The Art Of Gift Wrapping, by Wanda Wen

This book has nothing to do with knitting, but I came across it and thought you’d enjoy hearing about it.

Using some of the most unconventional items on the planet Wanda wraps gifts. She takes old jewelry leftovers and wraps gifts. Banana leaves, grasses, and bark as well as the traditional papers, ribbons and bows, but in the most untraditional ways. Nothing is safe!

Jazz up your gift wrapping with The Art of Gift Wrapping Wanda’s 50 innovative ideas using organic, unique, and uncommon materials.

Have you ever received a gift wrapped in lichen and moss? Or berries? Or how about topped with a bird’s nest and jelly beans? Go beyond boring and enter the twilight zone with taped candies, left over gauzes, crayon shavings, stamps and even rocks and stones. Very unique. And fun too.

You can get Wanda’s book, The Art of Gift Wrapping, at www.pottercraft.com

There’s a lot to like about the Eloise Bandana from Katryn Seeburger. This cute little colorwork triangle can be worked as a bandana or kerchief size or a bigger shawlette.

It’s worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn so you can use whatever yarn you have in your stash and just make it as big as you can (since it is worked from the bottom up).

You can see the two sizes from the photo, and also two colorwork options: strawberries and lily of the valley.

But that’s not all the choices you have. In fact, there are 34 different charts you can choose from to knit onto your project. Some of the options include happy faces, a lobster, a pumpkin, a snail and a butterfly. There are cherries, peaches, tomatoes and radishes.

There’s even a blank square you can use to draw your own little design if you want to use something else. Or keep it blank and make it a plain checkerboard design.

And while both of these shawls use the same icons throughout, you could also use different designs throughout if you want. Say a fall version with a bat, pumpkin, leaf and acorn, or a summer beach theme with sailboat, fish, lobster and a bird? I keep suggesting four different icons because the larger size has four rows of squares, but the smaller has three, so you could do stripes of the same icon or alternate a couple of different ones, whatever you like.

Look through the finished projects on the Ravelry project page to see lots of different options, from rows to individual icons. There are also some projects that are smaller than the suggested size to make a smaller bandana. You could also keep going a make a bigger shawl working increases in the same way as you have been going.

Check out all the details and grab a copy of the pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Katryn Seeburger]

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