As a wee crafter, I spent many a holiday working on little holiday needlepoint and cross-stitch patterns that my mom hoarded during after-christmas sales. The first step (and the one that drove me INSANE when I was young) is to baste the edges of the canvas to prevent fraying. I dreaded doing it, but it was not nearly as tedious as I remember (can I possibly be more patient than when I was 8?). The next step was always to take of the thread from the project and attach to a yarn organizer. Miner were always butterfly shaped. Did anyone ever have one that WASN”T a butterfly? Anyway, i realized that this would be the step to stop adult-me in my tracks. I didn’t have a yarn organizer. With nothing to do all day but craft, and an awesome idea from Carmen, i decided to make my own.

i whipped out a sheet of Brown shrinky-dink plastic and threw together a retro-fabulous sketch of an owl. I planned out where to place holes that I could punch with my circular craft punches.

I made it the size of the entire sheet of plastic, and then cut it out (note pen for scale)

Then I popped it into the toaster oven at 300 until it shrank up (i used chopsticks to pull apart any areas that got stuck during shrinking).

I am really pleased with the holes of varying size – it is very satisfying to put the fat wads of yarn in the bigger holes, and the thread in the tiny holes. I added a rare earth magnet (with E6000 glue) to the center to hold on to needles, and then I got busy!

So busy, in fact, that I completed the whole thing!

The project was a new in package 1972 Caron Crewel 5 x 7 (#6306). The yarn was all wool (in some of the older projects the included yarn is acrylic) and the instructions were thorough. Highly recommended!

The outer ring is flexible rubber with a faux bois pattern. They are much easier to deal with than the flat sided wooden or plastic ones, and they wouldn’t look too bad hung up on the wall. I thought I was super-special and a few ebay and google searches revealed that these were pretty widely available in the UK. I smugly thought about how much cooler that made them, but then lamented the fact that I couldn’t get more.

I found them at Michael’s this weekend. When they go on sale… Watch out!! I’m stocking up.

I made a long sleeve red dress to use as the base of the costume. I used felt and embroidery to create her organs.

I knit a long I-cord for intestines, and created a pocket behind her stomach for gut storage. thanks for the yarn, b!)

Her tiny heart attaches to her chest with a rare earth magnet, and can also be attached to a magnet on her hand.

Her brainy hat is made from pieces of curled up pink t-shirt material sewn to a skull cap that I made.

The overall effect is super-creepy. Let’s face it, Blythe dolls are inherently a little creepy, so for Halloween, you just have to go for it.

Check out my Flickr set to see photos from the SF Blythe Halloween meet.

A vintage pillow kit! In avocado green! It is going to look so good on my couch- It already does! Check out her shop… I am already eyeing the recycled cashmere yarn…

And let’s just say that on garage sale day in el cerrito $20 will get you everything you want and more.

Click through to see the insanity in detail

i often imagine that special items are always in really high concentrations in the areas that they come from. For example, in my mind, everyone in portland knits with Socks that rock all the time. And they don’t even know that it is special because it is just what they get locally. Coming from Ohio and having only eaten unripe avocados my whole life I discovered that, indeed, everyone in california puts avocados on everything all the time and that they are delicious (but they also put fruit in their salad. weird.) One might imagine that here in the SF bay area everyone runs around with Dansko’s and Timbuk2 bags and that garage sales are busting with them… Well they do and they are. I turned my nose up a to a pair of danskos and turned around to find that abby had secured herself a $5 timbuk2 bag. I made it back to the same sale closer to the end of the day to secure the pictured one for $3. i cannot believe that i didn’t buy it right away!

other highlights include

• 10 cents: the pre-plate tectonics book on earthquakes in California – a geologists delight (wait til you see this one, ingrid!)
• $3: the 70’s Mr. Juiceman Jr. Fresh juice every morning baby – my neighbor’s nightmare.
• $1: Carmen’s set of french onion soup bowls – on the list and found at the first sale we stopped at.
• the giant painting. Bought mostly to teach my fellow garage-salers a lesson about never turning down a $5 bargain. I am kinda already sick of looking at it.
• 50 cents: brent’s box of 70’s recipe cards.
  . I made a flickr group just for them. There are already a few amazing contributions.