So.  You know how sometimes you get a craft idea in your mind, and until you can fully realize this grand crafty plan, all else falls to the wayside?

This is me with play food today.  I mean I can’t stop thinking about it.  It all started when looking at old pictures of my sister and I and finding this one of us having a tea party:

My sister is on the left and I’m on the right.  I think that I’m about 7 years old in this pic, and that’d make my sister about 2.  That’s just about Olive’s age now.

And the wheels start turning…

We LOVED playing tea party and restaurant and pretending to cook.  Both of my daughters love to help mix and pour when I’m cooking for real, so wouldn’t they just LOVE to have their own pretend food and a tiny wooden kitchen to cook it up in?

There are SO MANY wonderful play food resources on the web.  I particularly love this felt food thread on Craftster…the food – maker seems to have started off small and soon amassed a most impressive fake food stash.  I can seriously see this happening to me.

By SesameSeedDesigns on Flickr

By lisajhoney on Flickr

An orange slice here, a felt breakfast there…until soon we are over our heads in felt groceries.

And, lest you think I’m *not* going to knit any food…just look at this adorable set from Cheezombie on Craftsy:

SO CUTE!  Check out my Craftsy blog post for even more links to even more play foods.

I’ll keep you posted as I find more patterns and even get to crafting some foods myself.  Do you have any favorite play food links?  Please leave them in the comments on this post, I can’t wait to see!!

As many of you long-time readers know (hi Mom and Dad!) I’ve recently joined the team at Craftsy.com. Those of you who are new to reading my blog might not have known that, and some of you might not even know what Craftsy is!

I first met the folks at Craftsy when the parent company, Sympoz, invited me to teach online knitting classes with them. I was actively experimenting with my own online knitting course website, and was absolutely thrilled to be “called up to the big leagues.” I filmed my first intro – to – knitting course back in March. Later in the spring, I filmed two more knitting courses, and then soon joined the company in Denver, CO as Manager of Marketing and Community.

It’s a fantastic job. I work with bright, creative people and am doing what I love every single day. We even have “knitting lunches” and go to craft nights together! I write for the Craftsy blog (you have to check out this post from one of Craftsy’s founders about our ongoing charity campaign) and am currently working to help grow Craftsy’s Designer Workshop Program. (Sign up for a chance to take my online One Skein Shrug workshop…it’s free for a limited time.) I also get to help with event planning, organizing charity work, and get to work closely with lots of fabulous indie designers. Have I already said that I love my job?

So back to What Craftsy Is…

Craftsy is a project-based online community. We offer online classes on a whole range of crafty topics from quilting and sewing to knitting and crochet. All of the courses are shot in HD video by a professional production crew (SO much better than what you find on YouTube or even in Ning-based classes!) When you take a Craftsy online class, you have access to it for life AND a 100% money-back guarantee. So you can watch it over and over, asking questions directly to the instructor (who is always a well-known designer / professional in the topic area) as many times as you want to for as long as you want to…your class NEVER expires! If you find out that you should have taken a more beginner-level class than what you signed up for, they’ll just switch you into a different one. Same if your class is too easy!

We just started a new thing called Designer Workshops, in which crafters can work through projects along with the designer and a whole bunch of other crafters via a detailed photo tutorial. Participants can ask questions directly to the designer & chat with fellow crafters along the way (like a pattern tutorial only with a really active forum and direct access to the designer.) Both the courses and the workshops get GREAT reviews, so if you’ve ever wanted to learn to sew, quilt, crochet, knit socks…or learn to make any of many-many more crafty projects…give it a shot! It’s really fun!

Craftsy’s “Projects” section is a great look-book of projects across lots of different crafts! It’s a really nice place to post pics of all of your projects, all on one site. If you quilt AND sew AND knit, you can post pics of all of your projects and get lots of love from the Craftsy community. If you sell either patterns or finished projects, just join Craftsy and you can list them for sale for free (Craftsy takes NO cut of any pattern sale!!)

BTW: We’ve seen amazing things happen for designers who’ve been featured on our blog or in our newsletter…list something today and let me know when you see a spike in sales!

Anyway, there’s so much going on at Craftsy every day that it’s really not hard to believe that we’re the fastest-growing crafting community on the web, with over 350,000 members already.

I’m so happy to be part of Craftsy, and I really think you’d get a lot out of it, too.

Here are some corrected stitch counts for the Shapely Boyfriend Cardigan. These don’t change ANY of the knitting that you do, just correct the stitch counts in the yoke. I sent these along to Amy, and the pattern should be updated shortly, but in case you’re eager to get going:

Text SHOULD read:
Repeat the last 2 rows 15 more times (33 total rows worked). 180 180, 180, 188, 188, 192, 192 sts.

Begin front increases:
At the same time that you’re working the raglan increases, you’ll also begin increasing at the front neckline. Stop where indicated for your size and continue below at “Separate Sleeves from Body”.

Row 34 (RS): k3, LLI, (k to 2 sts before marker, RLI, k2, sm, k2, LLI) 4 times, k to last 3 sts, RLI, k to end.

Row 36: (k to 2 sts before marker, RLI, k2, sm, k2, LLI) 4 times, k to end.

Size XS only: 198 sts. Go on to “Separate sleeves from the body”.

Row 38: (k to 2 sts before marker, RLI, k2, sm, k2, LLI) 4 times, k to end.

Size S only: 206 sts. Go on to “Separate sleeves from the body”.

Row 40: k3, LLI, (k to 2 sts before marker, RLI, k2, sm, k2, LLI) 4 times, k to last 3 sts, RLI, k to end.

Rows 42: (k to 2 sts before marker, RLI, k2, sm, k2, LLI) 4 times, k to end.

Size M only: 224 sts. Go on to “Separate sleeves from the body”.

Row 44: (k to 2 sts before marker, RLI, k2, sm, k2, LLI) 4 times, k to end.

Size L only: 240 sts. Go on to “Separate sleeves from the body”.

Row 46: k3, LLI, (k to 2 sts before marker, RLI, k2, sm, k2, LLI) 4 times, k to last 3 sts, RLI, k to end.

Row 48: (k to 2 sts before marker, RLI, k2, sm, k2, LLI) 4 times, k to end. –, -, -, 258, 262, 262 sts.

Hi All!  I have a new pattern in Knitty magazine! It’s part of the Knitty Fall Surprise:

O-Wool Classic [100% certified organic Merino wool; 198 yd/181 m per 100 g skein]; color: 4112 Rust; 5 [5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8] skeins.

Find out all the details at Knitty.com!