Once again, I’m attempting to handmake as many holiday gifts as possible. I did pretty well last year- giving things I made, handmade things I bought from etsy, and giving materials for others to handmake their own projects!
I got started early this year- my New Year’s Resolution last year was to knit and sew a specific number of items each month, and a lot of those have been holiday gifts, so I’m pretty far along already! But here’s some other knitted items I think would make AMAZING gifts…
After stuffing ourselves full of maple cotton candy, kettle corn, soft pretzels, hot apple cider, and all sorts of delicious farm fresh treats and petting each sheep at least 3 times and touching hundreds of different yarns, we went to the Ravelry Party!
My friend Carly asked me to make her Halloween costume for her… can you guess what she’s going as?
The muslin:
The ingredients plus one nearly finished component:
In other news, Chris and I went to the American Museum of Natural History. I love how they set up the animals like they’re posing for family portraits.
And one of my favorite tote bags was this free one I got with a Japanese magazine. It’s falling apart from over use, so I copied the shape and made another one out of old vintage fabric…
Something happened after Anya Hindmarch made her I’m Not A Plastic Bag: conserving the environment became fashionable. Clothing started being made of organic materials, hip and trendy companies started making composters and gardening tools out of recycled materials, every store you go into has reusable shopping bags for sale, and suddenly every cosmetic line is paraben free and organic. Hopefully, unlike other fads, being green won’t go out of style.
Growing up in California, we were taught in school from about kindergarten to abide by the 3 R’s- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. My mom had canvas bags in her car for grocery shopping. As kids, my brother and I collected and sorted recyclables to take to recycling centers, and the money we got was ours to spend. When I first moved to New York, adjusting to the lack of public recycling bins and everything in a paper bag in a plastic bag with 14 napkins and styrofoam cups was really hard for me. I’ve had a little folded up tote bag in my purse every day since I arrived, use my travel coffee mug and Nalgene from college every day. Not that I claim to be better than anyone else, just luckier. Adjusting to a conservatory lifestyle isn’t too hard for me since it was ingrained into me since birth. Chris and I have recently been watching some really interesting Sundance Channel shows on our instant Netflix queue- The Lazy Environmentalist demonstrates how to change your life to waste less without compromising your comfort or convenience, and Eco Trip- which follows production of everyday goods and examines their environmental impact. I just queued Big Ideas For a Small Planet as well.
We’re now taking on a new challenge: The No Impact Project Experiment. It’s an experiment to train yourself to consume and waste less. Conceived by Colin Beavan, who went for 1 whole year living a zero-waste lifestyle with his family in New York City, it’s a challenge to get people to live zero-waste for one week. The week of October 18th, to be exact. I still haven’t decided if I’ll just post our progress here, or if I’ll post to the official community site… Click here to sign up if you want to participate in the official week.
I should know better than to knit at a bar by now, but I guess I don’t. Sunday night, after work at the bar, sitting outside on a step, I was chatting with the security guards while working on a lace shawl when some guy drunkenly stumbles up to me and says, “HEY! WHAT ARE YOU NEEDLEPOINTING??”
I went back to looking at my work and didn’t look up for the rest of the interaction with this guy.
Me: “Uh, no. This is knitting.”
Drunko: “NEEDLEPOINTING. KNITTING. WHATEVER. SAME THING! ARE YOU MAKING SOMETHING INTERESTING? WHY DON’T YOU COME INSIDE AND HAVE SOME FUN! HAVE ANOTHER DRINK!”
Also, back in August, when I couldn’t find anything to wear to work, I made a new dress!
These aren’t the best photos- I’m really losing steam for photographing the stuff I make…
Over the last few months, I’ve also knitted some little jackets and boleros for the Pink Slip Boutique grand opening party fashion show. I didn’t get any photos of them before I sent them off, so when I see photos from the party, I’ll make sure to post them here! They turned out cute!
I’ve been wanting a small digital video camera for a while, but most of the little, inexpensive ones I found had the same resolution as the video on my Powershot, so I just resolved to take short videos of the cat (what else, really, am I planning to make videos of? really.) with that. I didn’t want to spend much to get a camera- Chris has a nice little Sony video camera.
BUT THEN….
I saw in Paper Magazine’s current issue: the Hello Kitty Flip Mino HD.
After watching as many Flip Mino HD videos as I could find on Vimeo, I’m pretty impressed with the video quality. For the price, it makes nice videos. Obviously no where near as amazing as the HD videos Chris and his friends have shot with their Very Expensive Rentals, but good enough for me.
AND I googled, “The Flip coupon Code” and found the code FLIP10 gets you $10 off any camera through 9/30/09 when you buy from their online shop. I’m not trying to be a commercial, I was just excited to find the code. It’s $189 after the discount and they do free ground shipping. (Thanks, mom and dad, for the super early Birthday gift! I feel like such a spoiled brat…)
So be prepared for videos of Gary and Robot hugging and cleaning each other. And maybe of some sheep and alpacas from this years Rhinebeck….
