A Twinkly Christmas Eve

Twinkly TreeThis is one of my favorite nights of the year.  I love the twinkly lights and the sense of anticipation,

When I was a little girl, I used to sleep in the living room next to the tree the night before Christmas.  I don’t know if the plan was to catch Santa in the act, or to be completely sure I wouldn’t miss any present opening.  I came to love drifting off with the colored lights twinkling nearby.

Right now twinkly lights are playing a part in my crafting as well.  As I reported earlier, I’ve been bitten by the eTextile bug.  After an inspirational Skype chat with eTextile diva Lynne Bruning, I’m even more entranced with combining electronics and fiber and garnered some new ideas.

 

I had mentioned working on the Knitty Know-it-all bag.  That project’s done.  It works as described and I love it… with two caveats.  (1) There’s a short somewhere inside that makes the pattern advance without a button click on rare occasions.  I need to track that down. (2) The LEDs are super bright and give me a headache after staring at them for a while.  I think I either need dimmer LEDs or a way to reduce the power to them.  I need to see if the Lilypad will let me dim the LEDs with software or if I need to come up with a hardware fix.

Knitty Know-it-all Bag

My favorite thing about this bag (aside from learning about Lilypad and the whole “it works!  It really works!” part) are the cloth flowers I added as an embellishment.  I’m not normally a girly-girl, but I found these at Jo-Ann’s Fabric and the colors matched the bag so well, and the shape echoed the Lilypad, that I succumbed.  The contrast between the burly tech-y electronics and the soft girly flowers makes me smile.

In other eTextile news, I’ve been playing with el wire.  This stuff is uber cool.  Here are some preliminary pics of what I’m working on.

Weaving Light

Knitting Light

All grown up, and I still love playing with twinkly lights!

Please share your thoughts: I enjoy your comments and feedback!