Macabre artist and crafter, Christine McConnell, has a new YouTube series, From The Mind Of Christine McConnell. I felt robbed when her Netflix series, The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell, was given the axe after only one six-episode season. I loved this quirky, bizarre genre-buster which mixed equal parts The Addam's Family, Martha Stewart, and The Muppets, with a little Dita von Teese mixed in. Literally. Dita, a friend of Christine's, appeared as a ghost living in Christine's bedroom mirror who dispensed fashion advice.

I have always had a special fondness for offbeat, weird, and tongue-in-cheek crafting shows, like Brini Maxwell, At Home with Amy Sedaris, and Making It with Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman. McConnell's work is a goth-y twist on such offerings and "From The Mind Of Christine McConnell" is no different.

She has posted two episodes to YouTube so far, one where she converts a musty old pull-out couch into an ornate Edwardian sofa-bed, and one where she constructs a jaw-dropping ginger bread replica of the Winchester Mystery House using a quarter-ton of ginger bread.

Christine has also created a Patreon page to help support her channel. I, for one, will be signing on. Read the rest

You can make your own perfectly adorable chibi crocheted AT-AT Walker with this $5.90 pattern from Polish textile artist Kamila Krawczyk, AKA Krawka. (via The Stars My Destination) Read the rest

Combine a paperclip, tin foil, a cereal box, and a print out to make the Die Hard John McClane Air Duct Christmas Ornament. PS: Die Hard is a Christmas movie. (via Kottke) Read the rest

Spanish Etsy seller EasyPrintAndCut makes tiny, printable papercraft furniture, housewares and decor for haunted dollhouses: grimoires, vampire hunting kits, spooky wallpaper and wainscotting, tiny taxidermy, adorably tiny engravings from tiny gothic antique books and much more -- all for instant delivery. Read the rest

Did you know that there's such a thing as "dungeon crafting?" I didn't, until recently. There are a growing number of YouTube channels dedicated to teaching viewers how to craft all manner of terrain and building components to be used in Dungeons and Dragons and other roleplaying and tabletop games.

My friend, Make: and Geek Dad contributor Jim Kelly, has recently launched a new dungeon crafting channel called Game Terrain Engineering. So far, he has posted videos for such projects as making towers, tombs, crypts, columns and doors, and my favorite, how to make monuments to your fallen D&D characters!

In the latest episode (above), Jim gets to work on creating a set of red herring playing pieces for his (and my) current favorite game, Frostgrave (read my WINK review of Frostgrave here). Osprey Games, makers of Frostgrave, have just released an awesome new expansion for the game, a deck of 40 cards called Ulterior Motives. These cards contain special game objectives that players draw before beginning play. I love this game mechanic of adding individual player objectives to an existing game via a deck of cards. Frostgrave is not an RPG, it's a narrative fantasy skirmish wargame. Adding these individual motives helps to bring more play-depth and narrative flavor to the game.

Some of the objectives in the Ulterior Motives pack are revealed right when the card is drawn. Others remain secret until you make your move as indicated on the card. To get other players off the stink of what you're up to, there are a series of red herring terrain pieces that are called for (a statue, a zombie, a pit, a portal, a sarcophagus, a trap door, an arcane disk, and a runic stone). Read the rest

Ulna-Stina Wikander's many pieces include a wide variety of household objects (chairs, mirrors, etc) covered in meticulous cross-stitched fabric; bracelets and belts made from toy cars, lamps made from framed slot-car racetracks, and a lively miscellany of other pieces. Alas, her Flash-based site makes it impossible to link directly to my favorites (and I had to install the Flash plugin just to see it!), but it's well worth your time to go looking. (via Crazy Abalone) Read the rest

The MT Washi Masking Tapes come in 20 colors for $16.35, 10 meters of each color, with hundreds of positive reviews from crafters and customizers (caveat: this is "decorating" tape, and has limited use for e.g. sticking things up on walls). (via Fun Finds) Read the rest

Today sees the publication of Bonnie Burton's (previously) long-awaited new book, Crafting with Feminism: 25 Girl-Powered Projects to Smash the Patriarchy. Read the rest

Stephanie Pokorny freehand crocheted this out-of-this-world E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial costume for her son Jack, age 2! The project took her four days.

"He is free handed and made with no pattern," she said. "I literally just tried it on him as I created and stopped when it fit right!"

"Grab a Phone, ET needs to call home! New “HumanGurumi!”" (Crochetverse) Read the rest

Bonnie Burton (previously) is a favorite around these parts, thanks both to her keen eye for awesomeness, and her next book, Crafting with Feminism: 25 Girl-Powered Projects to Smash the Patriarchy (Oct 18), looks like a big ole ball of perfect. (with a foreword by Felicia! Day! (never weird!)) Read the rest

Wintercroft's Etsy storefront is full of beautiful, downloadable plans for making geometrical animal- and horror-masks from recycled cardboard boxes. It's a great, simple way to make the perfect Hallowe'en costume. Read the rest

We've featured the lovely knitted dissections of Aknitomy before (previously), but its proprietor, Emily Stoneking, keeps on turning out whimisico-scientific knitted fancies that please the eye and tickle the mind. It's not just her classic knitted dissections of frogs, fetal pigs, bats, worms (surprisingly affordable!), and even Easter bunnies -- she's also selling all her patterns, and even kits! Read the rest

K2G2 -- a wiki for "krafty knerds and geek girls" -- has a marvellous series of posts about "Computational Craft" through which traditional crafting practices, like knitting, are analyzed through the lens of computer science. The most recent post, A Computational Model of Knitting, point out the amazing parallels between knitting and computing, with knitting needles performing stack and dequeue operations, "While straight needles with caps store and retrieve their stitches according to the principle of LIFO (first in - last out), double pointed and circular needles additionally implement the functions of a queue or FIFO (first in – first out), effectively forming a double ended queue, also known as dequeue." Read the rest

My 10-year-old daughter has been brushing our three cats and saving their hair in a plastic bag. She wanted to be ready when her copy of Crafting With Cat Hair arrived. On Sunday morning, she made her first cat hair project - a little cat. My older daughter had a sneezing fit, so Jane will have to complete the other projects from the book outside.

Crafting With Cat Hair Read the rest

Andrew Salomone of Craft says: "Fiber artist LeBrie Rich of Penfelt created this amazing felted TV diner (complete with TV) using a combination of commercial wool felt with needle and wet felting."

I would've preferred the TV to be showing Land of the Giants instead of a football game, but I won't complain.

Felted TV Diner Read the rest

The US Olympic Committee has apologized for describing the knitters' Ravelympics as "denigrating" to real athletes. Ravelympics are an activity on Ravelry, a community for knitters, in which members compete to complete knitting projects while watching Olympic events, producing hybrids like the "afghan marathon" and "scarf hockey." The Olympic Committee, worried that they will have a hard time raising millions for giant, evil companies like Dow Chemicals if knitters are allowed to share patterns that include the Olympic rings, sent a grossly insulting legal threat to the knitters of Ravelry:

We believe using the name "Ravelympics" for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country's finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work.

After a lot of hue and cry, the USOC said sorry, and suggested that knitters could give away the stuff they make to the USOC.

Jun 21 Statement from USOC Spokesperson Patrick Sandusky

(Thanks, Gladys!) Read the rest

Crochet costumer Veronica Knight has topped herself with this crocheted cyclops outfit. This puts the Z in ZOMG.

Crocheted Cyclops Costume Read the rest