The above title was my email subject line upon completion of the mini drum and regulation-size drum sticks seen here, designs requested for a little bloggy/magazine/crafty collaborative fun. (Um, I was *quite* proud of that subject line, maybe more than I was of the designs I came up with). But, you know how I loooooove crochet challenges.

Anyway, Leslie Henkel of Abrams/STC Craft Books did a fun little interview for Tom Tom Magazine, the one and only magazine (online and in print) for female drummers. Do you like niche publications as much as I do? I am no drummer, unless you count the beats I tried to make with the above crochet-with-balsa-wood-inside drumsticks. Nonetheless, check out the interview linked to above and comment HERE, answering the following question, for a chance to win the drum or set of drumsticks:

What is the MOST played song in your iTunes/Media Player/etc.? (Alternately, what record/CD of yours has the most wear and tear?) Leave it in the comments and cross your drum-holding fingers! (They are also in my Etsy shop).

More pics here.

Last month, I signed up for the Plush You! Schmancy Olympic Challenge and got assigned “Opening Ceremonies” for my plush-creating. And what do you know, I went with something crocheted and smiley. Oddly enough, I have not watched any Olympic coverage yet, and I just finished designing these…at the tail end of the games! Ah well. Below is the pattern for these Olympic rings.

Supplies

F hook
worsted weight yarn in black, blue, green, red and yellow
tapestry needle
black embroidery thread
embroidery needle
8 4mm round black beads
fiberfil

Make FIVE rings, one in each color

ch 31 and *sc across; ch 1 turn.*
Repeat between * * 2 more times.
Sc across and finish off, leaving a 12-inch tail.

Assembling

With tapestry needle, stitch together the free loops (first row) to the inner loops of the last row, stuffing with a small amount of fiberfil as you go.

When you have done this for all five rings, arrange the rings using the top picture for guidance or check out this Wikipedia image to see how they should join together. One by one, stitch each ring closed as you wrap it around the correct ring. Stitch to the back of the ring it’s touching if it lies underneath, or to the front of the ring if it lies on top. (Does that make sense?) While they won’t stand on their own, the rings will stay in place if leaned against something. Sew on the beads for eyes and embroider the mouth on all of the rings except the black.

Lane: You think you’re a genius?
Franny: Aw, Lane. Please. Don’t do that to me.
Lane: I’m not doing any–
Franny: All I know is that I’m losing my mind. I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting–it is, it is. I don’t care what anybody says.
Lane: You sure you’re just not afraid of competing? I don’t know too much about it, but I’d lay odds a good psychoanalyst–I mean a really competent one–would probably take that statement–”
Franny: I’m not afraid to compete. It’s just the opposite. Don’t you see that? I’m afraid I will compete–that’s what scares me. That’s why I quit the Theatre department. Just because I’m so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else’s values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn’t make it right. I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of splash.

The web and world of print aren’t lacking in optimistic articles that advise forgetting 2009 and looking forward to 2010. Well, I’ll jump on the bandwagon for the second half of that (forget 2009? how about we all just learn from it instead?) After I wrote the last post on my 2009 health challenges, I looked at my Flickr pics for reminders of all the good things that happened amidst the bad:

-Halloween craft work for Better Homes & Gardens and The Today Show

-day trips to Storm King, Westport, the North Fork and Atlantic City

-bike rides to Jamaica Bay/Far Rockaway, The Cloisters and one around my hometown of Pittsburgh, a ride that was on my to-do list for years

-cheese crocheting for a Fromager, big gay ice cream truck-crocheting and a subsequent Serious Eats gift guide

-being part of a Chashama art show and the Plush You! show in Seattle

-becoming friends with peeps at Abrams Books/STC Craft and introducing the Safety Cones to Kata Golda’s puppets and helping STC Craft and BurdaStyle with DIY Design and a Pie-bake-off benefit to boot

-participating in Parking Day with Safety Cone Adventures, where I met some great people and made some connections that continue to have a wonderful domino effect

-discovered Only Make Believe, a great organization to volunteer for, and one that made my birthday extra special

-used a lot of my sick-at-home time for reading, writing, perfecting my knitting, sewing and crochet skills, baking and cooking

And there are many creative and exciting things in the cooker, including some big magazine and book news (!!!), all of which will be written about here…

All of this is to say: I have good reason to feel fortunate. When the holidays were approaching and I still wasn’t getting better, it was sad to think of spending my first Christmas away from home, and worse than that, in the hospital getting tests done. Even with frowny lump of coal in tow, not even look-on-the-bright-side Alicia could have turned Christmas-in-the-hospital around. (Okay, maybe I would have written an adventure story for frowny lump of coal amidst all the wires, needles and beeps, but I wasn’t looking forward to tapping into even more creativity via melancholy and soaking my notebook with tears).

Luckily, I started to feel “well” enough to make the trip to Pittsburgh (and did NOT have to go to the hospital YAY YAY YAY!), and continued to get better and better while in Pittsburgh. Big “phew.” While there, I got the idea to crochet a fortune cookie, based on some felt ones I saw in Martha Stewart last year. I bought a fortune cookie at the mall food court so that I could match the color of the real thing to appropriate yarn, and lo and behold, the fortune was perfectly relevant! (Have you noticed that most fortunes aren’t really…fortunes? More like declarations). It reads: “You have a deep interest in all that is artistic.” And there was a smiley front at the beginning and end of this sentence. T’is true! Ha.

Anyway, after the jump, the super easy pattern for a crochet fortune cookie. I wish you ALL good fortune in the new year and beyond…

Supplies

G hook
Red Heart TLC Essentials yarn in “Sandstone” (or red and pink for V-Day fortune cookies)
6mm black beads and black embroidery floss
5/8 inch white ribbon

Directions

Leaving a long tail, ch 2 and make 8sc in the 2nd ch from hook. (8)
2sc in each around. (16)
2sc, sc around. (24)
2sc, sc, sc around. (32)
2sc, sc, sc, sc around. (40)
Fold in half and sc together until there are 4sc left. Sl to next sc and finish off.

Pinch the cookie at the center, and with long tail and tapestry needle, sew across the (2sc, sc) round on the bottom side to “gather” the yarn a little and keep the pinched part in place. With embroidery floss, sew on two beads along the (2sc, sc, sc) round, spaced about 3sc apart. Sew on a tiny mouth one round below. Cut a 2.5-inch piece of white ribbon and sew onto the inside of the cookie. Ta-da! May good fortune follow you everywhere, i.e. put him in your pocket STAT!

In the pep talks that I give to myself when I am ill, which has unfortunately been a substantial chunk of the last 5 years, and basically ALL of this past year, I try to remember that familiar feel-good saying, “every cloud has a silver lining.” I’m not sure it’s even known who said these words first, but when researching them to make my Etsy listing for the above, I discovered that the general concept of a cloud having a silver lining comes from the 17th Century poet, John Milton. In “Comus” he writes, “Was I deceiv’d, or did a sable cloud/Turn forth her silver lining on the night?” Milton would later go blind, after writing the above, but before writing his masterpiece, Paradise Lost through dictation. He was of the opinion that his blindness sharpened his verbal and poetic abilities. Talk about practicing what you preach.

I have had a bookmark for quite a few years that has a literary quote on each side. The Raymond Carver one I stenciled on my bedroom wall, “Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read.” The other is from one of my favorite writers, Jorge Luis Borges, whom I only started reading in the last year. It reads, “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” As a literary buff and bonafide bookworm, I never thought twice about this quote beyond agreeing with it. I knew nothing about Borges’ life until very recently, having no idea how ironic this quote actually is: Borges said it after becoming blind himself. Borges was inspired by the way Milton perceived his own blindness, believing that no matter what calamity befell one, one must use it as best as possible. He called his blindness a “confinement,” but also a “liberation” because he was forced to invent and create in a different way, to approach his literary craft in a different way.

My own health calamity is a little more unpredictable and changing, not as fixed and final as blindness. But because of this I feel like I’m perpetually on a roller coaster where I’m supposed to get used to every single hill, valley, twist, turn, pull of gravity and bump as if each singular one of these is the way it’s always going to be. I try to get used to the feeling of the steepest, most terrifying hill only to be lifted up again into the clouds. This year has been incredibly challenging for me, as I can only call about 40 days out of 365 healthy ones, and even then, the experience of drug withdrawals can sometimes feel like another disease in itself. I have never worked harder at “keeping it all together” than during this year, because suddenly it felt like I had my hands in so many wonderful things and I didn’t want bad health to take them away like it has in the past. As many times as I had to hear my doctor say, “You need to rest, you need to work less, you need to be more selfish, how you take care of yourself now will affect your health later, you aren’t helping your body get better, you won’t get better this way,” I couldn’t listen. But there were many times in past years when I did nothing but rest, and I still didn’t get better; I got worse, so ever since then, I’ve adopted the belief that, well no matter how terrible this is, I want something to show for it, I refuse to stop until my body physically makes me. Of course, once upon a time, I took this too far…

In order to keep from slowing down, it seems necessary to hide from everyone what I’m actually going through, especially on an emotional level. I don’t want to feel more different than I already do, I don’t want to miss out more than I already do. And it’s denial, the “defense-mechanism of the illness” as Lawrence Durrell puts it, a compulsion to lie when you’re really sick because it’s all so catastrophic. I have always had a problem with opening up when it comes to difficult situations or feelings, particularly when it comes to my health. “Tell me what you’re going through, tell me what you’re feeling, I want to know,” but deep down I think, “No, you don’t want to know. You really don’t.” Because all it will do is make you feel sad and helpless. It IS sad and you ARE helpless. I am met with melancholy looks and sympathetic words. But sympathy has always felt like a pity party in disguise; I’d rather not attend. And yet, a few weeks ago, coincidentally, someone at a party said to me, “You look so beautiful, you don’t look sick at all. You must not get any sympathy.” That didn’t sit right with me, thinking that everyone around me almost can’t believe that I’m sick just because I hide it well, because some illness is hide-able. Maybe I do want some sympathy after all?

Sympathy requires the person doling it out to take on some of the burden, to try to understand the struggle. But passing on my burden to others doesn’t lessen it for me, and if anything it makes me feel more guilty. I compare a lot of things to math principles and scientific concepts, so I think of this scenario as resembling mitosis. One burden splits into two burdens that will each be exactly like the first, and they just keep multiplying into lots of burdens. And I hate witnessing this. To try to circumnavigate this passing on of the burden, I have tried instead to hand over writing I’ve done about the utterly horrible sick years where my body was perpetually deteriorating. The response to that writing? “I cried for an hour. I don’t know how you did it.” So, that’s kind of the same result. Or I get, “Gosh you say things in such a beautiful way” or “You should write a story about that” or “Your ability to describe emotions is amazing.” In other words, I get feedback as if I were brainstorming future literary material, not chronicling the physical struggle that is often my daily life. That doesn’t quite help me process it all either. In an effort to be more open about it, on this virtual paper, here is what I would say, if I were being honest, on any of about 150 days of this past year:

If I was lucky enough to sleep through the night, I am jolted awake around 7 or 7:30 with intense colon pain. I go to the bathroom. I haven’t had to set an alarm clock all year. I can count on that morning pain, day in and day out. I try to eat breakfast, but because food is associated with pain, it’s forced eating at best. I brush my hair, which comes out in clumps for the first two weeks of taking prednisone these days. It’s impossible to tell what’s drugs and what’s disease when it comes to what’s happening inside my body. The thing that makes eating easier is that taking so many pills on an empty stomach hurts and some of the pills taste like poison. So I take some medications from a pillbox that I’m outgrowing at 15 pills daily. I get nauseous every other day or so some weeks, feeling on the verge of vomiting for a good half hour, or at worst, an hour. Sometimes I bite my hand so that I focus on that pain instead. I probably go to the bathroom a couple more times. I put a garbage can right next to my desk and start reading email, working, managing, ignoring. I make a phone call and thank God that the person on the other end of the line can’t see me billowed over with pain on my bed. By lunch time I’ve bled internally enough that my legs feel like jelly because the muscles don’t have enough oxygen. Running errands like this takes twice as long because I walk slower. I have sat on almost every curb, stoop and bench in and around my neighborhood, waiting for my heart to catch up. Sometimes I get a headache, sometimes I collapse in bed because I just can’t stand up anymore, or even sit up. I get a little woozy. But I can’t take a nap because prednisone causes insomnia and my racing heart, both a side effect of prednisone and blood loss, prevents me from falling asleep anyway. I try to block out thinking about the horrible long-term effects of these pills because without them there is no short-term. I try to block out thinking.

That’s a smattering, a mere few hours. Sometimes it’s worse than the above, rarely is it better when I’m in full-blown sick mode. The key to getting through these days is the block-out-thinking part, which of course is not entirely realistic as I have to LIVE it 24/7 and there’s no real escape. The next best thing is to put myself on a kind of autopilot, a full immersion into the depths of denial, to think of it all as “normal.” To not contemplate how painful it all really is, both physically and emotionally. To forget that the majority of people in my life are not doing this, are not fighting their own body that is trying to kill itself. If I can keep myself in that state of denial, I can keep going.

Instead of turning to people in a time of need, I turn inwards. I think, I read, I cry, I write. Maybe these feel safer because no one else is affected but me. I can find wisdom and encouragement in the written words of others but don’t have to expose myself in return. I can love those writers and know that I will never let them down, will never make them cry, will never have to tell them I sometimes hope I don’t wake up in the morning, will never have to cancel, will never have to explain, will never not come through. Borges once said, “I have always felt that my destiny was, above all, literary; that is, that many bad things and some good things would happen to me. But I always knew that all of them, in the long run, would be turned into words.” Relatedly, in the fifth volume of her diary, Anais Nin writes, “I begin to look at what happens to me as a storyteller might look at it. What a good story it makes! I take my distance. I look at the dramatic possibilities. Try that. The depression falls away, you are changed into an adventurer faced with every obstacle, every defeat, every danger, but as they increase the sense of adventure increases too.”

I look back at this year and I am overwhelmed by both the bad things and the good things, but if I am to subscribe to this silver lining thinking, I should turn all of them into words, into art, into something. Transform the sense of confinement into one of liberation. With more skeptical eyes do I read these words of Nin, because it seems risky and irrational to treat “real life” as story fodder and dramatic material, without processing it as real life first. More than once I recall being what felt like accused of “You’d do anything for a story,” to which I responded, “No, it’s really just that I’d do anything. Period.” I don’t think far ahead enough in the future to really consider “the story” that I’ll be able to tell. The story is the logical aftermath, the residuum, what you end up with. But for me it’s all about the living, the experience, first and foremost. And that’s why it’s so distressing to handle “the many bad things,” the parts of this year when I was sick, because the experience is not enjoyable in any way, and living becomes living with a disease, every single day, tainting everything in the process. The lessons I learn, the story I’ll some day be able to tell? The journey to get there feels too long and painful to care. And yet, after taking inventory of this year, I realize that I have to care, because the “bad things” may never let up in the way I want them to. The bad may always number “many” while the good lag behind at only “some.”

So I must keep looking for Milton’s silver lining, for Borge’s liberation, for Nin’s good story.

Lynne Barr’s Reversible Knitting was recently published by STC Craft, and it’s one of the most impressive pattern books I’ve seen to date. Lynne has designed 50 brand-new stitch patterns, and these aren’t just simple arrangements of knit and purl stitches that you’ve seen before. They’re original techniques and patterns and take into account the knitter’s desire to not really have a “wrong” side of a finished garment that shouldn’t be looked at. She takes 3-D knitting to the next level (!) and then some, even creating a whole series of “faux crochet” patterns. Relatedly, I’m always intrigued by the “faux knitting” (usually ribbing) patterns I see in my crochet books, just because it feels like this playful joke among fiber artists: “You thought I knitted this! Psych, it’s crochet! Muwahahahaha.”

In addition to patterns that you can tailor to garments of your choosing, there are also projects like some adorable double-wrap stockings and a geometric dress that should be in every knitting math teacher’s wardrobe. Stockings belong to that material realm of, “Wait, you can make those?” for me. Like shoes and pea coats and swim suits, I forget that, yes of course one could make those if possessing the knowledge to do so. If I can tear myself away from crocheting, hopefully soon I will be happily saying, “I made them,” when someone asks me where I bought my tights.

I decided to try my hand at “faux crochet bobbles,” bobbles being one of my favorite crochet patterns and crochet words to say out loud. Bobble! Bobble! Bobble! I’m done. It’s so strange to use knitting needles like they are crochet hooks. It feels like…cheating! And while I could have crocheted a very similarly looking pattern and made 20 rows in the time it took me to knit the 3 that you see here, it made me reflect on what Lynne says in the introduction: “It may be human nature to play to one’s strengths, but I find that working through a weakness or facing an obstacle often sparks my creative development.” Well-said, and quite a life lesson that can be found amidst all of these rows of interweaving yarn.

Want a chance to win a copy of this book? Head over here and leave a comment!

I have been burning the midnight oil to ready my shop for the holidays, finally tackling some craft “to-do’s” by adding new crochet designs and owl soap scents. I crocheted some ribbon candy a year or so ago, but wasn’t happy with the finished look. Ever since I started working on the crochet cheese commission, I have begun to pay more attention to yarn texture, instead of just trying to perfect the design by tweaking the actual pattern and playing around with stitches. So, with a mottled cheese, I chose mottled or fuzzy yarn; for waxy-covered cheeses, I chose shiny yarn, and so on. It isn’t just about getting the color and shape right, especially when it comes to recreating food products. So, what I discovered about the ribbon candy design is that I was using plain-old acrylic yarn, which makes for chunky, not-shiny ribbon candy. Ribbon candy is, of course, smooth, shiny, almost elegant.

Anyway, I stocked up on Caron Simply Soft yarns, which are shiny and thinner than most acrylic worsted weight yarns. With little white ribbons (!), these make pretty sweet (!) holiday ornaments. Free crochet pattern is after the jump.

There are three different patterns for the three ribbon candies seen here to get the different color schemes.

Supplies

Caron yarn in pink, red and white
F hook
White 1/4 inch ribbon

Pink and white ribbon candy:

With pink yarn, ch 74 and sc for five rows, always making a ch 1 turn at the beginning of each row. Leaving a long tail, snip pink and join white. With white, sl into each stitch across. Finish off. With white yarn again, join at the beginning of the pink free loops on the other side. Sl across and finish off. (Skip ahead to Assembling).

Red and white ribbon candy:

With red yarn, ch 74 and sc for 1 row. Leave red yarn and join white. Sc across with white for one row and snip. Pick up red on the other side and sc for 3 more rows. Finish off, leaving a long tail. Join white and sl into each stitch across. With white yarn again, join at the beginning of the red free loops on the other side. Sl across and finish off. (Skip ahead to Assembling).

Pink, red and white ribbon candy:

With white yarn, ch 74 and sc for 1 row. Leave white yarn and join red. Sc across with red for one row and snip. Pick up white on the other side and sc for 3 more rows. Finish off, leaving a long tail. Join pink and sl into each stitch across.

Assembling

Cut a 9-inch piece of white ribbon. Laying the long crocheted rectangle flat, sl stitched edges facing down, tie ribbon around a center stitch, being careful not to let it show through to the right side. Then insert the loop made through the crocheted rectangle so that it pops over to the right side. Begin folding into 1 1/4 inch pieces, so that you make about five folds and ribbon candy is about 2 inches long. Hold in place and with long yarn tail, sew through folds a couple of times until it stays in place on its own. Knot yarn on inside of a fold and tuck away.

About a month ago, I tagged along with Brooklyn Based to the Brooklyn Flea in Dumbo, in order to sell some of my crochet stuff. And guess who was also swinging by the Flea? Martha Stewart herself! She was doing some filming for an episode on Brooklyn, specifically on the food of Brooklyn, highlighting small purveyors and unique food businesses in the borough. After Martha had left (sniff, sniff, I didn’t get to meet her), the filming crew did come over and I guess they decided to include a shot of yours truly! Well, my hands at least. But not just my hands. My hands crocheting Safety Cone ear flap hats! Watch the video and keep your eyes peeled around 30 seconds in.

While at the Flea, a girl bought one of my owl soaps as a gift for someone for when she returned home to California. A week or so later, I got an Etsy Conversation from the receiver of the owl soap, saying that she loved it and asking where I got my molds from. Well, I only have ONE owl mold, which means, yes, I make every soap one by one. (Let’s not talk about the inefficiency of this, lest I spoil my future book, “How to make the least amount of money in the most amount of time”). I bought it a few years ago at a kitchen store in Brooklyn and have never been able to find another one like it. There’s no company name on the mold and both brick-and-mortar shop and internet browses proved futile. I told her this, but lo and behold, a day later, she sends a link to a kitchen shop online that carries them. 6 for $13! It turns out they are “small cake pans,” which I never would have guessed, but it does make sense. I knew they were baking tins, but I was always searching for “owl mold” or “brioche tin.” How happy was I to welcome 6 new owl molds into my home, just in time for the onslaught of holiday owl soap orders.

This past weekend I helped out at DIY Design Day with my pals at BurdaStyle and STC Craft. It was held at a place I had long been curious about, the revolving storefront that is 303 Grand in Williamsburg. And how excited was I to learn that the trek from the subway there would take me past 662 Driggs Avenue, where the author Henry Miller himself grew up (FYI, he hated Williamsburg and hated New York City). When something crafty intersects with something literary, it’s a good day.

A few weeks back during a planning session at Sweet Ups, someone had asked if I could design a dog bone, as part of the proceeds from the event were going towards BARC, a no-kill animal shelter right there in Williamsburg. Never one to say no to a crochet design challenge (don’t hold me to that), I came up with the above. At the end of this post, click on More for the freeeeee pattern. But before that, take a look at what I made at the event:

We made potato stamps, inspired by those of author Heather Ross, who stopped by. Safety Cone and I are excited to take some detailed Field Notes about…well…we’re not sure yet, but they will be detailed and thorough.

And some felt coffee cozy-making per the instructions of Kata Golda…remember when the Safety Cones met her mice and cat finger puppets? A Safety Cone cozy seemed appropriate.

I didn’t get to finish the above, but I think you see where it’s going. Next up, from some of the same planners of DIY Design, including myself, plus Etsy, Spacecraft, and a bunch of great sponsors and judges comes the 1st Annual Brooklyn Pie Bake-Off this coming Sunday. Time to get out your rolling pins, aprons and best pie recipe using at least one local ingredient and a homemade crust. If eating is more your forte, we’ll hook you up as well. Conflict of interest or not, I’m entering!

(Click below for the crochet bone pattern!)

Supplies

G hook
white worsted weight yarn
two bead eyes and thread
fiberfil stuffing

Directions

*With G hook and white yarn, ch 2.
Make 6sc in 2nd ch from hook.
2sc in each. (12)
Sc for 2 rounds.*
Slip to next sc and finish off.
Repeat between * * and join with first piece as shown below.

Sc two sc’s from each round piece together.
{Then sc around each round piece, making one decrease on each one, and additionally making one decrease where they are joined.}
Repeat between { } twice.
Sc for one round.

Sc for approximately 7 rounds or until the entire bone thus far is just shy of 4 inches. Sl to next sc and finish off.

Repeat between * *.
Sc two sc’s from each round piece together.
Repeat between { } three times.
Sc for one round.

Sl to next sc and finish off, leaving a 10-inch tail.
Using picture for guidance, sew on eyes and a mouth on the first bone piece, placing the first eye close to the end of the bone towards the opening, and the next day about 3sc to the left. Stuff both pieces and sew together using needle and 10-inch tail, stuffing before you close it up.

I went through a tie-dye phase in high school, even attempting to dabble in natural dying (!) by collecting red onion peels and the like from the supermarket. As with most things regarding crafts+Alicia, I read up on all possible methods and techniques via many library books. I have since steered clear of it only because in Alicia land, “Today, I’m going to tie-dye” is like saying “Today, I really feel like ruining some counter surfaces and the clothes that I’m wearing.” i.e. I make enough messes and ruin enough shirts just having to eat three meals a day. But! The good people at FaveCrafts sent me the above tie-dye kit to peruse and use and blog about here, so I draped the apartment and myself in as many garbage bags as possible and filled some squeeze bottles. (Tie-dye-disaster-preventer AND poncho all in one!)

Knowing I would already get a dyed shirt in the process (Hi, I’m a mess-ball), I decided to do something for the home: pillowcase dyeing. Boring white pillowcases, begone! So, how did it go with the Tulip One-Step Tie-Dye kit? Fabulously. The directions were easy to follow, and basically involved shaking up powdered dye and water in the provided bottles. Then it was onto choosing a design! I went with “sunbursts,” rubber banding (those were included too) 3-inch pieces of the pre-washed and dampened pillowcase and adding dye like so:

I dyed half of the little pieces with fuchsia, half with purple and then filled the in-between with blue, but leaving some white showing to avoid the “muddy look” they warn against. I let the colors set for about eight hours before undoing the rubber bands, and then tossed in the washing machine with hot water and a teeny tiny amount of soap. I was very pleasantly surprised at how vibrant the colors turned out.

Doesn’t it perfectly complement my wall quote?!

These turned out so well that I’m contemplating tie-dying my sheets, seeing as though I have all-white bedding. Too much color? See, this is the other reason I have to be careful when revisiting past craft loves–I then want to compulsively do it. Before I know it, everything will be tie-dyed because I enjoy “the artistic process” entirely too much sometimes. If you’re thinking that you too want to catch tie-dye fever, FaveCrafts also has a FREE downloadable e-book with 18 different dye techniques. Interested in the above tie-dye kit? They can be found over at I Love to Create (Hey, me too! Nice site name!) If you enter the code “fave1009″ before 11/30, you get free shipping to boot.

What are you waiting for? Get dyeing! Errr….tie-dyeng, that is.