The New Yarnigans Blog

Faced with making an extremely large amount of apple butter for Regina’s autumn wedding and not being able to find a recipe, I decided to make my own.  It had to be classic, but with a little extra “autumn” in the mix.  After a few test batches, this was what we decided on.

Two lovely mice

Tweaking my mouse pattern.  Bigger ears = cuter mouse?

A customer requested an organic elephant, and I ended up writing down the pattern when I made her. 

Bunting banners are so whimsically adorable.  I’ve been seeing them on the front page of etsy and they’ve been catching my eye for the past couple of months.  I definitely think they are going to be the next big thing.  When the string of white lights that we had up in the kids’ room burnt out and had to be replaced, the first thing that came to mind was a string of buntings (is that how you would say it? I have no idea) to brighten up the space.  

Making the bunting was simple and easy.  I made a triangle pattern piece out of some computer paper, and was extra careful to make it symmetrical.  Check out the diagram below:

I cut the triangle out of all types of scrap fabric I had laying around, including some jeans I was about to throw out.  I cut an extra-long piece of white grosgrain ribbon, pulled out my sewing machine, and put a tiny white seam at the top of each triangle to secure it to the ribbon.  When it was done I put and iron to the whole thing and tacked it up to the ceiling.  

I sketched this logo with a sharpie and etsy seller AHueofDuckEggBlue worked with me to create an amazing custom stamp of polymer and olive wood.  I really love the way it turned out, and it’s going to be used on all my packaging and tags from now on.

Jude wanted to make me a rainbow birthday cake this year, and how could I say no to that?  I saw something here on the craft magazine blog that made me think it would work, but I didn’t feel like making the cake from scratch so I changed it up a bit.  I used two boxes of classic vanilla cake mix.  Each layer was about 2 cups of batter, baked in a 9” round pan and colored with plain old gel coloring.  The layers are uneven, and the colors didn’t turn out that bright, but it was still delicious and Jude loved it.

I spent almost all of my summer of 2010 working for a publisher to make simplified versions of some Yarnigans patterns for a book that would teach knitting to kids.  That book is now available for pre-order here at Barnes and Noble. 

Also, today is my birthday.  Best birthday ever.

So I guess the “behind the scenes” photo of my mermaids was featured in Tumblr’s craft tag.  Thanks crafty people! Welcome, new followers!

Finished!  Kailani the Mermaid.