Woooop, woooop! That’s the sound of the super fun craft blog alarm. Good gravy I love the internet and all its exciting sites. It makes me wonder how creative people connected with each other back in the technological dark ages? There must have been many a lonely teenager laboring over sewing machine or knitting needles in the 80’s. But no longer! Now we have this wonderful community creating tool. And Crafty Daisies blog is just one more place for us all to gather. This cozy little blog is home to a bunch of clever projects that range all over the map of craftdom. Check out the cute-as-a-button stuffed elephant made from a sock below. They also have handbag tutorials, how to make your own journals, plus the host crafty swaps and have easy to follow crochet tutorials for the uninitiated. And, might I add, their photography is pretty darn stellar. Give them the old once over, would ya?

The title of this blog is many layered. First of all, it is a classic saying of one Dr. Hank McCoy, a.k.a. Beast from X-Men (which is the best superhero comic book series in the universe). Also, it is a sly nod at today’s wicked cool website ohmystars.net. Apparently I have been living under a rock, because this craft tutorial site has been around since 1999 and I am only just learning about it now. On the plus side, because I found it now, I can celebrate like its 1999 and that is something I love doing. Anywho, Katie Marcus is our UK connection to a bevvy of attractive craft tutorials. She specializes in T-Shirt reconstruction (I am over the moon about her t-shirt-cum-halter-dress), but also crazy awesome knitting patterns that result in such coolness as a Marvin the Paranoid Android (my favorite Hitchhiker’s character) stuffed animal (pictured below). Not to mention tons of recipes, and miscellaneous craft tutorials. I am blown away by her creativity and talent. My only criticism is that the website doesn’t have scroll bars where it needs them. Some of the content is off screen, but there is no way to get to it. Fortunately, the print option takes care of this little hinderance. Any way, don’t take my word for it, go investigate yourselves!

  Okay kids, I’ve got a steak with my name on it ready to sizzle away, so lets make this meeting snappy. Today I bring you a website that’s just pure clean fun, especially to any of the crafters out there who are sewing mavens. Check out threadbared.com for some excellent craft satire. Mary and Kimberly, the women who like to lay our threads bare, are the sassy, smarmy brains behind a website dedicated to making fun of all those ridiculous models, fashions, and drawings that go hand and hand with all sewing and knitting patterns. My favorite so far is their parody on a macramé pattern (shown, along with their pithy remarks below). Craft jokes and a Dark Crystal reference? Mondo awesome nerd points all ways around!

Macramé Safety Tip 1: Please avoid any High Priestess-style headdresses that resemble something from The Dark Crystal, possibly making you look like the Dying Emperor of the Skeksis.

Howdy pard’ners. I just realize that my last three blog titles all rhyme. How lame. Oh well, there’s no time to feel embarrassed over spilt milk. Onward and upward, as my grandpappy always used to say. Now, I called you all together to talk to you about Indie Fixx. This nifty little blog is as the name implies, a quick fix of indie goodness. It sniffs out all those radical and clever indie vendors and serves them up to you on a silver plate. You want jewelry? Done. You want hand bags? Done. Pins, tee-shirts, hair ties, and note cards? Done, done, done and done. Like Modish, a favorite blog of ours, Indie Fixx does all the hard work and passes the rewards along to you. Much like another blog I know…ahem.

I stumbled across this yummy little resource called Crafty Planet and I couldn’t wait to share it with my peeps. It is a quirky little craft store in NE Minneapolis. It’s adorable, and the best part about it is that they sell their lucious fabrics online. There’s nothing like an off-the-wall pattern that you just HAVE to have to get your thinker thinking. I wandered into their shop and immediately I wanted to make a skirt, a pillow, and a handbag from the cool stuff I was seeing. In fact, I won’t bog you down with boring adjectives describing how fun their stuff is, I’ll let these pictures speak for themselves. The first is an interior shot of the store, the rest are fabric patterns. My favorite is “smitten kitten.”

I love the world wide web. It provides me with such delectable treats as neitherhipnorfunky.com which is a delightful blog by a peachy keen anonymous blogger named “Not hip” who loves to knit. Although “Not hip” does not want to be lumped in with the other trendy modern knitters who the advertising world are beginning to bombard with craft books claiming to be “hip” and “funky,” I’m afraid that she is legitimately quite hip and funky. But she seems cooler than both of those buzz words. So I dub her blog hunky. Or fip. She has a great voice and takes some mighty fine photos of her mighty fine knitting projects. I especially chuckled over her recent entry addressing the person who robbed her car. I would be bent out of shape if someone didn’t want to steal my Mazzy Star cassette tapes too. The Y Kan’t Tori Read reference was classic. But, if you still aren’t sold, then check this out. She has a tutorial online for a sweet method of stenciling with a common object most of us have kicking around the house: freezer paper. And, she’s doubly awesome enough that she includes a pdf of her stencil for us all to copy. SWEET! Or, maybe just a little funky?

I love magazines, especially online magazines (go figure, right?). And I love indie crafts. And I love d.i.y. And I love thrift shopping. And, because it includes all of these things, I now am completely in love with N.E.E.T. magazine, the online style baby of one super cool Brit, Stephanie J. If most fashion magazines cluttering up the news racks are tall, ridiculously thin women with $200 hair, Marc Jacobs bags and Jimmy Choo shoes, then N.E.E.T. is the second-hand Converse wearing, hand-made hand bag toting, curvy babe riding by on her Vespa, flipping those other women the bird. Chock full of hip articles and punch-you-in-the-face vibrant photo shoots, you totally get a lot of bang (a.k.a. a ton) for your buck (a.k.a. $0). I especially loved the d.i.y. bangle in this month’s issue. Plus its a great spring board to finding out about more indie business that you will luuuuuuv.

Ugh. Sorry guys, this one has to be super quick. I am fargin beat. But my long day is my own problem. I’d like to instead address a problem we both might share and that is expensive camping equipment. Oh sure, camping is cheaper than doing it up hotel style, but if you are a Pack Rat at heart then I am sure that at one point or another you’ve gone to camp and you’ve caught sight of the huge price tag hanging off some of these tents and back packs and thought: there has to be a better (i.e. more affordable) way. Well then check out the make your own gear section of litebackpacker.com. Oh sure, if you’re inexperienced you probably don’t want to hike out into the wilderness and then try to construct your own tarptent by moonlight, but reading up on this stuff can seriously help you cut down costs and/or the amount of sh*t you have to carry on your back. Just use common sense and be careful. Take a gander. I especially like the cat-food-can-cum-stove (for more ideas on how to reuse pet food cans check out our “Cantastic”article).

The dude (and I use this as a non-gendered term) over at steampunkworshop.com has got it goin’ on. The techie doodads and googaws he assembles make my little heart flutter. Primarily a one man show by a mysterious and bearded man name Jake, Steam Punk is THE site for all of us who use to take apart blenders and clock radios as kids, and then try to reassemble them. Dedicated to finding and recycling discarded objects, Jake’s mechanical sensibilities are perfectly matched with his design aesthetic. Plus, I like that the title of the site calls to mind both Punk Rock and a Japanese Cartoon called Steam Boy (nerd points for me!). Check out his site for crazy inspiration and mind bending directions. Like the ones for the Steampunk Flat-panel Mod below. The one on the left is the before, the one on the right is the after. You can’t even f-in believe it, can you?

Hola mis amigos. Hope everyone States side had a happy 4th, with much grilling and fireworking. And seeing as how this is the beginning of July, otherwise known as outdoor arts n’ craft fair season, I thought you all might like a little events calendar action. Those of you who have been reading my lil’ blog for a while may remember me talking about indiecraftshows.com. Well, here’s another site with a lot of major listings, artfaircalendar.com. While it doesn’t traffic in the hip and funky crafts, the way the Indie Craft Shows site does, the bonus is that there are a lot of other, different-yet-equally-awesome, craft shows listed here (like the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts, pictured below). Plus, since there’s not a lot of overlap in the listings between the two sites, if you visit both you should be able to put together an action packed summer of crafty fun.

Changing gears slightly, I would like to say a big warm thank you to our web designer/IT guy Paul. I love this little site and it would be nowhere if it weren’t for him. Paul single handedly built Pack Rat’s HQ from the ground up and graciously has subjected himself to my many whims. You don’t hear from him quite as often as you hear from me (all though he does write a mean music review. Check it out in our articles section), but his behind the scenes orchestration is what gives Pack Rat life. If you like the work he does and you are looking for someone to help you with your own website, or if you would like to just send him an email letting him know he’s doing a good job, drop him a line.