Crafts

A few months ago my friend Michal came to a party with the most eye-catching, impressive dessert in the history of not baking. She arrived with two half-litre mason jars with candy skewers sticking out all around. It was a feast of colour and confection! So yesterday, in advance of going to dinner at another...
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I discovered Shwin & Shwin's quick tutorial for an upcycled t-shirt scarf a while back on Pinterest, and I finally tested it out on an old t-shirt this morning. The verdict: ACE. One old t-shirt, a pair of scissors and twenty minutes and I was done. It's soft and comfy, and as an added bonus...
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Imagine, if you would, how loudly I squealed when my stitch-group friend Marie gave me this knitted Dalek last week. DUDE. How awesome is this? And she made it a rattle. I can't wait till Owen properly interacts with toys. You, too, can knit a Dalek if you're so inclined. Marie told me she used the...
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Publishing-industry thinker Sean Cranbury linked to this article in the Globe and Mail: The rise of the e-book lending library (and the death of e-book pirating). The voice of the article, along with some of the people quoted within it, struck me as... naïve. To say the least. But enough about that. As an author, here's...
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Owen's 30th day is this coming week, and there's a chance the paperwork will be a bit delayed. No cause for panic, but we're going to continue to lay low. While we do that, and I master the art of blogging one-handed and praise the Kobo app on my iPhone that provides effortless one-handed reading,...
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2010 was the year I ventured far from my yarn-crafting comfort zone, which is not to imply I was uncomfortable doing it. Inspired by my cousin's jewelry making, I learned how to make earrings. Armed with a bag of implements I bought off Craigslist and knowledge gained from a workshop at the Summit of Awesome,...
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I'm on holiday with a friend this week, volunteering at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary and otherwise soaking in the stunning scenery of southwestern Utah (and a little bit of Las Vegas). Best Friends is a massive no-kill facility; we've met dogs rescued from hoarding situations, puppy mills and some surrendered by families who...
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Last Thursday I spent the day doing very ugly arts and crafts with all sorts of interesting people as part of the Exhibition at the CreativeMix conference here in Vancouver. It was the first time in many, many years that I had to prepare a visual display for something, and here's the story of...
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For a while, I had a line in my professional bio that I dream of quilting. I've always had a fair amount of anxiety about sewing. I couldn't sew in a straight line; my machine, basic as it is, was a mystery to me; I never really grokked how it all works. Then an old...
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This week I was invited to talk about last-minute Halloween costume ideas on the BC CBC Radio show North by Northwest. Sheryl, Anna and I had a blast bouncing ideas around; it'll air on Saturday morning and should be in the show's podcast after that. To get my brain in gear before we recorded, I...
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