Well Twi-hards, the time is here. That special day in November when you no longer have to dream of powdery white skin and the smell of blood (and teen angst) in the morning. You can live it, man. Well, vicariously through the screen presentation of the much anticipated debut of the Twilight Saga's New Moon.

To celebrate, we've ditched the not-so-vamp-friendly knitting needles for a kinder, gentler (read: can't be used as a stake) yarn tool: the Knifty Knitter Flower Loom, to make the Ode to Alice Cullen wrist warmers. Gather 'round, Twi-sters!

Berkeley-based Vaska, makers of botanical-based laundry soap, is holding a Get Cozy With Vaska Contest, which sounds like it's right up our alley.

Twelve winners will get $300 in cash and a page in the 2010 Vaska Cozy Calendar, sure to be a collector's item (or so they claim). The contest ends at midnight Jan. 4, 2010, with winners announced on Jan. 10. So now's the time to get making cozies! The cash would be a nice help in paying off some of my holiday debt, is what I'm thinking.

And I appreciate the fact that their PR efforts are focusing on crafters and our mad crafting skills:

"The Get Cozy Contest is a way of introducing the crafts community to laundry care products that conserve the integrity of their designs and, at the same time, we can reward them for their creativity. We know crafters will appreciate Vaska's softer, brighter, greener results," says Julia Fry, Vaska creator. Fry is a former fashion designer, whose love of textiles led her to create the herb-based detergent.

All the details, contest rules, and info on where to buy Vaska detergent can be found on their website.

Fall is in the air, and I'm feeling a need to embroider. If you're like me, you have an enormous pile of yarn left over from other projects. In my case, it sits in my needlework bag and taunts me, daring me to dig into it and make something pretty. So, one early fall afternoon with Vivaldi's Autumn Allegro playing on iTunes, I took the challenge. Using one of the butcher linen placemats from my Felix Populi product line, I set about laying down some fall foliage in yarn.

This is the kind of awesome that happens when you bring together two guys over two months with a whole bunch of yarn. The second vid is the equally enticing making-of. [via Jeanne Jo]

More than a dozen New York yarn stores are participating in the first ever NYC Yarn Crawl this weekend in an effort to "encourage exploration of the city's yarn shops and promote the needle arts."

The NYC Yarn Crawl is a free, self-guided tour for knitters, crocheters and other fiber artists to the city's premier yarn shops. Featuring special demonstrations, exhibits, sales and promotions, the crawl promises to be 4 days of shopping, discovery and urban exploration for both local and out-of-town knitters.

You can read more about the participating retailers, scavenger hunt and big basket raffle prizes on the NYC Yarn Crawl Web site. Our Cozy Up To Yarn month sponsors, Lion Brand Yarn, will be participating. You can get a sneak peek at the cozy, yarn-filled Lion Brand Yarn Studio in Nat and Becky's video tour from last month! [via The Purl Bee]

Too often we are left with mountains of little balls of sock yarn. here is a nice and easy way to use up those leftovers bits.

You can use one of two methods:
1. If you have two colors you want to use up, use one color for the cuff, heel flap, and toe.
2. If you have 3 or more colors to use up, use one for the heel and toe and alternate the other
colors every few rows. Just makes sure you use the same striping pattern for both socks.

Shortly after I learned how to knit I read about how one could recycle a sweater for the yarn. Sweet! Cheap yarn I thought! I went to the Salvation Army and picked out a sweater I thought would be good for recycling. Huge, an XXXL, and 100% cotton. It was all cream colored and pretty nice. I took it home and gave it my best shot. Which failed pretty miserably at first. I wasted so much yarn that first time around. I still got enough to make into a sizable bath mat. I used the pattern from Mason Dixon Knitting (what a great knitting book).

After a whole lot of trial and error over the last three years, I've been able to get the recycling of sweaters down pretty well.

First you need to pick out a good sweater.

This Wool Eater blanket looks so very complicated, but Sarah London's instructions make it seem easy. The colors are quite inspiring, and the texture is to die for!

Yarn is the perfect way to embellish just about anything. Trim a yard of micro-fiber fleece with yarn fringe for an easy and ultra soft no-sew blanket. The technique is so fast that you can spend extra time getting creative with color combinations. Try the fringe with many strands of thin yarn, a few strands of thick yarn, short fringe, or long. Use a skein of your favorite yarn, or mix it up and use your scraps. When your project is done, you can literally cozy up with yarn!

I've been cleaning out my apartment one space at a time. Today was my studio. After collecting up all the butterfly bobbins of wool I have floating around I was confronted with a whole shopping bag full of random colors. Some people may see this as overwhelming, depressing, challenging (what to do with all these random colors)... well... honestly... it filled me with childhood glee! You see, wool is great for crewel... and all those random colors? A painters palette!

Sometimes it's fun to mix things up a bit. Just because you have leftovers from a knit project, does not mean you have to stick with knitting for the leftovers. Those last 3 yards are perfect for a variety of projects and crewel is on the top of my list. It's free style embroidery, but specifically with 2-ply wool yarn - though I've used a variety of fiber types with good results.

I can easily figure out ways to use a half a skein of this and a half a skein of that, but it's really those last 2 yards that leave me stumped. Today I'm going to show you how by braiding yarn, you can refresh the life of your yarn scraps! And of course some fun project ideas to use those braided pieces.

Kim Werker is a master of crochet, an advocate for community-building, and an accomplished author. Her new book, Crocheted Gifts: Irresitable Projects to Make and Give, was released last month. I recently caught up with Kim to talk about her favorite craft medium: yarn.

When did you start working with yarn, and what was the first yarn project that you completed?
I first started working with yarn when I was in my third year of university and my dorm director's wife taught me how to crochet (for the second time - I'd learned the first time when I was in high school, but that was for a thread project, so not as cozy). I picked up a giant batch of this hideous variegated acrylic yarn and started in on a huge blanket. I didn't get very far. I think the first yarn project I actually completed was a felted knitted bag I made in the class I took to learn how to knit when I was in my mid-20s.

Why did you gravitate to yarn as opposed to other craft materials? 
You know, I've never even thought about this. It's just the way it is. When a friend mentioned that knitting class when I was 26 and had just moved to Vancouver, my ears pricked up and I nearly pounced on her (literally) for more info. Now that crafting is such an important part of my life, I do find I'm drawn to other types of materials, too. I'm digging embroidering, and I learned how to make beaded earrings a couple of weeks ago. I was surprised by how meditative and fun that was (and gratifying! I had a pair done in just one evening).

I enjoy the practical side to yarn crafts - I like that I can make clothes and blankets and toques and scarves. And I think it's the practicality of it that leads to my love of doll-making. Dolls - at least the kinds I make - are totally absurd and impractical. Their only purpose is to make me happy, and hopefully they make other people happy too.

What is your family's history with yarn (mom, grandmother, etc.)? 
After I started knitting avidly, my mom took an interest in it. One day when she was visiting us with my grandmother, we sat down and quickly realized she already knew how to knit (a clue: after I made her cast on, pull it out and cast on again about a hundred times, she started knitting continental style, and I knit English. After that, it was the quickest lesson ever). Turns out she'd learned when she was in high school. That wee reminder all she needed; she's spent the last few years knitting her heart out. My grandmother used to crochet a lot. Arthritis prevents her from working much with her hands now, but for a while after that visit she got back into it, too. So amongst the women in my family, it's been a reverse of the expected generational passing-down of yarn craft; with us it's sort of passed up.

How do you feel when you are working with yarn?
I feel like I'm home, you know? Like no matter where I am, I'm grounded. Like I not only have something to keep myself busy, and something to create, but also something that's useful - and specifically something useful (well, or not that useful) that can be used to create great whimsy and therefore great fun and joy.

I first learned how to make these great little bobbins in my beginning weaving class at Northern Illinois University. They are great for weaving, especially tapestry weaving, but also when working brocade on the floor loom. And really great for organizing your stash when there are tons of little random balls in there. Unlike balls of yarn, these won't unravel and unlike center pull balls they won't tangle either. It's so much easier to keep these sorted in a bin of yarn that little balls tangling all over the place. Being able to see and then easily use your lovely fiber stash is a key to inspiration. Nothing kills a project quicker than having to untangle a huge mess of yarn strands.

When faced with a pile of yarn scraps, it can be quite a puzzle getting them to match. How does one take yarn from a baby sweater and get it to look dazzeling with leftovers from a men's glove set? Or what about that half skein of verigated yarn? What will that go with. Today I'm going to show you some practical applications of color theory! I love Joseph Albers' teachings on color theory and read them like a favorite novel. Not everyone does though, or may be asking, who is Joseph Albers anyway? Without reading texts on theory, you can still get some great use from color theory basics. I'm going to show you how using stripes + some basic color theory makes color matching a no brainer.

Even though temperatures here in Austin are still flirting with the 90s, I can't help but feel like fall is knocking at our door. These fun yarn apples from Marie at Make and Takes are the kind of fall craft that is quick and easy to whip up, and fun to make with the kids!

This week I am loving the special way that lavender and green play off each other. Such a dynamic color pairing. Herb Garden yarn from Beck and Call Girl on Etsy has just the right dusky light purples mixed with just the right greens.

Manspun Yarns are the creation of Mathieu. Imagine a lumberjack who chops trees into endless yards of yarn! Imagine a weightlifter who can bench press 1 million skeins! Imagine a man from Canada who sells his own hand spun and hand dyed yarns, is active on ravelery, and spent today spinning in public! That Canadian man is Mathieu.

I'm going to let you hear more about him, from him, in his own very manly all lowercase voice:

i'm a man. i spin yarn. i knit.

i also breath and eat and drink and play guitar and video games. many people are confused when they think of "man" and "yarn" in the same sentence, but they do in fact go together.

i'm relatively new to the world of yarn, spinning and knitting. i've known for a few years the basics of how to do things, but got really hardcore into things about a year and a half ago during a weekend spin-along in the Novelty and Art Yarns group on Ravelry (http://www.ravelry.com/groups/novelty-and-art-yarn-spinners).

i'd probably have to say that i mostly prefer assembling (the manly word for spinning) Merino Wool and Bamboo into my manly yarns, and although many sheep have to live colder lives and many pandas go hungry, they know it's for the good of mankind. i use a Majacraft Little Gem for yarn assemblage, but because "Little Gem" sounds kind of wimpy, i refer to it instead as "Little Bastard"

If you feel like you can handle the testosterone- Find him on Ravelry. Find him on Flickr. Buy his yarn at his online store. Read his blog.

Saturday is World Wide Spin in Public Day! That's tomorrow, so grab your spindles and find a Spin in Public event to visit. If you already know how to spin, get out there and try to teach someone who has never tried it. If you don't know, it's the perfect excuse to learn. Oh, and many thanks to Manspun for sending us the info on the event. Little did he know that I have a special place in my heart for men who spin! I'll be profiling him tomorrow, so check back for that!

In honor of WWSIP Day, I want to introduce you to two of my friends, Buck and Greg. They are obsessed with spinning. For them, every single day is Spin in Public Day! They run a roadside fiber stand in Monte Rio, a little hamlet on the Russian River in Sonoma County, California. Their shop is called Two Guyz Spinning, and Tuesday through Sunday, the "Two Guyz" set up their wares and set up their wheel, and then they spin.

What I love the most about them is their unconventional take on fiber arts. Buck and Greg are dedicated to living from the earth, and that includes their yarn-making techniques. Their unique take starts with the fibers that they spin. They spin sheep's wools like dorset and churro. They spin other animal fibers like alpaca and Kashmir goat. And they spin plant fibers like flax, bamboo, and hemp. The yarn Greg is showing off in the photo is some of his wolf yarn, and its just to die for. Buck and Greg take it to the next level when they spin fibers like wolf and wildcrafted bison. Collecting bison is tricky, because conservation laws prevent taking wool from any of the national parks like Yellowstone, where the herds live. Instead, the gatherers wait for the bison to leave the boundaries of the park to calve, and then take the fibers that are left behind.

Last Friday, Natalie and I got a tour of the NYC Lion Brand Yarn Studio on 15th Street in Manhattan. Zontee and Patty showed us around their rotating window display, their luscious yarn offerings, and told us all about the classes and events that take place in the studio.

Subscribe to the CRAFT Podcast in iTunes, or download the m4v video.

Natalie also took some awesome pics at the studio, check out her Flickr set! Pictured aboe is Becky, Natalie, and Zontee.

3D Knitter's Gift Tag
By Jamie Chan

Often times when I knit a project I have a wee bit of yarn left over. Not enough to knit but just enough to keep for embellishment. This quick tutorial will show you how to make a cute 3-dimensional gift tag with your leftover bits of yarn. The perfect way to send off a knitted gift or that special skein of yarn to a friend!

Patricia Zapata of A Little Hut shares how to put together these quick and cute yarn gift tags with a secret recycled ingredient. Can you guess what it is? Check her tutorial for all the details.

When I read the review Goli posted of the new book Yarn Bombing, I remembered that I found some yarn-fitti in Seattle. I was in town for the Urban Craft Uprising, and there was some great mural art near our hotel. And to my surprise, along with the paint was some yarn. When I look at the colors on the wall and I look at the colors of the crochet, I can't help but think that the piece was hooked with the intention of complementing the wall.

Yarn is such a versatile material. I often use beautiful yarn to wrap gifts, and it's very simple and quick to make a lush tassel to finish a present. The tassel can be made by anyone, in any color, with any yarn! And instead of being recycled like a paper bow, it will be cherished as a lovely handmade aspect of the gift. If you make a yarn tassel, add a photo to the CRAFT Flickr pool!

MAKE's photo editor Sam Murphy sent us this great photo she recently took in Vienna. She writes:

I was on a lightning trip with my fiance and his parents in Germany for my soon-to-be family reunion. We were in Germany mostly, but we hopped on the train to Prague and Vienna. These were the horse and carriage rides you see all over Vienna. Not all of them where crochet like this one, but I saw maybe one or two more. (I like the silver details on the ends, the yarn seem to be faded, but it may be the yarn is dyed.) Pretty much all of them had their ears covered like this with a hat, usually of cotton. Too much to see, and too much great food to eat!

The photo -- taken in front of Vienna's famous St. Stephens Cathedral -- got us excited about what other horse projects might be out there for us to crochet. These ear or fly bonnets, used to protect the horses' ears from flies, seem to be the most common crochet project. Here's a short list of related websites we found; feel free to post other resources or photos of projects you've done in the Comments!

• Crochet Horse Ear Bonnet
• St. Patrick's Day Parade
• Crochet for the Horse
• Bonnet Chasse-Mouche
• Pattern: Goose - Horse Hat

There's a few more spaces left for Yarn School (Oct 1-4) and Felt School (Oct 5-6) taught by Nikol Lohr and Shannon Okey respectively. The location is at Nikol's Harveyville Project, 2 former schoolhouses transformed into workshop and living/studio spaces in Harveyville, KS. I love the idea of this retreat for intense learning as well as a chance to get to know other crafters. You can see the full schedule online. Sign up for both as "Fiber School" and get a free bonus dye lab and overnight Sunday stay.

My favorite snaps from Yarn School and Felt School are after the jump!

This fascinating Lego yarn ball winder works its magic in Portland's Twisted yarn shop. Twisted owners, Shannon and Emily, share how the Lego yarn ball winder came to be.

The ball winder was born out of boredom and concern. A good friend of Emily's is an out-of-work engineer, and he was in the shop, visiting us one day. We were winding a ball of yarn for a customer the old-fashioned way, and he was appalled - why were we expending so much energy to wind a ball of yarn!? So, he took an old winder home with him, and a month or so later, came into the shop with Mr. Roboto, version 1.0. We have since had an upgrade, and we absolutely love it!

He sent some technical info about the ball winder:

The Lego apparatus serves to electrically crank a Royal brand manual winder. Two 9V Lego motors, fed by an AC/DC power supply, drive the crank. On/Off and winding speed are controlled through a power button and potentiometer housed in an electronics project box. The entire assembly is mounted to an acrylic cutting board via zip-ties.

Our customers, as you can imagine, absolutely love it.

Love it, indeed! I can't wait to get back up to Portland and visit Twisted to see it in action! Thanks, Lee!

Related:
Lego Yarn Ball Winder

Shepherdess, Louise Fairburn, of Rsiby, England, was recently married wearing a stunning wedding gown that was made from wool from her own flock. The dress took a spinner and a dressmaker 67 hours to create, and was made from a rare Lincoln Longwool. More pictures and the full story are here.

Gareth @ MAKE writes:

This enterprising fellow built a chakra (a spinning wheel) largely out of cardboard. At the end of the post, he also has links to a bunch of other cheap lo-tek spinning wheel projects available online.

For you traveling knitters and crocheters, there's an easy way to make your own project caddy for the car, train, bus (or other) trip. When you get a new set of sheets, save the vinyl zippered case they came in, and poke a few holes in the top, then pass through your yarn. The pockets come in handy for scissors, needles, hooks, and patterns. I used a piece of card stock to separate the two balls of yarn, but you could easily sew or glue in a permanent divider. Not only does this keep your project clean, dry, and self-contained, but you can see through the bag to spot your tools. Using center-pull balls will keep it extra tidy.

More:

• How-To: Wind a Center-Pull Ball of Yarn
• Acorn Travel Yarn Holder
  
• Ask CRAFT: The TSAs of Crafty Air Travel