Over at Sew Retro, Janice shared information about her new iPhone application - a vintage fabric converter. When you’re shopping for fabric for your vintage patterns, are you ever stymied by the fabric width options on the back of the envelope? You end up purchasing too much fabric as you try to guess how much fabric you need in our modern width of 44 inches, when the pattern calls for 1.75 yards of 39 inch wide fabric? While no conversion can be perfect, this iPhone app looks promising! Read more about it over at her blog.

Fellow crafty Iowa blogger, Failed Feminist, found some awesome blue glass canning jars at a garage sale this morning. Super jealous!

How about this for my mother in law - a cat lover.

Considering we’ve just offloaded 4 old computers at our house, this new book seems particularly timely.

You can enter a giveaway and read Craft magazine’s review here.

Just browsing over at Etsy, through some of the items listed by fellow SHE team members:

These are fun. Bookmarks with calendars on them.

Angel food cake body butter? Yum.

Gorgeous merino-bamboo yarn.

Ouchie pillows. I love these, instead of the little hard ice packs we currently use.

Felted wool balls. We have several of these and love them. They’re actually my preferred balls to play with.

Catching up on Craftster Blog posts, I found this fun tutorial on patching holes in sweaters using crochet. If you don’t subscribe to the CRAFT blog, you really ought to consider it. It’s definitely a busy blog, but full of great ideas.

Thought I’d share some of my favorite Etsy sellers…

First, Siam2U

You can’t have this awesome skirt because I just bought it. Organic cotton, embroidered, wrap skirt, $19. But you can have other, equally-awesome skirts, fisherman pants, or dresses.

Next, Babus.

I bought one of these felted wool toys for Genna for Christmas. It’s fun and I love the texture. She could care less about it at this point, though. :-)  Free shipping thru February!

Catzinthehouse has nice wooden stuff.

I bought Genna a teether for Christmas from this shop. At that time, they offered mostly children’s products, but I see they’ve branched out now. (CPSIA?)

GirlwithaSword

While it would be inaccurate to say I’ve ever bought anything from her Etsy store, I shop her in-person store a LOT! (Prairieland Herbs) Maggie makes awesome dyed stuff, all using natural dyes largely (or exclusively) from their farm. Way cool.

MiaJean is another local gal.

I have ordered a bag from Mia and can’t wait to get it! I’ve seen them in person, and they’re great!!

For a while, there has been an informal group of my friends who knit and they would get together every once in a while. I didn’t join them, as they met on a night I had to teach classes. Then, a few months ago, the group got much larger, took on a new name, and started meeting at a time I could go!

Natural Parenting Fiber Artists - largely a group of women who circulate in the same circles I do - Holistic Moms, Cloth Diapering, Babywearing, LLL, etc.

It’s super fun, gives us a chance to craft and talk birth, breasts, babies, husbands, and things completely unrelated. (As if we don’t all have plenty of opportunity to discuss said topics anyway…) Knitting Night is close up there to ICAN night in terms of Nights Away From My Family That I Really Look Forward To!

added to sidebar: me on facebook, me on twitter, blvd designs on facebook.

So if you were looking for something to buy me, here are some ideas:

Super fun camera strap from SplitYarn.

Mushroom zip top from GoodEgg.

  Superfun new Tshirts from Craftster.