The NorthWesternBelle

I really love my current schedule. At my real job, I work Sunday through Wednesday, 10 hours shifts. This gives me Thursday, Friday and Saturday off each week, which is seriously fantastic. I usually manage to get some crafting in each weekend, but it's not often as much as I'd like. Between cleaning my house (a constant struggle), my three-year-old and the hubby, I'm lucky to actually finish any projects. This weekend the bestie and I decided it was time for a craftathon, and we went for it on Friday. She spent most of the day cutting fabric for a commissioned quilt. I spent most of the day organizing my crafting headquarters (aka, the living room). I don't have a before picture because it was really bad before, but here's the after: Yeah, that's the massive ripple blanket that I've been working on for about a year...it's 99.9% finished. It's going to be done soon..... Anyhow. I managed to compress all of my finished handmade product i...

Happy Labor Day Weekend! Naturally, I'm laboring away ;-) Got some new inventory listed this weekend, in both the HANDMADE and VINTAGE categories. First up, my current favorite stash-burning pattern, the chunky headband : The lovely & talented Taiza P. was kind enough to model it for us. Orange is the new black, y'all! Next up is a vintage pot holder set that was too beautiful to ignore! Yellow square, tied in green. Teal hexagon, tied in yellow.  I'm seriously perplexed at how these were constructed, but the pattern is spot on. Double thick, tied in contrasting colors. These are perfect for the vintage-loving cook, seeing as they're acrylic and washable to boot. The set would make a wonderful gift! Additions to the Vintage Afghan inventory also arrived this weekend. I'm very excited about how quickly some of these blankets are getting scooped up. They are seriously lovely! I just need to get them measured and listed, which will hopefully b...

I hate waiting for shipping, but I just love being able to buy quality yarn in practically any color/fiber combination online. Amazon has been my online go-to place for yarn thus far because I'm a prime member and shipping is free on select items. I usually get my kitchen cotton from there as add-on items when they're less than $3 a piece. Having to spend $25 on other merchandise isn't always an option, though, so I went in search of an alternative yesterday. Lucky for me, I basically when straight to the solution. RedHeart.com had a 15% off sale yesterday, and I discovered that they do $3 shipping. Sooooooooooooo, naturally I purchased a large amount of Soft and Creme de la Creme Cotton yarn. You may already know that I'm totally obsessed with cotton yarn, and the Soft stuff is great for these Crocodile Clutches I've been making. My BFF wants one, in fact, in pink & green, so I picked up the following two colors: Leaf Rose Blush Also, Off White ...