Boutique Knits

I went into Close Knit the other day and spotted Boutique Knits. It's a wonderful book by Laura Irwin, a Portlander who is a manager at Seaplane.Close Knit had samples of many of the projects from this book on display. These gloves are so cute. I really want to make these.However, the gloves shown below are what really struck me. They are gorgeous.I had to show this hood since I've been working on my hooded scarf this past week. I love the color and the thinckness of the whole peice. It looks so warm.Isn't this hat beautiful? I've always been a huge fan of that braded look in knitting.

There are so many other items that I was blown away by. If you get the chance, do check out this book. The hand bags are amazing. They are mostly felted with some details knited. You can see photos of them on her flickr site here.

You can also read an interview with Laura from Oregon Live here.

More Handmade Gift Ideas

I have to admit to a weird habit that I have; I save all of my wine corks. I can't help it I just do it and I don't know why. I hate throwing things away and they just look so cool!

Lucky for me, back in April, Design* Sponge shared a really cool diy project that I just fell in love with; making trivets out of old corks. This might not seem like the sort of thing that you would actually give someone, but I say why not? It would go great with a tea set.

Handmade Holidays

This year my goal is to make at least one gift per person on my Christmas list. So far I'm doing pretty well. I want to share all of them with you, but I don't want to give away the surprise to those people on the receiving end.

One project, that I think I'm safe sharing, is a knitted scarf-hat that I've been coveting, myself, for quite sometime. You can find the pattern in Speed Knitting and also on the Craft blog here.

I'll show you my version when it's done. To be honest I already took one go at it but some how managed to knit the hat too shallow. Hopefully second times a charm... I am new at this.