a few random things

A few random things to post about today. In continuing with the idea of reusing household items, I posted a how-to about reusing old magnets as the Friday Blogger on The Sampler site. Check it out here and leave a comment to let me know what you think about the project!

Alison from The Sampler will be at Magpie in Davis Square next Saturday, February 7th giving out a free mini Sampler to the first 100 customers. Each mini Sampler contains a variety of valentines, candy, jewelry, pins, cds - all sorts of things you normally get in the Sampler! I'll be donating some of my love-themed handmade greeting cards for her to include in the mini Sampler, plus she'll be giving out free cupcakes too! If you're in the area, be sure to stop by to get your free mini Sampler and Magpie will be offering 25% off all jewelry and valentine cards that day.

The snail mail valentines are available for purchase on the Fred Flare website! Read their blog post about the project here. You can buy them here, and if you enter the discount code "love" they'll give you free shipping! They are selling them as blind surprise so you can't pick the exact valentine you want, but all the cards are handmade by FF customers and there are some really cute cards in the mix. You can view them on their Flickr account here, too.

My coworker Lynn's husband, Wenxiong Lin, has some of his work on exhibit at Bloc 11. We went there this morning so I tried to snap some photos of his photographs and watercolors on display.

We have a small knitting group at work that gets together on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I helped one of my coworkers, Jeannie, by making an umbilical cord hat from the Stitch 'n Bitch book and they turned out super cute!

We both used the Debbie Bliss baby cashmerino yarn and size 3 needles. I love the greenish blue color that she used. I started a feather and fan baby cardigan from 101 Designer One Skein Wonders book last night with the same raspberry colored yarn so hopefully it'll be a cute set in the end.

One of our coworkers, Jessica, does an AMAZING job at crocheting. Seriously ya'll. She made this Noah's Ark toy for her neighbor's son and brought it in to show us the finished product. It just blew us away!

She didn't work with any patterns, isn't that so cool?! The giraffe was my favorite but all of the animals had such intricate details and little characteristics that are simply amazing. She used the Vanna's Choice yarn and entered the project into the contest so I am crossing my fingers and toes that she wins!

Speaking of contests ... I received this in the mail today:

I entered a couple of cards into the holiday contest at Paper Source and apparently one of my designs won! I submitted three different designs so I'm not sure exactly which one was sent to their corporate office, but according to this letter they're going to photograph them and use some of the designs in next year's promotional materials. So I guess I'll have to wait until then to see which one actually won.

Alas, such a long post. Hope you all have a great weekend! :)