Sister Diane is one of my all-time favorite people: she’s a kick-ass wedding officiant, a tireless Church of Craft organizer, a maker of beautiful things, a killer zine writer, a gifted teacher of everything from blogging to button-making, a podcaster extraordinaire, and a lovely friend. And now the woman of a million cool community projects (like Craftypod and Portland Church of Craft) has just unveiled one more… DIY Alert, a brand-new site listing anything and everything crafty going on in Portland, day by day!

Check out the color-coded calendar to see what’s happening, arranged into neatly organized categories: classes, events, craft shows, or out and about (aka “road trip”). And of course, you can also submit your own events for the calendar. So cool.

Diane also offers a super-customized weekly e-mail service: when you register, just check off what crafts you’re interested in (crochet, quilting, sewing, etc.) and ignore the ones you aren’t as crazy about. Your messages will be streamlined and filtered accordingly, so you will get a heads up about things you’re excited about, but you won’t have to hear about stuff you wouldn’t have wanted to do anyway. There’s a free 30-day trial to see if you like it, and after that, it’s super cheap: $5 for 6 months, $10 for a year. If my math is right, that’s 19¢ a week!

Speaking of cool new crafty sites… have you checked out lov.li yet? It’s a one-stop announcement-community art market-blog-meeting people-photo and video posting (whew!) site that’s free to use, created by Portland designer and photographer Patrick Sullivan. You can message friends, sell your work, or set up events through lov.li… and it’s global in scope, so go ahead and stake out your little spot!

You can join local groups (like the bay area crafters or the Paper Diva Exchange in PDX) or find one for devotees of something cool (like Felterrific! or the Purse Posse)… or start your own with a page of photos and blog entries, like the Portland Church of Craft’s.

Here are a few pictures from their last meeting (when 65 people came to crochet with wire and beads!):

…and speaking of Church of Craft, the Los Angeles chapter met yesterday, which was a lot of fun! Getcrafty‘s own Christy Petterson was visiting from Atlanta, so we got to hang out and make felt flowers among the knitting and cross-stitching. It was great to see Brenda, Cathy, Tootie, and Christine, and meet lots of new people too…