I'll have to watch movies and knit all day to finish the hat. Not a bad way to spend my b-day.

Today is my birthday and tomorrow is my husband’s. We made a deal this year to boycott store-bought presents and instead make something for each other. No, that’s not true. I’ll restate: I made the plan to hand-craft a present and I imposed my plan on Steve. I told him he could make me anything: a poem, a card, a dinner. Truth be told, he’s miserable about the whole thing. In fact, he actually said this sentence: “I can’t make you a present. This is so unfair! You are going to win!” Win? Win at gift-giving? Men are so funny.

Here’s the thing. Though I do have the clear advantage in the hand-made stuff department, I’m on the fast track to failure. This is as far as I’ve gotten on his hat. His b-day is in less than 24-hours. I don’t think I’m going to make it, especially because I’m dreaming up the design as I go with no graphs. All I have is this inspiration photo of a hat he liked in a store:

Last week I had a grandiose plan to paint him card, write him a poem and present it with a beautiful, Nordic hat. Now I’m down to just a hat. Wish me luck.

Here’s how it came about: Last week a friend of mine emailed the editor of our local paper and told her she thought I’d be a good subject for a feature in the arts section. My friend let me know about the email after the fact, which was better. I would have tried to stop her.Needless to say, I was VERY surprised. I was even more surprised that the writer contacted me that same day.

She wrote a wonderful article that I felt  genuinely captured my feelings about moving to a new community, my partnership with my mom, and my old life as “the knitting lady” in Oakland. And she did research on yarn bombing. What a thorough reporter.

Then there was the photo shoot. It cracked me up. The photographer stayed for like two hours and did three different set-ups. For the set-up with the doll, he treated her like she was a real person and kept on saying, “Excuse me, I just have to adjust your skirt….you don’t mind if I button this button, do you?”  How cute is that?  When the piece came out this week, I got lots of nice responses. The funniest came from my friend, who didn’t “get” the perspective of the shot. He said, “Is that doll life-size?” Add to this that the doll looks a lot like me. So he was thinking I had knit a life-size doll of myself. That’s a little too Lars and the Real Girl for me.

In case you’ll are wondering, her name is Benji; she’s American Girl-sized and she has two different outfits: a ballet ensemble complete with toe shoes and a school-girl uniform.

When the striped side is done, it curls. It can be blocked, and the seed stitch edges will eventually sit down but they really, really want to fold back up again. Rather than fight that for the life of the scarf, I knit a stockinette stitch back, then embellished it with a running stitch. The decorative stitching is not necessary, but I like the way it adds a deconstructed edge as a counterpoint to the prettiness of the waves on the front. I wear this scarf EVERY DAY. The weight is perfect and because of the bamboo silk, its hand is soft but not fuzzy.

I made the flowers before the hat as a way to thank my customers for a great 2011. The flowers felt lonely without a perch, so I knit up this deep-brimmed cloche out of my alpaca, doubled. The band is knit lengthwise, then the stitches are picked up along its edge. The crown is then worked in the round. The pattern is in three sizes and includes the flower instructions so you don’t have to download that separately. If you just want the flower pattern, it is still available as a free download at Pick Up Sticks.

The larger sized flowers.

I am a fiend for short rows and can’t seem to make anything these days that doesn’t use them. I was messing around with a short-row flower and came up with this little 3-D number. I decided to give it away for free at Pick Up Sticks as a THANK YOU to everyone who supported me in 2011. At the end of 2010, I moved across the country from California to Vermont and in the process essentially had to shut down Pick Up Sticks. It was traumatic, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to start the company back up again. When I made the decision to rebuild this fall, I quickly  realized that I have the most supportive customers in the industry, and I was inspired by working with you all again. So thank you for your business. Much, much appreciated. And I’m looking forward to an exciting 2012.

The smaller flower.

Use the flowers to embellish hats, boots, anything you can think of.

In the daytime.

And at night.

As soon as I saw the cheap-looking white spray-painted wire trees at my local second-hand store, I knew they had to be mine. They were $2.50 each, and they had so much potential. They came in three different sizes, which meant no matter how I clustered them they would look good.   Plus they were pre-strung with little white lights. Any decoration lit from within makes a striking focal point at night, and any decoration that I don’t have to string myself is a good thing.

Adding the first layer of twigs.

I had a spiral of twigs in my stash, so I got to work wrapping the trees in the woody loveliness. The whole scene fills up the window seat in my living room. I like it because it will stay up as long as the snow stays on the ground, unlike the holiday decorations, which always come down too fast for me.

The whole vignette.

All lit up. I used the extra cedar trimmings to decorate the mantle.

I went to buy a wreath for my mantle and discovered that, at $65, wreaths were not in my holiday budget. My neighbors have a row of cedars along our shared fence and their branches hang into my yard. See where I’m going with this? I spent 20 nippy minutes clipping the branches, then ran down to Creative Habitat for a metal  wreath frame. Five dollars and a few hours playing with florist wire later, and I had a beautiful holiday mantle.

The wreath before I dolled it up with lights.

Clipped berries and wreath frame, waiting to pair up with the cedar to become my holiday centerpiece.

Here’s your chance to buy a little somthin’ somthin’ for you . . . all my cones are half-off at my online retail store and shipping is free through Dec. 22. One 2,200 yard cone is $47.50. Think of the felted bags you could make!

This is the same 100% wool, worsted weight yarn that I use for all my projects. High quality, imported from Peru. On cones, I have 15 colors left. I’m still selling yarn in 65-yard and 220-yard balls. I’m rolling them out by hand, and they’ll arrive unlabeled, just so’s ya know. The small balls don’t look nearly as cute as they used to when I had my crazy huge rolling machine.

Our best Will and Kate.

My husband works for a great company that throws themed costume parties every December. About 1,000 people go to the parties and almost all of them show up in amazing get-ups. This year’s theme was “Entourage,” which no one understood. The party team had to put out an email explaining that “entourage” could be any group, like the gang from Scooby Doo or Bay Watch, or anyone who has an entourage. This was a hard one, so Steve and I didn’t settle on a costume until the day of the party: Prince William and Catherine Middleton.

On the way to the ball.

Because I am the Queen of Craftiness, Steve has an unrealistic expectation that I can pull anything crafty out of my ass in about two minutes flat. OK, OK, so his expectation isn’t all that unrealistic: I did have a wedding dress that looked surprisingly like Kate’s which I’d strangely purchased from the Goodwill this summer. That was done. But the rest, well the rest was going to test every bit of my Crafty Reserve.

Raw materials: The coat + a tree skirt, ribbon and ornament hangers.

My mom and I went to about 5 thrift stores and we couldn’t find a single red coat for a man. We finally got the brainstorm to find an extra large women’s coat in red. We found it at half off — godbless KMart — for $40.  By this time it was noon, and we were seriously under the gun. We made the decision to get all the embellishing supplies at KMart, or we faced a night with me in a wedding gown and my husband by my side in a lady’s coat.

We picked up a pile of 1/2 off Holiday decor: a tree skirt, royal blue ribbon and ornament hangers.

We used baubles from my grandma's stash to embellish.

At home I had a box of my grandma’s beads from the ’60s and ’70s. I knew that would be a treasure trove for the medals. A few hours of stitching later, we had a coat fit for a prince.

We didn’t win the costume contest — Gilligan’s Island did — but people said we were robbed. I think it’s because we didn’t have Pippa and her cute butt hopping around behind us.

The tree skirt became the collar and sleeves.

The robe edging from the tree skirt became the edging on the lapel.

I didn't have the teapot that'll be used in the real photo shoot, which made designing a challenge. Hope it fits when there's a spout and a handle.

I sent off the teapot cozy and eye mask to my editor at Knitting Today today. I’m happy with the finished project — it looks a lot like my original sketch – but without the RIGHT TEAPOT, it’s pretty hard to know if the fit will be correct. I took the cozy down to my local Home Goods store and popped it on every teapot they had on display (yes, I got several odd stares). It didn’t fit one of them. I was working from the dimensions my editor gave me from the teapot they’ll use in the photoshoot, so cross fingers.

I made a matching eye mask, which I’m excited about because of the picot cord. I picked up stitches to add the picot edging, then moved into i-cord to make the tie. The pairing of the bumpy picot and the straight i-cord just didn’t look right. That’s when I figured out I could cast on a bunch of stitches and work just a few rows of the picot, bind off, fold and seam to make a fancy cord.

The eyemask with picot edging and ties.

I lined it with a swatch of silk so the mask would be comfy on the face.