I got a cool custom order request. A guy in NJ contacted me and asked if I could make this R2D2 hat for him. I was a little nervous b/c I had never done something so intricate, but I read over the instructions and found I understood them all well enough. I did notice the woman who came up w/the pattern said she didn’t want to make and sell them anymore, but also that the pattern was for personal use as far as us knitters were concerned. I contacted her anyhow just to see how she’d feel about me doing it just this once, and she was nice enough to say “go for it”, with the stipulation that I don’t make a habit of making and selling more than one of them, and I happily agreed. And so, here is the result of my efforts:

It took a few hours here and there to make, and I really enjoyed the process. Plus I learned something new (one reason why I don’t mind going back to patterns now and then is because they usually end up forcing me to learn new techniques), the duplicate stitch method. So that rocks.

What do you think of my handiwork?

My cats are pretty darn lazy. Rarely do I see them moving around and about the apartment. And while they’re probably content with this way of life, sometimes I miss the hyper, kitten/younger selves. When I find myself missing that time in their kitty lives, sure I could revisit old photos of them, but why not make them appear more active in their older ages? And that’s kind of what I’ve accomplished with these photos of them…

This is relatively easy to do if you have the right camera. It’s definitely do-able with cameras where you can manually zoom in/out with a lens while shooting, but give it a shot with a camera that has a zoom button to see if it would work with that type of camera too.

Here’s what you do:

1. Zoom all the way out, and focus on your subject.
2. Here’s the tricky part… You need to simultaneously zoom in and move your body (in as steady/straight a line as possible) forward towards your subject, and snap the photo while these two actions are going on.*
3. You may need to try this a few times. The result should be that the center of your photo will be the most in focus, and all points outwards from that will have the neat effect of lines flowing away from the center.

* You can also try zooming in, focusing on the subject, and snapping the photo while simultaneously zooming out and moving away from the subject.

Post links in the comments if you try this out and are successful with it! I’d love to see your results!

In 3 days the EcoEtsy street team will be auctioning off a basket of our goodies to the general public (within the U.S.). The auction is set to start on October 20th, 2008 and end on October 30th, 2008. All items in the basket are handmade and eco-friendly, and the total worth of the basket is about $300. The proceeds from the highest bid will all be donated to the Nature Conservancy.

This basket could be kept entirely by the highest bidder, or he/she could divvy up the contents and give them as gifts. It could be a great way to get quite a bit of holiday shopping taken care of in one fell swoop! So please sweep on over to the website and take advantage of this auction, and do something great for the environment, on multiple levels, by bidding on this wonderful basket!

~Kate

I’m now offering the option for readers to subscribe to my blog so that you receive email updates whenever I post something new!

Subscribe to Knit Storm by Email

This is going to make life way easier for the both of us…

~Kate

In less than 2 weeks I will be selling at the Handmade Faire in Medford, NJ. This is a juried show that will feature high quality handmade arts and crafts. If you’re gonna be around Medford, NJ on October 25, 2008, you need to come out and get started on your holiday shopping!

Speaking of handmade arts and crafts shows, I’m working on compiling a google map source of shows featuring handmade arts and crafts in NJ. You should check it out and if you know of other shows in NJ that aren’t on my list, please let me know so I can add them! Should be fun to put together and I’m hoping that others get some use out of it!

Lastly, I wanted to share just SOME of the new items for sale by ShutterKate:

Chunky Knit Wrist Warmers in Pumpkin-Orange

Neck Sausage Links!

Crocheted Flower Ring

Take a shot at winning a set of my dish cloths over at Green {Goody}! It’s way easy to enter.

Good luck if you try!!!

~Kate

Yes, the time when I blog shamelessly about things I want so that my loved ones don’t have to guess whether or not I’d really like the ceramic cat they were eying up in Marshals for me. Yes, that’s right, it’s birthday time. And I’m just going to get right to posting the things my heart desires, in no particular order…

I also have an up-to-date wishlist on Amazon.com. Just ignore the high-priced “pipe-dream” items. They are more of a reminder to me of what I will buy for myself when I win the lottery.

My big H’s b-day is this upcoming Monday. But considering it’s a Monday, and he works late because he teaches that night, I decided to go ahead and bake him a “cake” a bit early. What follows is the story of how I created for him, a cake out of cupcakes, in his “likeness”.

OK, first thing’s first. What I used:

- 1 box of cake mix, which can be used to make cupcakes.
- Cake icing!
- Tube(s) of decoration icing (use whatever colors you like)
- Cupcake pan(s)
- Cupcake paper cups

Now, my idea was to bake him cupcakes instead of a cake because, personally, I prefer them, and he doesn’t seem to care one way or another. It occurred to me though, that I could make a cake out of small cupcakes, which would then not need to be cut. You know exactly how many pieces you’re getting out of this “cake”, and heck, it’d be something a bit unorthodox.

I got started baking the cupcakes even before I knew how I was going to decorate them. Halfway through baking, with the help of some graphing paper, I sketched the idea for how I could lay out and decorate the cupcakes. No one has to follow this exactly, especially because I doubt everyone is going to be baking a cupcake-cake into the likeness of a glasses-wearing, red bearded guy like I did.

So, here’s what I did, basically:

1. First things first, the cupcakes need to be baked. Keep in mind they should all be as close in height as possible when you’re filling the individual cake cups up with batter.

2. When you take them out of the oven, let them cool slightly so that the heat is bearable on your hands when you pick them up, and then carefully remove them from their paper cups, watching that you keep them in one piece.

3. Let the cupcakes cool fully.

4. Lay the cupcakes out on a plate they’ll all fit on, in the shape you’d like the cake to be. Don’t mind the gaps too much, and push them fairly close together to keep them nice and packed.

5. Apply the icing as you would to a full cake. If you want, leave off the icing on the sides to allow for easy pickup/distribution of the cupcakes when serving them later. Here I used a light butter cream icing and it managed to lay over the larger gaps in between cupcakes nicely, and did not fall through or need to be filled in.

6. Now, use the sketch of what you had in mind for the cupcakes as a guide or simply begin decorating them off the cuff if you’re artsy like that. I personally used my sketch to keep track of what should be where approximately.

7. Store the finished cupcake-cake somewhere safe until serving time, and enjoy your cupcake-cake!

When John (big H) came home, I surprised him with his cupcake-cake, and he liked what he saw. So woohoo! We sampled the cake, which turned out to be way easy to pick up individual cupcakes from, and it was DELICIOUS!

Here’s a comparison shot of John and his cake. Note how cupcake-cake John questions human John’s behavior…

I recently participated in a little group advertisement in the latest issue of Weird New Jersey magazine. We got an entire page worth of an ad at a discount b/c someone on my street team knows someone at Weird New Jersey. On top of that, Etsy gave our team some grant money to go towards the ad, in the hopes of it boosting our sales on their site. The combination of the price being lowered, and going in on the ad with 25 other shops made it pleasingly affordable.

So the issue was released on something like Sept 28th. I had to wait a while for it though, and somewhat patiently because I had no car and no place in walking/biking distance that I could go to to purchase it upon release, sadly. Finally, on Tuesday, John delivered! Woo hoo!

Above you can see the fruit of the EtsyNJ street team’s labor. I also found out, upon leafing through the magazine, that some friends of mine are in the same issue as my ad! Of course they’re all the way on page #81, while my ad is on page #5, but I won’t hold that against them.

So yeah, if you like me, or like weird things, specifically in NJ, you should go out and get yourself a copy of the latest issue of Weird New Jersey, especially because there’s info about how you can get special deals and offers from EtsyNJ sellers!

You get it by now…I knit a LOT. So much so that I sell what I make, and have multiple “shops” set up to sell different types of things. A couple of months ago my one shop (EcoKate) got accepted to a neat-o site known as Trunkt. I blogged about it.

I’m here to blog again, as my other shop (ShutterKate) just got accepted to Trunkt today! This is especially cool because this second shop of mine had been rejected in the past. I guess I have since spruced it up enough that the folks at Trunkt found it presentable and OK’d my stuff this time around.

In other news: I recently got back from a honeymoon in London that was very cool. I miss London now. Lots. But I’ll save the details of the trip and all for another blog or two in the near future. However, for now, if you’d like you can check out my London photo set on Flickr: