Check it out, I changed my blog header! I’m kind of giving the place a little facelift and a new focus. It’s languished for too long, and I’ve let it fall out of my routine.

As you can see, the new header doesn’t have knitting in it. It’s just got a generally crafty feel, and so do I. It also has Chloe’s tail in it. That wasn’t the original intent, but it made it’s way in there while I was photographing the fabric and embroidery and it was too cute to crop out.

I’m still a knitter, but I’m also a crocheter, a sewist, an embroidered, a cross-stitcher, a . . . whatever you call someone who cuts out bits of paper and sticks them to other bits of paper. I just like making stuff. So from now on, that’s what I’m going to blog about. Making stuff, or just doing stuff.

For instance, did you know that I do custom embroidery for Madewell? It’s a hip new offshoot of J.Crew. I like the clothes a lot. The do the skinny jean thing, so those are hopeless for me, but the tops, sweaters and scarves are great! I’m starting to amass a large collection of their scarves.

Every once in a while, I go in and embroider things onto jeans that people purchase. It started when my friend Julie of Subversive Cross Stitch asked me to represent her during the grand opening of the Soho store. Here’s the sign I cross-stitched for the event:

It was huge, like 18″ or 22″ or so.

Since then, I’ve switched to embroidering because dayum, cross-stitching takes too long. I’ve been doing it at the Natick Collection store and should be there sometime in February. I’ll let y’all know next time!

I also just joined Caro’s 365 Self-Portrait project on Flickr. Here’s my page. I’m up to day four and so far, so good. Here was today’s:

That dealie on my noggin is a vintage quilt bag that I just made. I need to add the drawstring, but it came out really well.

I’ve also been putting a lot of work into my shops. I decided to use both the Big Cartel one and the Etsy shop. Big Cartel limits you to 100 items, and baby doll, I’ve got way more than that left over from Bazaar Bizarre. As much as I don’t want to blog constantly about the shops, they are kind of a big deal to me. I’m trying to keep up with the bills so my husband doesn’t have to go back to work. At least not for a while. He took a year off to focus on his artwork and he also does the cooking and laundry. His year is almost up, but he’s actually a good cook and I’ve forgotten how to do laundry . . .

I’ll only post about that when there are updates so you don’t get shop overload. I do have some great fabrics to blog about. I just got some from the 70s with a Wacky Packages print. It’s Mice-a-Roni! Tell me, who doesn’t need a Mice-a-Roni pouch? No one. No one doesn’t need that.

It’s going to be a great year!