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.”