Growing up, we gave Christmas cookies as gifts to anyone not closely related. Starting at Thanksgiving, my mom and I would start making the longer-lasting cookies (or making sugar-cookie dough and freezing it for later rolling and baking). We’d go to church the Sunday before Christmas, loaded down with tins filled with a variety of cookies, wrapped in ribbons, tagged for everyone we knew (luckily, it was a small church). As I grew older and my younger brothers and cousins were born, we started holding annual Cookie Parties: days filled 4 little boys kept busy rolling, decorating, baking and sugar rushes for all. Most of cookies from these years were best given to parents who could appreciate the ’skill’ of the decorator.
Now that I live hours away from my family, I miss a house filled with cookie smells and countertops that are as piled with cookies as the sidewalks with snow. Last year Mom waited to have the Cookie Party until I was home to help, but this year the boys are older (7 & and they wanted to have their friends over, so they’re forging on without me.
I’m also feeling the tug to create my own memories, with my own little family. For the first time ever, Jay wanted to contribute to our Handmade gifts, so as we sat down for a ‘planning meeting’ last weekend. I was overjoyed that he thought cookies would be a fantastic gift for his family that we’re visiting next week! I immediately started jotting down all the cookies I wanted to make (chocolate chip, decorated sugar cookies, snowballs, brownies, 7-layer cookie bars…) and then it hit us: his family is diabetic. They can have a little sugar (they love my apple pie), but a whole tin of cookies? At least some of them need to be sugar-less. This is a test of our creativity, since, as Sister Diane writes, sugar does a lot more than just sweeten the cookies.
All of my Google-skillz are being tested as I search for sugar-free cookie recipes, but I’m not happy with the quality of the recipes I’m coming up with.
Any suggestions?

This week promises to be full of Christmas making. My to-do list is long but exciting and this week it’s my biggest inspiration:

Clapotis for Mom, out of Mati Hari Spinnery’s Seasilk yarn, dyed by me.

The gorgeous fibers I got in from (again) Mati Hari Spinnery. Seasilk and merino; I dyed it last week and will spin it up and knit into something for Mom this week, probably handwarmers to match the scarf, or maybe a hat.

Me and Hub are sewing Star Wars Cloaks for my little brothers (like this). It’s fun to have a project for both of us and it’s good sewing practice.

Speaking of sewing practice, I’m loving the book Sew U.

I’m dyeing to make a neckwarmer like Grumperina’s.

What’s inspiring you?

I am honored to be interviewed by the Dharma Design blog, as a Featured Artist! You can read the article here. I found the blog and shop through an Etsy forum and am so glad to have discovered her beautiful jewelry. I really love the photographs of her work and her jewelry is really unique.
Wendy features different artists all the time, which is something I love in all forms: getting to know what makes other artists tick. I always flip to the interviews in magazines first (Mary Englebreit’s Home Companion has great ones with pictures of their studios) and most of my favorite podcasts have an interview or essay section (CraftSanity – my favorite!, NPR’s Fresh Air, CRL with Vickie Howell). There are many many blogs that do interviews but my 2 favorite are Crafty Synergy and the
Featured Seller on Etsy.
I’ve pondered for a long time doing interviews with artists (in fact, I was a guest interviewer for Create a Connection), but it seems there are already so many…
Do you have any favorite interviews? Is there someone (or some type of artist) that you’d like to see/read interviewed that hasn’t been?

I find inspiration all around me on good days. On not-so-good days, I often wish I knew where to go for an inspiration fix. So, a new weekly feature: Weekly Inspirations. It’s my hope to post, on Mondays, those things that are inspiring me today. I’d love to know what inspires others, so please comment, or post your list to your own blog!
This week’s list is influenced by my recent receipt of a huge amount of wool for dyeing and spinning, my weekend in Gatlinburg with girlfriends and the upcoming holidays:

• Elf - the colors, the music, the mood, the illustrations and especially Elf’s outfit and those wondrous snowflakes!
• Corinne Bailey Rae – her songs are perfect for catching up on reading and for dyeing, even her website is beautiful
• Pies – Since watching Waitress, I’ve been seeing the world through her eyes, imagining a pie for everything
• Shari’s Friday walks.
• The new Knitty

It seems a bit…clichéd to say one is inspired by a sunrise or sunset but since moving to East Tennessee, I really find myself enthralled by the sky, at all times of the day
For example, one evening, while walking the dog, I turned the corner to see this:

Now, I don’t live in the country. In fact I live in a row of townhouses, sort of in the crossroads of the commercial part of town and the residential. One street over is the ‘bad’ part of town with alleged drug deals and other unpleasantnesses. But directly out my front door, in the early morning, I see this:
The colors, so unreal in their brightness, inspired this Organic Cotton yarn:

and as a compliment, this one:

I dyed them more than month ago and then put them aside…that orange is just so orange, I didn’t really consider the yarn a success. Yesterday, with some trepidation, I posted it in the Boutique and within 24 hours, Sally Rei gave my confidence the sweetest little boost by purchasing both of them!

Ok, I confess: my Grams is pretty darn cool. She loves anything I make her and we have similar tastes in books, so she’s a breeze to shop for. This year, I plan on giving her Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, by Barbara Kingsolver, because I know she’ll love it.

But my mother-in-law is another story. She’s not really into handmade; her house is immaculatley decorated, strait from the pages of a high-end catalog. My husband has neve known what to give her and in years past we’ve given cookbooks. And more cookbooks.

I bet I’m not the only one with a woman to shop for, so the first Give Handmade Guide is going to start with these women: classy, department store types; Grandmas, Mothers-in-laws, Moms, aunts…anyone who care about enough to give a thoughtful gift.

• How about framing a picture of yourself (seems a little self-involved but I bet this woman doesn’t have enough pictures of you past 6th grade)?
• Does she journal or do a daily devotional? Try the beautiful handmade journals from I Make Arrt!
• Everyone likes candles, I prefer these natural beeswax candles from Mama Beehive (my husband designed that website, so I might be a little partial!)
• Stationary is my go-to gift for anyone and everyone. The following sellars have particularly classy style

Spilling Beans has great monogrammed cards

Althena has beautiful photo cards

Ok, first of all, it’s hard for me to talk about *mojo* without using my Austin Powers voice (yeah, baby) but my loved ones don’t find that funny, so I’ll resist (oh, behave).

But in reality, I am feeling the mojo. I’ve been reading, devouring, savoring Brenda Ueland’s If You Want to Write a little bit each day, journaling my impressions. That bit about resting in a creative idle, well it really sunk in and started to work some magic in my creative life. After a weekend of emptying list of ’shoulds’ and ‘musts’ .. I woke up with a buzz Sunday morning. I had a burning desire to create, to make, to flow.
Luckily there’s a stash of yarn next to my bed, so I grabbed the first ball and needles I found and just started knitting. It doesn’t matter what I knit, or even that I knit…but what matters, what really spoke to me, was that I wanted to.
I had bemoaned that my interests and inspirations never make that jump into passion-in-action but through reading this book, I realized that it was because I wasn’t showing up for it. Brenda (we’re on a first name basis, now) encourages the writer (or artist or whatever) to show up everyday, ready to write, ready to create. I had been feeling inspired, but I wasn’t commiting to showing up whether inspiration struck or not. Just the commitment itself has become inspiration, spurring me on to action.
I’m not entirely sure I’m explaining this as clearly as I’d like, but I plan on writing about this more, with my journal by my side, because it feels important to get this right, to figure out this part of my creative life. To understand and maybe to capture it…

Finding yarns for BCB isn’t easy.
My commitment to using only recycled or organic materials really limits what I’m willing to buy. One of my favorite finds is what I call Bananiere (the French word for ‘Banana’). It is made from 100% Banana fibers, which is stripped from the leaves and barks of banana tress. It’s a very renewable and under-utilised material. Besides that, this yarn is actually made from the leftover fibers from the weaving industry, so it’s really recycled!

What made this yarn so irresistable is that my supplier gave me such great information. Below is what she shared with me:

Environmentally Friendly:

Bananiere is made from the remnants of the clothing industry. The fibers would have been thrown out if not for the ingenuity of the women who spin this yarn. They are using what they can to make a new, gorgeous product. This yarn is also completely biodegradable.

Fair Trade:

Banana fibers from India’s weaving mills are handspun by women’s cooperatives and cottage industries to produce this yarn. Many of these women are refugees or have been abandoned or widowed with families to support. Using their traditional skills they are able to create vibrant, textured yarn in a endless array of colorways. Each skein is handspun creating natural inconsistencies and a rather scrappy nature; to make any project, no matter how simple in design, instantly charming and unique. One thing that sets this yarn apart from most others is the connection to women on the other side of the globe, living in a Lots of time and care goes into each skein. The fibers are first sorted, then hand teased, and finally handspun on a charka or drop spindle. Once the yarn is spun it is turned in for payment. Another group of women prepare the skeins for sale. We only purchase yarn from cooperatives who provide good wages to the people who spin and skein the yarns, and we put a portion of our profits into helping purchase equipment or providing funds for educational programs.

How could I resist?

1. three + three, 2. yet another, 3. cat pincushion, 4. bird nest 2 003, 5. Zingy!, 6. Donut Strawberry Erdbeer Pincushion, 7. red ladybird, 8. Cupcake Pincushion (bottlecap), 9. bottlecap pincushion, 10. koi pincushion, 11. custom order for fgantner, 12. Festival de alfineteiros!

They are just so adorable and small and fantastically useful! After stumbling upon the Flickr group, I discovered some great vendors of handmade pincushions:

• Kup Kup makes the most fantastic scenes with them
• MoJo has Poo
• CrazyCakes has, well, cupcakes!

edited to add: All of those pincushions inspired me to try my hand at my own. I used Purl’s tutorial…but only as a rough guide. I cut the fabric a little too small, and my pincushion is minuscule.The dog added himself for scale, but keep in mind, he’s little!