And to all a good night.

Someone please remind me that I absolutely stink at posting daily and should not do such things. Seriously it just leads to situations kinda like this or this awesome comic.

But anyways this December I have in fact made a number of pretty awesome things and also listened to much good music. 

And so in the spirit of making up for the lack of 19 promised posts I give you a bunch of Christmas music I highly reccomend:

Straight No Chaser - They have 2 Christmas albums out I believe. Tons and tons of fun as they interject their beautiful A'capella sound with lots of humor. I recommend the 12 days of Christmas, which does in fact get radio air play and is how I first discovered the group as well as The Christmas Can-Can.

Glee Cast - The TV show is so popular they can even have holiday albums. And I still love them. Start with let It Snow.

Take 6 - Another A'capella group, there is a pretty serious theme going on for me so far. But always fun. I especially recommend The Sugarplum Dance.

David Crowder Band - Another Christian Rock group, I think the spiritual side always helps give these groups a leg up on other Rock bands trying to rock the genre. Start with Joy to the World or O Holy Night.

She & Him's Christmas album A very She & Him Christmas was a new discovery curtsey of Amazon.com she has a very unique sound and its quirky but works well for a different twist on the holiday classics. The whole album is great but try The Christmas Waltz as a good introduction.

Hayley Westerna's Winter Magic is a more traditionalish type album. She is a classical cross over artist that I discovered back in college. Sometimes she can sound rather young but its the glass-like quality of her voice that gets me every time. My favorites of hers are Silent Night and Coventry Carol, they just work so well with her voice but I also quite like her Carol Of The Bells and Sleigh Ride was a strange mix that I enjoyed.

Sarah McLauchlan's Wintersong is likely an album that you already know about but I strongly reccomend checking out some of the tracks that may not get so much air time. What Child Is This? and O Little Town Of Bethlehem are wonderful arrangements that do stand out as being rather unique but my favorite is easy The First Noel/Mary Mary.

Bethan Marshall's O Come O Come Emmanual is a welcome change to so many overproduced overdone songs out there. Her simple and heart felt rendition stands out for its soul and quality.

Diana Krall's Christmas Songs are perfect for jazz lovers or well anyone at all. My favorites are Jingle Bells and The Christmas Song

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy got in on the Christmas market with their album Everything You Want For Christmas. Their swinging big band sound is perfect happy mood music and Merry Christmas Baby with its blusey feel is not to be missed.

Ultra-lounge Christmas Cocktails manage to put together weird yet awesome renditions of Christmas songs. I highly recommend Cha-Cha All The Way which manages to add a mambo beat to Jingle Bells and another favorite of mine is their The Nutcracker Suite which is swung.

The collection album titled Alternative Rock X-mas hit a few wins including Santa Baby by Everclear, Little Drummer Boy by The Dandy Warhols, and Silent Night by Sinead O'Conner.

Christmas Remixed 2 has some great stuff if you're down with adding some beats to your holiday tunes. They pretty much had me with their Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies. Along the same lines Merry Mixmas: Christmas Classics Remixed puts fun twists on some old favorites.

David Lantz, The Christmas Album is beautiful piano arrangements of Christmas favorites. His stuff would be perfect when you're looking for unobtrusive background music.

BarlowGirl, Home For Christmas is another Christian 'rock' group. I like their Carol Of The Bells/ Sing We Now of Christmas.

This Warm December - A Brushfire Holiday Vol. 2 is a compilation holiday album (with a really long name) which seems to have a bunch of indie artists. Alot of it is original, which after some listening can be fun but I really fell in love with Zee Avi's Frosty The Snowman. Seriously Frosty done in a weird slavic sounding mode and a good touch of melancholy - I am in love. If nothing else you must take the time to listen, the song starts around 1 minute into the video.

Hey, if nothing else now you've got some good music to bookmark and check out again next December!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

25 Days of Christmas: Days 4, 5 & 6...oops

Ugh, I should have known me slacking was destined to happen if I tried to post daily...ah well. Life got in the way of Sunday and Monday so I present to you 3 awesome songs today:

To celebrate Christmas I decided to highlight 25 days of awesome Christmas music!

Day 4: Stufjan Steven's: O Come O Come Emanuel

For Sunday's song we have an advent appropriate hymn! Stufjan Stevens is a pretty cool folky singer. I think I first discovered his music through a free iTunes download, but I've greatly enjoyed his music since then. He has a huge album of Christmas songs which is quirky and fun. It is also huge, 4 or 5 disks huge. If memory serves he set out to make a disk of Christmas music for friends and family and the project just grew. How fun!

Day 5: Jethro Tull: Holly Herald

At college my primary instrument was flute and as a Music Business major I had this crazy half rocker-ish adviser (he could talk knowledgeably about Classical music but you always knew his loyalties were to the Beatles) who I distinctly remember talking a good bit about flute and Jethro Tull. I had never listened to any of his stuff and I'm pretty sure I didn't until I found this Christmas album. It's rather odd, but the flute playing is different and laudable. And in the end the music is quite fun with a different flair.

Day 6: Angels We Have Heard On High: Relient K

Rock versions of classic Christmas music can be quite fun, but all too often they end up being terribly. But I should have known that Relient K, a Christian rock band, would have no problem nailing it.

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Carlin's 25 Days of Christmas Music

Day 1: A Christmas Festival Leroy Anderson	Day 10: ???????	Day 19: ???????
Day 2: How the Grinch Stole Christmas Soundtrack	Day 11: ???????	Day 20: ???????
Day 3: Christmas Time is Here, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones	Day 12: ???????	Day 21: ???????
Day 4: O Come O Come Emmanuel Stufjan Stevens	Day 13: ???????	Day 22: ???????
Day 5: Holly Herald Jethro Tull	Day 14: ???????	Day 23: ???????
Day 6: Angels We Have Heard On High Relient K	Day 15: ???????	Day 24: ???????
Day 7: ???????	Day 16: ???????	Day 25: ???????
Day 8: ???????	Day 17: ???????
Day 9: ???????	Day 18: ???????

Keep coming back each day as I celebrate the season with new songs each day!

25 Day's of Christmas: Day 3, Christmas Time is Here

To celebrate Christmas I decided to highlight 25 days of awesome Christmas music!

Day 3: Christmas Time is Here, Bela Fleck & the Flecktones (plus A Charlie Brown Christmas!)

I was first introduced to Bela Fleck & The Flecktones by my high school band director. It was one of the 3 videos that he would show us on those school days where for whatever reason we were watching videos instead of having regular class (or rehearsal as would be the case with the band teacher). He really was an amazing teacher and can be credited for quite a bit of my musicality And the Flecktones are just one of the many many awesome things he exposed us to.

All of the musicians in that group are phenomenal and listening to them take a simple tune like Christmas Time is Here and play with it is just a treat. As a bonus I also have a video of A Charlie Brown Christmas (which I don't actually think is a Christmas song, more of their theme song but always gets playtime around the holidays so I'll take it). It's thematically appropriate and just as fun!

As always these recordings are sketchy, although acoustic does add some merit. If you like what you hear there is always Spotify, iTunes, or any other of the zillions of online music options available.

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Carlin's 25 Days of Christmas Music

Day 1: A Christmas Festival Leroy Anderson	Day 10: ???????	Day 19: ???????
Day 2: How the Grinch Stole Christmas Soundtrack	Day 11: ???????	Day 20: ???????
Day 3: Christmas Time is Here, Bela Fleck & the Flecktones	Day 12: ???????	Day 21: ???????
Day 4: ???????	Day 13: ???????	Day 22: ???????
Day 5: ???????	Day 14: ???????	Day 23: ???????
Day 6: ???????	Day 15: ???????	Day 24: ???????
Day 7: ???????	Day 16: ???????	Day 25: ???????
Day 8: ???????	Day 17: ???????
Day 9: ???????	Day 18: ???????

Keep coming back each day as I celebrate the season with new songs each day!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 2, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

To celebrate Christmas I decided to highlight 25 days of awesome Christmas music!

Day 2:How the Grinch Stole Christmas: Original Motion Picture Sound Track

I have always loved Dr. Seuss's the Grinch. We had a whole pile of Christmas books and it was always one of my favorites. Plus there was always the old animated movie to watch on TV as well. So I was quite excited for the Jim Carey live action version when it was released. I quite enjoyed it and now have it on my must watch during the holiday season list. But something not everyone knows about is the absolutely stunning soundtrack!

Almost all of the tracks are favorites of mine so I'll try to limit myself today.

First Jim Horner's amazing symphonic compositions are absolutely stunning. Maybe it is because I love the story so much but I could listen to them all day. This album will certainly be making some encore performances, although I do also suggest acquiring the music for yourself as well (Spotify is a great way to listen to free and legal music).

First I have here "The Shape of Things to Come" featuring beautiful backgrounds, hinting and some later melodies, and introducing us to the fun world of the Who's this track is a great winner and really does give quite the overview of the whole movie in my opinion!

Along with the awesome symphonic tracks the album also features fun holiday themed pop songs. A lot of them are actually rather melancholy, to go along with the Grinch's feelings of the holiday, but I am really a fan of this alternate vibe for the holidays so I love it.

Green Christmas by Barenaked Ladies is completely catchy and fun to sing along with but when you actually listen to what you're saying it can be a bit sad.

"Green, cause of everything I miss
All this mistletoe, no kiss
And with every Christmas wish
There would be no greater gift
Than to have this envy lift."

 Still a super great song and something different to add to your holiday mix.

This is a bad recording, although acoustic does add some merits, but its the best I could slurp here on the website. An upload with the original from the soundtrack with rather unrelated anime images can be found here, or there's always Spotify, iTunes, or any other of the zillions of online music options available.

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Carlin's 25 Days of Christmas Music

Day 1: A Christmas Festival Leroy Anderson	Day 10: ???????	Day 19: ???????
Day 2: How the Grinch Stole Christmas Soundtrack	Day 11: ???????	Day 20: ???????
Day 3: ???????	Day 12: ???????	Day 21: ???????
Day 4: ???????	Day 13: ???????	Day 22: ???????
Day 5: ???????	Day 14: ???????	Day 23: ???????
Day 6: ???????	Day 15: ???????	Day 24: ???????
Day 7: ???????	Day 16: ???????	Day 25: ???????
Day 8: ???????	Day 17: ???????
Day 9: ???????	Day 18: ???????

Keep coming back each day as I celebrate the season with new songs each day!

Fiber Arts Friday: Created by Carlin

I've been hinting at it here but this coming weekend marks the 'real' start of my own little crafting business.

The idea started in late October. I was asked to come teach Moravian Star folding at the library (more of an archive really) and museum where my dad is the executive director. They expand out their little gift shop to have a little Christmas Market of their very own. So it seemed like a good way to see if I could sell some things.

I then experianced quite the frenzy of ideas and options. And then a crazy frenzy to get a bunch of things created and ready to sell by Thanksgiving when I would be able to deliver my goods.

It was pretty crazy and nearly burnt me out (link) but here's what I put together for the opening of Created by Carlin...

First we have Carlin's Critters. These incredibly cute little guys were also surprisingly simple, although like many things the devil is very much in the details. The pattern is from fuzzymitten.com and I can't reccomend it enough. Although while I love the final products, as does everyone I show them to, they did get rather tedious to make.

 

 Next are a bunch of little ornaments. They are all constructed just like their regular knitted object would be but with sock yarn on tiny needles and only a few stitches. Although my mittens were a bit wonky. The stockings ended up being my favorite by far. I started with a pattern to knit them flat but modified it so that I could do everything in the round. Hooray for no seams.

After that we have the tote bags. Colorful circles were crochet into white hexagons and  pieced together for these fun guys. I also added matching sewn linings (with a pocket!) for each. It's lots of fun to get to play with so many colors although as all things the repetition can get tedious. The green family bag was a ton of trouble because I just ran short of 3 of the colors when I was I believe 3 circles shy of my regular construction. So I improvised and adjusted a bit and the bag came out a bit thinner and maybe a bit taller, but hopefully it's still fun.

Somewhat randomly I decided I ought to get some 'fun' yarn and whip up a few scarves. It was then that I met my newest favorite yarn. Lion brand Wool Ease Thick N' Quick. I am so used to using lace-weight or maybe sport and the somewhat rare worsted that this stuff felt practically like it was crafting itself. Plus the resulting scarves are soft, plus, and machine washable! I also went against everything that I've heard from fellow crafters in recent memory and couldn't resist the lure of the pretty colors (and price) of the Lion brand homespun. And yes the stuff was quite splitty and not at all my favorite but it gave my 'collection' some nice variety I think.

And lastly while in the midst of all of this I had been taking items in to show or bouncing ideas off of my coworkers. One day as I was talking about the scarves one coworker had a thought, went out to her car, and came back with a knit headband/ear warmer that had a crochet flower on it. It was super cute and I found what was virtually a replica of the same thing on Ravelry. So with the rav instructions and borrowing her object I used the left over yarn from the Thick N' Quick scarves and made my own, pretty dead on, copy. It's just as cute as the original and now I need to make one for myself.

The Christmas Market opens this weekend, and I'll be home on Sunday to teach star folding (and see the family again, see/house a friend, and play my flute in church....going home is dangerous). Here's hoping that I sell some thing and that I can teach the complex folding without loosing or frustrating too many folks!

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Thanks for visiting! Be sure and check out the rest of the Fiber Arts Friday blogs. And I have started a series of posts to celebrate the 25 days of Christmas in Music. Click the link to listen to day 1 or keep an eye here on the blog daily for the rest of the series!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 1, A Christmas Festival

To celebrate Christmas I decided to highlight 25 days of awesome Christmas music. I seem to hear from alot of folks that Christmas music is overplayed and they are tired of it. But personally I can never get enough. This year I started listening a bit towards late October (while working on Christmas crafts of course), which is actually fairly late for me. 

Now if I listened just to radio stations for the entirety of the 2 or 3 months I might agree that the stuff gets old, but I happen to  have a ginormous collection of Christmas music. I think my itunes tells me that I am somewhere between 2 and 3 days worth of Christmas music if I were to listen to it all in one shot. I've also found Spotify to be a great way to discover even more new music. Check the bottom of this post for more information.

In these next 25 days I'm hoping that I'll be able to introduce you to some new seasonal listening options. Enjoy!

Day 1: A Christmas Festival by Leroy Anderson.

 Click play to listen. I choose this video for the audio quality not the images, so don't feel obliged to sit and watch this all, it's a long piece. See the bottom of this post for another listening option.

This piece is a medley of 9 Christmas carols arranged by Leroy Anderson during his time with the Boston Pops and their conductor Arthur Fiedler. The recording I've posted I think may be Fiedler conducting the Boston Pops, but it's youtube so I make no guarantees.

I picked it because I thought it was a great rousing start to Christmas music (and I love Leroy Anderson). The joyful fanfare opens with gusto and leads us across so many different soundscapes and carols it's hard not to smile the whole time. 

Personally I know the piece from playing it (last night) as a band arrangement with my community band. So if you've ever played with a middle of the road to decent group you may very well already know the piece. Or it's also performed often by professional orchestras on holiday concerts. The arrangements are tons of fun. My personal favorite moment, likely tied to being a flute player, is probably minute 7. It makes me think of all the little moving parts that you would find in a holiday toy display :-)

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Carlin's 25 Day's of Christmas Music

Day 1: A Christmas Festival Leroy Anderson	Day 10: ???????	Day 19: ???????
Day 2: ???????	Day 11: ???????	Day 20: ???????
Day 3: ???????	Day 12: ???????	Day 21: ???????
Day 4: ???????	Day 13: ???????	Day 22: ???????
Day 5: ???????	Day 14: ???????	Day 23: ???????
Day 6: ???????	Day 15: ???????	Day 24: ???????
Day 7: ???????	Day 16: ???????	Day 25: ???????
Day 8: ???????	Day 17: ???????
Day 9: ???????	Day 18: ???????

Keep coming back each day as I celebrate the season with new songs each day!

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Spotify is an awesome new free way to experience music. Visit their website to sign up and download the needed software. Once you are set up you can search for songs or artists and stream them on your computer. There are a number of more advanced features available and also some "premium" options that require payment. But I enjoy sticking with the zero dollar option that still allows me to listen to tons of my favorite music plus find and discover tons more music!

This is not an ad, just my opinion about a great little music freebie that would make listening to any of my Christmas music, or any of your own a breeze.

Burned Out

It happens every year. I have all of these grandeous crafting plans but then reality hits and I realize that there is just not enough free time in the day. It's sad.

This year I thought I was being smart. Initially I wasn't going to do much of any holiday specific crafting. I was actually going to buy (or maybe cook) gifts instead. Instead I would get to work on whatever I wanted, mostly projects for myself even.

Before too long this plan morphed so that I would make small things for most people. Then I committed to the charity crafting. I got involved with a spin a bag get a bag commitment. And suddenly the awesome idea of crafting and selling things and even establishing my own little business was firmly in place. Plus a bunch of those items would be perfect for my regular giftees.

And next thing I knew I just spent all of November frantically crafting in every spare moment. The sell/business idea was definitely the bulk of the crazy. I'll be posting tomorrow with all that I did for that. It's pretty awesome and I do hope I succeed. But holy moly I don't know that I want to feel so rushed again in the near future.

Since delivering all of the items to sell on Friday I've been in a bit of a craft coma. I dabbled a bit in a few projects that had been on the back-burner when the business stuff took priority.

Yesterday I finally managed to start looking ahead at the next few weeks and take stock of all of the things that now must be accomplished. I'm trying to keep it lighter now, but alas I think I'm going to need to get my butt back in gear pretty quickly if I'm too accomplish all that needs to be crafted.

First up is sewing my friends wedding veil. I rather stupidly underestimated the time required to hand sew the lace edge. But I think I can still be on track to have it ready to go when we get together this weekend. Now you must excuse me while I go get to work!