GoTo our latest Treasury!

That is, the latest treasury by GoTo...Great Panes. Beautiful. And, I see in the posts that

Juliesparklybits

has had a sale from the treasury. Yay!

Click here to visit the treasury before it disappears on November 15!

Sizzlin' Hot Treasury

MadameTeasley has continued our November challenge by helping to fuel team momentum this week with a Red Hot treasury of team items. These are great for the holiday season! Visit the treasury. Send your friends. Ask them to join our team!Treasury expires on Friday, November 13.

Ice Blue treasury

Thanks to WhoaItsMe for beginning this week with a wonderfully wintry treasury of icy blues and snowflake patterns.Treasury ends on November 11, so hurry on over and pick your favorite items for that special somebody!

A Trio of Treasuries

Amazing! We have had three treasuries in the past week, and when I did a search for "hoardersuniteteam," I came up with 7 pages of result to choose from. I have my poster sketch at the ready!

Here is the latest by Mamta:This treasury expires tomorrow, so take a gander and share the news!

Team Treasury Kick-off

Nancy has gotten the ball rolling on our November participation challenge by snagging a Treasury! It will expire on October 30, so visit and promote in the forums, and hopefully your items will be soon on their way to happy new owners.Click the photo or (here) to be taken to the treasury listing. If you would prefer to copy and paste, here is the location: http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=90518&show_panel=true.

Happy Hoarding!

November 2009 Challenge

In case you missed it on the Yahoo Groups page, or have not visited our forum thread on Etsy, I am posting the challenge for this month here on the blog as well:

I think we should do a participation challenge for November. With the holidays
around the corner and all of us busy as bees in summer, I am not going to make
it a "create" challenge. So, here it is:

1. Team Treasuries: if you know how to get treasuries, let's try to have at
least one team treasury for each week of November. I haven't even tried for a
treasury in some time, but I will start working on that one.

2. Sharing the treasuries and other promo info on the Etsy forum: let's have a
team thread for the month that lists thoughts, projects, treasuries, blog posts,
etc...so we can all stay inspired and we can help each other with stash
suggestions. Here is the link to the thread:
http://www.etsy.com/forums_thread.php?thread_id=6319779

3. Communication on the Yahoo Groups forum:
I would love it if we had more discussion here in the forums. What do you like?
What are your gripes about selling, creating, whatever? What do you do to stay
organized? You can even just put up good news and links to features about your
work.

I hope you will all check in on the forums and let me know you are in for
the participation points for the month of November! (figurative points, of course!)

Maggpie's Hat

photo, copyright © maggpie

I have received this very Smart Hat from Maggpie on Ravelry. It is called Smart Hat, and the pattern is available for free download on Ravelry. It is like Christmas in October around here, but I get to have the dual excitement of receiving the gifts and opening the mail packages AND playing St. Nick and delivering them to their future owners.

I LOVE mail, I LOVE yarn, I LOVE textures, and I LOVE giving. Now, I have it all wrapped up on one project. I am loving this arrangement. I will not be the direct mail recipient for all the projects, so will not always get to have such fun and excitement from the post box.

Thank you, Maggpie, for this wonderful hat! It is soft, bulky, and a wonderfully manly color. I am certain that the Veteran receiving this one will appreciate all your hard work.

How are your projects working up?
Have you tweeted the Project today?

October 2009 Challenge

(My completed hat for the October 2009 challenge)

I have mentioned the project from Sharing Our Gifts that is currently doing a hat and slippers drive for Veterans in Southern Oregon. This project will be our team project for October, and the deadline to have these received by me is October 25, so please allow appropriate mail time. I will be presenting these to my contact at the facility on November 2, just in time for Veteran's Day.

Further details and updates for the project can be found on the Sharing Our Gifts blog, but here are the basics:

Our 50 states tour begins in the beautiful state of Oregon. We will be making
hats and slippers for Veterans at the Southern Oregon - White City Rehabilitation Center. It is a 600 bed facility, and I am told that they always appreciate hats and slippers. These can be knitted, crocheted, or sewn. The key is that they must be handmade. If you don't make items yourself, but you want to contribute, you could purchase handmade items at Etsy, Artfire, 1000 Markets, or some other handmade venue. They should be size and color appropriate for adult males (slipper size 10-12), and machine washable.

The address to send your items for this project is:

Sinclair
P.O. Box 1046
Jacksonville, Oregon 97530

Please leave me a comment here or on our Yahoo Groups page to let me know you are participating in the challenge, and please help spread the word even outside the boundaries of the Hoarders Unite group. As always, our group goal is to use up stash yarn and supplies before purchasing more. Visit our Yahoo Groups page to upload your project photos and to share pattern ideas.

Happy Creating!

Handmade Hope- September Challenge

In my Internet travels, I ran across a succession of blogs that led me to one called Craft Hope. I am very happy to have found this site because it puts important things together. It combines the importance of beauty, appreciation, caring, sharing, helping, and hope all into a tidy bloggy box of love.

In doing so, it puts helping people together with those who are in need of help. Here is what the founder, Jade, says in her About section:

"Craft Hope is a faith-based, love inspired project designed to share handmade crafts with those less fortunate. It is our hope to combine our love for crafting and desire to help others into a project to make a difference around the world."

This is similar to my goal with my sister blog, Sharing Our Gifts. I have not been as faithful in developing that blog as I would like to be, but finding Craft Hope has helped kick my thoughts about it back into gear. Meanwhile, I think I am going to join in on the Craft Hope current project to make a sock monkey for the Little Heroes Preschool Burn Camp in Sacramento, California. The camp is by the Firefighters Burn Institute in Sacramento, and runs from September 25-27, 2009. I encourage you to join me in this September Hoarders Unite Challenge and do the same.

So, the link above to "sock monkey" will take you to a place to learn how to make a sock monkey, and to purchase a sock monkey kit if you (like me) have never made one. Even more exciting, a message on the Craft Hope Nest Bulletin Board from Tamara at sockmonkey.net states that she will give a discount on sock monkey kits to any person purchasing specifically to make a monkey for this project. If you don't need a kit or a discount, sockmonkey.net is just a fun place to visit for free pattern ideas and monkey inspiration.

The deadline to get your sock monkey in for this project is September 18. If you're interested, visit Craft Hope and get started!

Loving Hands Embroidery Project

I took Amilia's Loving Hands piece and photocopied it to transfer onto some yellow linen (left over from my porch swing project). In keeping with this week's Change The World Wednesday challenge and my Hoarders Unite July Challenge, none of the tools or materials were purchased new for this project. They are from my hoard (supplies stash).I do not have any transfer paper or other nifty transfer device, so I decided to use the ol' stipple method. I pinned the sheet to my linen cloth, then pierced holes in her design. I then used an orange permanent marker (because I am/was planning to use orange thread for the embroidery) to make a mark in each of the holes.Voilà! Now I have the design on my fabric. I'm sure I could have used fabric marker or other quilting marking pencil, but Sharpie is my friend, so I accepted its help.Next, I placed my embroidery hoop and began threading.I have chosen to use a mix of orange and sage, and it is yet to be determined how this will turn out on Amilia's small hand. The dots are somewhat visible under the sage thread, even though I am using 3 strands of floss, but my vision is to give it a twisted cord effect with orange on top. I am using an outline (stem) stitch in sage, then I am planning to whip it (whipstitch over outline stitch) in orange. If you want to see a how-to, I found an explanation at CraftTown.com.

Are you in suspense yet?
Stay tuned for the Final Product...

July Challenge

This next month, let's try something related to the height of summer. Food focused, maybe. All about environmental friendliness, eating local, and sharing the bounty. Picnic blankets/quilts, cloth napkins, cloth coasters, napkin rings, wine glass jewelry, fruit bowls, picnic totes, place card holders, bird feeders, bird houses, you get the idea...

Who is in?