free pattern: Punchneedle Poinsettia
I doubt you’ll remember this from previous years, but I’ve developed my own little holiday crafting tradition of creating a poinsettia every year. I’m not quite sure why I do it, but a tradition that means I only have to make one item per year and forces me to try something new each time sounds pretty good to me. I suppose at some point I’ll run out of ideas for different crafts to make a poinsettia from, but I’m nowhere near that point yet! In 2006 (well before the recent kanzashi popularity!), I made a kanzashi poinsettia:

Christmas Trees crochet pattern
It’s funny the way one idea can lead you to another. I was on my third failed attempt to come up with a design when I realised that the stitch pattern that didn’t work for its original use would be perfect to make something else: a lovely textured Christmas tree! And, you know, it’s actually not that long until Christmas – there are less than 7 weeks to go – so now would be the perfect time to begin your holiday crafting, if you haven’t already… My Christmas Trees pattern is really versatile – the pattern contains tw

review: Facebook Advertising
For those of us with small businesses (crafty or not), advertising and marketing is always a difficult area. Very few of us can afford an advertising budget, so we have to try to make wise decisions that lead to maximum promotion with minimum expenditure. Having said that, it could be that we’re missing out on effective advertising methods, so I thought I’d try an experiment with Facebook advertising on behalf of the entire crafting community, to see if it might be something we should be doing. This is what an advertisement on Facebook looks like ̵

review: Soak Wash
Last April, we visited the Wellington Fibres Open House, to see the baby Angora goats and maybe pick up some mohair yarn for a future project. There were about 30 tiny little newborn kids who were absolutely adorable, especially when they started leaping about! We also saw the mill where the mohair fibre is processed and spun into yarn, which was very interesting, but I forgot to take any photos – the sweet little kids were just too distracting! It was still winter in Ontario, so the goats were being kept inside, hence my poor quality low-light photos, but you should get the idea:

fuzzy to brushed crochet tutorial
I know that some people, especially beginner crocheters, are a little scared of my fuzzy yarn patterns. And now that eyelash and novelty yarns aren’t as easy to find as they once were, I wanted to come up with an alternative to give my old patterns (pictured below) a new lease of life… And here it is: you can make them with regular yarn and brush them to make a fluffy a