My amazing and cute friends Cat & Tom from the popular craft site Cut Out + Keep have just published their first book! It’s called Cut Out + Keep: Around the USA in 50 Craft Projects, and it follows them on their actual road trip around the U.S. with a craft project or recipe inspired by the history and culture of each state! And yes, I did get the honor of hanging out with them while they cruised through California!

It is out now in the UK, and will be out here in the U.S. on March 17! I just pre-ordered my copy!

(The snaps below are from Amazon…!)

One of the things I’ve always loved about Cut Out + Keep (besides how nice Cat & Tom are!) is that the projects always feel very accessible, encompassing a huge range of crafts — from sewing to knitting to crocheting to jewelry-making to cooking to hair dye-ing to pretty much anything under the DIY umbrella — and also fun ideas that all crafters of all skill-levels can handle. Just for kicks, here are some old photos of me, Cat, and Tom from 2011 in London when they visited my book signing/crochet party!

I know you guys wanted me to let you know when you would be able to nominate some of your favorite crochet apparel designs for the first quarter 2015 Crochet Awards. Click here to send in your top picks!

If you wanted to check out who the judges nominated, go here!!  There’s a full list with links and larger photos on the Crochet Awards website.

Voting on everything will begin on Feb 23rd!

It’s the 15th of the month, so it’s time to launch a new blog sponsor giveaway!

Thanks so much to my generous sponsors for offering us these wonderful goodies!  ONE lucky winner will receive:

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Let’s squeeze out one more heart-shaped pattern before Valentine’s Day!

I got a couple requests for a Ricardio the Heart Guy from Adventure time. I had to look him up, and he looks like this:

Kinda freaky, right?! Anyway, I figured this was also a good opportunity to make heart-shaped throw pillows, and then you can put a Ricardio face on it, or a happy/cute face, or make a set of conversation hearts with your own messages. Lots of opportunities here!! I will put arms and legs on mine, but you can leave out the limbs. The world is yours!

There are a few ways to create a throw-pillow-type project. You can either work in the round, or you can crochet two flat pieces and sew them together. We are going to work this one in the round, kinda like a jumbo version of my heart lollipop necklace. I normally like to use single crochet for items that are stuffed, but I wanted to bang this out really quick, so I used double crochet! Let’s go crazy!!!

(p.s. I’m sorry that the photos here are just screen grabs of the YouTube video….. I changed the way I decided to work the pattern, and all the photos I took were no longer valid. I will work up another pillow this weekend and shoot proper progress photos!)

I totally forgot to blog these nail photos from a week or two ago! I bought a set of nail stickers from Pygmy Hippo Shoppe a few months ago, and finally tried them out! (Sorry, it looks like these are no longer available… but there are still tons of cute things in the store!)

The set came with a bunch of things like these pretzels, kitties, and french fries, but also pizzas, pugs, and some other things I can’t remember because the sheet is in another room right now!

This is the 2nd set of nail stickers I’ve tried, and they are thinner and lay much flatter against my nail. Some other stickers are thicker and end up leaving a ridge around the image, even with a good coat of Seche Vite on top. So while thinner stickers are a bit trickier to place on the nail correctly… they definitely have a better finish!