Runaway October

The theme for the Back Tack 4 Swap that is. I know my part­ner has received her good­ies, so here’s an almost full reveal of what I sent.

Gold {some­thing that sparkles}:

A sim­ple neck­lace made with hemp and fair trade glass beads. I bought enough to make one for myself too. I also included an altered jour­nal which had a lit­tle bit of shim­mer to it.

Frank­in­cense {some­thing that smells or tastes good}:

These are home­made soaps and an assort­ment of itty bitty choco­late bars. The soap was fun, easy and such a blast to make, even Declan helped. We will be mak­ing more soon.

Myrrh {a lit­tle some­thing for you}:

Another beau­ti­ful Emme­line apron, com­plete wth pock­ets (with extra good­ies inside) and dec­o­ra­tive stitch­ing. This is the 5^th one I’ve made, still not one for myself yet. I need to learn a bet­ter way to pho­to­graph an apron. Not pic­tured are 4 lit­tle Otedamas that are just adorably addic­tive, both to make and play with.

That’s all for now. We’re off to the Tamale Fes­ti­val today, and maybe a lit­tle craft fair that I heard some buzz about. I’ll let you know.

Finally.

I have a ten­dency to get in trou­ble with swaps. The fear of my part­ner not lik­ing what I make liter­rally freezes me up until the last minute. Then it’s a mad rush.

This time it was dif­fer­ent. I knew what I wanted to do, but my pay­check was late, so I com­pletely missed the dead­line. But it’s been wrapped, boxed and shipped as of last night! Go me! Only what… 8 days late?

Back Tack 4 was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the ope­ness of the cen­tral theme: Gold Frank­in­cense and Myrrh

This time there are no colour, size, or mate­r­ial restric­tions, all we ask is that you take the theme and run with it, and make 3 items accord­ing to the indi­vid­ual out­lines below.

The first item is some­thing that sparkles [the Gold part]- cards, dec­o­ra­tions, calenders.….see where your imag­i­na­tion will take you. [It doesn’t need to be gold]

The sec­ond item is some­thing which has some sort of sen­sory aspect to it [the Frank­in­cense part] — either smell or taste. Baked goods? Short­bread? Choco­late, soaps, the mind can run free here, but be mind­ful of cus­toms reg­u­la­tions in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Sealed food stuffs are gen­er­ally ok, but check with your part­ner before send­ing anything.

The third item is a small gift for your part­ner for Christ­mas [the Myrrh part] Per­haps a small item for the tree, or mantle­piece. Quiz your part­ner to see what their them­ing is for this Christ­mas, and tie in your gift! or make them some­thing they might like to use through the year — a cal­en­der, a purse, a scarf.

Here’s a sneak peak. When my part­ner gets her pack­age I’ll post more photos.

 In the  mean­time, check out the Back Tack Flickr pool. Lots of gor­geous good­ies! And my part­ner, Kristin’s, beau­ti­ful blog: Kleas.

I’ve been feel­ing quilty lately. Baby show­ers seem to be the best inspi­raion for me. I gives me a dead­line and an excuse to give a gift that will last instead of some­thing that will be used for a month or two and then donated.

I have few baby gifts that we still use now that my youngest is a year. One of them is a small sam­pler quilt that my mom picked up at at a truck stop some­where out­side of Payson, Az.

Here’s the ver­sion I cre­ated. I think it turned out really well. I had a cou­ple dif­fer­ent quils in mind when I des­gined this. Purl­Bee lists a great tuto­r­ial. Crazy Mom Quilts had a beau­ti­ful ver­sion. Don’t for­get this sassy one too.

I used 6or 7 dif­fer­ent greens that I picked up at JoAnns. The brown is a super soft linen blend. The back­ing is Alex­ader Henry’s Giraffe Cross­ing.

When I asked the mama-to-be what her nurs­ery theme was she said giraffes and out­doorsy col­ors. I hope it fits in okay. If not I know quite a few boys here that would be happy to keep it!

(That’s my 6’2″ brother for size reference!)