Crafting as of late...

There's only been six days into this new year and I've still manage to get my crafting in daily. Yeay!! I've started another Knitted Gnome Baby, one of several for some friends of our families, I plan on gifting them at Christmas time. I don't believe they follow my blog, so I'm not too afraid to mentioning it. I guess only time will tell if I get them all done AND on time (I've got 353 days to go). I'm also STILL working on a knitted beaded bag that I volunteered to test knit in a Ravelry group I joined. I've run into problem after problem with it, mainly because I keep dropping stitches on the double pointed needles. I'm also a slow knitter and add in the string of beads and my speed has slowed WAY down. I'm farther along than what the pic shows, I just haven't taken a recent photo of it.Other than my constant dropping stitches, it's fun to work on! And I think I beaded the beads to create a spiral pattern among the colors. Yippee!

I've joined Yarni Gras Year of Enchantment which is a year long swap of enchanting Christmas ornaments. This months swap theme is the acorn or the pinecone. I wanted to do something really unique and creative for my swap partner, Natalie (who lives in Australia...SO COOL! I've wanted to go there since the fifth grade when my best friend went for a month and we did a science project on it, which was really just an "informational" project, there was no science involved, you know, the kind where you get a big ol' display board and put up a title, information and trinkety stuff to display along with it, maybe even a flyer for people to take)...anyways, back to unique and creative...I thought about it for a good week, and I always think at night when I go to bed and I'm drifting off to sleep (why do the best ideas come right at that moment in between wake and asleep??) So I had an AHA! idea that I thought would be SO CUTE and I've already got a few prototypes going when Yarni Gras posted her tutorials post here, here and here. One of the posts gave me the idea to look up on Etsy my idea and what do you know...someone had already thought of it, BUT...it's not quite the same...MY design is different...and honestly, I think I like my design better. Well, that's all I can say about that super secret crafty bit. The suspense...what could it be?? Soon you all will see!