By now it’s a pretty well-established fact that I love knitting and keep trying to force it on everyone else. Consider it one of my charms. While going through my morning Audrey news search, I found a new knitting book called Knitted Icons: 25 Celebrity Doll Patterns, a crazy cool book that has patterns to make 25 of the most recognizable celebrities, all in vaguely voodoo doll-type form! You can see Audrey Hepburn as the instantly recognizable Holly Golightly to the left for proof that this is, in fact, a really cool book.

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It seems I’ve been remiss in my duties again. A lot of women have been searching for Audrey Hepburn, Holly Golightly, or Breakfast at Tiffany’s sewing patterns so they can make their own costumes for Halloween (or everyday life, because Audrey Hepburn is year-round!), and I just left you to your own devices. I’ve felt guilty, though, and all day yesterday I scoured the Internet for suitable patterns to make you dream Audrey costume. Be prepared and take notes, because there’s a lot here! I’m also going to make this a regular theme, updating once a season for any new patterns, so check back once in a while for new goodies.

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Monkey Do Collective is a cute, crafty website with lots of neat little things to covet. But the one I covet the most, and you probably will too, are these fabulous Audrey Hepburn notecards. They come in sets of five, $8 a set, and are blank on the inside so you can make the cards mean whatever you want, which is nice. You can see different views of the cards here, as well as order some if you must have them.

In what may be the most expensive piece of Audrey Hepburn fan art yet, artist David Smith has made a painting of Audrey as Holly Golightly using 11,000 hand-placed rhinestones. You can see the picture to the left, unfortunately that’s the best I could find so far. But if you’re in the Clydebank (West Dunbartonshire) area, or will be anytime in the next two weeks, then you may want to stop in the Gate Gallery, Drumchapel and see the piece for yourself. If you really like it, you can even bid on it through ArtRunner.com, but bidding starts at £380.00. If you’d like to find out more about the artist and his exhibit, you can go here.

Just a quick reminder to Audrey’s UK fans that “The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-1957″ is now open at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. I first mentioned this exhibit back in March when I first heard about it,* but since then the Museum has put up a special website dedicated to the exhibit. It’s really nice because it has a fraction of the collection up for viewing, and a Givenchy couture gown is one of the featured, a beautiful one at that. From the site you can send e-cards with preselected pictures of couture items, and book tickets if you’re available to go. The coolest part of all is that you can download and print out a pattern for a couture-inspired dress, which you can then make at home! If you’re really into shoes, there is also a competition to send in your original shoe designs for a chance to have your design shown on the V&A website. Intrigued? Click here to see more.

*Reminder: the blue cape Audrey wore in Funny Face is on display at this exhibit.

I like to feature some handmade Audrey Hepburn artwork when I can, especially when it’s made out of pure love for art — and Audrey, of course. Yesterday I was out wandering the city when I came across a small chocolate shop called Chocolate Covered. I went in out of curiosity (and maybe the need for a good single origin chocolate bar) and stumbled across some great Audrey artwork! The owner of Chocolate Covered keeps his hands very full by not only running the shop, but by also making art tins. Half of the walls are covered with tins showcasing every major street in San Francisco, and the other half are tins with just about every celebrity you’d ever expect to find. The tins are covered with beautiful blue-tinted photographs and Japanese paper, and make for very mellow art. I found a few pictures of Audrey on the wall and left my contact information for the owner. He called back today and said that “by far, Audrey Hepburn is the bestseller” out of all his tins. I can see why! He also said that there are usually a lot more than what was up, but he’s been running a little short on time lately and so his Audrey stock is depleted.

Aren’t they lovely? And very reasonably priced, considering all of the handwork that goes into each tin. The prices vary from piece to piece, but the price range is from $15-25. These ship anywhere, as well, so if you’re interested in any of these tins, please click the link above and call the number at the top of the page for more information (I don’t like posting phone numbers here, even if they are business numbers).

An extra feature: the lady who was working at the shop that day also runs a dog rescue charity called Rocket Dog Rescue. I thought it would be nice to mention this because Audrey was a dog lover her whole life and I’m sure she would have approved of this organization and all the hard work they do to keep dogs from being unnecessarily euthanized, and to give every pet a good and loving home.

For those of you who haven’t marked every Audrey release on your calendar, Audrey Hepburn: The Paramount Years is now out! If you remember, there was a video review posted at the beginning of the month which had a good preview of what was in the book. That, along with the Search Inside! feature from Amazon, makes me very excited for this book. And now it’s finally here! Click the link above to buy through Amazon.

Have you ever yearned to have a clawfoot bathtub- turned- couch like Holly Golightly did in Breakfast at Tiffany’s? Now you can have your own, thanks to Flavour Design. Yes, it is a bit pricey, but I’m guessing it takes a lot of work to saw through a cast iron tub and then re-glaze it. If you do have that kind of cash, though, and want to really make your couch/tub Hollyish, simply buy about 3 yards of indigo fabric and about 2 yards of fuchia fabric and recover the cushions that came with this couch. Voila! Instant Holly style.

Last for today, The Sydney Morning Herald has an article about gamines, what exactly makes one, and who is one. Audrey is, of course, heavily featured. For more information about gamines or how to become one yourself, simply click here.

Note: I’m sorry for the gap in news here, but I had one last chance to visit my family for a long time, so I took it. Thanks for being understanding about this, and don’t worry — you didn’t miss any big Audrey news.

When I find it, I like to profile Audrey Hepburn fan artwork because it’s nice to see people still so influenced by her and willing to make her a part of their art world. I also like to find the not so mainstream art, which means things you usually don’t see mass produced and/or for sale everywhere. I came across a place called Etsy again (I say again because it’s been sitting in my bookmarks forever, and I’d forgotten it was there), and on a whim did a search for Audrey’s name. There was one artist’s work which stood out to me, mainly this painting of Holly Golightly knitting from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (left). It’s a limited edition print in a run of 50 on canvas that you can have just on canvas, or stretched on a wooden frame, if you’re more into 3-D wall hangings. I just really like the drawing style in general, so I wanted to share!

The artist, elloh, has another Audrey piece up on the website, this one called Ode to Audrey Hepburn (right). This one is a mixed media and is one-of-a-kind and much more handmade than the prints.

Note: I do not know this artist and this is definitely not my art, so please don’t think I’m giving a friend free publicity. I just really like this!

And speaking of Holly Golightly knitting, I have a Stitch ‘n B—h page-a-day calendar (name edited for those of you at work or under other filters), and this was last Thursday’s page:

Pretty cool, huh? The quote isn’t exactly correct, but it doesn’t even really matter. I was just happy to have some Audrey and some knitting that day.

Some of you may have known that Audrey was a real-life knitter, and she was a good enough knitter to have made herself and husband Mel Ferrer matching sweaters one Christmas. Today’s news brings an article discussing good movies to knit to, and one of Audrey’s films just happened to be mentioned! I don’t even think the author knew about Audrey’s crafty hobby, either. I wanted to mention it because it was cute, and also because I love knitting to movies as well (it helps me justify the fact that I’m sitting there, staring at a screen for two hours if my hands are at least busy).

As an added bonus, I want to help any non-knitters who might be interested in starting on knitting. It’s actually not that hard once you figure out the three basics: casting on, the knit stitch, and the purl stitch. Really, that’s about it, until you start getting into really complicated things like knitting lace and cabling sweaters. To get you started, here’s a link to knittinghelp.com, which has really useful guidelines and videos to help you out, and even includes some easy, free patterns once you get the urge to start showing off your new skills. And if you needed any incentive to learn to knit, there’s a book out called Hip Graphic Knits that’s all about knitting images into projects, and it features a cute cowl-necked sweater with Audrey (as Holly Golightly) on it! On the cover of the book, no less. For that extra Audrey touch, you can knit something and send it to someone in need, from an ill child to suffering children in Afghanistan. If you’d like to learn more about charity knitting, you can go to knittingforcharity.org.