome wood jewelry got posted all over the place and reminded me that I’d been meaning to experiment with this idea and had even bought the wood tiles a while back.

So I charged up the dremel tool, penciled a guide on the wood tiles, drilled some tiny holes, and stitched. It’s harder to be precise than I thought it would be, so the holes aren’t spaced as evenly as I had intended, but I kind of like the wonky cross stitches, especially in the variegated thread.  For the rectangle one, I drilled a bigger hole to fit a grommet.  They both have felt glued to the back to hide the threads.

This is definitely a method I’ll try again.

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I am fascinated by the trends that sweep through blogland (I used to do a column for Whip Up called memewatch).  Envelope security linings appears to be one that’s been picking up steam for quite a while, and I am not immune to their charms.  Recycling bin diving tonight came up with 7 envelopes of various blue and gray shades.  I added a few other papers (graph paper and origami prints and solids) to bulk it up.

I cut 3.5 inch circles and stiched them down the middle in packs of 4-5, stiched the packs together, then fanned the “pages” out to make a ball.  I left long thread ends to tie in a loop as a hanger.

Did I mention that this was difficult to take a good picture of?  Yeah, sorry about that.  Also, what am I doing making xmas crafts before Thanksgiving?  Thanks a lot, Christmas-industrial complex.

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Yay, only one more to do and then I’m caught up on my One Quilt blocks.  Nice way to spend a day off.  The task from bura ellen was red+white, plus redwork embroidery in a “woodland fantasy” theme.  The weird piecing was kind of made up as I went along based on the size of the pieces she sent.  Some, um, unfortunate cutting miscalculations led to the frankenstein spotted patch on one side, but whatever.

I used a pattern from one of my Japanese craft books, Simple Stitch Life (ISBN 4579111036) for the cute embroidery.

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January’s One Quilt assignment from Rummage. She sent a neat floursack and indigo collection of fabrics, and asked for some sashiko stitching in red thread. She said she liked the idea of the previously used fabrics, so instead of cutting around the old fold marks in the floursack, I incorporated them into the design. I also sewed the whole thing with red thread, thinking that might peek through the seams, but no such luck. The seams look pretty snazzy from the back, though. :P

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The latest issue of Martha Stewart has an article about “glitter painting” in it, which is essentially a several-pages-long advertisement for the Martha glitters.  I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to pay that much for the complete set of 24, but I am hoping someone with a 50% off Michael’s coupon might get it for me for xmas.  Anyway, the idea is paint by number with glue and glitter.

The best part is the cute tool on the website to convert photos into simpler, glitterize-able images.  You have to register, but whatever.  It is really neat.  I’ve been playing with it for like the last hour with random photos that happen to be on my computer.  This is my favorite (look at the trees!), and I got a few good cat ones too.

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childrenplayingwithfire on Flickr is embroidering her way through Twin Peaks.  They are amazing.  BOB is scary even in thread form.

Cooper Portrait, originally uploaded by childrenplayingwithfire.

First seen at Feeling Stitchy.

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