Hecho Aca

I went to Uruguay's largest craft exposition in Montevideo: Hecho Aca y La Mesa Criolla. The entry fee was 70 pesos to get into LATU, near the Portones Shopping Center, with three covered pavilions filled with artisan crafts.


Every handicraft you could imagine was featured--and everything was made by hand in Uruguay. There were goods crafted of leather, glass, ceramics, silver, wool, precious stones, wood, and so much more. I came home with a something special--a ring. But not just any ring, it is a ring carved out of cow horn. It's awesome. A little piece of Uruguay to carry around with me.

Your sweater is so...furry

Well, it is an interesting concept, but um, disturbing, at the same time. The newest craze seems to be sweaters--made out of your pet.

If you love Fluffy, then you'd probably love to WEAR Fluffy too, right?


Ihabitots presents: Make a Sweater From Your Pet's Fur.

Danelle German, a professional cat groomer based in Simpsonville, S.C, was troubled by the large amounts of fur she would dispose of after grooming clients’ Persians and Angoras. Her solution? Spin the fur into yarn. Then you can knit the yarn into warm, cozy creations (cute little sweaters, mittens, hats, you name it). Can’t you just imagine grandma knitting your little one a sweater made from Mr. Buttons?

I personally think Emily C's cat (with fat little cheeks) would look quite nice as pair of mittons. And Emily W. could knit them. hahaha.

Ooo, I made it

Not into stardom, or onto American Idol or anything like that (which coincidentally aired it's first episode last night), but rather, I made a camera case.

I wanted to make a matching laptop, cord, and camera case, but my mom cleared out some of the old clothes in my closest and gave them to Good Will. Therefore, I had no ugly old flannel shirts to cut up and turn into pretty new things. Awww, poor me (and people who received the flannel).


Alas, I still made the case from some scrap material around the house. The sad part is that I sewed it all wrong first and to redo the whole thing. Yes. I am that bad at sewing. But in the end, I suppose the final product isn't that bad.

Corn Festival

Every last Saturday in August, Shippensburg hosts the annual Corn Festival. I'm not exactly sure why we refer to it as the "corn" festival as there are next to no usages of corn at the festival. But to be fair this year, they did paint ears of corn on the downtown shop windows, serve corn on the cob at a few vendors, and pay a guy to walk up down the streets in a scarecrow costume.

The Corn Festival is basically a giant craft show with food and music. Up and down King street hundreds of vendors come to sell their handmade products. I noticed a lot of jewelry stands this year and less of the antique-ish potpourri that usually dots the streets.


I got myself a pretty blue abalone shell bracelet. I couldn't resist. It was calling to me from one of the tables. It said buy me, buy me. I almost got one in pink too. But then I took a deep breath and put it back down.

Fancy Smancy Laptop Case...and Handmade Too

I sewed something! I made a cute bag for my laptop and another one for the charger and cords. The first was actually just practice to see if I was up the task, and surprisingly, it turned out well.

Unfortunately, I still can't use my sewing machine that I got for Christmas two years ago (since I am a sewing moron, and every time I touch the thing, the threads from the bobbin get ridiculously twisted while the material gets jammed around the needle until it starts making angry noises), so this project was all done by hand.

I used scrap material and an old blue flannel shirt for the lining that ought to have been cut up years ago for violating every rule of fashion. I took pleasure in cutting the flannel shirt up and sticking pins in it. Bah ha ha.


But anyway, after I was finished sewing the first bag, the trim around the top turned out being uneven at the seams. That's ok, I had a light bulb moment. I found ribbon and tied little bows right over the bad alignment. Problem averted. Then I sewed buttons on side for decoration. Voila! A free laptop cover and cord-carrying bag. It only took me about 6 hours to make...

Coloring Eggs

This week I've been in Pittsburgh (which I will post about later). I made it home just in time to be swept over to my grandparent's house for our annual Easter Egg Coloring Get-together. I ended up taking so long on each egg that I only got to decorate three eggies. I had Peeps on my brain, so what do you know? that's what appeared on one of my eggs. One was a miserable failure, so we will not discuss that one. And finally, the last one celebrated the 'feet' of Easter--namely cow, chick, and bunny feet.

What can I say? I had to amuse myself.

But, I am not going to lie, I am pleased with how they turned out this year (except for that one we were not going to talk about).


You can judge for yourself.