DIY Life: Harry Potter crafts, Kanzashi, etc.

I've been sitting on this for a few weeks...

I'm writing for DIY Life now. I'll be posting on general craft and DIY topics, but most specifically on knitting and crochet. (If you click that link, you can see a picture of the pitcher I use for iced tea and Kool-Aid. It came from Target earlier this summer....)

A post that I'm particularly proud of went up today: Pottercraft. Check it out!

That post just about ate my brain. What happened was that I found a bunch of things myself, with the help of Flickr and Wists and the Craftster search function and so on, along with some patterns I already knew of. Then I found out that most of that material was completely obviated by the Leaky Cauldron and Freshisle Fibers sites, and could be condensed to two paragraphs. There was much gnashing of teeth & I was really mentally exhausted. I feel like I approached the topic backwards, and could have saved myself a lot of time if I'd looked to see if the Leaky Cauldron had a craft area first. They've gone around the internet asking almost anyone who comes up with an original pattern or way to duplicate a Potterverse item if they can use the pattern on their site.

I don't really do Harry Potter-inspired crafts, but I like the books and I have a lot of friends who are deeply into that fandom, and I've been aware that stuff is going on. One thing I didn't put in the post was about a woman in the UK who was trying to make over her wheelchair for book-release night; I left it out because she hadn't finished the project yet.

Another post I wrote this week was on kanzashi, which ppl might like. I actually want to review two books that do really interesting things with kanzashi forms (& other traditional Japanese craft stuff), but I think I will space out the Japanese content a little. Kanzashi are the hair ornaments associated with kimono - there are metal ones that tinkle, but I wrote about hana kanzashi, which are detailed flowers made of fabric.