Poetry, poetry, poetry! Chapbooks! So many chapbooks! And lit journals...so many journals. It was such a pleasure to go to AWP in Chicago and soak all that up. I came home with many books, including James Haug's Why I Like Chapbooks (Factory Hollow Press). It's really lovely. Why does Haug love chapbooks? Here are a few excerpts:

They're distilled books.

They're books that aren't books. They prefer not to be books.

They can travel in your clothes.

They're the one percent of what you remember about a dream.

The train on the way there was mostly on time and the train on the way home was on time, and tucked in between those trains there were so many books, so many ideas. Also some very good food and some special friends, and a cozy stay at the Burnham.

Flappy Owls, and lots of other stuff I've been making

I don't seem to have posted here for a while, but I've definitely been busy.

I have just finished testing my Flappy Owl pattern, that appeared in Inside Crochet magazine last year. I can now sell it myself, so I made two more owls to test it, and because I wanted to see what Hedwig would look like in a pullover! It's a fun pattern to make, and I would love to try out all sorts of different colour combinations. You can buy the pattern in my Etsy shop.

 

Over the winter I've been working on all sorts of amigurumi, for friends, presents, and even for myself. I'm a fan of the old tv show, Blake's 7, and so I made a friend a little Blake and Avon. They were finished late just before conventions so I didn't get good photos, but here's one he took:

I also made myself one of the creatures that appears in one of the episode, a hairy, horned critter called Og, to take to the convention.

I then decided to make a present for one of my nephews. As he likes Romans I thought I'd make him an amigurumi one, and because I'm a Doctor Who fan I based it on Rory. I had a lot of fun making the helmet.

Then, as a present to myself, I used the same basic pattern I'd been using for Rory, Blake and Avon and made a little Frodo, with a removable cloak. I'll probably develop this pattern so it could be used to make all sorts of other characters.

I've also been busy making various fun little toys for our school's Christmas bazaar, so I'll start writing up the patterns for those and posting them here. And I've been working on my Totoro patterns, improving them and coming up with a version of the grey totoro as well as smaller versions of the blue and white ones. I'll be posting the completed patterns for those very soon.