Personalized Scarf in Rare Bird Finds!!

I was honored to have one of my personalized scarves featured in the Rare Bird Finds Blog! Rare Bird Finds gets over 2000 people viewing a day and 70,000 - 100,000 page hits a month.

You can check out more pictures of this type of scarf at my etsy shop Blazingneedles

New Shop!

I decided to do it - open a new Etsy shop! The new shop, ChickadeeChic, has all my knit bags and will have felted bags and crochet jewelry. It has been a chore moving all the bags from BlazingNeedles, but both shops now look better.

As Mae West said - Come up and see me sometime.

ChickadeeChic

New Crochet Cactus

I got back into the cacti mood and designed a few new ones. I also learned how to spell "amigurumi" correctly.

The cacti seems to be getting smaller. Now I have a teensy 1" clay pot that is on my work table looking for inspiration. I even have smaller ones that could be earings. Since I just got my ears pierced last year, I think I will try that. Imagine wearing cactus earings in real clay pots!

See more at my etsy shop : http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5477267&section_id=5253188

Greek Baby Name Blanket

I decided to try a Greek personalized blanket to add to my Hebrew and Vietnamese blankets. I found a great font that look terrific on the blanket. If you are wondering how this is done - read on.

I retired as a software engineer where I wrote programs for CAD - computer aided drafting. This background allows me to feel very comfortable with design software. The program I use to put the names in is called DAK. If you are familiar with fonts, you will know that you can download many fonts to your computer - you are not limited to the ones it came with. The Greek font I use came from the web.

Like all graphic programs (including Paint) you can create a text box and insert words. I do that with the Greek font. There is always tweaking to be done to get it to look good, but that is how it starts.

Maybe I will try Arabic next!

More Personalized Scarves

I had requests for several personalized scarves recently. I love getting these because people have such interesting ideas that I can work with.

One request was for a scarf in purple with all the names of a friend's cats. I added some cat graphics for variety. It turned out rather nice. Now I am hoping for some dog scarves!

Another was for a boyfriend. I LOVE the sentiment - "No Skinny Chicks". This one is super soft with a special gray tweedy yarn and a pattern.

If you have some great ideas, contact me. I would love to do a scarf for you.

www.YORKnits.com
www.blazingneedles.etsy.com

Empty Nest, Pendant Bags and Lip Balm

The last of the chicks went off to college and we are left with an empty nest! What to do with all that TIME? I got right back to the knitting machine.

In previous blogs, I told how those cell bags were made with no seams. Now I made them smaller for use as pendant bags and lip balm bags. You can see how small the pendat bags are. Use them for treasures - or the tooth fairy!

Check out the bags at http://www.blazingneedles.etsy.com/

Taking my time with personalized blankets

I guess we all try to do it - get the last mile out of a tank of gas before refilling, hoping there is enough milk for the cereal to save a trip to the store.

Now if you are a machine knitter, you know that the machine HAS to be kept clean. Gunk builds up on the rails and carriage from the oil used to keep the machine running. I usually clean mine every day ... but ... setting up for blankets takes a while and I wanted to squeeze the last blanket out before cleaning. Bad move. There right down the middle was an error.

Sigh. I lost my work and had to clean the machine and set up again anyway. I hope I remember this the next time I am tempted to extend my cleaning period. But I probably won't.

You can see my personalized blankets at http://www.blazingneedles.etsy.com