Progress Report

I learned a long time ago that drunk-dialing is bad...very bad. As of last night, I learned that drunk-blogging is no better. A bit of early-morning editing was in order around here as well as a promise from my other half not to encourage any late-night, alcohol-fueled debauchery. Carry on.


As promised, I do have some things for show and tell in the Handmade Holidays department.


My first sock monkey. I've had the socks and instructions for monkey-making for a very, very long time. I have no idea why it took me so long to try this. I think I was afraid of messing it up, as there is no pattern, just some rather loose instructions on where to cut and sew. This was great fun and I'm pretty sure that I was born to make sock monkeys, but not sure why it was never brought up as a career path. I want to make more, but haven't found the socks in my area. Does anyone know a good source for monkey socks?

I'll show you rest of the little guy after Christmas. He is a gift for a very special person in my life and I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise.


This little birdy pincushion is the prototype for another project I'm working on. I kept this guy for myself, but cut off the leaves and reworked the band a bit and made a couple more for friends. I'll post more about this whole project later in the week.

A few quick and easy tissue holders for teachers' gifts.


A rather ambitious sewing project that has taken over much of our dining room as well as our lives. If you happen to see a very handsome, bearded man trailing bright strips of fabric from his shoes, please send him home. I need the fabric...and he has my wine.

New Hobby?

Okay, my holiday plan has been scrapped. Is anyone really surprised? Oh, I'm still making tons of gifts. I just happened to start something new, and now everyone may be getting...jewelry.

I found a tutorial in Craft magazine about rolling beads from scrap paper and after a rocky start, began making bracelets. Initially I was rolling the beads on wooden skewers and using tacky glue which only made the whole process lenghty and sticky and causing me to think I would rather have a bracelet made just from safety pins. I tried again using a glue stick and before long was in bead euphoria.

Apparently, Victorian babes rolled these beads and made whole curtains from them. You go, girls. A bracelet is the extent of my patience with stringing anything. My beads are fairly primitive, made from magazine pages and sealed with clear nail polish, but I have since learned that they can be much more sophisticated.

Getting into the whole jewelry thing, I started thinking about what else I had around that I could use for bracelets and came up with this.




I bought a couple of Scrabble games at yard sales last summer and had a jar full of tiles sitting on a shelf just because I liked the way they looked. Using a tiny drill bit and a template so that the holes match up, I drilled through from each side and then strung them on elastic cord. Viola!




Scrabble bracelets rock! The possibilities are endless. You can make one for everyone you know and love.