Category: Stashbusting

  • Scraps to the rescue

    Scraps to the rescue

    Among the gifts with the most commentary this year, my VERY last minute lavender eye pillows took the prize, which is hilarious after all my bluster about stashbusting. My tendencies to not donate, give away, or throw out any crafting supplies saved me this year!!

  • Last-minute gifts that make the grade

    Last-minute gifts that make the grade

    Some of the most challenging gifts to give are those for friends or colleagues that we feel close enough to that we want to give them a gift at Christmas, but we aren’t close enough to know where to begin in choosing a gift. We also may struggle with balancing not spending enough or overdoing…

  • My fiber-year in review

    My fiber-year in review

    I chose the featured photo (top of page) as it best reflects my thoughts on the past year, or at least the year since January 21st. In many ways, my sewing, knitting, and crocheting have helped me stay sane in a world that seemed to begin to fall apart around that time.

  • Holiday Self-Care

    Holiday Self-Care

    …we cannot give from an empty vessel. For many people, this has meant waiting for OTHERS to fill them. That’s a dicey proposition, and in many ways sets us up to fail. Caring for ourselves, even in small ways, is as close to a sure thing as it gets.

  • A loss of community

    A loss of community

    Crafters are creative and can transform simple things into works of art. As we continue to process the stages of “grief” around the loss of community that once resided in our neighborhood Joann stores, we can move on into new ways of being in community, finding and/or creating activities and small groups that promise a…

  • New habits, new norms

    New habits, new norms

    I suspect that a decent proportion of my fabric and yarn stashes came from past sessions of “therapy browsing” on Saturday afternoons or evenings at Joann’s, Michaels or in local fabric and yarn shops. While I have created many things over the years from those purchases, I have ALSO purchased a lot of fabric and…

  • Weekend WiP’s and whimsy

    Weekend WiP’s and whimsy

    My urge to shop for fabric and yarn picks up as the season here in Western Pennsylvania turns to Autumn, bringing chilly weather and thoughts of the holidays. With Joann now only a memory, I thought that (maybe) I’d have an easier time this year, but Michaels has picked up their game around sewing and…

  • In the spooky spirit

    In the spooky spirit

    Tonight I made my (1st) Halloween cross-body bag following the pattern I have used to make several other bags. Since I’ve made multiple variations of it, this bag went together fairly quickly. Here are a few of my earlier iterations: I have also started to add charms to the zipper pulls as some added glitz…

  • A mini craft

    A mini craft

    Sometimes being “crafty” can be short, sweet and simple. Tonight I was running a few errands after work and stopped by the local “dollar” store to see if I could find a small bottle for an idea I had earlier in the day: a DIY reed scent diffuser. The reason I chose a DIY option…

  • Technology: friend or foe?

    Technology: friend or foe?

    To a person, we all have way more fabric/yarn and patterns than we will EVER make in our lifetimes, regardless of how old we are today. If we limit ourselves to only “wanting” patterns that we will actually sit down and make, there’s no reason – ZERO – we can’t afford the handful of dollars…