Pink Altoid Tin

Hope everyone had a nice turkey day. I spent mine with family and had a wonderful time with excellent food and company.

My latest decorated altoid tin is for my pink-loving friend. I turned this one into a scissors case following Vonna's tutorial more or less. My friend is not a stitcher, but she does a lot of crafts involving paper cutting so I think this will work for her. The design is a freebie by Claire, stitched over-one on blue Monaco. I changed a few colors to be more pinkish. I added the little charm on the side to cover a bad glue spot. The inside is a brighter, hotter pink than the photo shows.

I won't quite say I'm addicted to making these. But there was a sale on Altoids at the drugstore last week, so I did buy I few just in case.

Cable-stitched Neckwarmer

These neckwarmers are so quick to knit. I made this one in one evening of TV watching for a holiday gift. It's made with Wool-Ease chunky yarn, an 80% acrylic, 20% wool blend. Very soft feel on the sensitive neck area. The pattern is free on the Lion Brand site. You need to register to see it. Search for "Lion Brand chunky cable scarf" to find it. I just made a shorter version with two buttonholes just before the garter stitch border. I also made it slightly narrower, casting on a couple of fewer stitches that surround the cable. I really wanted to make a pink one, but A.C. Moore didn't have that color in stock and I didn't want to order just one skein online. But I like this berry color also.

Warm Winter Altoid Tin

I'm having fun with Altoid tin stitching now. I finished one I really like that I can't show yet since it's a gift for a regular reader. But I also made another I can show now. This one is a slight variation on Barbara Ana's "Warm Winter Welcome". I just changed the wording a bit and a few colors. It's stitched over-one on tea colored Monaco. I'm planning to make this into a winter survival kit by filling it with lip balm, a hand sanitizer packet, travel soap leaves, and anything I can find in a small enough size to fit that follows the theme. Still finding the gluing to be messy and hard to do. Sometimes the glue seeps through the ribbon no matter how careful I try to be. The colors are much richer in real life. Can't figure out how to get the camera to understand that!

monsterbubbles Day One

The monsterbubbles ornament in the JCS 2009 Ornament issue really caught my eye. It must be so hard for designers to come up with something original. Seems like it's all been done before. But this stylized partridge was just so inventive. And I love the little colored blocks that appear as a kind of trademark now. This called for fancy hand-dyed threads, but I used all DMC. For the partridge, I picked 3 colors of tans and for the pear 2 or 3 colors of green and just tried to duplicate the look in the magazine. I'm pretty satisfied with my substitutions. And I just used seed beads for the plume and the highlight on the pear. I loved the border stones in the magazine, but not enough to used that finishing. I settled for 4 little buttons in each corner and pretty rainbow colored ribbon for the hanger.

The fabric is a piece of Vikki Clayton's 35 count linen. She is offering 32 count now and I plan to try some of that.