Create!

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.

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This is a well-known fact. Especially when a strange sequence of events leads up to something wonderful that you never could have expected. A surprising domino effect, getting from Point A to Point B by means of something that does not resemble a straight line by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve mentioned before that through my Etsy shop and crochet biz, I get a LOT of great stories from customers. Sometimes it’s relating a crochet story, sometimes an inside joke involving one of my items and why it’s meaningful, but regardless, I collect them all in a mailbox folder and read them over and over when I have doubts about my own Point A to Point B story that landed me here in the first place. I have a good craft story of my own to share:

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!)

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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.

The candy-filled gourds, in happier times

I did some freelance work for Better Homes and Gardens again this year, along with my good pal Sarah, for Halloween segments on The Today Show. Specifically, last-minute Halloween decoration ideas. Sarah focused on pumpkin painting and assembling the body of our buddy, the scarecrow. I got crafty with candy-filled gourds, gourd votives, a personal pozy (gourd that holds flowers), a mummy pot, a leaf-decoupaged pumpkin, the scarecrow’s carved jack-o-lantern head and a gold, glitzy pumpkin with painted leaves.

It turns out that living in Tribeca worked out well in terms of rounding up all the supplies for these projects, except for the gourds, which I found at the invaluable Union Square Farmer’s Market. I ended up having to carry around a bunch of the produce one day because of meetings, so it’s funny to answer the proverbial, “Oh, you getting ready for Halloween?” question with a, “Well, kind of, but actually, all of this is for Better Homes and Gardens and The Today Show.” At the hardware store in my neighborhood, I bought a terra cotta pot for the mummy pot, which prompted the guy ringing me up to say, “Man, everyone is so into growing things these days.” Me: “I’m filling this baby with candy and decorating it like a mummy. It’s gonna be on TV. But yeah, a lot of people ARE into growing things these days.”

After many hours and a couple of glue gun burns later, we got to proudly deliver everything to 30 Rock, an adventure in itself. Picture a car service picking us up with all of the above, particularly a headless scarecrow we put in the backseat in between the bleary-eyed two of us. Only in New York…. Here are a lot more pictures and pictures from last year’s segments.

To top it all off, the Ewoks hired to be part of the Halloween segments (the costume theme was Star Wars) were a little…rambunctious, and possibly tipsy. They stole the show, so to speak, and that’s putting it lightly. Very lightly. Care to watch what an ewok downing my gourd full of candy looks like? Or inappropriately doing something to Al Roker’s leg? Check it out here, if you dare. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Thankfully, I am soon headed off to what is quite possibly my favorite event in New York City, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine’s Halloween Procession of Ghouls+silent film+organ music, and I’m fairly certain there will be no Ewoks. At least I hope not. Happy Halloween!

While I’m not vegan, I like a good self-imposed food challenge, especially when it comes to baked goods. How to replace eggs and butter, two prominent cookie ingredients, in particular? I was asked to come up with a “pumpkin spice cookie,” but I figured I’d go the extra mile in recipe-developing by finally buying my first package of egg replacer and going for a vegan version, with a little crochet pumpkin motivating me from the sidelines.

I’m pretty convinced I must be the most excited non-vegan when it comes to all vegan cooking and baking. (Oh, remember my best-chocolate-cake-ever that happened to be vegan? That’s up to 109 comments on Instructables and still continues to wow even the non-believers).

Iced, cakey, with pumpkin puree and a spicy kick–recipe after the jump!
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