weekend links

Hello friends!

I hope you’ve had a good week. I feel like our house has turned into Craft Central now that Christmas gifts have been opened. S has been busy arm knitting, and I dug an unfinished project out of my basket in the hopes of completing it before we dive headfirst into all these cute little other kits and things to distract us! I guess cold weather is good for making things, at least. (It’s certainly not good for snow here in Madrid, although I can see that quite a few of you in other parts of the world have plenty!)

Pinterest Picks

S thinks we need a pet. She wants a cat, and here are a couple of cute cat crafts that would be fun to make in the meantime. (We’re not getting a cat right now.) The kitty faces would be fun for kids of all ages to make with finger prints or watercolors, wouldn’t they?

Or maybe S wants a dog. She can’t decide.

I’m getting closer to knitting myself an oversized cardigan, I think. That persimmon orange is stunning, isn’t it?

I’m really feeling the soft, muted florals right now, and these two are particularly stunning. You could make the dress in the left photo using the Building Block Dress book, easy-peasy.

I like how this quilt and rug have a similar color palette and style.

Weekend Reading (and Watching)

• What do you think of Pantone’s 2017 color of the year? Li Edelkoort has been predicting green as an important color for quite a while now, but it is indeed true that it’s not very wearable for most people.
• The first time I walked by Rolf’s German Restaurant, which is near our apartment in New York, I stopped dead in my tracks. Just the view from the window is astonishing, let alone the visual overload when you walk in the door. It’s worth a visit!
• An interesting history of gold and how it went from tasteful to tacky.
• It’s too bad that Tokyo’s expressive taxi signs are disappearing.
• If one of your goals this year is to save more money, this article about how to save money painlessly is really smart. I was surprised to discover that we already do a lot of these things (probably a result of all those years of surviving on a grad student’s budget), but now I have a few new tips to incorporate, too. Like sewing through some of the fabric stash I’ve accumulated since we arrived in Spain….
• Every winter when the cold winds blow across Lake Michigan, freezing water transforms the coast’s lighthouses into otherworldly forms.
• And speaking of ice and snow, this video about two artists who work with snowglobes is quite fascinating.
• Every new year brings more postal rate increases. They’re painful for everyone, but especially for small businesses who compete against free shipping. This article about the real cost of free shipping really hit home.
• Is all this talk about winter making you want to stay inside and get cozy? Then Hygge is the word for you in 2017. That’s definitely what we’ve been doing this week: in addition to knitting and sewing we’ve been cooking, watching movies, drinking tea, and getting ready to head back to school on Monday.

We’ll be back next week with a Building Block jumper I sewed for S, a favorite pattern feature, and some looks back at last year. Have a great weekend, everyone!