Boston Times and Stuff

Hi Knitters,
First I'd like to share with you something straight from my fridge...
and my kitchen table...
directly to the pages of....
Parents magazine, September 2008 issue!

I found this in my pile of mail yesterday. The wonderful Amanda Kingloff, the lifestyle editor at Parents magazine, is so kind to remember to send me issues that have my stuff in the pages. Otherwise I would probably forget and it is nice to see the results in the end. In every issue of Parents they have a quick one page craft for kids called Make It! Many months ago I sent Amanda a few of these flower magnets I had made using bottle caps as the base of the flower. They loved them and with a few modifications made for more accessible materials here is how it turned out:
This is such a quick, cute little craft project that is good for any age group young to old. In the project that made the pages I used felt and pom-poms from the craft store. They look great but I have to tell you that the original samples I made were a little different (seen in the top three pictures) and you, as fiber people, might enjoy the materials I used. I had some wool felt ovals and some felted balls in my stash that I put to use. The flowers made in the felt were gorgeous and if you have any of these items around this is a great use. A fun and easy project for kids and adults is always good.
Well, we sure did a ton of this last week. We started out the week in Boston. I love this city, so historical and interesting. We walked all over, up and down, side to side. We hit just about every Boston spot you could think of in our short stop over.
My kids took most of the photos from our trip and it is fun to see what they see through the camera. It is always creative and funny at times. We really enjoyed Newbury Street, of course. One of the spots my girls loved was Lush. This store is a franchise but we don't have one in Madison yet. They have all of this handmade soap in all different forms and smells. We tried everything in the store and we even had a hand treatment. The staff was so much fun and there was even a young woman working who is from Chicago and her family was in Madison at that time. She liked that we were from Madison, it was cute.
This beautiful young woman was really fun. She had that water pouring into buckets and bowls and we sampled to our hearts content. I asked if I could take a picture of her hair for my blog. I think she thought I was a bit nutty but what's new? She had taken roving and braided it into her hair and then left long ends to wind up in that spectacular roving bun. If I were twenty I would do that. Anyway, stop in to the Lush shop if you get a chance.

We also went to Newbury Yarns where the woman working in the tiny upstairs shop was so helpful and friendly. She made our visit incredibly pleasant. I bought a few fun items here that I'll share at some point including some needles that look like candy on the ends (my daughter picked those out).
We ended up at Sugar Heaven for some treats. It turned out to be an expensive candy stop much to my husband's chagrin. That's the whole crew taking a sugar break.
It was beautiful in Boston, what a great walking city. The eating was fun, too. You can't miss.

Change of subject, you know the silk ribbon I used for this cover project? A friendly reader sent me the link to this ribbon. I get so many emails about where to get this exact ribbon and now I know. Thank you, Allison.

Okay, more later. Oh, and Robbie aka washmom responded yesterday to the giveaway so she is the official winner for sure. Congrats again.

I am already gathering my next giveaway. It may be smaller but it will be just as good. I have no idea when I will do the next one, it will be when the feeling strikes. Those are pretty fun.

Have a great Tuesday, Knitters.
best, susie