Friday Sneak Peek - Knitted Pillbugs!

Hi everybody - Here's a peek at the newest addition to the Tatting My Doilies strange knitted toy menagerie - A Pillbug!

What do you call these things? (Aside from the only existing terrestrial crustacian or armadillidiidae) Apparently it's one of those regional things - I grew up calling them pillbugs. My friends from Upstate NY call them potato bugs, and Faye from Australia calls them roly polies. I'll probably call the pattern doodlebug, just 'cause that's the cutest name I've heard for them yet.

The pattern should be up by next weekend, so stay tuned!

Eisenia the Earthworm is Ready for her Close Up

Brand new in the pattern shop, meet Eisenia the Earthworm! This easy pattern includes three patterns in one - a mama worm, worm babies, and a worm egg. Hope you like it!

Knitted Vermicompost! Yippee!

Live in a teeny apartment but wish you could compost? You can! All you need is some compost worms (red wrigglers aka eisenia foetida), some newspaper, and a plastic storage tub with some holes punched in it. There's a whole book about it here and the wikipedia article is pretty good too. You can order worms online or find a source locally - in NYC I know you can get them from the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and the ecology center stalls at the Brooklyn and Union Square farmers' markets.

And, um, if you want to knit your own squiggly friends, the pattern's almost done! Mama worm, worm egg, baby worms all in one! Food scraps and casings not included.

Crochet Coral Reef

So here's my utterly belated post from the opening of the Crochet Coral Reef at World Financial Center. If you don't already know about the reefer madness that's descended on our city, go here or here or here. (And Londoners, you're next!)

I totally love this stuff. At the opening, I was privileged to meet my craft hero Helle of Gooseflesh fame, and also got a tour from my new friend Gay of the crochet guild, who pointed out her contributions. That little bit right there is mine... That's part of what I love about this project - it's so additive and polyglot. A number of the folks I've talked about it with have dissed the presentation - you can't tell from my fuzzy picture (it's behind glass) but much of it sits on separate bits of black fabric. It's nowhere near as faboo as the highly controlled photos on the IFF site's gallery, but I kind of love that about it, too - I can almost hear the Crochet Ladies who put it together saying "wow! this is neat!" a zillion times over.