Not only is Dame Helen Mirren a talented Oscar-winning actress and always looks beautiful for the big night, but she’s at least a bit crafty, in addition.

To quote Mirren Sunday evening, “He [the Oscar statue] [is] not naked in my house. I have knitted him a little scarf.”

I wish I could see that scarf! Instead, here’s a picture of Helen from this year’s Oscar’s red carpet. *To honor her (my fave) look of the night, I’m kicking off both my dogwear designing and our first annual Oscar’s Dog Gown with hers!

A sketch to come. I’ve planned it out and am ordering supplies very soon! No knitting, in order to speed things up a bit (OK a lot). Stay tuned!

No, Kool-Aid doesn’t just result in bright, obvious colorways. It can be as subtle and sophisticated as with any dye. Seeing this project picture from Knitterly Things just makes me feel even more that I can’t wait to dye and paint yarn!

MamaMay is still trying to come up with a name for this yarn, so please visit and help her out!

It’s just one of the standard methods of casting on, but isn’t talked about nearly as much as say the long tail cast-on. My long tail cast ons were too loose, and I’ve often found myself starting over projects, with one of the reasons being my cast-on, only to struggle with just the beginning–again.

Now that I’ve switched to knitting on, everything’s relatively smooth, and I’m a much faster worker. Tutorial video below (it’s not me).

A couple tips:

Your cast ons may get too tight to work with, or even a bit loose. You need to focus on pushing the stitches to the fullest part of the needle, but then pulling the top stitch close to the end when inserting your left needle into the right hand stitch. It takes some practice, and you may not always get it for a while.

Advanced tip: You don’t need to pull the right needle out of the lefthand loop at all, but just move it to the back! Things move much quicker this way.

Good luck! Feel free to link to your results in the comments!

My BFF and I always exchange presents around New Years, because I’m far away from him on Christmas. This year it was even later because I had presents arriving even later. Well, he always outdoes himself, and this year, he wood-burned a (OOAK) knitting butterfly on a plaque with a little (outgoing mail) shelf and key/umbrella hooks. Ahh!

And here it is in my new apartment!! I needed something like this.

Note the darling bug is knitting upside down. From now on that is how butterflies would knit! I find it adorable, because that’s how my BFF looks mimicking me. Ha ha! Oh those macho males, not understading the fiber crafts!

First of all, Happy New Year, crafters and indie lovers!

Now down to business. I’ve seen in other blogs’ knitting resolutions, and I think it’s a great idea for me especially to make a few. I’m a lazy knitter. I also already had a goal to make finish more, many more, projects and work on the business more. Not only am I almost all unpacked, but it is a new year! Time for resolutions, and while some others list projects they want to finish, I need to be more aggressive and think long term (it is a whole year). Of course, one still needs to keep it do-able.

Resolutions:

1. To craft some every day, or at least 5 days a week. To work half on one large project and work on - and hopefully finish - one small project on these days.

2. To focus on projects I need to get done / can get done quickly to sell, and start fewer new ideas before they are.

3. Think about timeliness of products; holidays, seasons, and think at least a month ahead for selling.

4. To set a 3rd of my crafting time, after the shop’s fleshed out once more, to creating pet items for my new shop.

5. To work toward finishing 3 purses a month. Perhaps a large, medium, and small. This will be a long-term effort to succeed.

6. And finally, dilly-dally less, and focus at least equally on blogging (other sites) because those sites are the actual moneymakers.

Now I challenge you to make at least one crafting resolution that will make you a better, more skilled, or more productive creator! Please blog, or post on a forum, and leave a comment!