Trick or Treat!

Or, more accurately, a card with a trick.



I got it in my head that I wanted to make a Halloween card with a pop-up bat. Except, the only kind of bats I know how to draw are actually bat signals.



Having no immediate need for assistance from the caped crusader, the googling commenced.



I found this great website with directions for making pop-up cards that are surprisingly intricate and elaborate looking for being fairly straight forward to assemble. (check out the Frankenstein card - so great)



So, of course, I made none of them (not even the one with the bat), but I did rip off the instructions for making a mouth.



Hence, the talking jack-o-lantern card. Or at least, the lip synching jack-o-lantern card.



I'm fascinated with the construction of these, so I suspect I'll revisit the pop-up card genre come Thanksgiving or Christmas.



Happy Halloween, y'all!

Oh dear...

Intarsia (in-'tar-se-uh) n. A knitted design resembling a mosaic that is visible from both sides of a fabric. Derived from the German for haha, sucker!

Holy tangled mess of ends to weave in Batman!

Baby's first colorwork is a sight to behold. Actually, it's not so bad - the front side looks okay. But seriously, someone should have warned me about the tangly-ness. And apparently, bobbins - not as optional as I thought.

Step away from the glue gun...

I think I am officially excited about Halloween (which is but 2 weeks away my crafty procrastinators)...

In case anyone is wondering why the kitchen floor didn't get washed last night, it's because I was making these:

Scary skeleton napkin rings using the felt that was left over from the costume I made Maddie wear last year. Vaguely inspired by Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas and the super-great Day of the Dead projects you can find on the Crafty Chica's website. Vague inspiration is as good as it gets around here, since I am generally too lazy to follow directions.

Then, since I was glue gun-happy, I also made some pumpkin ones. And some candy corn ones. I was a little out of control with it all. At present they are operating as tea towel rings, since I don't actually have Halloween-themed napkins, but you get the general idea.

Diablo Baby

Did you know that Saturday was World Card Making Day? No seriously, it was.

So naturally, I celebrated by knitting a hat. I had good intentions about throwing in a bit of card making, but then I was distracted by the hat making. While an extremely quick knit, this project did use up all of the time I had allocated to crafts on Saturday.

Hey - Halloween is rapidly approaching, I needed to get in the spirit a little.

The pattern is the Lil' Devil Baby Hat from K. Schmidt. (There is a grown-up sized pattern avaialble too) I had a skein and a bit of burgundy KnitPicks Essential left over from the Falling Water scarf I made last year. The pattern calls for worsted weight yarn, but two strands of sock yarn held together on US #6's seemed to work just fine. The only other modification I made was to make the ear flaps a bit bigger.

Heh. Devil baby. Perfect for a little one to wear on Halloween, or if you have a friend named Rosemary with a sense of humor, or if you are feeling a little collicky - whatever.

Behold - Sleeves!

After an impressive number of delays, excuses and mistakes, I finally finished my little blue sweater for Miss Erin. I only hope it will still fit her.




The pattern is the Ribbon Edged Cardigan from Debbie Bliss' Special Knits, although obviously, without the ribbon edging.



I made the 3-6 months size (at least I think I did -adjusting for gauge is scary) which took about 2/3 of a ball of Bernat Softee Baby yarn and some little heart-shaped buttons from la petite.



Although it took me forever to finish, the actual knitting went quite quickly on US size 3 & 4 needles.




All in all, I'm quite pleased with it (I'll be more pleased once I have confirmation that it will actually fit around the baby it was intended for). My seams aren't perfect, but they are a huge improvement over Maddie's bear. And this definitely counts as an actual sweater, unlike Miss Chloe's vest which I counted as a sweater despite the critical absence of sleeves.