Squirrels Go Like This

Hello? Is thing still on?

I know…it’s been quite a while since we’ve been around here. We have a few reasons:
First we moved, then we had kids, then we moved again.
All this in the space of 10 months.

…

Now, that life is returning to some sort of normal (read that as snot-on-my-shirt-everyday and random-mess-on-my pants normal), we are starting to adapt the hobbies we used to have to our lives.

I’m hoping Boombadeus starts showing all the sweat and blood he’s put into the house (with record heat summers we’ve been having, there was a LOT of the first one)…and I will try to show all the crafts I’ve been documenting.

At some point the RSS was hijacked, and now it won’t go back to normal on Google Reader. We’ll try and figure it out; but we’ll be honest, might take a little while…

Weird spam coming from the blog

There seems to be some weird spam coming from the RSS feed lately. (We are trying to figure out what is going on.)

While we figure this thing out, DO NOT click on any of the links!

We haven’t been around lately, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy with projects! Hopefully soon, when things slow down a little bit in real life, we’ll post about our recent projects!

–Angie

My excuse

Every time I’m in the Boston area I have to stop by New England Mobile Book Fair…why? ’cause I can get craft books at great prices! For example; last time I was there I bought Weekend Knitting by Melanie Falick. The excuse: it has this cute flower washcloth pattern and I had also been itching to make the second bathroom a little more than just an extra bathroom; with niceties for the guests…so why not buy the book and make a washcloth? or two? Specially since Boombadeus’ mom was going to visit soon…

The pattern is easy; increases being the most ‘difficult’ part I think. Five petals are made separately; and then joined (which is quite easy). The not so easy part: making sure the silly yarn ends get hidden.

The cotton yarn (Sublime Cotton) was purchased at Loop (on sale!). It, being cotton, was quite easy to work with (compared to the slippery Misti alpaca that i’ve been battling on my WIP “Calm”); but it was annoying because of the separate threads…every once in a while I’d miss one.

I got three different colors of this cotton; the one I used here is Mashed Banana and I used about 0.6 to 0.75 of a ball…so not that bad huh? What do you think of the finished product?

A kid approved gift.

In this day and age, children seem to have it all: dolls that speak to them, bears that know their names, crazy cars that do back flips, robots that double as pets….amongst many other amazing toys that my generation didn’t have. You can understand why searching for a birthday gift could be a little frustrating!

Luckily for me, the adorable little lady that is about to turn 3, likes creativity just like her siblings…and her mom hinted at how much her older siblings had loved a gift that I made for them 2 years ago: Crayon rolls!

These rolls are a lot of fun: They’re not too difficult to make and are easy to personalize if you want to spend a little more time thinking of that little person.

First step:

Come on, personalize it!

You’re making something hand made! It doesn’t take that much longer to add a few finishing touches!

I chose to embroider birthday girl’s name onto it along with a teddy that would tie the front to the patterned fabric i’d use in the inside.

Notice I also used simple letters; nothing worse than confusing a 3 year old learning how to read with fancy handwriting! (Save the fancy stuff for the older kids).

Two:

You’ll need five pieces total.

2 large rectangular pieces of of the size you choose the roll to be.

2 small rectangular pieces for the holding of the crayons (these were about 1/2 the width of the large pieces).

1 large 1.5″ wide piece for the ribbon that will hold it together.

You sew the long side of the two small rectangles together and press (trust me, press, it takes a few extra minutes, but makes it so much easier for you!)

Then you put all pieces together: if you’re embroidering,  remember where you’re putting the tie!!

And here is the finished gift! Pair it with a few coloring books and it should be a good entertainment tool for  a three year old when they can’t go out because it’s cold/raining out!

Sophie’s quilt

Lately “minky fabric” has been all the rage for making baby blankets. I had seen it described as extremely soft; so I was very curious to feel this fabric. I found out just how soft when i went into a Joann’s fabric, while looking for a rotary cutter. In my personal experience, I think only alpaca wool is softer than this fluffy stuff.

Anyway, I had a great excuse to get a couple of yards of minky: K & N were having a baby!

In  a previous Joann’s trip I had found a cute Winnie the Pooh fat quarter bundle in various colors. As they decided to not find out the gender of the baby until it was born, this would be perfect for my fabric addiction and schemes…er I mean blanket! Read the rest of this entry »

Hawaii Five-O

Last year, in a trip to Joann’s fabric I was lucky enough to find a ~1 yard piece of acetate in the remnants rack. The background color was black; but it had beautiful bright happy print of hibiscus and orchids on it…I was sold.

The piece of fabric shouted to me “tropical drinks” and “afternoon sunset by the beach” while the theme of Hawaii Five-O played in my head. While I’ve never had a tropical drink while admiring the afternoon sunset by the beach, I’ll happily start go-go dancing when I listen to the theme of Hawaii Five-O.

A couple of weeks later, on a sewing kick one Saturday morning, I looked at the fabric. “What to make?” I thought to myself. Having just made a halter dress, I decided to make a halter top; a dress but shorter!

I cut three pieces, two for the back, one for the front and barely had enough fabric for the length I wanted. Since making a cord from that was not an option, I used some silk ribbon I found….and ended up with this halter (i kinda love halter tops, not sure why).

I might not love hot and humid weather, but I do love this top. Sadly for me, so do the mosquitos!

Butterflies in my bread!

Remember how I embroidered a Monarch butterfly for the Eternal Spring table runner?

That I was tempted to make another one in the same table runner?

Well, I liked it so much I had to make yet another one…this time the butterfly is going to be in a napkin that will be wrapping bread/tortillas in my table! Aren’t butterflies pretty?

Here is the finished Butterfly bread napkin…

Fastest baby booties ever!

… After having been left with so much yarn from Pound of Love, I decided to continue the baby-gift-making-fest.

Jeannette, one of the wonderful knitting ladies in my Stitch & Bitch, was making a lot of these cute booties around the time I was making the blanket. She was pregnant and wanted to make these for her daughter, but instead kept on giving them to friends that were also due soon.

She shared the link to the pattern, Sullivan’s baby booties, with the knitting group, and I started making them right away. In no time I had two pairs of booties, which was perfect to go with the two blankets ready to be gift wrapped!

These baby booties are extremely easy; just follow the link and see for yourself. They didn’t really make a dent on the remaining Pound of Love ball, so I’m guessing i’m going to have to make another baby blanket!

Also, because I was asked on Flickr, I am translating the pattern into Spanish below:

Este patrón de botitas de bebe es super fácil; alguien, via Flickr, me pidió el traducir el patrón, asi que aquí esta:

Read the rest of this entry »

Alex’s blanket

Having finally finished the DNA scarf, I didn’t now what project to start next (I’ve found that since I joined the knitting group, I am more encouraged to finish projects!). I wasn’t interested in knitting another scarf. Luckily for me, right about that time Jess announced that she’d be having a baby. I decided I wanted to knit a baby “something” for her.

I scoured the internets for a project; something pretty, something not too girlie (Jess didn’t know the gender yet) and something not too complicated as I wanted to complete the project before the baby was born.

I also wanted to start using a recently purchased a “stitchionary”, Lace & eyelets, that I had gotten with a gift certificate Boombadeus’ mom had given me for my birthday…but I was still intimidated by the eyelets…but the eyelets and lace look so pretty! Oh, what to do?

I started looking at baby blanket patterns on Ravelry, but most had hearts, bears, and simple squares. Don’t get me wrong, I like hearts, bears and simple squares…but Jess has lots of crochet/knitting relatives…I wanted to do something that was going to be different…then I found this blanket by maggiecrafts. I was saved! Not only did it look beautiful, she mentioned that she had whipped it up in no time. Well, I was new at the eyelet/lace thing…but heck, it looked so pretty, how about I give eyelets and lace a try?

I chose Tulip Lace from my stitchionary, and off I went. I can’t remember how many stitches I cast…probably whatever they recommended in the ball of yarn (Pound of love) and I started.

At the beginning I was knitting on two needles; a few inches after I started it was getting heavy. My wrists were starting to hurt from holding all the weight with only one hand…so off I went to Rosie’s and purchased 36″ circulars. Oh, what a difference that made!! I loved it!

Less than two months later it was done! Since I tend to mostly knit on Tuesdays, at the knitting group, the timing wasn’t so bad for a first timer at lace, right? If you’d like to download the pattern, click here.

Minolta Hi-Matic 9

Self Portrait

The last time Craftyangie and I visited my parents, my father dug through his collection and found a treasure: my Grandmother’s old Minolta Hi-Matic 9. It’s a late ’60s 35mm rangefinder camera, with a 45mm f/1.7 lens. It features fully automatic exposure, but also allows full manual exposure control. Like so many hand-me-downs in my family, even though this camera was used extensively by my grandmother, it’s in absolutely perfect cosmetic condition.

Hi-Matic 9, straight on

Of course, there’s always a catch to these things. (There kind of has to be!) In this case, there were a couple of catches. It originally took one of those nasty old Mercury cell batteries, that are now illegal in the US. And, as we played around with it, we discovered that the shutter didn’t always fire. In fact, while playing around with it, the shutter stopped working entirely. You’d hear a “click”, but nothing would happen. Fortunately, I was able to fix both problems… Read the rest of this entry »