craftfetish: our latest crafty obsessions

Happy Birthday Emily!

2008-02-07T17:52:00.000-05:00

Is it barbecue season yet? We had some unseasonably warm weather in Kentucky this week (and some scary @ss tornadoes, but fortunately I missed the worst of those). Makes one want to sit around in the backyard, drinkin' beer, eatin' 'shmallows.

mmm...'smallows.

Which brings us to the birthday bit. My dear sister has an outdoor fire pit, which is a lovely thing to sit around on warm, tornado-free evenings. And for several years since she got it, she has had marshmallow roasting sticks on her Christmas list. (If your birthday is in February, don't think I'm not pulling out the same list I used in December)

So, roasting sticks it is. And because I can't help myself, of course I had to make them.

Et voila! Personalized 'shmallow roasters:

Because you can't have anyone trying to steal your perfectly toasted 'shmallows. And you know, some for guests:

They are made of salt dough (for which there are loads of recipes online - take your pick), acrylic paint and recycled coat hangers (for the holding of the 'smallows - not pictured). I'm not entirely sure how food-safe recycled coat hangers are, but meh, we used to use sticks we found on the ground. These are funnier.

The idea is from FamilyFun.com - I stuck with their 'shmallow and hot dog designs, but you could certainly branch out. The possibilities are limited only by your sculpting abilities, or possibly your sculpting abilities and your supply of old coat hangers.

Baby Girl is not happy

2008-01-31T12:13:00.000-05:00

Forgive the camera phone picture, but I wanted to share Miss Eleanor's reaction to my baby hat and gratuitous ear research.

I don't think she's too thrilled about the goofy ears. Perhaps she would have preferred a larger ear to hat ratio. The good news is that she should outgrow the hat pretty soon. The bad news is that Aunt Sarah's obsession with knitting all things ridiculous probably won't be something I outgrow.

Good things she's cute. She can pull off goofy. In a couple of years, we'll have to see how she does with tiny lobster claw mittens.

For the moment though, she is probably safe. I am taking a sabatical from my goofy baby hat research to work on some mittens for myself. I'm finally getting around to the Fetching mittens I intended to make last winter to go with my Fetching hat.

Speaking of Cuteness Quotients...

2008-01-24T10:34:00.000-05:00

Check out Miss Eleanor modeling her blue argyle sweater:

Still a little big on her, but she's pretty freakin' cute no matter what you put on her. My gauge and Debbie Bliss' gauge didn't quite match up, so I think (I think) this is size 3-6 months. And my sweet niece is only six weeks old, so I guess big is a good thing at this point.

Further Research

2008-01-21T13:48:00.000-05:00

Previously on craftfetish, we explored the scientific properties of baby hat cuteness as it relates to the addition of gratuitous ears.

Holding true to the scientific method, we initiated a series of experiments to identify the ideal mathematical ratio between baby hat size and gratuitous ears.

We posit that cuteness will be maximized at extreme values of the gratuitous ear ratio - basically that very small and very large ears are friggin' hilarious.

(we further posit that if I inject enough scientific jargon into this posting, no one will notice that it has taken me two weeks to knit a simple baby hat)

Experiment One: A hat for Baby Christopher employed an ear to baby hat ratio of 1:3.

Next, we would need to determine how variations in the ear:hat ratio would impact the overall cuteness quotient for the hat. Which brings us to the current phase of our research.

Experiment Two: A hat for Baby Eleanor

(I have previously knit a tiny orange hat for my niece Eleanor using the same Cascade Fixation yarn that I used to make a pair of socks for her birthmom. That was back when we thought she was going to be a boy, hence the gender neutral orange.

Now she can have a pink hat too. Okay, back to science...)

For our baseline cuteness quotient, let us consider the hat sans ears:

And now to experimentally manipulate the ear:hat ratio...

For consistency, we employed the same baby hat ear technology as in Experiment One:

Cast on 20 stitches. Decrease one stitch at each end of every knit row until 10 or 12 stitches remain (whenever they seem tall enough) and bind off. This gives you a little trapezoid. Allow the cast on edge to curl in on itself and stitch the top and sides of the trapezoid to the hat in a c-shape.

Because my gauge for the Cascade Fixation was smaller, I needed to cast on 84 stitches for this baby hat.

Ergo, our new ear to baby hat ratio is 20:84, or about 1:4.

We'll employ a survey instrument to determine the relative impact of this new, smaller ear to hat ratio on the underlying cuteness quotient. (Translation: leave us a comment as to which you prefer)

Stay tuned for future experiments.

Math and stuff

2008-01-08T21:35:00.000-05:00

I've decided to research the ideal mathematical ratio between baby hat size and gratuitous ears for maximization of hand knit baby cuteness.

Why? No good reason really, other than I enjoy employing the scientific method to urgent matters such as this one. And I worry that babies may be suffering the ill effects of goofy baby hats that don't maximize their cute potential. And we can't have that.

My hypothesis is that similar priniciples of cuteness apply to both goofy hand knit baby animal hats and bona fide baby animals. (for the theoretical framework of baby animal cuteness, please consider the fine body of research at cute overload)

Basically, we posit that baby hats with ears are adorable. And very large or very small ears are even more so. But these assumptions must be validated. Ergo...

Experiment one: A hat for Baby Christopher

For the hat itself, I boosted the pattern for the baby duck hat I made for Baby Aubrey, only, you know, without the duck bill. Using 2 strands (of my never ending supply of) Bernat Softee Baby held together, I cast on 60 stitches.

For each ear, I cast on 20 stitches. For research purposes, we'll call this an ear to baby hat ratio of 20:60, or 1:3.

Should you need to make some ears:

Cast on 20 stitches

Purl across

K2Tog K16 SSK (18 stitches)

Purl across

K2Tog K14 SSK (16 stitches)

Purl across

K2Tog K12 SSK (14 stitches)

Then, they seemed about tall enough, so I sped up the decreasing plan:

P2Tog K10 P2Tog (12 stitches)

Bind off (I K2Tog and the beginning and end of this row too as I was binding off, but I'm not sure if that really makes a difference)

Let them curl in on themselves and attach to the hat in a C-shape. Voila - ears. Good stuff.

We'll have to see how increasing or decreasing the ear to baby hat ratio impact the cuteness factor.

Yay! Science.

Holiday Walk of Shame

2008-01-02T15:20:00.000-05:00

Okay, I was so distracted by the arrival of my beautiful and perfect niece that I did very little crafting this holiday season... and even less photographing of the crafting that did occur... and even less blogging of the few photographs of the tiny amount of crafting. I suck.

My shame is only compounded by the fact that, even with a newborn, all of my sister's Christmas cards were still homemade. Sigh, I made one stinkin' card:

Outside based on supplies from one of Emily's card swaps. She sent me all of the ingredients. I'm still exploring the wonderful world of pop-ups, so I put a tree on the inside:

The color was a bit nicer on the original, but you get the idea.

I did virtually no holiday baking this year. I caught a bad cold (excuses excuses) the week before Christmas, so I'm not sure anyone would have wanted anything I cooked anyway, but before that all I managed was a single batch of porn star cookies:

I try to keep this a PG-13 website, so I'll spare you the cookies with ball gags in their mouths. (can't wait to see what sort of google traffic we get now that I have typed that - ick) Sadly, my limited cookie decorating skills preclude them from getting too racy. Chaps are about all I can make.

The last of my conscience clearing pre-holiday crafting documentation was a teeny baby sweater. Alas, I only have in-progress pictures. Hopefully Miss Eleanor will be kind enough to model it one of these days. This is the almost finished knitting shot:

and the Sarah's first attempt at intarsia shot:

Can you tell I started this back when we thought she was going to be a boy? I found a little yellow dress, so hopefully she'll just look preppy in the completed ensemble.

It is a Debbie Bliss pattern from Special Knits. I used Bernat Baby Softee, because frankly, I have a boatload of it.

And this concludes our guilty conscience belated holiday retrospective. May 2008 be a year of crafty goodness and more timely updates.

Happy New Year y'all!

Introducing Eleanor!

2007-12-14T11:54:00.000-05:00

Now hang on a second, I thought you said you were getting a nephew. Apparently ultrasounds can be decieving, as I now have the most beautiful and perfect niece.

This is Miss Eleanor:

She was born December the 4th, but I have been too busy staring at her photos and pestering Emily to take more pictures to do much crafting or blogging. But don't worry - the deluge of tiny pink craftiness should commence soon, I assure you.

(possibly starting with a teeny pink bow to girly up that dinosaur onesie - whatcha think?)

But, baby Eleanor does come with a little craftiness already - she was kind enough to model her tiny orange hat before leaving the hospital. I apologize for the blurry photo, but you hate to blind the poor thing with flash bulbs on her first day. If you'll notice in the background, her birth mom is sporting the matching socks I made for her. Love it!

You can't see with all of the tiny hat photos, but she has the cutest little head full of super dark hair. I confess, the urge to give her a baby faux hawk is strong. Perhaps it is for the best that she lives 400 miles away from her Aunt Sarah.

Time is running out!

2007-12-13T10:23:00.000-05:00

How's that for pressure? The holiday season is in full swing. If you were planning to make Hanukkah gifts, you're already behind.

You have a week and a half to go for Christmas - if you were planning on homemade gifts, you should be stockpiling caffeine at this point for the inevitable all-nighters.

And if you were planning to purchase gifts, you still need to get a move on - today is the last day for regular shipping with most online stores - including ours.

'Tis the Season to Make Excuses

2007-12-02T20:58:00.000-05:00

Fa la la la la la la la la

One more cookie won't hurt...

They'll never know that it's a re-gift...

Everyone's so busy - I can go weeks without posting and neglect to photograph my finished projects...

(are you buying this?)

strums fingers together a la Montgomery Burns

Ex-cellent

Over Thanksgiving, I finished up making the little orange hat for my nephew-to-be that matches the socks I made for his birthmother. But I forgot to take a picture, so I'll just have to try for a live-action shot after he gets here.

And as the other projects I'm working on are still in progress (what looming holiday deadlines?), how about some more onesies?

They come in a five-pack you know:

Monkey

(for future reference, freezer paper stencils don't stick that well to areas you have already painted, you may need to clean up the monkey's face a little)

Squirrelly Baby

RAWR!!

crap, can't think of another stencil to make, okay how about a Star

For the crafty baby

2007-11-16T12:01:00.000-05:00

Surely if Aunt Sarah rubs off on this impending arrival at all, the kid's first words will be delivered with an eyeroll and dramatic sigh. Kind of like the fairies in Sleeping Beauty, my gift to the baby will be sarcasm.

Or possibly, sarcasm and a love of playing with scissors and glue.

To get him started on both counts, the latest in high fashion freezer paper stenciled baby snarkiness:

suck it

Birth Mom Socks!

2007-11-06T17:13:00.000-05:00

I don't think that I have previously mentioned that I am waiting to adopt a niece or nephew. Or more accurately, my (occasional co-blogger) sister and brother-in-law are waiting to adopt a baby and I am way WAY WAYexcited about becoming an aunt.

Months ago, a poster on the knittyboard suggested handknit socks as a gift for a potential birth mom. I thought this was a fantastic idea - although I had never made socks before. My inaugural (okay, practice) socks went to my sister - I didn't want to mess up the birthmom ones. Then, I started to make these:

And now, finally, I have finished them. (Please note the fancy pants sock blockers made from a clearanced out Halloween placemat)

In the meantime, my sister and brother-in-law have matched with a potential birthmom!!! And she is due in the next few weeks!!! Yay!!! Baby!!!

It is pretty clear what our family is going to be grateful for this year at Thanksgiving. The nature of adoption means that nothing is certain until everything is finalized, but as you can see, I'm completely over the moon with excitement.

Please keep this amazing woman, this little baby and our family in your thoughts and prayers in the coming weeks.

How do you thank someone for such an awesome gift? Well, I decided to go with socks. And while I realize that socks could never compare to the gift of a baby, I did have to learn the kitchener stitch in order to make them. Surely that counts for something, right? (no? damn)

The crafty details:

These are Cascade Fixation Ankle Socks made with TurtleGirl's pattern. I used US #2 needles and cast on 62 stitches. I used exactly one ball of orange and maybe 1/3 of a ball of the pink.

I have another ball of orange that is destined to be a matching hat for the little one, but I'm not done yet. Stay tuned - I suspect there will be a lot of baby knitting in my future.

Trick or Treat!

2007-10-28T21:15:00.000-04:00

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...

2007-10-26T16:46:00.000-04:00

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...

2007-10-17T14:47:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-09T10:05:00.001-04:00

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!

2007-10-02T14:12:00.000-04:00

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.

Vicarious Card Swapping, Part 2

2007-09-26T16:21:00.000-04:00

I got a little glue stick crazy this weekend with all of the fun cardmaking kits my sister sent me. Of course the more I made, the worse I got about following directions, as evidenced by this Halloween card and Christmas card.

For the Halloween card, things started out okay. It was a paper pieced pumpkin and I figured out the assembly process alright. But then I decided that I didn't like the color of the stem that was provided. Or at least I didn't like the color of the stem with the background paper.

So I traced the stem onto a different green. Then the inside of the card read "cute as a pumpkin" or something like that. Sweet, but not a sentiment I am likely to mail out to anyone. So I used another block of the nouveau green to cover it up on the inside. Then I trimmed a bit of the background paper off the front with the hopes of making the inside look on purpose (rather than like I had glued a sheet of paper on top of a message I didn't like).

And because somethings never change, even when I'm given all of the necessary materials and I have a giant tote filled with legitimate scrapbooking supplies, I can't help but improvise. Remember the flip flop layout? Well, the other one provided just the right touch of dimension to this card.

Check it - 3D pumpkin!

The same instruction sheet also had a mock up for this Christmas card. But because I just can't help myself, and I have a brand new crimper, I felt like the green background really needed to be a crimped green background. Texture is very important in cardmaking you know (or at least that's the story I'm going with).

Sadly if you crimp the paper it no longer goes all the way to the paper edge like it did when it was flat - so you have to trim it a bit to make it look like that was on purpose. And instead of a swirly, freehand approach, I wanted to attach my ribbon in a line. I like lines.

Then I could carry the line around to the inside of the card. See? Fancy.

Of course, the ribbon didn't really stick to the glue or behave in an appropriate manner of any sort, so I ended up taping it down underneath one of the gold boxes. Don't tell anyone, but this is probably not an acid-free, archival-quality solution. But it did help me to liberate my glue covered fingers from the uncooperative ribbon.

And the finished project...

I realize that the crimping doesn't show up in the photo, but it's there, I promise.

Vicarious Card Swapping, Part 1

2007-09-24T14:30:00.001-04:00

This is a pretty good scam - my sister (and occasional co-blogger) frequently organizes/participates in card swaps at her local scrapbooking store. I guess everyone brings enough materials that everybody can trying making everyone else's cards.

Or if you live in another state (like me), and someone doesn't show up for the swap, you get an envelope full of materials in the mail without having to make any effort whatsoever. See? Told you it was a good scam.

Em saved me the extra kits and mailed them down with photocopies of her finished cards.

I went on a cutting and pasting binge over the weekend. See? (I was out of control with the new camera battery, so this may end up being 2 posts)

I liked this baby card kit - in part because I am not any good with stamping, or inking, or tearing edges, or any of the other fancy things happening on the center panel of this one.

But conveniently, the heavy lifting was already done for me. I also liked that there seemed to be enough ingredients for a second card.

I didn't totally follow how this car card was constructed based on the photocopies, so I kind of made it up.

I also wasn't that sure on the intent - at first I was thinking the race cars were some sort of "I'm in such a rush, just a quick note to say hello" kind of greeting. But then I thought it would be kind of crappy if you spent so much time handcrafting cards that you didn't have time to keep in touch with your friends (not to say I haven't done it, I just think you have to be more subtle about it).

Conveniently, I find I have need for a "thanks for helping me replace my hubcaps after some @sshole stole them off my car in broad daylight while I was at work" greeting card this week. So that's what this will be.

Aaargh! No Batteries

2007-09-21T16:16:00.001-04:00

Dang it. Of course the batteries in my camera would be dead when I have socky progress and card-making goodness to show you.

Sorry - stay tuned!

New Toys and New Projects

2007-09-12T12:11:00.000-04:00

My birthday was last week and I scored some fantastic new crafty toys. (I also scored tickets to go see Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello - thanks Mom & Dad!) Presents totally rule.

Check out the adorable stickers my friend Tammy sent:

So perfect for Maddie's puppy scrapbook. See the one of the little devil with the sock in its mouth? Doesn't it look like devil Maddie?

(Although Maddie seems to favor chewing on my new rug to chewing on socks)

And holy crap, look at the crapper keeper, I mean scrapping tote my sister and brother-in-law gave me! It's friggin' huge. The box was ginormous. So fun.

As if that weren't enough, when you opened it up, there was all this too:

Honest to God scrapping supplies - not flip flops and whatever else I usually decide to chop up and glue to a page. I'm so fancy I can hardly stand myself. The nice thing is that now I can keep my toys some place accessible, yet still packed and out of the way if I have people over. (quite the upgrade from my current strategy of having papers and markers and gluesticks exploding all over my bedroom)

I keep putting all of my toys inside and the pulling them out and rearranging them and putting them back inside. It's like an anal-retentive field day.

As for actual crafting, I've started to work on some Cascade Fixation ankle socks designed by the lovely Turtlegirl. Since I went with solid colors instead of self-striping yarn, I thought they wanted a bit of a contrast color for the heel and toe. So, pink and orange it is.

All I wanted was to buy some buttons

2007-09-07T16:33:00.000-04:00

Grr. Bad customer service.

Slow but sure, I've made some progress on my ribbon-edged baby cardigan. This is the vestiness portion. There is some sleeve action as well, but they are still on the needles.

I thought that I would take the vesty part to the "world's largest button and fabric store" to buy some buttons, now that I know how big my buttonholes will be. Conveniently, the "world's largest button and fabric store" is in downtown Louisville and just a few blocks from my office.

I wanted to get some fancy, girly buttons since I'm making this for a fancy, girly baby. It is already blue so I thought we could hearts and flowers it up a bit. (I first met the baby in question when she was about 4 hours old. Somehow she already had a teeny pink bow in her hair. See what I mean? Fancy and girly)

The button store in question closes at 5:30 on weeknights. So I go barreling out of work at about 5:04 and arrive at the store at no later than quarter after.

Now, I've worked retail. I know how badly you want to be able to actually close the store at the time posted in the window. I know how annoying it is when you have that one customer who lingers long past the posted closing time. So I firmly intended to be in and out in 10 minutes.

I'm not in the store 3 minutes when they make the "(insert name of store) will be closing in five minutes, please complete your shopping and proceed to the registers" announcement.

Then, they shut off all of the lights in the button section where I'm standing. Immediately. After saying you have five minutes, I'm standing in the dark. I find what looks to be little pearl buttons of the correct size and make my way to the register.

Sarah's total time in the store: less than 5 minutes. Actual time: about 5:20. When I get to the cash register, where the lights are still on, I see that the buttons I've grabbed are actually a pale lavender and not the white that I thought.

Grr. I leave the stupid purple buttons on the counter and leave.

Forget this. I'll go to JoAnn's. I tried to support my local craft shops, but this is not the first time I have had terrible service at this particular store. So screw 'em. Clearly they don't need my business. So they won't be getting it anymore.

Okay. End of venting. I need to get back to the sleeve-making.

I heart the internet

2007-08-28T09:19:00.000-04:00

Seriously, the internet rules. Lookit what I learned to make:

(I made the necklace display. I cannot take credit for the necklace - it was made by the lovely Ms. Vanda at paraphernalia. Isn't it so great though?)

Admittedly, you can purchase such things - and if you make a lot of jewelry, you probably should. But if you are more of the crafty generalist and just need the occasional snapshot for your etsy shop or blog, it's way easy to make your own.

In my case, my officemate was organizing a silent auction for an alumni fundraiser. She was looking for a way to showcase some of the donated jewelry so that it wasn't just laying on the table looking ordinary and not attracting any bids.

She didn't have time left to order a pre-made display, so I found down a DIY version on the internet. This would be really pretty if you covered your cardboard with imitation leather the way they did in the instructions. But if your fundraiser is tomorrow, you can also MacGuyver one of these together with some recycled office supplies (a legal size file folder and spare rubber band if you were wondering).

Now with 20% more knitting

2007-08-22T11:08:00.000-04:00

Okay, it has been a while, but I'm back now. No more letting work get in the way of my craftiness. That just won't do.

I finished my very first pair of socks. Yay! Socks!

There is a bit of a learning curve evident in them, but they are definitely socks. I was pleased that they are both the same size and that they fit on to adult sized feet. I'm calling it a win.

And now I see how so many knitters become obsessed with making socks. (I think there must also be a learning curve associated with taking a picture of socks on your own feet. Or else I really need to do something about my cankles)

To recap, these are Spiral Eyelet Socks in Lana Grossa Meilenweit Colortweed on size 2 DPNs. The yarn was originally a prize from the lovely knottygnome, it just took me almost a year to work up the courage to use it.

And, for some bonus knitting footage, check out the lovely Miss Aubrey modeling her duck hat and feet:

Bad timing that she grew into them during a record heat wave, but hopefully they will still fit in a few more months when hats are more seasonably appropriate. (oh how nice hat weather sounds about now) My baby garment growth trajectory extrapolation skills (or whatever) may still need some tweaking. But damn she looks cute (and boy will she be pissed when she grows up and finds these pictures).

heh. duck hat.

Bad blogger, no biscuit

2007-08-01T16:46:00.000-04:00

Alas, the socks I have been working on are still only partially knit. Sorry to all for the lack of updates, but I've been in home improvement mode and it is eating in to my craft time.

I had the brilliant idea to replace all my carpeting with wood laminate. Actually, that idea was okay. It was the idea that I could install it myself where things took a turn for the sucktastic.

Like any good home improvement project, this one has involved more time, more mess, more money and more trips to Lowes that I anticipated. I'm almost done though. I still have a bit of shoe molding to install, and then it is back to the craftiness. (or possibly off to the chiropractor and then back to the craftiness)

The progress so far:

BEFORE

Miss Madeline and the old carpeting. Well, the portion of the carpeting that she didn't chew up during her puppyhood.

AFTER

Poor Mads. She can't figure out why her butt keeps sliding when she sits on the new floors, but I like 'em.

New Shirtz !!!!11!!OMGponies!!!11111!

2007-07-20T10:26:00.000-04:00

Git ur geek on with our new shirtz. A lil sum sum for teh crafty bloggers.

i can has sock yarn? (yes, u can has more sock yarn)

While it is distinctly possible that I am the only one who finds me funny, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, start here. Then go here. Then be ashamed that you wasted 2 hours looking at stupid pictures of kittehs at work.

Then, go buy some shirts, because I'm going to get fired if I keep looking at stupid pictures of kittehs at work.

Christmas in July sucks

2007-07-13T10:38:00.000-04:00

Look what arrived on my doorstep yesterday:

This was the box of toys and blankets that I had shipped in early December for the GetCrafty Handmade Holiday project.

These guys should have been delivered to Project Night Night, but alas, they have apparenly been languishing in a PO Box somewhere for 6 months.

Not exactly the Christmas in July surprise I was hoping for. Oh well, I guess I'll send them along to Project Night Night direct.

In other news, check it out:

A sock! That looks like a sock! Of course, now it needs a friend, but I'll get there. I should have a little free time between now and when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out next weekend.

This tastes...purple

2007-07-12T15:57:00.000-04:00

Generally speaking, Emily is way better at creating a themed event than I am.

But I think I gave her a run for her money last night: I give you the first annual purple dinner!

Wait, The First Annual Purple Dinner! (yes, I think it's much better in purple font)

The absurdity began over the weekend at the Farmer's Market. One of the stalls was selling purple beans. They are like green beans, only purple. And then they turn green when you cook them. (I'm sorry - color changing vegetables? where were these when I was a kid?) So much fun.

Later, I was shopping for potatoes, I decided to get (purply red skin potatoes instead of regular ones because I thought they looked nicer with my beans. (don't question the logic). Finally, I came to a stall that had purple bell peppers, at which point I was officially out of control and invited my friends over for purple dinner.

And what kind of theme would it be without appropriate decor?

Earlier in the week, my friend Lizzie sent me this adorable pad of paper. It's actually made from recycled elephant poop (no, seriously check it out). My favorite part is that it is apparently acid-free and suitable for scrapbooking. They even sell poop paper in 12x12 sheets and cardstocks just for crafters. I think it is my favorite new craft supply. But for our immediate need, see how some of the papers are purple? Can you say placecards? So great.

In the category of slightly less funny, but still pretty I picked up a purple flower at the Farmer's Market. Conveniently I already had a purple bud vase.

And you can't talk about a dinner party without talking about dinner. Voila, the purple dinner menu:

(Purple) red skin potatoes roasted with butter and herbs and a bit of purple basil.

Roasted eggplant with yellow squash and purple peppers.

Purple green beans.

Purple chicken (more or less coq au vin without the tomatoes, the red wine turns it a lovely lavender).

(Purple) red leaf lettuce and mixed greens salad, with (purple) blueberries.

And for dessert, pound cake topped with (purple) blackberries.

Once my friends came over, I forgot to take pictures of the finished products so you'll have to forgive me for the photos of the leftovers I packed for lunch today.

I must say that for such a ridiculous exercise, it all came out quite tasty. I'll have to see what kind of beating a dead horse dinner party I can host next.

Babies!

2007-07-06T16:02:00.000-04:00

Here are two of my projects of late. I was slow to post as I am big on karma and superstition.

Baby One. This is the shower invite for the recipient of the fab-u Duck Hat and Feet.

Yes...I had help with the sewing. But c'mon... there were 55 of them! I also conveniently slammed my thumb into my door the day we assembled them so I was only able to color most of that day. As I am obsessed with theme.... I used the same image to make candy bar wrappers and stamped the front of all of the gift bags. I remembered to pack four different shades of pink soda into my car... and forgot my camera so you just need to trust that the prizes and favors actually happened!

Baby Two. Here is where the superstition comes in... a dear friend of mine adopted her daughter from Guatemala. As an adoptive-mom-to-be, or "waiting mom" for those of you hip to the lingo... I simply HAD to produce the BEST baby gift ever for a fellow a-mommy. BUT...we had to wait and wait and wait for her travel clearance so I didn't want to post these until they were home. They have now been a family of three for two full weeks. So here is part of the baby book I scrapped for her...

Here is perhaps my finest moment as a scrapbooker.... I hand created the flag of Guatemala! Seriously - google all ya want....there is not a 12x12 flag of Guatemala! So the first few pages of her book are the colors from the flag, with country facts from the year she was born as accents. Plenty of pages to scrap their travels. The pages are mostly blank so mom and dad can fill them in. I also threw in the bag blank journaling boxes, pens, tape runner, etc for them to customize at will!

Here is a page with envelopes for her first tooth and first haircut. I apologize for the glare... after my prowess with the flag of Guatemala I just couldn't chance fingerprints!!!

And a page for milestones and firsts. These are mostly blank so their family firsts would have a special spot. The book has a full montage of pages for baptism, the nursery, a shower, first friends, family, etc. that are standard to a baby book. There are also some pages that are a-specific like a foster family page and a "while we waited for you" page. But adoption or not.... this was a SUPER FUN project for any new child as the scrapbook post binding lets you add or subtract from the book as you like or change the order. We'll see if I muster the energy to make more baby books.....

A few hits and one major miss

2007-07-05T09:47:00.000-04:00

(insert excuses for my lack of knitting progress here - I won't bore you with my need to re-read books 1-6 before the 7th Harry Potter comes out later this month - I'm such a nerd)

I have knocked out a couple of quick projects though. First the successes...

Quickie Head Band

I'm not sure where I got this ribbon, I'm sure it was tied to something. But for the past few weeks it has been sitting on top of my desk. I keep looking at it and thinking it would make a good headband. Finally got around to actually making said headband.

Ingredients: length of ribbon that will more or less fit around your head and one generic hair elastic.

I started out thinking I would measure things. My hair elastic was about 2.5 inches unstretched, so I would subtract 3 inches from the circumfrence of my head to cut my ribbon.

But that just seemed too fussy, so I sewed up one side, wrapped it around my head and winged it. If I knew how to take a photo of the top of my head (and don't think I didn't try), I could show you that we're calling this project a success. But, you'll just have to trust me.

Running Scrapbook Revisited

I had been making a scrapbook for the half marathon I "ran" back in April, but since I hadn't made much progress on it since the race. Much like my training regimen, it was pretty much shelved.

I pulled it back out yesterday and knocked out a couple of pages. I also figured out the cover.

I had purchased this album way back thinking that the little window would be a cool place to affix my finisher medal. But when I actually got the thing, the way it hung off the ribbon was the wrong dimensions for the window. So I had to improvise a bit.

I took the medal off the ribbon and just hot glued it in front of the ribbon. Otherwise, the red really wouldn't have shown up. Hopefully no one will notice that it isn't really hanging from the ribbon.

And for more MacGuyver-esque scrapbooking, I made these pages of our adoring fans.

The background papers are actually 6x8 sheets spliced together to make an 8x8 page. I needed something to cover the line where the papers switch.

Enter the flip flop.

Emily and her husband Chris - who both friggin' rule by the way - not only drove all the way to Kentucky to cheer me on during the race, but brought me a fun pedicure kit for afterwards when my feet were sore.

Although I have used most of it for its intended purpose, the kit came with those little disposable flip flops that they give you at the nail salon. Well, at my house I can just wear regular flip flops, which leaves these guys open for crafting.

Doesn't it look like it was meant to be scrapbooking supplies?

The flowers came from the signs that Emily made for me (I love that I have a crafty sister - ours were the fanciest signs on the whole route). You can see them in the finished pages...

So, I'm calling those the "hits." Which brings us to one serious "miss"

Gardening Disaster

This year, I decided to "garden" by purchasing two already planted flower boxes for my balcony. How could I mess this up - someone has already done all of the actual gardening for me?

Turns out, I can still totally mess that up. One flower box was doing just fine.

Almost everything had died in the other.

So, I decided to dig up some of the petunias from one box and move them to the other, to even things out a bit.

Oops.

That would be my downstairs neighbor's patio. That would also be the flower box that was alive. Of course the one where I had killed nearly everything wasn't the one to fall to its doom. Nope, all of the healthy, pretty flowers. Sigh.

Wait, those aren't socks... baking experiments

2007-06-25T10:31:00.000-04:00

Dear sock yarn,

I owe you an apology. My socks should have been finished a long time ago. But a crazy couple of weeks at work and a great big pile of indulgent summer reading have eaten up much of my free time. (and don't get me started on the little dog who steals knitting and drops stitches)

I have managed to get a bit of baking in - though with varying degrees of success.

Last week, I improvised a recipe based on one I found in The Garden of Vegan. What started as a fairly simple no-bake cookie became no-bake Chocolate-Cranberry-Mudslide cookies. I think I made about 11 substitutions too many (particularly since there were only about 4 ingredients). Should you get it in your head to make some no-bake cookies, only you are out of brown sugar, so you decide to use maple syrup and a bit more oatmeal, and you don't have chocolate chips but they say you can susbtitute raisins, but those are practically the same as cranberries, and then you think you might miss the chocolate, so you add some cocoa, and since it will be chocolatey, maybe you could use a bit of mudslide mix as a liquid sweetener, and you're measurements are totally out the window now so just add some peanut butter to make sure it holds together... seriously - step away from the kitchen. This is what happens:

They were not good. Sometimes when you are craving junk food and you really want a Blizzard, it is probably better to just get in the car and drive to Dairy Queen. Lesson learned.

This weekend offered a slightly more successful baking endeavor: a lemon raspberry cake. Although I'm thinking it needs a better name than that. Cake seems fancier if you call it a gateau or a torte or something pretentious like that.

My friend Kim had a baby last week (little Erin, who has adorable dimples, but alas, no blue cardigan, because like the socks, I haven't finished it either). So, she and her husband decided to have a cookout this weekend. I'm sorry, what?!? You gave birth 4 days ago, so now you think you should clean your house and cook dinner for people? nuts I say. nuts!

So, I offered to bring dessert. And since I didn't give birth 4 days ago, I thought the least I could do was actually make said dessert.

Pictorial recipe! fun stuff.

Step one: gather your ingredients. If you don't have the ingredients, you should go buy them or make something else. You cannot ask anyone else to eat no-bake Chocolate-Cranberry-Mudslide cookies.

I'm a big cheater, so I started with white cake from a mix. You just need to make sure it is an "add water, eggs and oil" type of cake mix and not a "just add eggs" or something mix.

Step two: Substitute lemon juice for about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of the water. If you were willing to squeeze and zest a fresh lemon, you could use a bit less. If you're using the bottle of concentrate like me, use a bit more.

Add water until you get the amount called for on the package. If you use a big measuring cup, there's less math.

Step three: Bake the cake according to the package directions. If you wanted to be really fancy, you could divide each layer in half and alternate between jam and frosting, so you have a 4 layer cake. If you are already running late for the cookout, 2 layers is fine.

Step four: Spread raspberry jam on one cake. I like to use the spoonable fruit-type product with little or no sugar added, because this is pretty sweet already. Spread a bit of whipped frosting (yeah, it's from a tub) on the other half.

Step five: Make a sammich.

Step six: Cover the outside with more whipped frosting. Then add a bunch of fresh raspberries. I think fresh berries are the secret to the dessert on the cover of every summer issue of Good Housekeeping ever published. But they're on to something - if you camouflage the frosting with fruit you don't ever have to learn how Martha Stewart makes her cakes so smooth and perfect.

Voila! Cake...or gateau...or whatever. This one honestly tastes good. I promise.

If you happened to get the inaugural issue of the craftfetish mini-idea books, you've seen this recipe. If you missed it, leave a comment with a pretentious cake name suggestion and I'll send you a copy (at least, until I run out of them).

Dear sock yarn...

2007-06-07T16:22:00.000-04:00

Thank you for your patience. I think I'm ready for you now.

I don't know why, but socks kind of intimidated the heck out of me. I think it's the teeny tiny little needles. But with the false sense of security that comes with making a pair of duck feet, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Check me out. I'm a little more than half done with the first one. I'm making these spiral eyelet socks with the Lana Grossa Meilenweit Colortweed I won a long, long time ago.

What? I'm supposed to be making a baby sweater? I'm sorry I can't hear you... You're breaking up...

I hate posts without pictures.

2007-05-31T17:04:00.000-04:00

For the record, I did finish my second baby ducky foot over the holiday weekend. And I delivered the little feetsies and duck hat to Baby Aubrey.

Unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture before I handed them over. Oops. Hopefully in a few more months when she grows into them, I can get you a picture of the embarassing duck accessories in action.

Oh well, you saw pictures of both earlier. I used Bernat Baby Softee yarn for both the hat and socks. Two strands held together on size 6 DPNs worked out well for the hat. A single strand on size 2 DPNs for the feet. Both patterns were from p2designs. Fun, quick knits despite my slow turn around time.

Since then I have made some progress on my ribbon-edged baby cardigan, but no new pictures for it yet either.

I'll see if I can't cook up some more photogenic craftiness for you soon.

I knew this was going to happen...

2007-05-24T13:16:00.000-04:00

Good news:

Baby Aubrey was born earlier this week.

Also, I made a sock! (a very small, duck foot shaped sock) My past attempts at booties involved seams. This was my first crack at turning a heel and the like.

Less good news:

At present, the ratio of Baby Aubrey feet to just ducky socks is 2:1. I better get cracking on the other one before her little toes get cold.

Dagnabit!

2007-05-21T10:16:00.001-04:00

I've been cooking along on the back of my baby sweater. Realistically, it should be done by now, but since the back panel is the largest expanse of uninterupted knitting, it got a little repetitive. I mean c'mon, give a girl an increase or a K2Tog now and then! It is unfortunate that aesthetically, I like very simple patterning but in practice I want a little more action in my knitting.

So I decided to take a break and work on my ducky feet baby socks. Naturally, I didn't actually have the pattern with me when I stopped by The Knit Nook to buy some smaller DPNs. I had swatched my yarn on size 4's and I knew that was too big, so I bought 3's.

Now had I checked my pattern, I would have seen that not only were 4's too big, but they were far enough off that I'd need to go down to 2's. But instead I thought I'd breeze in on my way home from work, buy whatever size DPN's strucky my fancy and be on my way. Which is a pretty good way to guarantee that you buy the wrong size. Which means it will be another day before you can actually get to work on your ducky feet.

(The Knit Nook graciously offered to swap out my needles if I got home and found out I needed a smaller size, but I figure I'll need the 3's sooner or later) More than anything, I'm annoyed that I had to knit 3 gauge swatches for the darn things. Gauge swatches aren't any fun. I really don't want to have to do more than 2.

I finally got things sorted out and should have been able to finish at least one ducky foot last night. In retrospect, I decided I did the increases on the web footing wrong. I was sort of okay with my modified version and was just going to go with it for this pair.

I was all set to bind off last night towards the end of Brothers and Sisters, but then they jumped in the pool and I guess I got distracted and ended up knitting across my cast off row, without actually casting anything off.

I started to back up, but apprently I can't be trusted to tink stitches past my bedtime. I dropped two stitches before I finally went to bed. Hopefully this evening's attempt at the repair will go a bit more smoothly.

Sigh, so much weekend knitting and I don't have a darn thing to show for it. So help me I will have a finished object to show you all soon!

Out of the Closet

2007-05-16T10:41:00.000-04:00

So...I did fall off of the planet and did notice Sarah's subtle chiding to post. BUT...it was for good reason. I am a volunteer for Hope Closet. Hope Closet is a charity that gives young women free prom dresses so that they may attend their prom regardless of financial constraints. This year we set up our prom boutique for eight days and sent over 400 girls from Metro Detroit to the prom!

By the time we have set up, run the boutique, and packed it all back up...I had quite the prom dress hangover! I thought I might have a few days "off" before began working for 2008, but thankfully no, donations keep coming in, volunteers need to be thanked, bills paid, thank you notes need to be sent...

If you have prom or bridesmaid dresses still in your closet...look and see if their is a similar project in your area. Don't forget those dyed to match shoes and costume jewelry!!!

http://www.glassslipperproject.org/yostate.htm

C'mon....you aren't wearing lilac again???? But someone else will...and you can make her sparkly taffeta dreams come true!

Are you in Michigan??? Here is our mailing address:

Hope Closet

PO Box 530413

Livonia, MI 48153

More baby knitting...

2007-05-11T09:36:00.000-04:00

Baby gift production continues...only now with buttons and scary deadlines.

Buttons first:
I found these little black and white oval buttons the other day that were just begging to be ducky eyes. Apparently, I live near the world's largest button and fabric store. Despite their "world's largest" claims, the number of buttons with ducky eye potential was less than you might think. The staff wasn't particularly helpful when I went in, so I'm not going to post a link. (That'll show 'em)

Anyway...This hat still cracks me up. I need to buy some smaller DPNs before I start on the little matching duck feet, so they are on hold until I get my act together and go to the store.

Which brings us to scary deadlines...

I just got an invitation in the mail for a baby shower next weekend. I knew said baby was coming and fully intended to make something for the new arrival, but I didn't know there would be a baby shower. (It's not their first kid - I'll spare you my Emily Post rant)

So now instead of having about 6 weeks, I've got a week and a half to finish this up. I'm about 6 inches into the back of the ribbon-edged cardigan from Debbie Bliss' Special Knits. Think I'll get it done in time? Think I'll be able to seam it up well enough that I'm willing to give it to an actual baby? Think my dog will end up wearing a little blue cardigan? Stay tuned.

Just in time for Mother's Day!

2007-05-03T11:18:00.000-04:00

New styles and sizes! Great gifts for crafty moms or your own crafty self.

New designs for knitters:

Image reads: plays nice with others, except at yarn sales

More colors and styles for our most popular designs:

Image reads: Not now kids, Mommy's scrapbooking.

Plus sizes now available:

Image reads: I sent my kid to college so I could store fabric in her room.

Visit the craftfetish store today!

And now back to our regular scheduled craftiness...

2007-05-01T11:46:00.000-04:00

I survived the mini-marathon! Now back to knitting...

Sure, that little tiny baby is sweet and innocent and perfect in every way...now. But sooner or later, s/he is going to be a teenager. At which point s/he's going to start dating.

At which point, Mom and Dad are going to need some embarassing photos of the aforementioned tiny baby wearing stupid hats. Or at least that is my understanding of how the system works.

Voila! The Just Ducky hat from p2designs. It's so fantastically adorable and humiliating all at the same time. I just love it.

I still need to add some little eyes, but I finished up the loopy i-cord featheredness at the top last night and had to share.

The pattern calls for a worsted weight yarn, but I used 2 strands of Bernat Softee baby yarn (a sport weight) held together. Would you believe that there are matching duck feet? The sock pattern calls for a DK weight, but I'm hoping I can find a way to make a single strand of the Softee yarn work so that they'll be nice and matchy.

I'll keep you posted.

The shake down...

2007-04-19T10:36:00.000-04:00

What were we thinking?

Sorry for the infrequent posting. Non-crafty life has a bit crazy of late.

Emily is running around like a crazy woman this week for Hope Closet. Hope Closet is a very cool organization that provides free prom dresses to area high school students. This is the week when they open the "store" for the students to come in and find their perfect dress. You can view some news coverage for the event here.

Sarah had the crazy notion that she should be a runner. I've signed on for my first ever Derby Festival miniMarathon for Saturday, April 28th. I have no business running .1 miles, let alone 13.1, but some how or another, I'll get myself through it.

So, what does it mean?

(1) Training and whining about training has taken up a lot of Sarah's crafting time. Sorting through prom dresses and accessories has monopolized Em's. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled posting soon.

(2) I'm shaking down our blog readers for charitable donations. Well, kinda.
While a lot of people do raise money for charity during the miniMarathon and other races, I'm not doing anything so formal. But, I'm tired and sore and 13.1 miles is really far and frankly, I'm pretty dang impressed with myself. I hope you are impressed with me too.

If you are, next time you write a check to your favorite charity, you should add a dollar or two for me.

If you don't already have a favorite charity, I'll offer the following suggestions:

For the craftily inclined, Hope Closet could use earrings, necklaces, handbags, wraps and other formal-wear accessories for Prom 2008. If you are good with a sewing machine or are looking to de-stash some rhinestones, they could use 'em. Send an email to craftfetish (at) yahoo (dot) com and we can get you the details.

For a not-so-crafty option, my friend Rachelle is also running the miniMarathon and is raising money through Team In Training to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Rachelle was more or less a non-runner when she first got involved with Team In Training. Since then, she has completed several marathons and half marathons and has given me all kinds of help and support as I tried to get my butt in shape for this thing.

This is actually Rachelle and I at the finish of the "Reindeer Romp" back in December. (Okay the photo is horrible, but I thought I was going to die and it was really friggin' cold)

Even though her normal pace is considerably faster than mine, she hung back and ran (practically in place) the whole thing with me. Then, because she rules, she subtly stepped behind me at the finish line so that I could come in 645th place and she'd be 646th (or whatever it was). She's good people.

So if you are looking for a place to make a financial contribution, this is Rachelle's Team In Training donation page.

Okay, end of shake down.

See that wasn't so bad. No hard selling here. We'll be back with more craftiness soon - just as soon as we get a nap. Wish us luck!

On further consideration...

2007-04-13T13:44:00.000-04:00

I'm just not that thrilled with my bear, or more accurately my finishing skills. It doesn't look anything like the picture. (the one in the picture is so cute too!)

Look closer - I don't know how they did their edges, but it sure is different from how I did mine. (I tried 3 different strategies - and not a one looks like the picture)

Anyway, I didn't feel good about giving this as a baby gift. So, it looks like I am back to the drawing board for the boatload of babies coming this summer.

On the bright side, I did find another willing recipient for my bear. She seems quite pleased with it and didn't mind the wonky seams one bit.

Another checkmark on the "Madeline is spoiled rotten" list.

It's a Bear! uh, kinda

2007-04-09T17:09:00.000-04:00

I finished the stuffed bear I was working on from Erika Knight's Simple Knits for Cherished Babies.

I used white Bernat Baby Softee yarn since I had a bunch leftover from my abandoned baby blanket and US Size 3 needles. All in all, I'm not completely thrilled with it, but it more or less looks like a bear, so I'm saying mission accomplished.

Very quick and fun to knit, but clearly I need to work on my finishing skills.

Defeated

2007-04-02T12:15:00.000-04:00

Nearly a year ago, my first post on this blog was whining about knitting. Specifically, knitting this baby blanket:

Yeah, that's as far as I ever made it. About 4 inches.

I quit. P2Tog, KBL you have defeated me. I think that is the abbreviation anyway - it was purling two stitches together and then knitting into the back loops of the same two stitches, but it has been so long since I've actually made any progress on this thing I can't honestly remember.

I really liked the way the stitch worked up. It had a nice texture and some interest to it but not such giant lacy holes that little baby fingers would get stuck or pull it out. I think this would have been a cool blanket. Unfortunately it was zero fun to knit. So I quit.

Pulled the needles out and started using the yarn on a new project. It feels quite liberating really.

This is where the new project currently stands:

Yikes. That's gonna be a lot of seams and finishing.

If you can't tell from that pile of chaos, this is the cashmere teddy bear pattern from Erika Knight's Simple Knits for Cherished Babies - only not so much in cashmere. (Doesn't it look like a bear?) The knitting part went very quickly - we'll see how long the finishing takes me.

I figure if I am done in under a year, I'll still come out ahead of the yarn's previous incarnation as a baby blanket.

More fun with scissors and paper

2007-03-28T14:52:00.000-04:00

I finally gave up on a perpetually unfinished knitting project last night. It was quite satisfying. I've already started a new project with the newly liberated yarn, so knitting related updates are coming soon.

In the meantime, I've done a bit more scrapbooking. A page for Maddie's puppy album and two more pages for my running journal (one of which is still really about my dog):

Like mother, like beagle. I used to sleep with a security blanket every night too. Of course, Maddie has 4 security blankets, but then, she's kinda spoiled.

Training Partner #1: Peggy
Likes: Hugh Laurie Doesn't Like: pulmonary hypertension

Training Partner #2: Mads
Likes: belly rubs Doesn't Like: baths

Oh right, knitting!

2007-03-21T11:30:00.000-04:00

I remember when I used to do that. After an alarming amount of procrastinating, I have finally finished the pink scarf I started over the holidays.

Perfect timing seeing as it is about 70 degrees here today, so you want to be sure and bundle up with a nice warm scarf...

Here it is stretched out to re-block after I crumpled it up for 2 months until I finished the fringe. The scarf itself actually knit up very quickly. I used Karen Baumer's pattern for the Multidirectional Diagonal Scarf on US #10.5 needles. I don't think that this was the best yarn to show off the pattern, but it was a great pattern to show off this yarn, which wanted a nice loose knit. Learning short rows was an added bonus and kept me more entertained than just a loose garter stitch or something. In real life, you can see the triangles and the direction change a bit better than my photography would indicate.

The big needles made this the skein that would never end. After blocking, the scarf measures 5 inches by 7 feet - which is why it didn't all make it in the photo.

I actually finished the knitting part back in January. But my decision to use a beaded fringe stretched this out into a multi-month project. Threading the little suckers on there was a colossal pain, but I'm quite pleased with the end result.

I've been on a scrapbooking kick lately, but now that there isn't a pile of pink beads and yarn taunting me from the dining room table anymore, I think it's time to play with yarn again.

Low Fat Banana Hockey Pucks

2007-03-14T12:38:00.000-04:00

sounds tempting, right? Actually they weren't that bad.

Since I can never seem to match the number of bananas I buy at the store to the number of bananas I actually want to eat, I frequently end up baking with them.

(I can't help it - even when I buy them in different levels of green, they all seem to ripen at the same time)

Anyway, over the weekend I made low fat banana muffins using a hybrid of the "Banana Nut Muffin" and "Low Fat Banana Muffin" recipes in The Joy of Cooking.

I understood why they left the nuts out of the low fat version, but the cinnamon and nutmeg? C'mon now. Just because they are low fat, they can still be tasty. Hence, the hybrid.

I also left in the wheat & white flour combination from the full fat recipe, which may have contributed some to the hockey puck phenomenon.

For the record, when they first came out of the oven, they were delicious. Very soft and moist. Alas, the next day they were a little tough. Like if someone hits the last ball off of the roof of the Quick Stop, you could sub in one of these and keep the game going tough.

Twenty seconds in the microwave and a bit of butter softened them up and made a nice breakfast the next day, but the butter pretty much kills the whole low fat thing. Oh well. Sad brown bananas are no longer sitting on my counter.

I would make these again if I have enough of a crowd to actually consume 12 muffins in one day. Or, if I find a recipe that performs better on Day 2, I'll post that recipe.

I could go running...

2007-03-05T17:46:00.000-05:00

or, I could play with paper and scissors.

Yeah, paper and scissors. I finished a few more pages for my running journal with the scrapbooking toys Emily sent me.

This is the first page of the album. A washed out picture of the women's winner from the 2006 MiniMarathon, when Peggy and I stood on the sidelines and said "Hey, we should do that."

Technically it wasn't the winner that inspired us, but the regular people who finished an hour or so later. If they could do it, so could we - or at least that was the thought process at the time. Anyway, that's why I went with the washed out picture - I wanted it to be a little non-descript.

This page was a lot cooler in my head. I made the scale out of cardstock then added the vellum overlay. In the category of superfluous details, you can spin the arrow back and forth from "in shape" to "out of shape." I don't love it, but it details the bet Peggy and I made. Whoever could lose the most weight at 3/6/9 months got a mani/pedi/massage.

This page and the next one I'm pretty pleased with though. I love the yellow running-themed paper Emily found. This is the couch-to-5k training program we "followed." The eight week program took us way longer than that, but eventually we got there.

I'm not sure if it is because I am cheap or impatient, but I didn't have any black cardstock when I was working on this and really wanted something to make the 5K stand out. So I colored a piece of seafoam green cardstock with a black marker to make the starburst and little dots.

This page is part of the reason the couch-to-5k thing took so long (the other part of the reason is because I was much more fond of the "couch" part than the "5k" part). Anyway, Peggy got sick. Scary sick.

But she's better now, so I can joke about it. Actually, I joked about it when she was sick, but I'm a fan of gallows humor.

The "seriously?" title probably reflects the influence of Grey's Anatomy on my use of slang, but it kind of fits since the heart/lung image is from the 1918 edition of Gray's Anatomy. (the cartoon swearing is probably the influence of Beetle Bailey in my life. what can I say? not eveything has to bookend together)

Didja know?

2007-03-02T15:58:00.000-05:00

March is National Craft Month

So why are you just sitting there? You could knit a hat...

or sew a bag...

or refashion a t-shirt...

or make someone a present...

or learn something new...

or support another crafter. There are lots of great folks out there covering the world in kitsch and glitter and just generally spreading the crafty love.

Let the world know you're crafty.

(okay, so that last one was a little self-serving)

Things I did this weekend instead of laundry...

2007-02-27T09:26:00.000-05:00

Tried to turn Maddie into an agility dog using the box for my Christmas tree. Check out that form! I wonder what I have lying around the house that I could fashion into weave poles.

Finished stringing the beads for the fringe on my pretty pink scarf. Now I just need to make it into fringe.

Started playing with my running journal using all of the fun toys Emily sent me. I made these pages for Race for the Cure, which was our first 5K. I don't have any photos so I pieced together the Komen logo out of cardstock. I've decided that hidden tags are a good way to record the embarassing details (e.g. our finish time).

At least, that was their logo. They recently changed the name and logo for the foundation (the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation is now Susan G. Komen for the Cure), I don't know if the race logo will change as well. I hope not - that took forever to cut out.

This next page isn't all that exciting, it is just the page opposite the one above. I decided to make this an 8x8 album. Since I won't have many pictures, I thought it would be easier to fill the smaller pages. The flip side of that is that souvenirs like race numbers pretty much eat up a whole page. Que sera...

I have a few more pages partially completed, but there's no sense posting them until they are done.

(ed. note: For the record, I managed to get all of my clothes washed and dried, but none of it is folded. I keep moving this colossal pile of clothes back and forth from my bed to my ironing board. Pathetic really)

Can you handle the deliciousness?

2007-02-19T17:48:00.000-05:00

mmmm....mini key lime goodness.

I'm a big fan of key lime pie - particularly this time of year when it reminds me of warmer places. Beyond that, any recipe that involves 3 ingredients is all right in my book.

Basically, if key limes are in the stores, I'm putting key lime pie on the dessert menu.

In the past, I've use mini phyllo shells that you can get from the freezer section at the grocery. They only hold about a tsp each, so you can have dessert for a large party using only about one pie's worth of filling. You'll have to buy about 6 boxes of mini phyllo shells, so it isn't necessarily more economical, just bite sized and little and cute. And bite sized is a good way to go when you only have 4 chairs so every party is a buffet.

This weekend I went with individual graham cracker crusts. The graham crust tastes better than the mini phyllo - although it isn't quite as cute.

A bit of decoratively-piped whipped cream and a teeny slice of key lime could up the cute factor immensely. I'd show you a picture of that, but I prefer a touch more whipped cream.

I'd have used more, but the can was empty.

A little Valentine's Day love...

2007-02-14T14:31:00.000-05:00

How awesome is my sister? So awesome.

She sent me the cutest handmade Valentine:

mmmm...cupcakes. I love that she even has crinkly paper for the little paper cupcake cup.

And because she is the greatest sister ever, she also sent new scrapbooking toys for me to play with:

My friend and I have started running - er, trotting and wheezing, whatever, tomayto, tomahto - so Emily sent me all of these great papers and embellishments for a running journal. I'm not buying the whole running = fun thing yet. It still kicks my butt every time we go out, but playing with paper and scissors = fun. A little injection of craftiness can only help with my motivation.

(I'm a little nervous that she gave me a pack of "2008" rub-on dates. Does this mean I'll still have to run a year from now?)

On an unrelated note, but since red things seem appropriate for a Valentine's Day post, I found a use for the red cotton yarn I had leftover from my toddler vest:

Fetching! Still a fun pattern the second (third?) time around. This time I tried the picot bind off. Or, at least something resembling the picot bind off.

Magically, Lion Brand Wool-Ease, Rowan Calmer and mystery-brand mill end cotton (post washer and dryer) all gave me the correct gauge for this pattern on size 6 DPNs. Maybe some day I'll give this a go with the cashmerino that is recommended in the pattern.

We'll see. This pair is beagle-approved and off to Michigan. My aunt subtly hinted that she would like a pair, so hopefully she'll like these. And hopefully Michigan will get some fingerless gloves weather soon (a bit too chilly this week).

6 Weird Things About Me

2007-02-09T10:55:00.000-05:00

Alas...6 seems almost diminutive to my wackiness.

1. I have a perfectly round head. Seriously...like a basketball. This has been confirmed by precise measurements taken in the 5th grade as I desperately hoped a home perm would make all of the girls whose names end in "i" like me. If only I had been Emili...my whole life would have been different.

2. I HATE surprises. I attempted for weeks to weasel the photo below out of my sister. She only posted it for fear I self combused as it didn't arrive before 7am of my birthday. I truly fear a surprise party where I am the surprised. I hunt my whole house beginning in November for the Christmas presents, etc.

3. I wear ugly shoes. Sarah is like Imelda Marcos. She actually owns TWO pairs of hot pink shoes. One pair was not enough. I own four. Clearance rack tennis shoes. Brown and black walking shoes (think of your grandpa) and one pair of black "heels". They are rubber bottomed Mary Janes so I don't fall down the aisle as your bridesmaid.

4. I have fun paranoia. If I have an event, I spend the next day calling to make sure you had fun. I had to call home from a pay phone in Mexico on my honeymoon fearing no one had a nice time at my wedding. Hellloooooooooo open bar....but I am just irrationally fun paranoid.

5. I don't like strawberries. Hate them. Think they are gross.

6. I believe if I change my hair, I can change my life. I have been blond, permed, long, red, short. Whatever. I now keep it super short so I can be "transformed" every 4-6 weeks. It also minimizes the damage time of a poorly selected hair color.

Tag out.

All About Sarah

2007-02-07T16:26:00.000-05:00

So, I've been tagged. Which is to say that I've been asked to share 6 weird/unusual/quirky things about me. Sadly, I'm not all that weird, but we'll give it a shot anyway.

(1) I'm a world-class procrastinator. If you don't give me a deadline, it will never get done. And in many cases, even if I do have a deadline, it still won't get done in a timely manner. (case in point: today* is Emily's birthday. today is also the day I put her gift in the mail. oops)

Happy Birthday Emily!

(2) I'm a little shallow. I like having things that no one else has. It could be the crafter in me appreciating one-of-a-kind things. Or it could be the 6 year old in me who never learned to share (neener neener neener).

Either way, it means I am a huge fan of art fairs and boutiques and small business. In Louisville, we have this fantastic place called the Mellwood Arts Center where they have converted an old meat packing plant into artist studios, co-op galleries, shops and restaurants and stuff.

I bought Emily's birthday (late) present there (she knows about it so I can post a picture here). Sharon Major is a jewelry artist with Gallery Janjobe. She makes all of the links and beads for her pieces by hand, and she made this bracelet for Em:

(3) I am cheap. No, seriously, I mean cheap. CHE-EAP. Which limits the extent to which I can purchase one-of-a-kind things. That may be why crafting appeals to me - I never want to buy anything that I could make. Unfortunately my cheapityness also prevents me from being willing to spend much money on craft supplies.

Dangerously, Archiver's has totally got my number on this. (If you've never been, Archiver's is a colossal scrapbooking mega-store and we recently had one open in Louisville) Once you get on their mailing list, they send you coupons about once a month. The "5 free pieces of cardstock" one is my weakness. This past week I went a bit coupon crazy, and came up with these:

The mini-albums were on the clearance rack - apparently leftover from Christmas. Don't they realize that the pearlized white ones would be perfect for a baby or a wedding? And the little red books would be great for Valentine's Day.

The little word charms were from the Hot Spot (think bargain bins) and aquired with my "Free Hot Spot item" coupon. The blue cardstock was one of my free sheets. And the little metal guys were from my 30% off one item coupon. Final cost: I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure Archiver's lost money on the deal.

But back to me...

(4) I am a colossal dork. A few years ago, I would have characterized myself as a pop-culture junkie, but I haven't had cable for a few years, so my references are all embarasingly dated. If something sounds familiar in one of my posts, chances are it could be sourced back to a John Hughes movie or an episode of 90210. Sometimes I branch out, but seldom beyond the mid-90s.

(5) I am secretly obsessed with vegan recipes even though I think animals are delicious. My greatest fear is that someone would come over to my house and leave hungry. Well, maybe not my greatest fear. Lions are pretty scary, but hungry guests are right up there.

I think I come by this genetically - people come over, you feed them. One time my cousin and his friend spent a long weekend with my Grandma. The friend gained 7 pounds that weekend. Nobody goes hungry around here.

I like vegan recipes because anyone can usually eat them. One time I had a friend for dinner that I didn't realize was vegan (for the record, if you are vegan, that is the sort of thing you should tell people before they make you dinner). Fortunately, I had made a pumpkin stew for the vegetarians which was vegan by coincidence.

I should probably clarify, that I am obsessed with recipes that are vegan by coincidence. That is my preferred category for party food. Since I am not actually vegan myself, I don't want to eat soy cheese or any sort of susbstitute foods.

Presently, I'm obsessed with Pumpkin-Peanut Soup

Emily and I had this once at a local restaurant and it was fantastic - I'm obsessed with recreating it. I made a batch last weekend using store brand peanut butter (see previous notes re: cheapity) and it wasn't that good. The picture is from a batch I made earlier this fall using brand name peanut butter that was delicious (it was just Skippy, but it made all the difference).

I highly recommend trying this - just don't cheap out on the peanut butter. It's even better if you make it in the fall when you can wow your friends with the uber-Martha touch of serving it from a pumpkin. Alternately, if you find yourself in downtown Louisville, check the specials at Artemesia. I don't think their version is vegan, but it is fantastic.

Not near Artemesia, here you go:

1 medium onion
3-4 ribs celery
4 cloves garlic
2 T butter (or margarine)
2 T flour
3 (14oz) cans vegetable stock or about 5 cups
1 cup creamy non-store brand peanut butter
1 (29oz) can pumpkin -or- cooked and pureed flesh from a 5-6 lb pumpkin
1/2 c cream (optional)
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 1/2 T coriander seeds -or- approx. 1 T coriander
1/2 tsp ginger
salt and pepper to taste

Toast and crush the coriander seeds. Chop the onion and celery into large pieces - they will be removed later. Finely mince garlic. Melt butter in stock pot and saute onion and celery for about 5 minutes. Add garlic and saute for 5 minutes more. Add the flour and stir until dissolved. Add the stock and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Strain out the onion and celery and return to heat. Add pumpkin, peanut butter, cream and spices. Whisk to create a smooth soup and simmer 15 minutes.

For vegan soup, skip the cream and use margarine or a bit of oil in place of the butter. Still good.

But back to me...

(6) I am a pretty lazy hostess. Don't get me wrong, if I am having people over, I will probably have spent the week beforehand making shopping lists and to-do lists. I'll have rethought the menu three or four times - to make sure there is something for the vegans. And probably something else in case someone is allergic to nuts and can't have peanut soup. This seems paranoid, but I actually find that part fun.

Like I said, nobody goes home hungry. But nobody gets a second beer if they don't get it out of the fridge themselves.

Hmmm...maybe those aren't the weirdest things about me, but look how nicely it tied in with the pictures I had to show you. I'm not going to tag anyone, since I think most people have already completed this particular questionnaire. But maybe Emily will tell you why she is weird anyway.

*note: Wednesday was Emily's birthday, but I procrastinated finishing this post until Thursday.

Next stop - sleeves!

2007-01-31T17:34:00.000-05:00

Check me out: I'm a knitter of sweaters.

Well, knitter of toddler sized vests, but I think it still counts.

The pattern is from the Vogue Knitting on the Go: Vests book that my CASP sent me. I used a red, 100% cotton yarn on US size 6 needles, which were also from my CASP.

In true cheap @$$ fashion, I bought the yarn at the mill end shop across the street from my house - total cost for this project (and whatever I make from the 200+ yards I have left): $6.

It is basically just two stockinette rectangles sewn together, but I'm still pretty impressed with myself. I'm no longer intimidated at the thought of knitting actual garments rather than just accessories.

The scariest bit was shrinking. This shrank up about 20% in length which was kind of a lot. Gauge swatch or no, the fact that I ended up with the measurements I intended was a pleasant surprise.

The shrinking was key for future laundering options. I like the idea of a toddler sweater being something that you can throw in the washer and dryer, particularly this sweater with the handy pocket for storing cheerios and goldfish crackers and leaves and dirt and whatever other important toddler things need storing.

Gotta get out of bed, get a hammer and a nail...

2007-01-25T11:53:00.000-05:00

...hang cool new stuff on my wall.

First up, Glitter Mads.

Glitter Mads or Sparkle Maddie - I keep changing my mind about which I prefer - was a Christmas present from my friend Liz.

My Dad took this picture of Maddie, jumping up and demanding to be in the photo like the diva that she is:

Then Angela from glitterpaintings made it sparklier. I like sparkly.

If you like sparkly too, you should definitely check out her etsy shop. She has pictures and ornaments and buttons and good things for sale and she also does commissions. (We have established that I'm not the greatest photographer. You should see this in real life - so great)

In light of the wave of baby showers Em has been planning, I can't help but think this would be a really fun way to preserve ultrasound pictures for little princesses-to-be. My understanding is that those little printouts from the doctor can fade over time, but sparkly - sparkly is forever.

I also framed the theorem painting that my fantastic Cheap @$$ Secret Pal made for me. In the spirit of Cheap @$$ness, the frame was rescued from the garbage.

My aunt sent me this cute frame with a space for your puppy's picture on one side and a list of "beagle rules" on the other. Unfortunately, the wood part of the frame had come apart in the corners during shipping.

So I took out the poem and used it for a scrapbook layout in Maddie's puppy album. If you can't read the poem from the photo, the list of rules basically becomes increasingly lax until the dog rules the house. Which is more or less the agreement Maddie and I have come to.

I like the layout - I think Maddie looks particularly sassy in the picture as she jumps all over the furniture - but I may have been a little rash in my dismissal of the frame. (Or else I was just in a scrapbooking mood that day - who knows)

The finish on the frame still looked good, so I glued the pieces back together and recut the mat for the theorem painting. Conveniently, the mat is the same color as the blueberries. Personally, I think it looks pretty good hanging up over my stove.

Baby Shower Recap - THEME does NOT mean Elmo or Clowns!

2007-01-23T12:47:00.000-05:00

Ok. So I am a blogcrastonator. The child in the previous Baby Shower invitation post is now a college junior.

But my event hints are still timely. Using the invitation as our theme, here are some party highlights.

The shower was in a building with many doors so I made one sign to denote the door and one to mark the parking lot. I used the stamp from the invitation, then enlarged it on the photocopier. Unless you are a top-of-the-line colorer, I suggest coloring your image after enlarging it rather than before. I used a full 12x12 sheet of the invitation cardstock for the background, assembled with clear contact paper for weatherability. A vital must-do in the Midwest. The "post" is half a curtain rod purchased from the dollar store. Metal rods slip over each other so there is a fine metal point on the ground side; no fears of frozen ground. The wall bracket on the top allows for festive ribbons to be easily tied on. As this is from the dollar store, I do not recommend it for tornado-like conditions.

Each of the interior doors had a wreath. This was cuter "live" than photographed. The ribbon is blue and white gingham.

Each table had a white paper cloth for economics. The tables were then topped with a blue gingham table runner (buy the fabric on sale, take pinking shears to "finish" the edges). I floated blue hydrangeas.

Prizes - plain white kraft bags with the carriage stamp on each of them.

Favors - so cute! Chocolate making is not as easy as one might think so ignore the little edges where I overfilled the mold.

These little touches tied the entire event together. And adding some "highlight" items greatly reduces your overall cost. For example, the fabric for the runners was $8.00. But it allowed for us to use plain tableware versus printed. A napkin is a napkin is a napkin, but solid colors are half the cost of printed. We saved $12 on plates alone. White table cloths are 1/3 of the price of colors, etc.

Happy Party! My next shower will be pink! Details to follow.

Cranberry Orange Muffin Cage Match

2007-01-22T13:47:00.000-05:00

Tonight on PayPerView: two muffins attempt to use up the orange juice in my refrigerator, but only one will become the Ultimate Fighting Champion.

(Note: Sarah is allergic to oranges, but occasionally does silly things like buy orange juice. These recipes are both variations on ones found in The Joy of Cooking. I find that baked goods are easier to share with friends and coworkers than half a bottle of OJ and less likely to give me hives than the other half of the bottle of OJ)

In the dairy corner wearing the blue paper baking cup, we have the reigning muffin champion: Orange Cranberry! Initially known as "Orange Quick Bread with Dried Cranberries and Pecans", this fighter has changed up his look to accomodate the ingredients I actually have (hint: no pecans).

Ladies and gentlemen! preheat your ovens to 350 degrees and give it up for Orange Cranberry!

Dry ingredients: 1.5 cups flour, 1 tsp baking powder

Wet ingredients: 1/4 cup milk, 1/4 cup orange juice

Beat together 6T butter, 2/3 cup sugar* and 2 eggs. Gradually add in remaining dry and wet ingredients (alternating is fun).

Fold in 2/3 cup dried cranberries*. Spoon into greased muffin pan and bake until done. This weekend I was feeling mini-muffin, which took about 14 minutes.

The betting report: Milk and orange juice? Wasn't that the cocktail Winona Ryder initially suggested to take down a Heather? gross. But it seems to work in muffins. Not very orange-y without the addition of some citrus zest, but Sarah doesn't have any oranges or lemons in the house. Still a tasty muffin, Orange Cranberry is scrappy and could pull it out in the third round. Also, Vegas is giving 8:1 odds that Sarah gets scurvy.

Which brings us to the challenger: In the non-dairy corner, wearing the pale pink paper baking cup it's Orange Cranberry! It's a bold move stealing Orange Cranberry's nickname like that, let's see if it pays off for Orange Cranberry.

In his early days as a street fighter, Orange Cranberry was known as "Ultra-Orange Vegan Cake." But this isn't a street fight ladies and gentleman, let's see just how Ultra-Orange this fresh-faced muffin really is.

Set your ovens to 350 and put your hands together for Orange Cranberry!

Dry ingredients: 1.5 cups flour, 2/3 cup sugar*, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt
Wet ingredients: 1 cup orange juice, 1/3 cup vegetable oil, 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar, 1 tsp vanilla extract.

Combine the dry ingredients, add the vinegar and the remaining wet ingredients. Fold in 2/3 cup cranberries* and spoon into greased muffin pan. Bake until done. The last time I made these, we went regular size muffin and it took about 20 minutes.

The betting report: No dairy products at all, you can see the challenger is trying to appeal to the vegans in the crowd. Vegas betters are discounting the "Ultra-Orange" reputation of this competitor due to Sarah constantly leaving out the orange zest. The odds are stacked against him, but that could pay off big for a gambler willing to take a chance on this one.

The Winner!

After 5 grueling rounds we have a winner. Though both muffins were delicious, there can only be one Ultimate Fighting Champion!

Ladies and gentleman, I give you our new champion: Orange Cranberry. Though both muffins were feeling the loss of the orange zest, the vegan muffin still tasted orange-y. This ultimately proved to be the downfall for the dairy muffin.

(Note: Assuming you don't have any dietary restrictions, I would still recommend either recipe. You can make your choices based on what you have on hand. If you are actually planning ahead, buy an actual orange and add the zest to either recipe.)

*I tend to eyeball a quantity of sugar somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 cups. You can use a bit more or a bit less depending on how sweet you like your mufins. All cranberry measurements are approximate and usually determined by how many Craisins I already ate out of the bag.

Must. Buy. Batteries.

2007-01-18T16:43:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of posts of late, but I have all kinds of excuses. Many of which are even legitmate.

Excuse #1: I need to buy batteries for my camera. So no photos until I take care of that.

Ultimately, that's not such a big deal because,

Excuse #2: I've had out of town guests and an extra puppy at my house. So, not really all that much craftiness to report.

I could go on, but instead, I'll show you other people's craftiness.

How fantastic is this? Amy over at angry chicken made these Aunt Sarah Dolls:

Your actual head on a doll. I love it. I hope the original Aunt Sarah doesn't mind me using her picture. But one of these days I'm going to be an Aunt Sarah too, so I hope she understands my excitement. There are even instructions to make your own, so I'm definitely filing this away for future use.

We should be back to our regularly scheduled blogging soon though. Maybe Emily will post something in the interim.

Um, how about red?

2007-01-11T15:06:00.000-05:00

I thought I would have finished pink things to show you this week, but not so much. I do have some new red things, so hopefully you aren't all that particular about color.

The actual knitting of my pink scarf went so quickly, I was not prepared for the fringe to be anything but a formality. Boy was I wrong.

I have these pretty little pink beads that I thought would add some interest to the ends of the scarf. But, stringing the little suckers is kind of a pain.

On my prototype fringe, I decided I liked the look of one beaded strand among several unadorned strands (not sure why the photo came out so green). This cuts down on the beading a little, but I'm still hoping that elves will come in at night and finish this up for me.

So far, I have beaded enough strands for one side of the scarf but haven't attached any since the prototype. And there's still no sign of the elves.

As a distraction, I've started working on a baby vest - my first non-accessory! - and have completed the back. In theory, it should a fit a 2 year old. In practice, it would fit a fifth grader. It is 100% cotton yarn, and I'm really hoping that this will shrink in a similar fashion. I guess time will tell. Maybe the elves can do something about my gauge when the are done with the fringe...

Pink!

2007-01-05T17:36:00.000-05:00

New Year! New Projects!

This is a preview of a short row scarf I've been working on using some beautiful pink yarn that my cheap @$$ secret pal sent me.

I probably would have finished it already, but a run in with the flu earlier this week stalled out my big plans for fringe. (But being sick did facilitate a Gilmore Girls marathon, so it's not a total loss)

Holiday crafting, part 7 - Wrap it up

2006-12-22T12:28:00.000-05:00

Ugh, puns. I'm so ashamed.

But gift wrap did seem like a fitting conclusion to my holiday crafting ideas. Hopefully you are about done with your holiday crafting (as we are about out of holiday season). Should you be a procrastinator like me, here's the recap:

Part 1: Knitted Coffee Cozies for the caffeine addicts. A good, quick option for making a Starbucks card a bit more fun.

Part 2: Okay, part 2 was about pirates. Maybe it's better to recap the ornament ideas.

Part 3: Pretty paper wraps for votive candles. You can do these assembly line style if you need gifts for a crowd.

Part 4: Fleece blankets. A no-sewing-required option for my dog or any Linus-wannabes on your list.

Part 5: The major craft. You can't do it for everyone (at this point, you may not have time to do it for anyone). But some people are worth a bigger project.

Part 6: Truffles. Each one is about as fussy to make as an individual Christmas cookie. But you can wrap up 2 dozen cookies for your neighbor or 8 truffles. Overall, you'll save time.

Which brings us to the end. So many lovely projects - store bought wrapping paper would be a let down after all this craftiness. Plus, they want like $5 a roll for that stuff.

Enter, the recycled sweater. One red cashmere sweater with moth holes + six cycles in the hot cycle of the washing machine = a whole bunch of soft and pretty felt. Cut out a couple of foot shapes, add a bit of blanket stitching around the edges and you've got a stocking. Perfect for wrapping up small presents. A bit of i-cord and you can hang it on the tree. (I always wondered how they did that "presents on the tree" stuff)

Cashmere wrapping paper - it seems so fancy. But I've gotten 2 big stockings, a bunch of medium stockings and all the ornament-sized mini-socks I can stand to stitch together from one crew neck sweater that would otherwise have been garbage.

(This one is Emily's present. I point that out only to see if I can drive her nuts with curiosity between now and Christmas)

Okay. That's it for me. This will wrap up my holiday blogging (ugh, enough with the puns already) because I'm off to visit family. Whether the final night of Hanukkah, the winter solstice, Christmas, New Year's or whatever you choose to celebrate, I hope it's merry.

Falling Water - and with 3 days to spare!

2006-12-22T12:05:00.000-05:00

I finished the Falling Water scarf I was making for my Grandmother last night. I made it through 18 pattern repeats without incident, but managed to screw up the 19th round and needed to rip it our twice, otherwise I probably would have finished this Tuesday.

The pattern is from Bonnie Sennott, and I have to say it was a great project. With the possible exception of the 19th repeat, the pattern was detailed enough to hold my interest but still pretty quick to complete and easy to memorize. I think the stitch pattern is really pretty when it opens up (actually - it is kinda cool unblocked too)

Here it is on the blocking board, er, my couch:

I used one skein of KnitPicks Essential yarn in burgundy on US #5 needles. That got me 20 pattern repeats which blocked out to about 4.5 feet. I think if I did it again, I would like a slightly longer scarf, but this one didn't look too short when I tried it on. (I have another skein of the burgundy and I must say it looked pretty good on me, so trying this again is a distinct possibility)

All in all, a gift for Grandma for around $4. (You may think I cheaped out on the yarn, but the KnitPicks worked out to be super soft and showed the pattern well)

I hope Grandma likes it. (As usual when there is a camera around, Maddie wanted to be in the picture. Such a diva)

Holiday crafting, part 6 - Cookies? We don't need no stinkin' cookies

2006-12-22T11:17:00.000-05:00

What can I say? The Christmas cookie spirit didn't move me this year. Ordinarily I go through alarming quantities of butter and flour this time of year. For a change, I thought I would try truffles instead.

I made three batches of ganache for the truffle innards. In each case I used a ratio of 15 oz of bittersweet chocolate (about 2.5 cups) to a scant cup of heavy whipping cream. (Scant only because I wanted to save enough cream for a really good cup of coffee the next morning - I usually only have milk for my coffee)

To one batch, I added 2 Tbsp of instant coffee. When the ganache had cooled, I rolled the little balls in chocolate sprinkles. Voila - dark chocolate espresso truffles.

To a second batch, I steeped 6 green tea bags in the cream as it was heating. I thought the resulting green tea flavor was a bit too mild, so I would probably use more tea bags for future efforts. I rolled these guys in cocoa powder - I wanted to make the coating for each look different so the flavors were easily identifiable.

The last batch I left as straight dark chocolate. Then I dipped them in milk chocolate - which was a bit of a disaster. I most definitely did not master the art of evenly coating them. However, rolling the resulting blobs in chopped pecans made them more or less round and hid most of their aesthetic flaws. Looks aside, the double chocolate pecan truffles tasted really good.

Overall, this was a fun change from cookies. Rolling the truffles is insanely messy - I highly recommend wearing plastic gloves. The ingredients are a bit pricier than most cookie recipes, but you need a lot fewer truffles to make a nice looking gift for the neighbors than you do cookies, so I think it is really a wash.

If you want perfectly round, double-dipped beautiful chocolates, you are probably better off buying them. But a gob of good chocolate is going to be tasty whether it is round or slightly asymmetrical.

One of these things is not like the others...

2006-12-20T15:06:00.000-05:00

Today's lesson in semantics: "knit even for a half inch"

Now I know that if you are knitting something that is ribbed or otherwise patterned, "knit even" means keep going in your ribbing or patterning. What if the last directions you get are "knit one, make one across" - does "knit even" mean keep on keepin' on with your increases or does it mean easy there tiger, that's wide enough, how about you make some nice stockinette stiches and call it a day?

Well, apparently the latter, but I blame the pattern writer. That's just confusing (as evidenced by the bootylicious cat toy on the right).

I figured it out in time for the second one - which was good since I nearly ran out of mouse colored yarn on the first. But do I rip it out and start over? Heck no. It's a cat toy. We're not looking for perfection. Plus, I'm banking on the kitty recipient being something of an @ss man.

Kitties and bunnies and bears, oh my!

2006-12-14T10:20:00.000-05:00

A little while ago, I mentioned the GetCrafty toy and blanket drive to benefit Project Night Night.

I had intended to make a couple of fleece blankets. After making a blanket for my dog and two for Project Night Night, I had about a 1/3 yard x 2 yard scrap left over from each of the colors of fleece I bought. Turns out, there is some merit to determining your yardage requirements before you go to the fabric store.

I also had a giant bag of fiberfill leftover from a girl scout uniform giraffe-making endeavor a while back. Voila - fleece toys.

I used this "easy teddy bear" pattern. I like patterns with the word easy in them. And I more or less copied this pattern from My Little Mochi for the kitties and bunnies (I skipped their little pants - hope no one is offended by nekkid bunnies that vaguely resemble Cartman from South Park). I know you aren't supposed to use button eyes for little little kids because they can eat them, so I tried to embroider eyes on one of the kitties. Yeah, embroidery is hard. Mostly I think I'll have to stick to making toys for kids old enough to know not to eat buttons.

There is definitely a learning curve to toy-making and these guys certainly look homemade, but they are soft and cuddly. I like making stuffed animals though and the fleece seems to hide a lot of mistakes, so we'll probably revisit toy-making in the future.

Mail Bag, Part 5 - So Spoiled.

2006-12-14T09:49:00.000-05:00

This is getting completely out of hand. There weren't supposed to be 5 mail bag posts, but my cheap @$$ secret pal is totally spoiling me.

These wonderful books arrived yesterday:

She has sent an awesome book of papercrafts. The authors seemed to have embraced my aesthetic of bright colors in simple, bold combinations (read: reproducible using paper and cardstock from the jumbo bargain pack) I already have 3 pages marked for things I want to try.

She also gave me some cool papers and a folder for organizing my knitting patterns - which should be a nice improvement over the wrinkled, dog-eared pile of knitty print outs currently littered across my desk.

And this fun book of Vogue Knitting vest patterns. I think it is time for me to move beyond variations on rectangles and attempt an actual garment. I think a vest would be a good entry level garment. (I'm not entirely sure what the VK book editors were thinking though. There are a bunch of really cute patterns in here. I have a few flagged as things to make for myself. There is a really cute baby sweater that I'm going to try and make for a little girl turning one at the end of this month. There are several more lovely Fair Isle patterns that I want to revisit when I'm brave enough to try colorwork. But seriously, and I apologize to any multi-colored check fans out there - the vest featured on the cover - that is a total Cosby sweater - not at all indicative of the rest of the book)

So thank you thank you thank you Secret Pal! We'll see if I can get my act together this weekend and maybe show you all some baby vest action soon.

Mail Bag, Part 4 - The Sampler

2006-12-12T17:07:00.000-05:00

Betcha didn't realize there'd be four parts when I started my ode to mail...

But the other fantastic thing that my mail carrier was kind enough to leave at my door was the December/January issue of the Sampler.

If you are not familiar with the Sampler, it is a monthly mailing of awesome promotional items from indie businesses, crafters, artists and the like. Or, more accurately, about as much fun as you can possibly cram into a 9x12 envelope.

You can subscribe to the Sampler, or if you are a contributor, you get a free copy. You may remember these mini-button idea books from my October craft binge.

s&em designs submitted a bunch of these little books for the Dec/Jan issue, which meant that I got all this in return:

A beautiful wall calendar from MilleFeuille Photography. Her photos of Africa are stunning - check out her website and you'll see what I mean.

This little "Vacation Days" scrapbook kit from Chronicle Books. They must have known about my love for and aversion to buying scrapbooking supplies when they sent me this.

Eclectic Jewelry Artisans is a collective of artists who promote their jewelry together. My pair of yin yang earrings was made by Ahna.

Okay, I had to start making groups - there were too many goodies. I got...

a mini issue of Craft: (Yay! Craft:)
a super-cute Christmas card from Jaime Zollars (her illustrations are adorable - despite the deforestation imagery going on here)
a Mandala card from Serpent Mandalas (really cool intricate designs)
and a portrait card from Heavenly Skull (apparently you can have your own picture made into art cards which would be pretty fun)

More, more, more!

handmade paper from Panda Girl (yay- more free cardmaking supplies)
a crocheted flower from Handmade Obsessions (handy since I can't crochet - I think this would be so cute on a knit hat)
a crocheted skull ornament from Emily Kircher, Recycling Artist (adds just the right touch of kitcsh and the macabre to my tree)
a fabric bracelet from Carly Couture (the bags and hoodies on her website are adorable)

And there' s still more! Seriously how great is this?

a birds nest charm from Yankee Girl Deisgns
little beaded earrings from Cherry Runway
a glass chip necklace from the Starving Artist Bazaar
a polymer clay magnet from Nice Clutter
holiday pins from the Glitter Workshop
a little package of collage supplies from Maison Celeste
delicious smelling loose leaf tea from Herb + Ginger
a mini-melt to make your house smell nice from Martinsville Emporium
a pretty orange button from Saidie
a snowman button from Kittycrossbones18
a magnet from EtsyDarkArt - mine was handpainted watercolor paper from AsilArt

Okay, I think that's everything. I love it all. I don't know if our participation will actually translate to increased sales, but it was totally worth it to get all of this fun stuff in the mail. Once you have all of the glue gun t-shirts you need, you should definitely check out some of these websites for holiday giving. Lots of beautiful one-of-a-kind things to be found.

Mail Bag, Part 3 - Ornaments!

2006-12-11T16:47:00.000-05:00

As I was saying, lots and lots of great things have been appearing at my doorstep lately.

This includes the submissions for a holiday ornament swap from GetCrafty. I cannot believe how awesome everyone's submissions were. There were quite a few ideas I may be stealing in the future.

(Sorry for all of the different sized photos - in cropping to compensate for my shoddy photography, they seem to have all ended up different)

Quornflour made these very cool sequined balls. The red and blue ones were covered with fabric scraps as well as beads. So sparkly and fun.

Athos' ornaments are top secret. Can't show you. Sorry. But if you got one in the mail and the tag had fallen off, they were wrapped like this:

for_esme got the gold star for timely submission. Her adorable felt owls were the first to arrive. I took a picture of the whole flock before I sent them out.

Petal also worked in felt. She made these great beaded snowflakes. I'm completely intimidated by how symmetrical and perfect these are. Nothing I make is symmetric.

All of binah's ornaments were different. She made these miniature quilts and stockings and a great little mini-bag.

Researchasaurus made these lovely embroidered circles.

Artgeek made these really intricate floral embroidered rectangles. I tried to do a bit of embroidery for some toys (pictures coming soon) recently. Yeah, I'm terrible at it. I'm totally impressed by the quality of researchasaurus and artgeek's stitching and detail.

Lilmissthrifty made these Martha-inspired button wreaths. It didn't show well in the photos, but she has interspersed cool little beads and holiday charms so there are little surprises when you look closely.

Gusmarco made these fun Nightmare Before Christmas collages. The photo doesn't really show off the dimension and sparkle that they have in real life.

Mazelpants made these beautiful little nativity scenes out of matchboxes.

See what I mean? Everyone is so creative and talented. This was a very fun swap to coordinate. Although it was not without its headaches. A couple of packages seem to have been lost to the abyss - and by abyss I mean United States Postal Service. Hopefully, they have just been misdirected and will still turn up some day and are not lost forever.

And if any of you still have holiday crafting to complete, hopefully you'll be inspired by one of these lovely handmade designs. (I think there's still time to add ornaments to our list of holiday crafting ideas)

Mail Bag, Part Two - My Sister Rules

2006-12-10T17:05:00.000-05:00

Not only do I have a fantastic secret pal who sends me swell things in the mail, I have an awesome sister.

Despite being totally MIA on her crafty blogging, Emily rules. During her travels to the Arctic Circle last winter (yes, Emily and her best friend went to Finland in the middle of winter, you know, when it's cold and dark pretty much all of the time. For the record, "Emily rules" and "Emily is completely nuts" are not mutually exclusive statements)...

Sorry, during her travels to the Arctic Circle last winter, Emily was kind enough to put in a good word for me with the big man himself...

that's right, Santa Claus!

Father Christmas!

Jolly Old St. Nick!

Mr. Kringle (if you're nasty)

Check me out - I have written documentation of my standing on the list of good girls and boys this year.

Personal correspondence from the one and only Santa - who just so happens to be my true friend forever.

And you know it is official because it was mailed from the Arctic Circle. Plus, it says so:

It's a genuine greeting. I totally love it.

On a slightly less magical yet slightly more crafty note, I also got Emily's Christmas card this week. She is a way more advanced card-maker than me, but this one I think I could replicate:

I think I would need the next size smaller circle cutter, but otherwise, how fun is this?

I can punch circles out of scrap paper. I could totally do this. My scrap paper isn't as cute as Emily's, but if any of you are still thinking you want to make your holiday cards this year but you haven't started yet - I give you the bubble wreath. Or at least that's what I'm calling it. You could probably knock quite a few of these out before admitting defeat and buying a box of cards.

Mail Bag, Part One - My Fantastic Secret Pal

2006-12-10T16:41:00.000-05:00

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I love mail! I love it even more when it isn't someone asking me for money. I've gotten such great stuff lately, I'm having to split it up into multiple posts. Let me just say that after a stressful day at work, it is really nice to come home to this:

Okay, technically that isn't new mail. That is actually the amaryllis that my Cheap @$$ Secret Pal sent me a few weeks ago. But I'm so pleasantly surprised that (a) I haven't killed it and (2) it has bloomed already (the package said 8-12 weeks - they totally lie) that I thought I would share.

But I did get another lovely surprise from my Secret Pal in the mail this week. It came in the cutest little flowered package.

And check out the insides:

Some mulling spices (do you know the part in It's a Wonderful Life when George Bailey and Clarence the Angel go to the bar and Clarence orders a flaming rum punch, then decides it isn't nearly cold enough for that, and instead orders mulled wine, heavy on the cinnamon, light on the cloves? no? just me? all right, forget you then - I'm not sharing my mulled wine), vanilla & lavender fabric softener, a knitting gauge finder (perhaps now my hats will fit my head on the first try?), 2 pairs of knitting needles (both in sizes I was missing, hurray!), a pair of embroidery scissors (uh oh - did she see the nail clippers I had been using?), some pretty flowered coasters and a pack of holiday mint scented cleaning wipes. Once again, I am being totally spoiled and I quite like it.

New for the Holidays!

2006-12-04T11:01:00.000-05:00

Sarah has posted all kinds of craft project ideas for everyone on your holiday gift list. But what about your fellow crafty ladies?

Be sure to visit s&em designs for lots of t-shirts, totes and other gifts for all the crafty chicas in your life.

Our latest design features a .357 Magnum Hot Glue Gun - the crafter's weapon of choice. Let the world know you're packing heat and you aren't afraid to bedazzle anything or anyone who crosses your path.

Waste Not, Want Not

2006-11-29T12:40:00.000-05:00

My dear sister Emily has a reputation for being frugal. If you ever go shopping with her, she will probably have a coupon you can use, no matter what store you are in. And she scores the most amazing deals (see $0.11 dog costume) and has the patience and forethought to buy things after a holiday and put them away for the following year. See what I mean? Frugal.

Me on the other hand, I'm cheap. Miserly even.

This is why I resisted scrapbooking for so long. I'm terrified that once I start buying the fancy papers and pens, there will be no stopping until I single handedly deforest the earth.

But I did make some cards this week that appealed to my penny-pinching ways. I used basic cardstock - you could fancy this up with some nicer papers or embellishments, but the idea is the same. Try to find two paper designs where the scraps from one card can be used on the second, and vice versa.

(If you didn't believe I was cheap before, please note the cassette tape that I have never replaced with a CD. Please also note that I was still buying cassette tapes well into the 90's because I didn't want to buy a new stereo or spend $3 extra for a CD... but I digress)

I traced the REM tape to cut windows out of my cards. The cheapness comes in when you switch around the colors and use the window scraps to make little trees and ornaments. I happened to have a sheet of yellow cardstock on hand for the stars and mini-ornaments. Otherwise, I probably would have cut these out of tin foil.

I have a star shaped hole punch, so I could make quick work of the tree toppers. Gluing two stars back to back on either side of the tree & window frame made this look a bit neater on the inside.

I made the ornaments using a circle punch for the little ones and by tracing a drinking glass for the big one. Oblong or fancy shaped ornaments would be cool, but then you need to find something else to trace.

The ornaments are actually glued in place, but I "hung" them using actual tree hooks cut to length and twisted around the ornament. A large sewing needle works for making the holes to hang them from if you are too cheap to buy a mini-punch (as I am). Silver or gold ornament hooks would have been more interesting, but I bought these green ones a few years ago and I'm not going to spend $0.59 on another package before I need to. I have a few left to hang, so I might try paper clips for the next batch. They're silver, right?

Stupid Gravity

2006-11-27T12:04:00.000-05:00

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

I had a lovely and delicious dinner at my aunt's house in Michigan. For a bit of post-moonwalk, post-football, post-turkey entertainment, I brought a little craft project to kick off the holiday season.

Cat Morley had a cool idea for a light bulb Christmas ornament on her site. Conveniently, Meijers had a sale on both lightbulbs and glitter glue last week.

Pros: These looked awesome when they were finished - very sparkly and festive and cool looking. The materials were super cheap - it's just glitter glue, lightbulbs and a bit of picture wire to make them hang. This was appropriate for a wide range of ages - road tested for elementary school through my Dad (the wire was a bit sharp - that step may be best done by adults).

Neutral: The mess factor. The glue was water soluble - so easy to clean up mistakes and/or sparkly fingers. Probably less messy than your average paint project but you'll still need to put newspapers down to cover the table.

Cons: Stupid Gravity. Since the ornaments weren't flat they needed to be hung to dry. In most cases it seemed that the glue had slid around or dripped before they were fully dry. I suspect this will vary with the type of glue you use, but was a problem for us (note to self: read packaging for appropriate surfaces). The abstract designs still looked really cool, but the more specific shapes were blurred (sparkle camoflage was a success, holly leaves not so much). More enthusiastic (heavy/thick) glue applications actually dripped off of the ornaments and onto the floor. Fortunately the glue was water soluble, but I'm a little worried that my aunt's kitchen will be permanently sparkly.

Sorry, I don't have pictures to show you. But I would certainly recommend trying this at home - just, you know, put down some newspaper first.

Holiday crafting, part 5 - they're worth it

2006-11-21T12:24:00.000-05:00

For the most part, my holiday crafting suggestions to date have been for quick and dirty projects you can knock out pretty quickly.

To recap, we've addressed coffee lovers, pirates (okay, that one was a bit of a joke), the masses, and puppies. We'll certainly have more quick and dirty suggestions as we go, but there are certainly people on your gift list worthy of a bit more effort.

Staring down the barrel of Thanksgiving and the official holiday season, there's probably time left for one - maybe two - more labor intensive projects. So choose your projects and recipients carefully. Think knitted hat not knitted sweater. Quilted tote not quilted bedspread. Mini-brag book not 12x12 scrapbook.

For my part, I thought my Grandma would be a good recipient and decided to make her a scarf. I'm using the Falling Water lace pattern that Bonnie Sennott was kind enough to post on her blog. I'm hoping that the red makes it Christmas-y and the laciness makes it appropriate for various seasons (at least that is what I am choosing to believe in light of Grandma's recent decision to spend the winter in Florida).

I'm not that far along, but I am confident I'll get it finished and blocked in time for Christmas. Hopefully without too much cursing or any all night knitting sessions, but if it comes to that, Grandma's worth it.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

How cool is this?

2006-11-14T11:40:00.000-05:00

My cheap @$$ secret pal sent me the most beautiful present. The little plastic spiders aren't part of the picture - they were just in the envelope and I thought they were funny.

Check it out.

It is a Theorem Painting, which (I have learned) is a type of stenciling using oil paints on velvet that was very popular in New England around the 1830s. My CASP has tea stained this one to make it look aged and more like the 19th C originals.

I'm totally floored by how pretty it is. Magically, the colors she has chosen are exactly what I have used in my house. I can't wait to frame it and hang it in my kitchen.

In her note, she mentioned that she was pleased to see that I was stenciling. Um, I put sparkly birds and dinosaurs on t-shirts, she makes art. I feel a little bit like Chaka Khan just caught me singing in the shower.

But I love my new painting and have enjoyed surfing through some Theorem Painting websites this morning. It is well worth the google search to see both the antique and modern intepretations of this artform.

Holiday Crafting, part 4 - the Snugglers

2006-11-13T09:42:00.000-05:00

So, how are those holiday crafts coming along?

This was initially just going to be my holiday crafting suggestion for the four-legged members of the family. My dog has a weird thing for fleece. She drags her little pink blanket all around the house like Linus from the Peanuts cartoons.

See?

Since she not only snuggles on top of her blanket, but kind of gnaws on it like a furry pacifier, the original model has gotten a little worn. But since fleece is cheap, washable, dryable and reasonably durable it meets all of my criteria for doggie indulgences. Maddie is crated during the day, so a little something soft and cuddly assuages my guilt about her sitting on a plastic tray all day. Anyway, I planned to make Maddie a new blanket for Christmas.

When I got to the fabric store, I discovered they were having a sale for Veteran's Day. I love sales. Since my cheap crafting project just got cheaper, I bought some extra fleece for the holiday toy and blanket drive on getcrafty to benefit Project Night Night. Project Night Night is a San Francisco based non-profit that provides security blankets, books and stuffed animals to homeless children staying in shelters across the country.

I was a security blanket kid. I fancy myself a pretty mature and independent adult, but my baby blanket still lives on the shelf in my closet. Although I haven't slept with it in years, I still can't bring myself to pack it away in a box or (God forbid) throw it out, so it stays on the shelf.

Anyway, I like security blankets. I think every kid should have one. And I really like the idea of giving kids something soft and snuggly to make staying in a strange bed in a strange place a bit less scary. So the mission of Project Night Night really appeals to me. Sending them a couple of blankets seems like the least I can do. (It looks like the sale at Hancock Fabrics is still going on, in case you were thinking the same thing)

I finished Maddie's blanket last night. She's a dog, so I went the quick and dirty no-sew route. I think I'll try to sew the ones for Project Night Night, but my sewing machine is about a million years old and may not be up to the task of thicker fabric. They may end up being no-sew blankets too.

Fetching-Inspired Hat

2006-11-08T10:22:00.000-05:00

Okay, I finally finished my Fetching hat, which was more than a little bit ripped-off from Cheryl Niamath's pattern for Fetching fingerless gloves in the Summer 2006 knitty.

This should have been a super quick knit, but I ran into a few technical difficulties. Initially, I underestimated the size of my head. Frankly, it's amazing I don't tip over from the size of it. Then, my master plan for decreases at the top of the hat went a few rows too long and I ended up with a silly looking point at the top. What should have been a simple matter of ripping out the last 6 rows or so went terribly awry and I kept dropping stitches until I had pulled out way more than I had intended. I had to step away from it for a few days before I could fix my mistakes and move on.

But it's done now, and I'm pretty pleased with it.

The specs: This was knit on US size 6 double pointed needles and took just shy of a full skein of Rowan Calmer (in calmer). It is pretty light and stretchy and should be good for wearing to work or other short trips where you don't want hat hair but need to keep your ears warm. Extensive snow shoveling or other arctic adventures will call for a warmer hat.

The pattern: For a large women's hat that is roughly the size of an average men's hat (using the same gauge as for the gloves), cast on 120 stitches. Follow the pattern for Fetching gloves through the third cable round (only you should have 24 ribs instead of 9). Continue in 4x1 ribbing until hat measures 5.5 - 6 inches from cast on edge (depending on how ginormous your head is relative to mine or how far you like to pull your hat down around your ears).

First decrease:
Row 1: K4 P1 K4 P1 around (120 stitches - 24 ribs)
Row 2: K2 SSK K2TOG K3 P1 around
Row 3: K7 P1 around (96 stitches)
Row 4: K2 SL1 K2TOG PSSO K2 P1 around
Row 5: K5 P1 around (72 stitches)
Row 6: K1 K2TOG K2 P1 around
Row 7: K4 P1 around (60 stitches - 12 ribs)

Second decrease:
Repeat Rows 2-7 from first decrease (30 stitches - 6 ribs)

Third decrease:
Row 1: (K2 SSK K2TOG K3 P1) 3 times (24 stitches)
Row 2: (K2 SL1 K2TOG PSSO K3 P1) 3 times (21 stitches)
Row 3: (SL1 K2TOG PSSO SL1 K2TOG PSSO P1) 3 times (9 stitches)

Don't bind off. Use a needle to weave yarn through all of the loops and pull closed.

That's it. Hopefully the top looks more or less on purpose. I still have visions of making a pair of mittens to match, but we aren't there yet.

If you try this, or you have a better plan for the decreases, or I completely screwed up the math, let me know. Whatever you do, I hope your ears stay warm.

I'm not worthy

2006-11-05T15:08:00.000-05:00

Okay, I was totally shown up this week, not once, but twice. I'm woman enough to admit when I have been bested.

Last week, I posted about making Maddie's Halloween costume. Later that same week, Maddie got two more outfits in the mail. Let's see how they stacked up...

Original costume: dog as candy corn

Humiliation: 3.5 out of 5
The dog is clearly embarassed, though costume's potential to keep water-fearing dog dry during walk in drizzly weather cost us a point.

Craftiness: 4 out of 5
A solid performance with invented pattern and the superfluous cross stitch.

Bargain-hunting prowess: 4 out of 5
The materials for this costume cost $0.85 - would have scored a 4.5 if I'd used a half off coupon at Michael's.

Total Score: 11.5

Competitor #1: dog as dog wearing a shirt
My friend Liz embroidered a cute design on a little dog shirt for Maddie. Not exactly a Halloween costume, but I think we can open the competition up to include dog apparel of any kind.

Humiliation: 2 out of 5
Maddie picked at this for a couple of minutes when I first put it on her, but as you can see from the picture, she settled in pretty quickly with her bone and forgot all about the shirt.

Craftiness: 11 out of 5
I'm only scoring these out of 5, but this is out of control. This was actually Liz's first attempt at embroidery. My first attempt at anything doesn't look this good.

Bargain-hunting prowess: 2.5 out of 5
Contestant may have scored higher if she had submitted receipts. As is, we are speculating that this would be affordable to replicate based on Liz mentioning $0.25 embroidery floss on the phone.

Total Score: 15.5

Competitor #2: dog as six-legged cowboy
Emily sent Maddie a pre-made cowboy costume. It should be noted that she also sent a Dracula costume to Maddie's litter mate, Bailey. Maddie's costume came with a little hat too, but there aren't enough cookies in the world to make Maddie stand still with a hat on.

Humiliation: 9.5 out of 5
Contestant was awarded 4.5 points for Maddie and a 5 point bonus for humiliating Bailey as well. Judges deducted a half point since Maddie was a little too short for the costume, preventing her from venturing outside for public embarassment.

Craftiness: 2 out of 5
Although technically a store-bought costume, it was purchased a year in advance and came with a special Halloween beagle card. One point awarded for impressive display of planning and coordination. Also, the costume was shipped with a selection of Halloween treats and goodies for me. One point awarded because the judge totally accepts bribes.

Bargain-hunting prowess: 968 out of 5
Purchased on clearance the week after Halloween 2005, this costume was $0.11
What? How is that even possible? Eleven cents? You could buy this using only money boosted from the penny tray.

Total Score: 979.5

So there you have it readers, get yourselves to the clearance aisle. Only 360 days until Halloween! Just be warned that no matter what you pick out, it all ends the same way:

Beagle v. Candy Corn Grudge Match

(Beagle won by TKO in third round)

Done!

2006-10-31T16:06:00.000-05:00

Okay, it's October 31st. My month-long binge crafting experiment is officially over. Despite some whining there towards the end, I think that overall, my first ArtSoMoFo Poseur adventure was a success.

I like having creativity as a part of my daily routine, but I think I'll still give myself the occasional day off (I miss reading).

I left off on Day 22. This is how I finished out the month...

Day 23 (10/23/06)

I cast on for my revised ginormous-head edition Fetching hat. I only made it through the first cable round, but it's a start.

Day 24 (10/24/06)

I made it through cable round 2 on the Fetching hat. Those little 2x2 cables take me forever. I also packaged up some notecards for s&em designs. Some of these will be sent out along with our mini-button idea books for the Sampler. They are pretty simple but hopefully are the sort of thing people will be excited to find in their mailboxes.

Day 25 (10/25/06)

I worked on a top secret project for my knitty CASP3 pal. I griped about this earlier when my pen broke - but I still can't show you what I made.

Instead I'll show you the super awesome package my secret pal sent to me. Mail is the greatest.

She sent me some delicious smelling candies, a candle, some garlic (should come in handy for experimental cooking nights) and a coupon for free stuff at Bath & Body Works. Not sure what I'm going to get yet, but I'm sure it will smell yummy too. She also sent me an amaryllis plant.

I potted it over the weekend. My last attempt at gardening didn't go so well, but I have high hopes for this guy. If all goes well, it should bloom just after Christmas when all of the decorations are down and the house seems so dreary.

(I hope Maddie doesn't eat it)

Day 26 (10/26/06)

A bit more work on my Fetching hat and I made some banana bread. Although in truth the bread had more to do with my inability to eat produce in a timely manner than creative endeavors, I think it still counts.

Day 27 (10/27/06)

I worked on a few top secret graphic design projects. I had good intentions to knit, but later thought a third beer during movie night sounded like a better idea. (Sarah + three beers + pointy sticks = bad news)

Day 28 (10/28/06)

More hat knitting. Things have progressed more quickly since I finished the cables, but it is still pretty slow going. This may be a sign that I need to learn continental knitting so I can speed up, but our weather is back up in the 70s so hat delays don't seem so critical just now.

Day 29 (10/29/06)

This is when I made Maddie's candy corn costume.

Day 30 (10/30/06)

I did a bit of experimental cooking - lemon chicken with a bit of a free-for-all from the spice rack. It came out pretty good, although I wished I had grilled it rather than baked it. The flavor was missing something, and I think that something was fire.

I also knit a few more rounds on my Fetching hat, but I suspect that you are sick of me saying that with no pictures to show for it.

Day 31 (10/31/06)

I made it! All I did today was knit one round on my hat before heading in to work, but I feel like that's enough to get my check mark for the day. I should have some time to knit more tonight after I parade Maddie around the neighborhood in her little outfit, but I didn't want to wait to post.

Done! Finito! 31 days of crafting (well, okay, only 29 since I blew it that one weekend, but that's pretty close).

Lots more crafting to come, although with slightly fewer anal retentive timelines. Bring on Lacevember!

Happy Halloween, y'all.

I see your candy corn...and raise you a ladybug!

2006-10-31T11:36:00.000-05:00

C'mon...anyone can wrastle 12 pounds into a costume...but an 80 pound labrador...

Trick or Treat!

2006-10-30T09:30:00.000-05:00

If we had not already established that I am one of those dog owners, this should seal the deal.

I have a thing about candy corn. Every year at this time, I absolutely crave it. And when I get it, the first handful is the most delicious thing in the world. The second handful tends to be so sickeningly sweet that I don't need to eat candy corn again for another year. It's not a perfect system, but it's mine.

But this year I thought I would try to find a safer and craftier alternative to the second handful of candy corn. Laural from thimble has been kind enough to collect all kinds of Halloween project ideas and post them on her site. Candy corn seemed to be a recurring theme (makes sense - it is a pretty easily recognized symbol of the season and you can't get a much simpler pattern than a striped triangle).

And then poor Madeline walks by, thinking we were going to play fetch only to become the victim of my craftiness.

So $0.60 worth of felt and $0.25 worth of embroidery floss later, here is Madeline modeling her candy corn costume.

You probably could make a more elaborate costume using a dog sweater as a template, but I think it is easier to justify making your dog wear a Halloween costume if it costs less than $1. This is how Maddie's is constructed:

Simple felt stripes stitched together with embroidery floss. You could glue this, but I had a little cross stitch nostalgia going on. Crisscrossed elastic bands hold it in place across her chest.

For people or dolls, you could just make two of these and stitch them into a simple smock. I thought this would be a fun little costume for one of those American Girls dolls that are so popular, but I'm not a 9 year old girl or the parent of a 9 year old girl, so I had to embarrass my dog instead.

Happy Halloween!

Are we there yet?

2006-10-26T16:56:00.000-04:00

The month is almost over, right? This ArtSoMoPo thing is killing me.

This is what arbitrary self-imposed crafting deadlines will get you:

My pen exploded. I have washed and scrubbed my hands repeatedly and it just won't come off. Grr. I was working on something for my secret pal, so I can't even show you the project that led to my ridiculous stained hands. (It was pretty cute though - you'll have to take my word for it)

Plus, I stayed up too late last night to finish my bit of craftiness for the day, so now I'm tired. Is it November yet?

Okay, enough whining. I've got to go wash my hands again.

Falling off the crafting wagon

2006-10-23T10:07:00.000-04:00

With more than a week left to go on my ArtSoMoPo month-long creativity binge, things have come a bit unhinged. But I'm back up on the bandwagon now, so I think I can finish out the month.

I left off on Day 12 (10/12/06)

That evening I made some brownies for tailgating on Saturday. That wasn't an especially creative endeavor though since they were from a mix. For what it's worth, Betty Crocker Original Fudge Brownie Mix makes the best brownies. Skip the chocolate chunks and peanut butter and stuff - the plain jane ones are tough to beat. Sure, I could sift cocoa and flour and make these from scratch, but I actually prefer the short cut ones.

To round out the day, I also learned to knit i-cord. Okay I get that it is called idiot cord for a reason and this is actually easier than making brownies from a mix, but I hadn't done it before. New skills are always a good thing - even mortifyingly simple new skills.

Day 13 (10/13/06)

Rather than waste a perfectly good Friday the 13th (in October, no less!) I had some friends over for dinner and scary movies. This ate up a bunch of my evening, but I did make a bit more i-cord and sketched out a template for some felt Christmas ornaments.

Day 14 (10/14/06)

Okay, are you sensing that my creative endeavors are getting a bit paltry? Things hit a new low on Saturday when all I managed to make was a batch of break-and-bake cookies to go with the brownies for tailgating. I was feeling a bit Martha, so all of the brownies and cookies were individually wrapped in plastic for extra tailgating convenience and portability. It also made it easier to pawn leftovers off on my friends - a safer option than being left to my own devices with half a pan of leftover brownies. Alas, Saran Wrap doesn't really make the creative output for the day any more impressive.

Day 15 (10/15/06)

I made some Christmas ornaments using Friday's template and played with my cashmere felt a bit more. Can't show you the results yet, but I swear - there was actual crafting.

This is also when I made the Halloween candle wraps I posted about last week. Here they are again:

Day 16 (10/16/06)

I am really taken with the knitty pattern for Fetching fingerless gloves. I just really like the little cables and the 4x1 ribbing. I've decided I want to make a hat to match Fetching, so I spent the evening swatching possible decreases for the hat.

I've only made stockinette hats before, so I needed to figure out how to make the ribs merge into one another so that it actually looked nice. Someone else may have a better plan for this, but for my part, I thought

K4 P1 K4 P1
K2 SSK K2TOG K3 P1
K7 P1
K2 SL1 K2TOG PSSO K2 P1
K4 P1
worked well for merging 2 ribs into 1 rib.

I also worked out a pattern for decreasing the ribbing as above based on 100 stitches - which according to my gauge swatch and a couple of average hat patterns seemed like the right amount. (Did you catch that mistake? I planned to copy the measurements of another pattern rather than measure my actual head)

I also played around a bit with my camera's macro function (Thanks to Turtlegirl's helpful suggestion for improved yarn pictures on the knittyboard). I need a lot more practice, but I think my candle wrap pics were a bit of an improvement.

This is the pretty pink yarn from my CASP3 secret pal without the benefit of direct sunlight. Not too bad, if I do say so myself. It helps that I could rest the camera on the table when I took the picture. If you want knitting glamour shots, you're still better off going here, but at least now you'll be able to see what the heck I'm talking about.

Day 17 (10/17/06)

I cast on my 100 stitches and made it through the first cable row for my Fetching hat. Twenty itty-bitty cables takes a while. When I was done, I couldn't help but think it looked a little small, so I transferred the stitches to waste yarn and tried on my hat-to-be.

Sigh. Apparently, I have a ginormous head. What would be a normal sized women's hat looked ridiculous. The sad little cables were terrified that I was going to ask them to stretch further. So, frogging.

I did make another ornament, so the day wasn't a total loss.

Day 18 (10/18/06)

I made more of the mini-button idea books. This is what they look like (in case you forgot or have noticed the relative absence of pictures in this post):

Day 19 (10/19/06)

A little light on the crafting - I re-planned my Fetching hat decreases, this time for 120 stitches and enough ribbing for my giant melon. Most of the evening was spent cleaning my house for out-of-town guests.

Day 20 and Day 21

I got nothing. I didn't even make coffee. My parents were in town for the weekend, so there was much visiting, but no crafting. We went to some galleries and looked at art on Saturday - does that count? Yeah, I didn't think so. Totally fell off the ArtSoMoFo Poseur wagon - which is worrisome when you figure that I was the only one on the ArtSoMoPo wagon to begin with. Who was left to steer?

Day 22 (10/22/06)

Here we go, back on track. I finished the remainder of the button books and I started knitting my giant size Fetching hat.

I think I should be able to be crafty for the rest of the month. More updates and pictures soon.

Fancy Pants Website

2006-10-19T12:19:00.000-04:00

Okay, so we're not that fancy yet, but we're learning.

We've made a couple of changes around here. We've added an email button over there on the right. Or as always, you can comment on any of our posts. We love comments. We love email. We love to hear about your crafty adventures and project ideas, so drop us a line. (for the record, we don't love pharmaceuticals, stock tips or other spammy messages, so please don't send those)

We've also updated our links. There are lots and lots of great blogs out there, but these are the ones we like. We tried to organize them by craft, but it's not a perfect system. The thing about creative people is that they are always surprising you and doing different things - which makes for great reading but is not so good for filing systems.

One of these days we'll actually understand html, then there will be no stopping us. Until then, enjoy the fancy pants new linkies.

Holiday Crafting, Part 3 - Wait, you need how many?

2006-10-17T12:36:00.000-04:00

T-minus less than 10 weeks until Christmas. How are those holiday craft projects coming?

A few years ago I started a new job in late autumn. Two months later, I discovered that their holiday tradition was for everyone in the office to bring in a small gift for everyone else in the office. I discovered this about two days before we all left for Christmas break when coworkers 2 and 3 presented their gifts.

Seriously? I had thought coworker 1 was a fluke. So the pressure was suddenly on for the new girl to come up with something for the rest of the office.

The criteria were it had to be (a) fast and (2) cheap as I was running out of time and had pretty much already expended my Christmas budget.

The solution I came up with was holiday candle wraps. Should you find yourself with a mile-long gift list or in need of two dozen hostess gifts, you may want to whip a few of these up yourself. And should you work in an office where everyone gives everyone a Christmas present, please, somebody warn the new girl.

So, step one is to check your local craft store for some standard issue glass votive cups. I have seen boxes of these in with the wedding stuff - and this project would certainly be pretty easy to adapt for wedding or shower favors. It's also worth checking the clearance shelf in the candle aisle - which is where I found these. I think they were 3 for $1.

The only other ingredients you need are some fancy paper (I used red and gold vellum) and a few tea lights.

Cut the vellum into 2 inch x 6 inch rectangles and cut an occasion-appropriate shape in the middle. If you have a few extra bucks and are making a lot of these, you may want to pick up a fancy paper punch to speed things along. I bought a star punch since it seemed like a shape I could use again - but trees, presents, wreaths or anything from the clearance bin would work.

I used a bit of gold beading wire to secure the vellum around the votive cups. You could use leftover bits of fiber, ribbon, beads or whatever you have on hand to fancy it up. Or, you could could just use a bit of scotch tape along the back where no one will see - it's totally your call.

To illustrate the super budget version, I made a few Halloween-themed candle wraps the other day. These are just strips of orange paper taped around the back of the candle holder. I sketched a quick picture on the back of the paper and cut it out with an exacto knife.

Admittedly, the bat signal would have been cooler if I used black paper, but I didn't have any in the house. But even these basic versions look pretty cool when you light the candles and turn out the lights.

How fun would these be lined up on a window sill or on the vanity in the guest bath? A little festive flair for an otherwise neglected corner of the house.

12 Days and Counting...

2006-10-12T10:45:00.001-04:00

My 31 day creativity binge is still going strong. So far it has been a lot of smaller projects. I've had some ideas for bigger things, but haven't had the time to tackle them yet. I didn't realize how hard it would be to carve out time for craftiness some days. Still, all in all, I'm pretty pleased with the "make something every day" concept.

I left off on Day 6 (10/6/06)

My friend Kim, her daughter and I went to the new Archivers store at the mall. It was huge. I am new enough to scrapbooking and cardmaking that the two aisles at Michael's has more than enough new and exciting things to keep me going for a while. An entire store was a bit overwhelming - I didn't even make it as far as the bargain bins in the back of the store. I could drop some serious money in there (Kim did drop some serious money in there, I made it out for under $20, so I was pretty proud of myself).

But that is just consumerism, it isn't making anything. So when I got home I started felting an old cashmere sweater. It was a beautiful color but it had (gasp!) gotten a few moth holes and really wasn't suitable for wearing to work or anyplace nice and I can't bring myself to wear cashmere for yard work. The yarn was too fine and a bit too worn to be suitable for recycling into a new knit project, so into the washing machine it went.

Day 7 (10/7/06)

Ultimately it took 4 or 5 cycles in the washing machine for the sweater to fully felt. I had removed the sleeves before I started so they wouldn't get creased during the spin cycle. I threw a pair of jeans and an old towel into the wash so the sweater would have something to bump against. For the last two cycles I decided that my hot water heater wasn't getting hot enough and added a kettle-full of just-boiled water to the wash. (I've never felted anything before, but I think I started out with a fairly typical technique and got increasingly reckless as I went on. I could get into this.)

After all that, the sweater did finally turn into the most lovely and soft felt. I'm not entirely sure how it will be reincarnated yet, but it will be something fabulous I'm sure.

And since that was kind of a carry-over project, I also made a card. But it was for my knitty CASP3 pal, so I can't show it to you. Sorry.

Day 8 (10/8/06)

Today's craft was actually official s&em designs business. These are the buttons I had ordered from ChristineRenee (man, that was fast).

They are little mini DIYer identification buttons. But because ChristineRenee rules, I didn't actually have to do all of the DIY-ing to make them. She had even put the pin backs on for me and enclosed a fun magnet surprise with my order. Seriously, if you need buttons, check out her etsy shop.

We're using the buttons to make little idea books. I used E. Bess' one shot zine tutorial to design the books. These were pretty fun to make, so who knows, we may turn this into a series.

Day 9 (10/9/06)

I wanted to try knitting toys, but to ease my way into it, I started with wonton from knitty. I figured that I have a lot of friends with kitties, it would get used somehow. I finished knitting the square, but didn't get through the finishing.

Day 10 (10/10/06)

I finished my wonton. I didn't have any catnip as I have no cats, and I'm not sure of my cat-owning friends relative positions on using catnip, so I skipped that step. Instead, I stitched a couple of jingle bells to the inside of the square before I closed it up. Makes a fun little jingly toy.

Maddie was sitting with me while I did all of this, as she often does while I knit. It didn't seem right to make a present for someone else's pet having never made anything for her. So I gave it to her to play with.

It is soft enough that she can catch it (she won't play catch with bigger/harder toys) and she seeemed to enjoy shaking it around to make the bells jingle. The bells are less annoying than most of her squeak toys, so this one gets the thumbs up from both Maddie and Sarah.

I realize this was more of a carry-over project than making something each day. But I spent my work day doing a bunch of graphic design work for a project. Since I am not a graphic designer, I'm going to say that counts.

Day 11 (10/11/06)

I started a bit of embroidery and taught myself the blanket stitch. Anyone who sews will know that this isn't particularly difficult, but I can't say that I have ever had a name for my sewing technique before. Actually, I'm not sure I have ever had a sewing technique before.

Day 12 (10/12/06)

Having learned the blanket stitch, I'll probably use this to make something tonight (note the use of the new cashmere felt above). But there's a new episode of Grey's Anatomy on, so we'll have to see what the evening holds.

Seriously, this secret pal thing rules...

2006-10-09T10:33:00.000-04:00

Saturday was such a great day!

Michigan beat Michigan State.

The Tigers demolished the Yankees.

And my CASP3 pal sent me this awesome package. Look how pretty and sparkly everything she wrapped everything:

She sent me these cute Laura Ashley mini notecards.

And this cookbook full of shortbread recipes and an acorn cookie cutter. One of the plain shortbread recipes looked suspiciously similar to my great grandmother's recipe, so I have faith that the variations and specialty cookies will be delicious as well.

And she sent me this gorgeous pink yarn. This picture doesn't really do it justice, I'm going to have to get a better camera one of these days. But trust me, I am going to make myself something lacy and beautiful with this.

So thank you thank you thank you secret pal.

Co-op Card

2006-10-06T17:02:00.000-04:00

Whew - I made my cards! I mailed them all back to Susan for fun, so she has four to mail out. I am also making fall cards for all participants - photo to follow!

Here is the first one. I received burgundy paper, a brown card, the turkey button, the burgundy ribbon and the gold see-thru ribbon....I added the letters. The letters are from the Dollar store. $1 for 2 alphabets. I'm not sure I'd "trust" the quality for scrapping...but great scores for carding!

Grrr - in the photo you see my tape runner under the gold vellum. It is not this noticeable in real life I SWEAR! All of this card was Susan's "crap"...but I stamped my trees onto her paper. One tree is metallic gold ink -- cool!

Ok - I was stumped on this one. In my envelope of stuff, most was "Christmas" of "fall" color families...then two neon sheets. So I added the ribbon, flowers and brads.

Seeeeee...c'mon - the neon was totally "one of these cards is not like the other" (sing it in your head). This card is all mailed items! I am unsure what the smudges are...some camera ghost.

Hope everyone thought it was fun...I'll dream up another swap soon!

The creativity binge continues...

2006-10-06T13:59:00.000-04:00

So, previously I declared myself the sole participant in ArtSoMoPo (or ArtSoMoFo Poseur). I'm almost through week 1, but I'm afraid I don't have much to show you guys for my efforts.

Not because there haven't been efforts, mind you. But most are of a highly classified nature. To pick up where I left off,

Day 3 (cont'd)
In addition to making some toast, I weaved in all of the ends on my second Fetching wrist warmer (I may have exaggerated a bit earlier when I said they were done - NOW, they're done).

I also worked on a top secret, heavily classified project for my CASP3 secret pal. Which makes this as good a time as any to tell you that I have signed up for the third round of the Cheap A$$ Secret Pal exchange (or CASP3, get it? get it?) over on the knittyboard. The exchange will last from 10/1/06 to 1/15/07 and the basic idea is to shower your partner with love and surprises of a non-monetary nature (or very limited monetary nature) without revealing your identity.

So I can't show you what I made, but I promise that it fulfilled the requirements for my made-up challenge. As a consolation prize, I can post the button for the CASP3 exchange.

Day 4 (10/4/06)
Non-confidential crafting today. I made a layout for Maddie's puppy scrapbook.

The photo is from my previously posted obsession with Photoshop actions. Since she isn't looking at the camera, the text says "Maddie-Mads-Little Dog-Good Girl-Sassy Pants-Sugar-Mad Dog-Big Girl-Sweetheart-Crazy-Pumpkin Pie-Trouble-Baby Doll-Madeline...no wonder she's not listening"

Sorry about the flash spot in the middle of her head. I'm still working on the best way to photograph layouts.

Day 5 (10/5/06)
Sorry kids, another CASP3 secret mission. Actually an attempted CASP3 secret mission that failed miserably. But I have plans for a salvage operation - I'll let you know how it goes.

But I can share with you a very useful and informative video that my secret pal sent to me: how to make laundry seem fun and exciting.

Day 6 (10/6/06)
Louisville just got a new scrapbooking store. My friend Kim and I are going to go check it out tonight. Surely more craftiness will ensue.

That's all for now. Have a great weekend!

Biting off more than I can chew...

2006-10-03T10:03:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, xobscura from the knitty coffeeshop brought up ArtSoMoFo. ArtSoMoFo is something of a spin-off on the concept of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, during which a bunch of crazy souls will exploit the power of deadlines and peer pressure to try and pen a complete novel during November. Yikes. Anyone who was privy to the trite afterschool-special-y attempts at fiction I wrote during freshman English knows that I have no business trying to write a novel.

ArtSoMoFo is a little different. It stands for Art Something MoFo (I try to keep it PG around here) and takes place during October this year. The premise is simple - to create art every day during the month of October. Again, kind of high pressure. But since I do believe that everyone could use a bit more creativity in their lives, I thought I might rise to the challenge, albeit with a very loose interpretation of the word "Art."

I chose not to join the official ArtSoMoFo party. This is more of an ArtSoMoPo (ArtSoMoFo Poseur) endeavor, just in case I get two weeks in and the only thing I have made is toast.

Anyhow, this is how the month is going so far:

Day One (10/1/06)
I tried to make art in the kitchen, to limited success. A roasted chicken and vegetable experiment went terribly awry since I didn't have an onion. It really needed an onion. It didn't help that one of the vegetables I used was butternut squash. Tasty, but it had pretty much melted into baby food before any of the other vegetables were done. This was also the first time I had tried to peel a butternut squash prior to cooking it. I wouldn't have minded the mushy squash nearly as much if peeling it hadn't been such a chore.

Oh well. I had a bit more luck making bread. (So I went on a bit of a starch binge...) I used the baguette recipe in The Garden of Vegan, using 1/3 part whole wheat flour and 2/3 all purpose. Without the support of a loaf pan, the bread was kind of dense. In the future I might use a loaf pan or use a bit less wheat flour to try and get a better rise. It still tasted very good (and made excellent toast). Here it is fresh out of the oven and brushed with a little bit of butter (thereby ruining its vegan properties and rendering it delicious).

Day Two (10/2/06)
Since I was already staying up too late to watch Studio 60, I figured I would finish up my first pair of Fetching fingerless gloves from knitty. I am still pretty new at knitting in the round, having only made coffee cozies before, and I haven't made cables in a couple of years, so I didn't want to buy new yarn for these. So I used some dark green Wool Ease that I had on hand. I knew going in that this yarn wouldn't really show off the cabling, but I was okay with that for my first pair.

I also wasn't totally sure how I felt about fingerless gloves as my fingertips are frequently the cold part. But so far, I am quite liking them for walking Maddie on cool evenings. My thumbs are free to operate her retractable leash and I have much needed dexterity for any necessary cleanup. Now that I told you that, aren't you glad I didn't use super special yarn?

I'm still quite taken with the cabling and ribbing on this pattern. I have visions of making a pair of Fetching mittens and a hat using the Rowan Calmer I left over from my Branching Out. I'm not really ready to make up my own patterns yet, but if anybody finds a 4x1 ribbed hat or mitten pattern that I could splice together with Fetching, I'd love to see it.

Day 3 (10/3/06)
Well, so far today I have made a blog post and some toast. But it's early yet.

Little toes, revisited

2006-09-26T16:24:00.000-04:00

I was going to title this post "deja vu" but I tend to associate that expression with a chain of strip clubs (do they have the Vu outside of Michigan?) and I worry about what sorts of google searches will lead people to this blog.

Anyways, after posting about freezer paper stencils a while ago, I made some more last week. I am no more original in my knitting it seems. I made a pair of booties a while back so that Baby Avery's feet wouldn't get cold.

I finished another pair over the weekend to keep Baby Laura's feet warm. Maddie ate the ball band but I am hoping that I can figure out what this yarn was with a repeat trip to my local yarn store. It was less than $6 for a skein that has already yielded 2 pairs of tiny shoes and it looks like there will be enough for one more pair (which is good because there are more babies coming). It is an acrylic yarn because I cannot imagine asking a new mother to hand wash anything, but it is super soft and very nice to work with.

The pattern is from I Can't Believe I'm Knitting! I can't believe they used that exclamation point in the title, but I have learned a lot from their charts and instructions.

On a slightly more original note, check out the cute card that Susan sent me for the C4 swap:

I sent her some cheesy cardstock and the dregs of a pack of brads and she made this cool paper pieced daffodil. Very cool.

Now with actual crafting...

2006-09-21T09:24:00.000-04:00

Did you think that all I was going to accomplish this week was a few pirate jokes and project links? Because for a while there, I did.

Last night I cut out a bunch of pictures for buttons. ChristineRenee has a pretty sweet deal at her etsy shop where if you send her circles, she'll send you back buttons. You should definitely check it out - except you know, not until she is done making my buttons.

A while back I attended one of those scrapbooking home parties where you feel guilty if you don't buy anything. And this was before I started scrapbooking. I bought a large circle punch, thinking I might use it for other crafts. Last night, I think I finally got my money's worth for that thing. This would have taken forever with scissors. More on the buttons to come.

I also made a few more shirts using freezer paper stencils. I tried it once and I was hooked. Well, I guess I didn't make the shirts - I found them on the clearance rack for like $2. But I made 'em fancy for my friend's birthday. I'm pretty sure she doesn't read this, so I feel safe giving y'all a sneak peek.

My camera may need new batteries, but I think you can still tell this is a brown wife beater with a chicken on the hip. Stencils + ribbing is something I may need to practice a bit more. This didn't come out perfectly, but I still think it is cute.

This is a close-up on the chicken. He's blue. You can make your own jokes, it wasn't my most subtle work. The chicken came from Microsoft clip art.

I also made her a blue t-shirt with some swallows on it. The swallows came from the Fitzpattern stencils that Make posted recently. (And thank you to Handmade Detroit for posting the link, because I totally would have missed this)

This is a close-up on the swallows. The gold one isn't quite that gaudy in real life. Well, maybe it is. I used Tulip soft fabric paints for all three birds.

Holiday Crafting, Part 2 - Aye, 'Tis a Made-Up Holiday

2006-09-19T13:47:00.000-04:00

Avast ye landlubbers! Did ye not know that today is Talk Like a Pirate Day? Aye, 'tis a made-up holiday but she's a fair day for craftin' if ye be so inclined.

Aarrr. Should ye be puttin' down your sword for some other pointy sticks, there be lots of knitterly things to make. Aye, there be hats and bags, and lest we forget...

What be a pirate's favorite socks? Aaar-gyles.

If ye do not knit, there still be plenty o' pirate booty to make.

Make ye some pirate jewelry or a pirate quilt. Aye, and don't forget to document the festivities in your pirate scrapbook.

And for the wee ones, you can make newspaper hats or this here milk carton pirate ship. Aye, she's yare.

If ye cannot be craftin', ye can be preparin' a pirate feast. Or at least, have a pint of grog while ye be watchin' yer Johnny Depp movies.

Aaargh.

Mail - oh how I love mail!!! C4

2006-09-13T11:07:00.000-04:00

Woohoooooooooo! After a swell 10 hour day at work where I was consistently well treated, respected, inspired and praised....HA! I came home to mail! Mail! I love mail! Not crappy bill mail or pizza flyer dear resident mail...but honest-to-god-made-an-effort-wrote-your-name-fancy-on-a-special-envelope-mail!!!!!!

Susan mailed me her crafty crap for my co-op card. She also included a card making magazine and a candy bar. Whee!!! As I licked the chocolate from my fingers I tore apart my booty!

I have three buttons, six cardstock cards, four envelopes, five pieces of cardstock, some gold vellum scrap, a porcelain tag that I am too paranoid to use, and 11 different bits of ribbon. I am going to try to make some Fall/ Thanksgiving cards and mail one back to her. The gold inspired me to Fall. Susan said she used the gold for Christmas.

Susan also made me feel a tad guilty as I mailed Nic's envelope of crap the day mine came. We can't all be timely I guess! She also trumped me with the inclusion of a snack....next time I'll be cooler! I'll report back on how I do creating my co-op card! Or perhaps will be sooooo fancy it will be worthy of Susan reporting back....hint hint...openly compliment begging...hint hint...

Holiday Crafting, Part 1 - The Coffee Lover

2006-09-11T13:22:00.000-04:00

Distant early warning: Christmas is 15 weeks away. Hanukkah is even closer. If you have visions of your friends and family opening gorgeous packages containing lovingly handmade articles this holiday season, you better get cracking.

To help you in your crafty endeavors, I am presenting what will probably be the first of many holiday gift ideas.

Voila! Christmas Coffee Cozies.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am not such a devoted recycler that I am worried about the impact of those little cardboard sleeves on the environment. I like these more because they are cute and add a bit of kitsch to your morning caffeine fix.

Plus, how cute would this be filled with chocolate-covered coffee beans and a gift certificate to your favorite local coffee shop? A quick homemade gift for any caffeine-addicted college students, harried soccer mom or java snob on your shopping list. Beats a boring old Starbucks gift card.

I got the idea from poops and modified the pattern on her blog for bigger needles (I only have 8's). I wanted to practice knitting with double pointed needles before attempting my first pair of socks. I also wanted to learn to duplicate stitch. I realize that duplicate stitching is ridiculously easy, but I'd never done it before. Sheesh.

Conveniently, this is a flexible enough project that you can use it to practice any stitch technique you like.

The coffee cup is modeling the Christmas version. I used US#8 DPNs and some leftover Lion Brand Wool Ease. I cast on 36 stitches and used three rows of a K2P1 ribbing at the top and bottom to keep the edges from curling. The rest is basic stockinette stitch. There are three decrease rows (K10, K2TOG across; K9, K2TOG across; and K8, K2TOG across) spaced out roughly evenly. I think I used five rows between the decreases, which may have been a bit much as this is a pretty long cozy.

I made up my own tree pattern for the duplicate stitching. You could probably also just freehand a triangle with a stick at the bottom, but this is what I did:

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The gray cozy in the foreground was the prototype. It has curled stockinette edges and some duplicate stitch polka dots. I don't really care for the curled edge, so I definitely recommend the ribbing.

Using a very slippery pair of aluminum DPNs for my first attempt at knitting in the round, I was able to make these up in about two hours. With a little practice, you could churn these out it no time.

More holiday ideas to come. Don't blame me if you procrastinate.

Happy Birthday to Me!

2006-09-07T16:07:00.000-04:00

What better way to celebrate than with a cocktail? None that my drunken self can think of anyway.

A few weeks ago on the get crafty boards, someone posted a recipe for a Mars Bars martini. Mars Bars being tough to come by here in the States, I went for a slight variation.

And since we were already straying from the recipe and nobody really likes a double boiler, I went for a slightly less conventional cooking approach.

Ladies and gentleman, I give you: CHODKA (chodka of course being the adorable pet name you come up with for chocolate vodka when you are on your third glass).

Ingredients:
Vodka
Chocolate Candy

For our test batch, we combined five fun-size Three Musketeers bars with one half of a fifth (a tenth?) of Stoli. The recipe can be adjusted to taste.

To mix the chocolate and vodka, you have several options. You could (a) melt the chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave and add it to your vodka, (b) chop the candy into little pieces and allow it to dissolve in the vodka over time, or (c) use your dishwasher for heightened dramatic effect.

We chose option (c). The dishwasher isn't used nearly enough in food preparation.

Add the candy to the vodka and seal tightly. Place bottle in the top rack of your dishwasher.

Run your dishwasher as usual. The heat should be enough to melt the chocolate without cooking off the alcohol. Your chodka may require a quick shake to mix.

Chill and enjoy.

For more alcoholic enjoyment, I invited a few friends over to sample the chodka and invent some cocktails. We chronicled the festivities in the name of science. (right, "science") You can read about that here.

What time is it?

2006-09-05T09:13:00.000-04:00

How much do I love long weekends? So much.

In honor of three glorious days off work, I have two projects to tell you about. Although in all fairness, one was almost done prior to the weekend and one isn't even my project. But c'mon - it's football season. A woman cannot live on craftiness alone. She also needs beer and hot wings.

I finished blocking my Branching Out scarf. To recap, I used Rowan Calmer yarn (in calmer) on US7 needles. Thirty-two pattern repeats required one and a bit skeins. It was 45 inches long pre-blocking and 60 inches long post. The blocking definitely seemed to open up the stitches, but blocking still stresses me out - I think with a bit more courage I could have gotten it a bit bigger.

I really enjoyed this pattern, and may knit another one of these for myself. Or I may try my hand at a different lace pattern. Who knows? But I have one full skein and one nearly full skein of the Rowan Calmer left. It's so soft and pretty that I am sure it will be calling out to be made into something soon.

While it was drying, I devoted several more hours of my weekend to trying to find a top to match it. The scarf is for my mom and she is much more matchy matchy than me.

When I picked out the yarn, it seemed like a color that was currently fashionable. Didn't think it would be such a challenge to find a top. Usually, you can walk into the Gap and they have shirts in every color of the rainbow.

Not this weekend, apparently. I went to Kohl's, The Gap, American Eagle Outfitters, Chicos, Banana Republic, J Crew, Meijer, TJ Maxx, Old Navy, Ann Taylor and Eddie Bauer. Struck out absolutely everywhere until I finally found a t-shirt that matched at Eddie Bauer. Only the Eddie Bauer I was at didn't have my mom's size. So now I have to go to a different Eddie Bauer tonight. The "throw in" t-shirt has now taken nearly as long to acquire as the knitted scarf. Man, I hope she likes this.

My other bit of craftiness for the weekend was actually craft repair. My friend Jason made me this chalkboard clock as a housewarming present a year and a half ago. Unfortunately it has never really kept time. But since it was cute and since I hammered nails into my freshly painted kitchen wall, I left it up.

The problem was that the hands were painted and seemed to stick together. Jason was clever enough to realize that you could buy a whole clock for less than the cost of the clock-making kits at the craft store. So he bought a cheap-o clock, broke it apart to get the clock mechanism out and painted the hands white so they would show up over the chalkboard.

Great idea. But if anyone is looking to replicate this, I'll recommend that you rub a little candle wax on top of the hands to keep them moving. It only took me a year and a half to figure that part out.

And if you really want to replicate this, take a square of plywood and finish the edges with a little molding. You'll need the molding to extend backwards past the clock mechanism. (If you don't have a miter box at home, Lowe's and Home Depot let you make cuts like this in the store)

(back view)

Depending on the width of your plywood, you may need to use a router to cut out a space for the clock mechanism. (The advantage of the craft store clock making kits is they come in a variety of widths and you could just buy your plywood accordingly)

Spray the whole thing with chalkboard paint (it may need a couple of coats), screw on the clock mechanism (after you wax the hands) and Voila! chalkboard clock. Thanks Jason.

Mission Control: We are GO for Crap

2006-09-01T12:00:00.000-04:00

Sign-ups are closed, so let's get the C4 cardmaking exchange underway.

At this point, everyone should know who their partner is and have their mailing address (if not, check the comments section of the original post). If you forgot to sign up - tough luck - but check back, we'll play another game soon.

We have a long weekend ahead of us, so start gathering your forgotten and neglected cardmaking supplies.

I am a procrastinator by nature, so I need deadlines to actually get anything done. Hopefully this schedule will work for everyone:

Mail supplies to your partner by Saturday, September 9th. (I know, it's only a week, but how long can it take to fill an envelope with crap?)

Make a card, or two, or three... with the supplies your partner sent you. Mail is fun. Send a finished card back to the person who sent you the supplies by Saturday, September 23rd.

Done!

2006-08-29T09:24:00.000-04:00

Two days ago, my dog got a new bone and she hasn't been seen or heard from since. (Well, I suppose I can see her as she has been laying next to the couch, but I honestly haven't heard her - it's kind of awesome)

Combine a preoccupied dog with a couple of rainstorms and what do you get? A finished Branching Out scarf, that's what.

Voila! The triumphant cast off.

I tried to take a picture of the finished scarf on an armchair. Alas, Maddie has a Pavlovian response to the camera. She has been conditioned to think that enduring flashbulbs in her eyes means she gets cookies.

(It is my own fault due to the amount of bribery that went into taking this picture of her last Christmas)

Since she was kind enough to set aside her bone for a minute, who was I to deny her the opportunity to pose? It really is all about her, after all.

Okay, back to knitting... I am planning to block the scarf over the weekend. I am hoping that by Saturday my desire to see how long it will be when blocked will outweigh my general terror at the thought of dunking it in water. Fingers crossed.

Recycled card idea

2006-08-24T13:05:00.000-04:00

So, this totally pales in comparison to Emily's invitation making skills, but my friend Sean sent me a card the other day that I thought I'd mention.

A little back story... Sean is awesome. He is an amazing graphic artist and designed several of the items for sale at craftfetish. Very creative guy. Since he lives out of state, Emily had the excellent idea of sending him a gorilla-gram for his 30th birthday.

This is the thank-you note he sent.

He also enclosed a photo of him and the gorilla. The gorilla apparently brings a balloon bouquet to the humiliatee er, I mean, birthday boy. So the embellishment is from one of the gorilla's balloons. I will spare Sean the added humiliation of posting said photo on the internet, but it gives context to the card.

I would also like to point out the pretty patterned paper below the balloon. I'm nosy enough that I peeled it up a bit to see if I could figure out where he got it. Turns out, it's a Dutch Boy paint sample.

So gold star to Sean for scamming free craft supplies from the hardware store and making a really cute card out of recycled materials. I may rip off this idea for the C4 swap (note: only a week left to sign up).

I'll try to have some projects of my own to report on next week. I'm currently 25 pattern repeats into my Branching Out scarf. I'm trying to finish in time for my mom's birthday next month and am currently debating just how many pattern repeats I need before I think it is "done."

I'm link-happy today. And so, I'll leave you with this completely random link that made me giggle this morning.

Let the Baby Showers Begin!

2006-08-23T13:28:00.000-04:00

I am the unofficial Official Shower Hostess...and after 12 bridal showers...it's time to start up the baby showers! So here goes my first one...

We sent the invitations...

I "borrowed" the idea from Stampin' Up. The ladies at my scrapbooking store call it "scrap-lifting". (note I DID BUY the stamp set so it's not completely immoral) They used flowers instead of carriages for a garden party.

The outer card is half a sheet of 12x12 so you get two pockets per sheet. You fold up the bottom to fit the inner card of your liking. Remember to use 2-sided paper because of the fold. This would also be a cool design for a menu card holder at a place setting, or a gift card/ certificate holder.

I put the map and registry cards in the little pocket as well.

Cutting the ribbon is A PAIN!!!! The trick is to lay down the ribbon with a little over hang to fold over. Then pinch the ribbon for the knot, then cut it. Glue down the undersides (under the gingham fold) and then tie your knot. I tried to guess where off-center was and it was a disaster.

We made these assembly line fashion and made 30 in three hours. We lost some time by running out of tape runner and so you might be quicker.

After the shower I'll send party photos so you can see where else my gingham and carriages reappear!