There is of course… the Crafter’s Basket in Sligo… yay if you have a car. Good for you. I don’t.

Crafter’s Basket Ireland
The Crafters Basket, Cliffoney, County Sligo, Ireland.
craftersbasket.com
map)

Now we have The Gingham Duck yarn shop, right in Sligo town!
High St – Sligo, Co. Sligo, Ireland
071 9144422
http://www.theginghamduck.ie/ (map)

and… even a beads store!

Twinkles bead shop… well it’s listed as “Boutique Coffee and Team Room”. It’s right above the Sligo Auctioneers which is going to open as an actual antiques shop. See a map, there’s no site yet. It’s in a funny part of town, but in walking distance. It’s worth the trip to browse antiques and site and have very god pastries and coffee while looking at beads

I’m adding these to a map for creative spots in Sligo and Leitrim for my guests coming this summer.

View Creative Sligo & Leitrim in a larger map

a drawing of tora in her favourite napping spot

best sketchbook ever

Clearly I need a scanner. Pic taken with photobooth comes out so grey.

I started a new sketchbook. Sorry Moleskin… I don’t like your tight gutters. The ideal sketchbook for me is landscape and spiral bound with not too many pages.

If the books are too long I end up leaving them half finished.

I bought a few extra Maruman sketchbooks before I left Japan. Of course I gave some away. I’m on the last one now. I like the look of the Artist Sketchbook, but the double spiral of Art Spiral series wins… even if the label looks dumb. I usually collage and cover that anyway.

I’m going to order some from Jerry’s Artarama. Seems to be the best place to get them online.

I got some in exchange for yarn I picked especially for her. I got two sets to give to my secret santa swap partner, and others for gifts and for me too.

I fully recommend buying or exchanging with her for these. I searched high and low for special DPN holders, and was so pleased to find handmade ones. I saw some plastic funny ones on Etsy, but I didn’t think it would be my swap partner’s style.

They are very simple to use. And Vigdis is probably one of the nicest people on the Internet. I didn’t know she was very ill during the time I first contacted her, and when I found out, I was amazed she was able to arrange all this. I felt bad, but I was also very pleased as I was able to give the present to my swap partner in time. So lucky! I’m so glad to hear she’s all better now. You can clearly tell how happy and healthy she is!

So I gave her the nicest sock yarn I could find, she posted a photo of it here: http://vigdismariedesign.com/blog/?p=453 This is the company that makes it: http://www.schaeferyarn.com/yrn_anne.html I bought the yarn in Dublin at This is Knit.

Can’t wait to see what she makes with them. I’m really curious how the handpainted yarn looks when made up into socks. I was told the one ball was enough for a pair of socks. I hope that works out!

SHE KNIT ME A COWL! In gorgeous green alpaca silk, yum. I should take a photo of how you wear it. I sort of folds across my neck, and keeps my neck and chest warm where my jacket is open.

Dearbhala included other lovely gifts- as you can see, but the best was this tremendous yarn Manos del Uraguay 100% Wool- out of which I made this hat. I had a challenge to make it work with the 100g skein- crochet gobbles up yarn. I undid and redid this so many times. At one point, I kept the yarn intact, and started working from the other end to make the hat cuff(?) so I could find out how much was left. There wasn’t one centimeter of yarn left when I was done.

I bought these at http://beautifulwork.etsy.com/

She sells fabrics, stickers, stamps, and other fun & totally unnecessary stuff!

Very good prices. The seller was very fair. When my shipping came out higher than it cost, she even reimbursed me, what a nice surprise

She also sent cute handmade paper dolls as an extra gift.

Great little shop!

This is so cool. Maybe everyone already knows this stuff.

I’ve been searching through unwanted yarns from other knitters and crocheters on Ravelry and getting lovely yarns for great prices! I’ve only just ordered them yet, so while I perch on the mailbox… here’s some info for you.

First of all, Ravelry is an amazing online high-fibre community. The site itself, from a web development perspective is so intuitive and full-featured while still being incredibly user-friendly. Do you know how hard that is? Powerfully feature-rich AND intuitive? It’s hard.

To register on Ravelry beta, you only have to queue a short time, and they’re sorting out the going-public thing soon.

Option 1) Search through the advertising boards

It’s simple, people list the items they want to sell, list the conditions of the sale, and you respond, voila! Good stuff goes fast! So you must keep on top of it, and it’s hit or miss.

Acronyms to know: (members use these on the titles of their posts)

ISO: In Search of
FS: For sale
FSOT: For sale or trade

There are a few certain boards for trading. When you get there, scroll waaaaay down to the bottom, and use the search function to locate a post. Fill in the field that looks like this:

I listed my two favorite Ravelry yarn trading boards below:

• Book De-stash and ISO Library http://www.ravelry.com/groups/book-destash–iso-library
• De-stash International http://www.ravelry.com/groups/destash-international
• NB: The De-stash page as links to many other boards.

Option 2) Forage with the stash search tool!

I only found out about this the other day- you can actually search through yarns available via stash search! This is just about the best thing ever. As with all functionality on Ravelry, it’s really powerful (search by colour, add keywords for fibre, company name, etc)

Get a cup of tea, close the door, put your phone on silent, have a seat and dive into THE RAVELRY STASH SEARCH!!

After you click on this link, I don’t think you’ll be back here for a while, so… bye bye!

Meanwhile, you can pine after her roving with me in the picture. Oooo… ahhh…. *sob*

I’ve been spinning the lovely soft, plain white blue-faced Leicester I bought second-hand from Diane, Chicwithstix. It is 100 grams, and that is wayyy to much for the drop spindle I have, it was spinning very very slowly. I don’t know if it’s really spun enough now. I decided to stop about 3/4s through. Next time, I will only plan on getting 50g on to the spindle. I put it on the loo-roll, and the loo roll buckeled under the pressure! I shoulda used a kaleidoscope or something!

i think i’ll end up hoarding this stuff if i’m not careful…

hmm… i know! i’ll just get a critical mass of it big enough so that i won’t mind using some.

yes yes, that is the solution. get more… yes.

japanese paper dolls

Originally uploaded by feather.

these are vintage japanese paper dolls. i worry about ephemera, they are in great condition, but you can tell they are yellowing at the back.

such crazy colors, i love their ‘outfits’.

if you’d like more vintage japanese eye-candy, i found a flickr group for it! vintage japan!