Mom wanted a bag to put her soap in to wash but made out of wool. I dug through my stash and found a nice wool sock yarn. It is one of those that makes a pattern if you crochet in the round but I couldn't get the images to line up so I just made it spotted instead. This little baggie would work with any sock weight yarn but cotton or wool would probably be best. 

Time for the second item in "the box" I received from Influenster: The Dr. Scholl's for Her. 

Hey, you may have noticed I have been a bit slack lately working on my 101 ways to upcycle blue jeans....I think i stalled out mid summer on number 13. Photo recap to get us in the mood.....

I am so excited!!! Today my very first Influenster box came in and had a bunch of goodies in it. Naturally the first thing I grabbed was the thing with chocolate in it! The BelVita Soft Baked energy bar. It looked so yummy how could I resist? Well it was yummy, and from the label it seems pretty healthy too. 

Meet Natalie, our new friend from Marigold's Loft! Mom, Crafter, entrepreneur, all around lovely lady. 

What she says about herself: 

"I used to be a yoga teacher, and also used to run meditation groups. I am a vibrational therapist and work with alternative healing methods.

I am a South African mom of two teens, living with my girls and hubby in Switzerland.

I used to homeschool our children, but since moving back to Switzerland have enrolled them in a local Steiner School. Not schooling the girls has given me a lot of extra time and so I have slowly become more and more involved in crafts of all kinds.

I adore knitting and crochet, and have spent many a blog hour posting about my WIPs and FOs :)

I am an avid reader and love curling up under the duvet with a nice cup of tea and a good book (which is very possible to do most days in Europe)."

Ok so there are 100 directions for melting crayons into new crayons so this isn't so much a tutorial as a "I did it!" post.  I can't find the exact post I used originally so I cannot give credit, sorry about that. 

The instructions were to cut the crayons into pea size pieces and put them in an oven at 150 degrees for like 20 minutes. If the melted crayons stick once cool, pop them in the freezer to loosen them up. 

You know we love to search the web for interesting sites, unusual creations, for fun and for inspiration. Today we wanted to introduce our latest find: Ananasa.com a great marketplace filled with beautiful items from the Middle East.

Ananasa.com started when two sisters wanted to expose the hidden beauty of the Middle East to the world. Ananasa takes care of logistics, customer service & marketing so artisans can focus on creating their hand-made items. They provide the platform to access a worldwide channel so that individuals can buy unique items from the Middle East, hassle-free.

And that is why it's called Ananasa (اناناسة):

Ana: means "I" in Arabic

Nas: means "the people" in Arabic

A: adding an a at the end allows the word to become feminine, just like the co-founders.

"for the people, by the people". 

I decided to browse around and see what sort of treasures are featured in the marketplace. I found so many beautiful and unique items like these Green Heels for $169. They are super cute! And genuine leather, nice. 

I love that they will ship worldwide, something that still intimidates me.

I loved this great "tea pitcher" that I found but it was called a ‘Khan El Khalili’ Jug, so I decided to find out what that actually means. The description says only "A beautiful handmade glass jug in Blue with a mix of silver colored metal. Also available in olive green and dark honey." 

So I did a little bit of research and I discovered Khan El Khalili refers to a major souq in the Islamic district in Cairo. Now I was even more confused, what is a souq? 


A little more reasearch later and I find out it a souq or souk is an open air marketplace! How interesting, so I gather that this great jug is based off of ones found in the open air marketplace of Cairo.

 Very cool. Learn something and shop at the same time! P.S. its only $35!  

Check out ananasa.com for that little something unique - as a treat for yourself or a gift for that person that has everything. Please let us know what you liked best!
 

Every once in awhile I feel the need to reevaluate. Reevaluate my course in life, in business, in everything. Well that happened recently. We have been focusing on making stuff, lots of stuff, why?  It's fun to veg out while making the same thing 20 times till it becomes muscle memory, but it's not very fulfilling. Recently I have discovered that making patterns is more fulfilling.