The Caped Cow

Very little crafting in Asia

2011-04-07T11:18:00.000-04:00

My husband and I leave in 3 days for our huge crazy trip around the world that won't be finished until November. I will absolutely not be updating this blog at all in that time as I don't see myself making much stuff while touring.

It you want to keep up to date with our travels, visit our other blog: http://ipadaround.blogspot.com/
We will be updating that on as regular basis as we can manage.

Happy crafting!

T quilt top is done!

2011-03-23T23:12:00.000-04:00

My goal for this month was to assemble the top to the T quilt before selling my sewing machine and moving. And it's done! I love it lots. There are several rows in which the squares are semi-squished looking but whatever. Once it's quilted it won't be terribly noticeable. Plus I am not going back and changing anything now.

Now, the question is how do I quilt it? I was originally thinking horizontal lines at every row but the squares don't line up nicely between 8x8 blocks. I could do horizontal lines every 1/2 inch but I'm not really in love with the idea. One idea I had was to quilt straight lines in all sorts of funky diagonal criss-cross lines, since there is a lot of diagonal lines in the map. Kind of like this:

I didn't want to quilt over the pictures of Boston when I was doing horizontal lines, to make the pictures stand out more. But should I stick with that rule if I quilt with criss-crossing? I could quilt a box around each of the pictures, and then when criss-crossing just stop at the box.

I want to get started with pinning the back to the top with the batting, but I have to located the batting somewhere in this house. Also, my sewing chair is an end table since we sold our chairs today.

I haven't left yet

2011-03-15T21:57:00.000-04:00

I'm still plugging away on my T quilt, but it's slow going. We had friends in town this weekend and my craft desk was moved down to the basement, so no sewing. I'd like to finish the top before we leave but time is quickly running out. We leave April 10th.

A couple weekends ago a friend of mine came over to use my sewing machine. She brought over curtains that were too long and made them shorter. Then we went to the fabric store for her to buy fabrics and when we came back she made 6 handkerchiefs and 1 apron.

Here she is modeling her new apron. Isn't it adorable?

Traveling around the world

2011-02-13T10:31:00.000-05:00

This isn't directly related to crafting but it is related to my life. For those of you who don't know me in real life, my husband and I are going to start traveling this year for 7 months. We have been planning this for months and months now but tonight we finally bought our plane tickets. We leave April 10th for New Zealand. If you are interested in learning more about where we are going, or want to keep up with us while traveling, visit http://ipadaround.blogspot.com/. This is where we plan on chronicling our adventures as we are on the road.

During this time there will be no updating of this blog and little to no crafting on the road. I am hoping to finish up the T quilt, including quilting and binding, before we leave. Anyways, thought I would post here and let you guys know. Hope you are doing well!

More T quilt

2011-02-10T08:24:00.000-05:00

Yay! It's much more fun now. I figured out a lot of my problems (although my sewing machine still hates the white fabric). I still have 10 more large blocks to go. Don't you love the fabric with the Boston prints? I do. Do you think I should outline them in colored blocks? Maybe a white fabric with a black pattern? I'm afraid that it would overwhelm the general design of the T.

An in action shot. Tonight I brought my computer over and watched a couple episodes of Dr. Who while sewing.

T Quilt sewing

2011-02-04T07:00:00.002-05:00

Yes! I have started sewing squares together for my T quilt. And I hate it. Hate hate hate it*. This is going to suck. Part of the reason is because I have a crappy cheap sewing machine that likes to eat my little white squares. The white fabric is a bit thinner than the colored fabric and when I sew two white squares together about 50% of the time my machine will just eat the first little corner and not sew the rest of it. It is incredibly annoying.

Another part is because I hand cut the colored squares but rotary cut the white squares so all of the colored fabrics are slightly larger than 1.5 inches. Just enough for corners not to align properly from line to line. Ugh! Not to mention the ripping out and re-sewing because squares don't line up, the rip out and resew again only to realize I sewed the wrong sides together.

So here is my first "square." It's somewhere in the center because I didn't want to do a lot of white squares just yet (I haven't decided where I am going to put my boston fabric in the white squares). Yes, my print out of the quilt is in black and white because our printer is being dumb and thinks it is out of color ink.

And for fun, here is a shot of my sewing workspace in action, nothing has been cleaned up or posed.

In Oh Franssons! original Tokyo Subway map, she assembled her quilt in blocks of 8x8 so I thought I would do the same. Which I like. But no more sewing for me tonight or else I will really tear out all of my hair. Next up: a giant glass of wine.

*I have since sewn more of the T quilt and it turns out I was just having a bad night. It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I've also planned and cut my boston fabric for the quilt to, so that's exciting. But my arms are too tired from shoveling snow to do any more today.

XKCD embroidery

2011-02-01T11:36:00.002-05:00

The inspiration for these embroideries come from a post I saw on craftster.org, where someone else had done this as a present. First comic is here. I printed it onto the fabric by ironing freezer paper to it, cutting it to size and running it through the printer.

This is going to be a gift for someone who is having a baby, but I haven't decided what to put it on. A pillow? Just in a frame?

But I was so excited that I started looking through the rest of xkcd and saving all my favorite comics.

Here is the comic on the right. The comic on the right, along with maybe 8 or 9 other comics, I am going to make into a quilt, with fabrics outlining each square comic. It's a gift for a friend who I know will love it, I just have to make it.

I also want to turn this comic into a quilt or wall hanging of it's own. I have big plans but little action. Also I wanted to change my background for my blog and couldn't really decide, so I went with something completely different.

Leftover hat

2011-01-29T11:36:00.000-05:00

I don't think I've talked about it on this blog, but I've put myself on a yarn diet. No new yarn until I've knitted down my stash some. With the exception of the yarn I bought to make a neck warmer for a co-worker. This yummy orange alpaca. I also bought a skein of green alpaca, just in case she didn't like the orange (I didn't want to make two trips to the yarn store). With the orange and green leftover I made 2 hats and used up all the yarn. The first hat I didn't take a picture of because I made it at work and then gave it to a coworker. Here is the second hat:

The brim is double thick. I knitted for a bit and then turned it under. That way my ears won't get cold. Also, this is a silly picture.

You can't really see in this picture, but there are tiny orange ear flaps on either side with an i cord long enough to tie under my chin. I love this feature because tying the flaps closed really help with keeping the wind out of my ears. And don't mind the pasty white skin tone, I swear it's not that bad.

Wedding Quilt finite!

2011-01-23T13:46:00.000-05:00

A lovely surprise for me this weekend, my wedding quilt is quilted and bound. My fantastic mother-in-law did machine quilting in the ditch (along all the lines of the fabric) and then Grammy hand quilted seashells along the edges and in the orange squares. Here is is on our queen sized bed:

This is the hand embroidery in designed and stitched for the center. The words are our vows (which I only remember because it was in an email). You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

Close up of one of the shells:

We love all of the things people wrote on our quilt, but this was is pretty funny, in the green triangle:

(we love you guys all the best. We are really enjoying ourselves to we are signing twice. Keith and Kathy)

Now I'm not sure what to do with it. It is "lap" size, which means it's about 5' by 5'. It will most likely live on our couch and serve as our tv blanket to cuddle with. But I love having it on our bed right now all spread out to look at.

Starting the T quilt

2011-01-09T11:21:00.000-05:00

Finally got enough motivation to sit down and start chopping some fabric. I have taken fabrics from my friend Serenity's stash and my mother-in-law's stash (thank you!) and used a couple fabrics of my own. For a guide, I cut out a 1.5 inch square piece of cardboard then cut all the fabrics with scissors (instead of a rotary cutter). It was easier than I thought it would be.

Here are my completed piles, including the cardboard guide in the upper left corner.

And for fun, here are some extra squares I cut out. Originally I was cutting 2 squares out of each fabric to make sure I had enough squares. Then I went through and chose at least one of each fabric square. For the reds and blues there are no repeating fabric squares.

Next up, cutting a million white squares. Yay.

Leg warmers

2010-12-09T08:44:00.000-05:00

Living in New England allows me to wear certain cold weather accessories I wouldn't normally wear in warmer winters. Leg warmers are crucial for me during the beginning and end of winter, when it's not cold enough to warrant long johns. The second winter here, I knitted myself this pair of leg warmers:

The purple striped one was made first. These are Clemson colors, and the yarn is leftover from a gift I sent my adviser in grad school. But after this first legwarmer, I ran out of purple. So I made the second one plain orange. Which also happens to be several rows shorter than the first one. These are pretty but they are worn under my pants, so they will do.

Since I am done with all my planned christmas gifts, I don't have a project. So the other night I decided to make myself a pretty pair of legwarmers. I found a stitch pattern that I had copied from a library book, measured how big around it should be, and cast on. Here it is so far (not the pattern in the back):

At least they will be all one color this time.

Craft fair fare

2010-12-06T08:27:00.000-05:00

Finally got around to setting up and taking pictures of what is leftover from my very first craft fair. There were 3 styles of baby blankets (10 in all I think), 6 pumpkin hats for kids, and 8 kids aprons in two sizes, 2-4 yrs old and 4-8 yrs old.

Here is the set up:

I shared a table at the fair with my knitting friend who had knitted 8 or so hats in different colors and materials. I made signs for each of the objects with prices ($10 for a blanket or an apron, $15 for a hat). To be honest, I wanted to sell the hats for $10 since they were smaller and went really quick, but since I was sharing a table with my friend we decided before the event what to sell them for, and she wanted to sell hers for $15 and I thought it wouldn't be right to sell mine for less on the same table.

A close up of the aprons:

I really like this pattern and as you may have noticed, I cut the fabric sideways so the pattern runs from left to right instead of top and bottom. The pocket fabric is orange with letters all over it.

This fabric is so cute! Here is a close up:

It has recipes all over it.

These aprons were made with the patterns upside down. They are supposed to be flowers. Oh well. I had one more fabric that the aprons were made out of, it was a nice christmas fabric, but I sold both of those aprons to the same person (a gift for 2 sisters).

A couple of people asked if I had any aprons that were boy fabrics and sadly I did not. The top one is the closest I got. When I went fabric shopping I didn't really think to buy boy's fabric. But now I know. I wish I had bought ribbon in other colors for the apron ties. It didn't really fit with the christmas aprons. But on the up side, I've used most of the ribbon I had laying around the house.

In all, I sold 3 baby blankets (all to friends), 1 pumpkin hat, and 4 aprons (2 in each size). Not too shabby!

Craft fair results

2010-12-02T19:04:00.000-05:00

I know I've been silent for a couple weeks now on here but it's because I've been sewing away preparing myself for the craft fair at work. Unfortunately I forgot to bring a camera so I can't show you any pictures from the event.

But as soon as I get the motivation, I can take pictures of what I didn't sell so you can see what I made. I sold 4 aprons, 3 kids security blanets, and 1 pumpkin hat. Which is so exciting! It seems that eople also wanted boy fabrics for the aprons for the little men in their lives. I didn't even think of buying boy fabrics when I went to the store, but now I know!

Craft Fair

2010-11-19T08:01:00.000-05:00

This year our work will be holding the second annual craft fair December 2nd. Last year was fun to visit and I bought a bowl to hold our fruits in. There was hot chocolate and gingerbread cookies, the whole holiday theme. This year I've decided to sign up for a table. I am really nervous about this because it's in 2 weeks and I haven't really made anything for it. Also because the woman putting it together makes knitted things I don't want to have a table full of knitted things as well. So I am thinking of sewing up some stuff. But I was told that I can always cancel my table or if I have a few things I could share my table with the woman who is organizing it.

For now I will be thinking of things I could make. Felted food, baby security blankets (the small ones with tags), maybe a few aprons, maybe a couple knitted hats and or scarves. Or I could just give away some of the scarves I have made and keep around. What do you think?

Hats

2010-11-16T08:34:00.004-05:00

It's hat season. Last week was an odd week for me because I spent two days in a conference and had an extra day off of work for Veteran's day. Therefore there was lots of knitting. These are the hats started and finished last week:

This hat I finished last week but started weeks ago. It is for a 2 year old but fits my head and is too long. But I started this hat at least 3 times in this yarn and a couple times in another yarn. So he's just going to have to grow into it.

And these were finished awhile ago but I never posted them here. These are part of my Christmas presents to people who picked out their design and color. I have enough blue and pink yarn leftover that I may make another hat out of them.

On a side note, my halloween wall hanging is still up and I don't want to take it down. I think I will leave it up until Thanksgiving.

Banana Bread

2010-11-09T15:31:00.000-05:00

Mmm... I made some yummy banana bread. Want to see?

Banana bread is something I have recently learned to love to bake. Whenever we have a couple bananas starting to turn brown I will forgo eating them until they are mushy enough for banana bread. I generally follow the recipe in my America's Test Kitchen Baking book, but always make substitutions.

Instead of the full two cups of white flour I use 1 1/2 cups wheat flour and 1/2 cup wheat germ and flax seed mix. Instead of 6 tablespoons of butter I add 6 tablespoons of applesauce. Only 1/2 cup white sugar instead of 3/4 cup (and next time I will try even less).

This time I tried one of the alternatives in the baking book and added 3 squares of bittersweet baking chocolate grated (it called for 1/2 cup but I didn't have that much). Are there any standard substitutions you make to your baking goods?

Scrapbook

2010-11-05T08:20:00.000-04:00

I don't have anything new to report on the knitting/sewing front. Instead I will update you on my paper crafts. As you may or may not have known, Andy and I went to South Korea in April this year for a 10 day vacation. It was amazing and we took around 600 pictures and collected a mound of paper memorabilia. A month or so ago I went through all our pictures and printed the ones I thought would be best in a scrapbook. Then finally last week I started assembly said scrapbook. It was a painful process full of indecision which Andy was immensely helpful with his opinions. Here are a few pages:

Our hostel in Seoul, The Yellow Submarine, and the beginning of our DMZ tour.

Part of the temple stay (we spent the night at a buddist temple and lived as buddist).

And this one is upside down but I can't get it turn turn right side up even though it is right side up in iphoto. This was one day in Busan where we found this random amusement park and ate at Jigalchi fish market.

It's not complete. I need to alter the front, which is just plain black, to say South Korea on it. But for now, it's done.

Nothing to see here, move along

2010-11-01T07:59:00.000-04:00

Oh how sad! I was really hoping to show you what I made recently. Unfortunately the day it was supposed to arrive at the recipient's house, she left for a 6 week trip. So sadly you will not see what I made all of last Sunday (and a little of last Saturday).

Soon I will make a post of all the christmas presents that I have been knitting away at (since the recipients know what they will be getting, I don't mind if they see it before christmas). I have finished all of the scarves and 2 1/2 out of 4 hats. Plus I am going to knit some winter accessories for my two nephews (who are the best little boys on the planet) but haven't decided if I should buy some more yarn. I went through my stash and nothing is jumping out at me (I have a lot of girly yarn colors), but I put all of the yarn that would look best in little boy hats in a drawer next to my craft area.

Because no blog post is complete without a picture

Costumes

2010-10-28T08:00:00.000-04:00

This weekend was our first Halloween party of the season. Andy worked tirelessly on his costume since the beginning of the month up until a couple hours before the party.

He made the proton pack from scratch using ply-wood, cardboard, an Alice frame and a ton of hot glue. Totally worth the investment of time and money.

And of course no one recognized who I was, which I was expecting. I'm a highly stylized version of a character on a British sci-fi show. Any guesses?

*I forgot that even it you put in the schedule when you want the post to go up, you still have to click "publish" in order for it to appear. Oh well.

Quilt Envy

2010-10-22T08:57:00.000-04:00

There is a fantastic website for crafty people to post their projects and get feedback as well as get inspiration from other people's projects. Craftster. My bookmarks list is full of other people's amazing projects and I thought today I would show you the quilts I have collected.

This works really well for someone with a pirate-y last name.

How awesome would it be to have a personalized quilt for your baby?

There is something about the muted colors and simplistic design of the landscape.

And this would be amazing but I would need an awesome game room for this to go into. Not really an everyday bed quilt.

Halloween!!!

2010-10-19T08:00:00.013-04:00

Late Thursday night I finished up the halloween quilt but it was too dark to take pictures and I already had the Boston T quilt post written up. I finished quilting it while Andy made dinner (I helped a little bit), cut the binding after dinner and sewed on the binding after apple pie. It is my favorite new addition to our house for the Halloween season (and may stay up past Halloween if Andy allows it).

Doesn't it look fabulous? It happens to fit a blank wall above my crafting desk. Can you see the fabric stored beneath the table? And that top drawer on the right in the red thing, that's all yarn. That's not even the majority of my yarn, just the stuff I'm currently working on or currently finished with. You can also see Norbert's permanent home on top of the bookshelf.

Next quilt

2010-10-15T08:24:00.007-04:00

Even though I haven't finished quilting or binding the Halloween wall hanging, I am already planning my next quilt. Why this is so addictive, I'm not really sure but it is. The inspiration for this project comes from Oh, Fransson! who is in the middle of a quilt-a-long for a map of the Tokyo subway system (starting in her blog about here). It looks amazing.

Looking at her quilt inspired me to make one of the city I love and live in, Boston. So I made an excel spreadsheet of where each of the blocks should go for the different T lines. It is not comprehensive since I left out the Silver line, but that is technically a bus anyways.

I have calculated how many of each color square I will need. I would like to do like Oh, Fransson! where each color is a fun little fabric square, instead of plain. Since there are so many squares, I am thinking of making each square an inch (not including seam allowances) so it will be a large wall hanging (about 32 inches by 32 inches). There is also a lot of white spaces, which is why I included the T symbol in the bottom left and I will embroider Boston on the top left.

What do you think?

Stupid blog

2010-10-11T21:36:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I click on the link to my blog to see if there is anything new there. And when there isn't I have to remind myself that I am the only person who writes on this blog and if I haven't written anything nothing new gets posted.

So here are a couple pictures from my weekend in the White Mountains, celebrating our one year wedding anniversary.

Hope you had a good long weekend!

Halloween Quilt

2010-10-01T08:51:00.005-04:00

Now begins the quilting. I've decided to do wonky lines, but because the quilt is so wide, the lines aren't very wonky. So far so good though.

First time using my walking foot (which came with the machine). It's nice, although the instructions say not to sew too fast, which I then ignore.

Baby blankets with tags

2010-09-27T08:20:00.034-04:00

Wow. I just did some research and am very surprised. A few weeks ago I came up with this awesome fantastic craft that I could make it would be like what other people make but different because I would be using a material that it seems no one else has thought of to use. I thought, hey if this works, maybe I could sell it, open an Etsy shop, be one of the cool kids.

First, I had to do my research online to find out what other people are making, if there are safety issues, and general background research. What I found was quite surprising. Ready for it? Taggies Co. (inc? org?) has a patent on taggie blankets. Apparently everyone in the crafting community is dumbfounded by this since a lot of people recall these blankets being sold long before the patent came around in 2002 (like Fischer Price, who sold these blankets in the 70s). What's worse is that the Taggie company is just going after small homemade craft selling websites like Etsy and ArtFire and not companies like Walmart and Hancock Fabrics.

Because no blog post is complete without a picture

If you are interested, read this forum about how Taggie Co harasses people for selling ANYTHING with a tag on it. Or the comments on this blog. Some people went looking for free advice about how to counteract Taggie.

For now, my idea will just hang out in my head, maybe turn into a couple baby gifts. But it will not be what I base my online crafting store around. Which is sad, because I still haven't come up with a good idea on what I can contribute to the online marketplace that is unique, not patented, and my own idea. I am really good at copying other people, not so good at coming up with the idea myself.

Maybe someone with a lot of money will challenge the patent in court where it will assuredly be determined invalid and then we can all go on flooding the craft market place with tag blankets (pillows, blocks, bibs, toys of any sort).

Edit: Here is a link on how to make your own taggie blanket (or click on it if you don't know what one is)

My knitted things

2010-09-23T08:52:00.000-04:00

This morning I searched around my house for all my the things I have knitted. I want to show you just how ridiculous the situation is and why I want to start my christmas presents early, rather than continue to make things for myself.

First up, my scarves:

I did not realize until today how many hand knitted scarves I own. It's particularly surprising because I generally hate making them. But I recognize a couple of these to be presents I made for someone else and then never gave to them. These aren't even all the scarves I own, just the hand knitted ones.

Hats and socks (cause they go together, right?):

Also included in the above picture are leg warmers and fingerless mitts. There should be another pair of fingerless mitts floating around my apartment but I didn't realize they were missing until I took these pictures.

And finally, my whole collection:

Halloween time

2010-09-20T08:23:00.000-04:00

Remember the halloween fabric I bought a couple weeks ago? Well I have started cutting into it. The first thing I wanted to make was a wall hanging (a mini quilt). For a few days I scribbled in my notebook deciding how to arrange the fabric. Once I had decided on a pattern, it went really quickly. I started cutting Wednesday night and finished the top Friday morning. Here is the top:

It's kind of busy which I didn't anticipate because my drawings were of white squares and rectangles. Ooops. I probably should have added some plain black border fabrics inside the quilt. Also, it is a lot bigger than I thought it would be. I'd guess it's about 35 inches wide by about 40 inches tall. But some of the fabric prints are so large I wanted to make sure I captured them well.

Here is a close up of the corner so you can see the awesomeness of the fabrics. Originally the orange spider border fabric was going to be the same width as the Boo! fabric, but I changed my mind at the last second (I had already sewn one side on). I like it smaller, but I think I made it too small.

Since it is so large I have no clue where we can hang it in our apartment. For the binding, should I use the black Boo! fabric, or a different black fabric or an orange fabric?

The Art of Non Conformity

2010-09-16T08:41:00.012-04:00

First: Thank you everyone who comments on my blog! I love reading the comments especially when I ask you questions and you respond with answers. I am horrible with writing responses back to comments (and sometimes I can't write back because there is no contact info) but I want you to know that I really appreciate you taking the time to read, think then comment.

and Thank you DryIcons for the image

I went to a book signing on Monday night. It was my first time at any such event and it was enlightening. The writer is Chris Guillebeau and his book is called The Art of Non-Conformity. He started with a blog. Right now my favorite post of his is called "How to be Unremarkably Average." You should read it here.

Afterwards Chris and a group of people including myself and Andy went to a local bar to talk more about things. There was about 12 of us and each person had a different reason for coming to the book talk and it was fascinating to talk to everyone. Some of us exchanged contact info and hopefully we'll actually start a dialogue with each other.

Oh, do you like the blog color change? I needed a change for the fall. It's just a cookie cutter design but I like it.

The beginning of present season

2010-09-13T08:07:00.002-04:00

It's that time of year. I'm starting early hoping to avoid December crunch time that most crafters feel. And I'm off to a good start. Two presents done! Since I have asked some of my recipients for their choice in color and pattern, I feel it is okay to post pictures of their presents.

Both of these are waffle scarves made with Malabrigo yarn. Holy cow, this is such a scrumptious yarn to knit. The final scarves are soft and warm and wonderful. I think I have 1 more scarf and 4 more hats to knit that I know of. Then I have to start on presents people haven't picked out.

New fabric!!!!

2010-09-09T17:59:00.003-04:00

For my birthday this year my best friend since high school gave me a gift card to Hancock fabrics. I went crazy. Halloween is my favorite "holiday" and I have been wanting fabric for a while. Here:

This one isn't shown above because the pattern is sideways:

A couple of my favorites:

Now the hard part is deciding what I want to do with all of them. I am definitely making a quilt with them, but each fabric is a yard so I have a ton of fabric. I was also thinking of making some Halloween clothing, but I'm not sure if I want something I can only wear 2 months out of the year (it's acceptable to wear Halloween stuff in September).

Any other suggestions?

Scarf length

2010-09-02T08:51:00.001-04:00

When knitting a scarf at what point do you stop? How long should a finished scarf be? I like my scarves to wrap around my neck once and then hang to about my waist. It's a long scarf. Does everyone wear their scarves like this?

I am asking because I completed the first scarf of many as a christmas present, but I'm not sure I like the length. It's a little on the short side when wrapped once around the neck, but perfect when not wrapped. Do I assume they wrap their scarves around their necks and make a scarf that is potentially too long?

I will end up asking my recipient how they prefer their scarves, but what do you generally think?

(because no craft blog post is complete without a picture)

New Yarn

2010-08-30T08:47:00.000-04:00

This week I went to the yarn store with a list of yarns to buy. I have started taking orders from some family members for christmas presents. I wanted to get started early this year so there isn't the usual December rush for knitting. It is very motivating to know what pattern you will be using for each ball of yarn. In fact, I have already started on present #1.

Other new skirts

2010-08-23T08:10:00.000-04:00

I made these skirts a couple weeks back but just haven't gotten around taking pictures of them until right now. This first one I attempted a drawstring waist. There are five panels of fabric, each one about 1 inch wider at the bottom than at the top. I think this skirt is just okay.

My next skirt is my new favorite. That might be the fabric more than anything though. It has a zipper in the back and is fitted through the waist with darts. I think each panel is 2 inches wider at the bottom than the top, which makes it flow a bit more.

Also, you can't really tell in the picture, but there is a yellow fabric with dots on it between the blue flower fabrics. You can tell in person that it is different fabrics, but I don't know how well you can tell in the picture.

The top skirt was made with about 3/4 yard of fabric. The bottom skirt was made with 1/2 yard of one fabric and 1/4 yard of another.

Next, I want to try to make a skirt that has more of a structured waist than just folded over fabric.

Picnic Blanket in action

2010-08-19T07:07:00.000-04:00

This past weekend we used our new picnic blanket for an actual picnic.

Life is about creating yourself

2010-08-16T07:05:00.000-04:00

My favorite quote for a long time now, by George Bernard Shaw. Click to enlarge.

I created the design in Powerpoint and printed the design right onto the fabric. Our printer left a little pink smudge between the N and G. If I were to make this again, I would make the black words a little bigger, they are a tad difficult to read. I bought the frame at Target.

Kitchen goodness

2010-08-12T07:21:00.000-04:00

In case you haven't noticed, for the last month or so I have been trying to put up a new blog post every Monday and Thursday (I failed a little earlier this week). Twice a week is a good pace for me. But this week I left my camera in Maine with Andy and our nephew. Since I don't have anything queued for this Thursday, you will have to make do with crappy cell phone pictures.

Today I want to tell you about two things I am super proud of in my kitchen. First up, our large utensil holder. We used to have them jammed into a round metal holder that sat on our counter taking up precious counter space. I wanted to hang the utensils over our stove but everything on Amazon came with a whole new set of utensils. So I had to come up with my own solution:

It is a bath towel rod and S hooks found at home depot. It is customizable since I could pick out the prettiest rod. This has been in our home for at least 6 months and I love it very much.

But our wooden utensils and plastic utensils without holes couldn't be hung from the S hooks. I didn't like the metal holder mentioned above because it was rickety and ugly. I looked around the house and found a flower vase that wasn't being used. It is beautiful and just big enough for the rest of the utensils:

What do you think?

Skirt

2010-08-10T19:20:00.000-04:00

For a while now, I have been thinking about clothing construction and in my head it doesn't seem that difficult. I decided to make a skirt, being one of the easier pieces of clothing to make. I made a practice skirt with muslin before I started cutting into my nice fabrics, just in case it didn't work. The fabric that I chose to make the skirt out of was only 1/2 yard, and that wasn't quite enough.

So I added a 2 inch strip of a coordinating fabric to make it fit better. I like it a lot, but I wouldn't call it love. It needs to be about 3 or 4 inches longer and flair out more at the bottom for it to be love. But then it would be like most of the skirts I already own.

Finished!

2010-08-05T09:40:00.000-04:00

Yay!
Here is a close up of the binding. It's pieced together from left over fabrics.

(it's folded over on the left side so you can see the back). It's far from perfect but it works.

Sewing fun

2010-08-02T08:03:00.000-04:00

Quilting is going really well. Except when I forget to lower the needle holder thing. Then I get this crap:

On Friday I went over to my friend's house to socialize and sew.

That's my quilt on the right. Serenity is working on a tropical fabric quilt made of circles. She finished assembling all the circles while I was there so we took some time to lay them out and decide on a good pattern. I bought the fabric for her when I was in Maui as a thank you for helping so much with my wedding quilt.

I'm quilting!

2010-07-29T09:28:00.000-04:00

I dove in a started quilting my picnic blanket. The first quarter is crappy. I had to tear out so many stitches because I wasn't sewing fast enough the back thread would be loopy. But then once I got the hang of it and my tension was fine it's been fun!

Above is a shot of the back so you can clearly see the AMAZING quilting I am doing. My random squiggles aren't professional but I did them all by myself. Don't mind the puckering, I don't.

Obligatory front shot.

Once I get into the swing of quilting I really hate to stop to readjust my quilt so it fits in between my sewing machine. Below is an example of when I tried to adjust my quilt without stopping and the result is a jagged line that crosses over itself.

But you know what? I won't be looking at the quilting when I sitting on it for a picnic. So there.

Quilting Practice

2010-07-26T08:13:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I spent a couple hours practicing quilting. It was just as difficult as I thought it would be, which I guess was nice.

I played around with free motion quilting mostly but tossed in a star and a flower just to see if I liked it. Part of me wants to do a fun design all over the quilt, so I am going to look around and see if I can find any that I really like. It was easier for me to keep the tension correct when doing a flower or a star because I had more confidence in where my stitches were going.

Does anyone out there have a good design or a good place to look at designs online?

Also, the other night when Andy was gone, I made myself a little case for my sunglasses. It's just two fabrics with batting in between sewn together in a tube. I added a little top detail, made from fabric on the inside.

What do you think?

Our Garden

2010-07-22T08:47:00.000-04:00

Excuse the interruption but I would like to show you our container garden.

These are our Cosmos. I bought a packet of flower seeds from Target and stuck them in the dirt hoping they would grow but not putting any effort into them. Aren't they pretty? They are in a window box next to a bit of parsley which isn't all that impressive or useful.

Next up my lavender plant. I bought this last year and left it on the porch through the winter. I was planning on throwing the "dead" plant away this spring until it made a miraculous comeback (I did not know they were perennial). It is alive and kicking, although I just don't know what to make with lavender.

This is our oregano plant with one stalk of basil sprouting from the middle. I received this plant from a friend of mine who grew it (among other plants) from seeds. At some point a basil seed made its way over.

Our favorite plant. As you can see we have 4 tomatoes right now! That is very exciting and we are anxiously awaiting them to turn red so we can eat them. Last summer our tomato plant produced about 1 red tomato a week, which was just the pace in which we ate them. Hopefully that will happen this year too.

Not pictured is our basil, bell pepper plants, and spicy pepper plants because they are not all that interesting.

Socks!

2010-07-19T10:50:00.002-04:00

My second completed pair of socks. I would show you my first pair but right after I finished them I stuck them in the basement with the rest of my winter clothes. They are ugly socks anyways. But I am loving these new socks.

Pattern: Jaywalker (Ravelry) I realized as I was taking pictures that I have no idea how to take a good sock picture.

I guess it on my foot isn't bad but I look like I have huge ankles (maybe I do). Anyways, I loved knitting this pattern. It was really easy to memorize and go. This sock was my first heel flap sock, which I also love and will never do heels any other way. Overall it is just a tad large. I used size 1 needles, so there isn't much else I could do to make them smaller. Hopefully they will shrink a bit when I wash them.

These are made from a sock yarn I bought at Joann's but for the life of me I don't remember what brand. It's a self-striping sock (in case you couldn't tell be the pictures). I finished these up about a month ago and haven't worn them with shoes since now it is summer. Hopefully it works!

Picnic Quilt Back

2010-07-15T08:25:00.003-04:00

Now that the frantic rush to finish my stepsisters quilt is over with, I am going back to work on my picnic quilt. The instructions call for a 1 and 3/4 yard piece of fabric for the back with a strip of 3x6 inch fabric squares running down the side. Well I kept meaning to run out to the store and get more quilting fabric but when it became apparent that this step was holding me up, I decided to improvise. I have a bit of leftover fabric from the top of my quilt since I bought 1/2 yard cuts instead of 1/4 yard cuts. So this is what I did:

My fabric strips are a couple inches short on the sides compared to the quilt top so I decided to keep the 3x6 inch fabric squares running down the side. In this picture they are just layered on top of the quilt so you can see what's happening. The long strips of fabric vary in height from 8 inches tall to 10 inches tall. Which also means that my strip of smaller rectangles don't match seams with the large strips of fabric.

I just don't care enough to make seams match and the fabric the same height, which is why I will probably never graduate to more intricate quilt patterns. And that is okay with me, because what I care about most is finishing the project.

So finish backing, baste together with front and batting, QUILT!

Wedding Blanket again

2010-07-12T09:56:00.001-04:00

I had so much fun knitting a blanket for John and Kate's wedding that I decided to knit another one for my stepsister's wedding gift. When I first decided I was going to knit this blanket I called my stepsister to see what colors where in her living room. Turns out her living room is a bit of a hodge podge, but she has yellow vases so I knitted a yellow blanket. Have I built up the suspense enough? Here is it:

Pattern: Alexi Throw. Ravelry Page. The pattern was a little difficult at first because it isn't written row by row. It's written in sections. The diamond section, the cable section and the border. But once I got going I didn't need the pattern except as a reference, so it wasn't so bad.

Yarn: Caron One pound (yes I bought the yarn at Joann's). I like making blankets out of acrylic yarn because it is machine washable and cheaper.

Here is the blanket laid out on our queen size bed. As you can see, it is almost the width of the bed, and a bit shorter than the bed. This turned out MUCH huger than I wanted it. I didn't gauge test my yarn compared to the pattern and I think that is why it turned out so wide. (Notice the quilt underneath the blanket? Andy's grandma hand quilted it as a wedding gift for us)

I finished it at 9 o'clock Thursday night before the wedding. Talk about cutting it close.

Quilt top done!

2010-07-06T19:00:00.000-04:00

Check it out:

The only fabric I picked out separately was the border (the rest I bought from fabricworm.com in a bundle, remember?). When I bought it I intended to use it for the back but it turns out I didn't buy enough. So it has now become the border. Sometime soon I need to go to the fabric store and get some backing.

Ring Bearer's Pillow

2010-07-02T12:46:00.000-04:00

My stepsister asked me if I wanted to make a ring bearer's pillow for her wedding. I, of course, leaped up and down in utter enthusiasm. Alright, that's a little exaggeration, but I was excited to be asked to contribute. I was given complete control of the style and look, and all she asked was that it be black.

From the Martha Stewart website, I found this tutorial. I went shopping this morning for fabric and ribbon and within 2 hours of being home I completed this:

Do you like it? I do! In the bottom picture you can almost see where I sewed on a ribbon on the bottom so the ring bearer can slip his little hand between it and the pillow to hold it. The skinny ribbons are just tied onto the button and can easily be changed out if more color wanted to be added. But I love the simplicity of it. What do you think?

Picnic Quilt

2010-06-30T19:15:00.000-04:00

What do you think? I like the randomness of it.

Ode to crappy yarn

2010-06-28T23:09:00.001-04:00

Once every six months I climb to the top of my closet (we have 10 foot ceilings) to pull out my stash of yarn. In college I would visit Hobby Lobby with my roommates and buy "fun" yarn, with no project in mind. Here it is, 3-5 years later, sitting in a box unwanted and unloved. A couple of skeins were presents from my parents who have a different taste in yarn than I do. And this is also where my leftover yarn from finished projects end up. I've tried on several occasions to give this yarn to my newbie knitting friends to help build their stash (every new knitter wants a stash of yarn). I have successfully dwindled down my original stash of 2 full boxes down to one (but don't look to hard at my crafty area where I have the "good" yarn in a drawer).

I have made a few projects with this yarn, mostly hats as presents. Earlier this yearn I crocheted a giant granny square all from stash yarn. But I just don't know what to do with Hot Pink yarn, or the furry blue yarn (at bottom of picture), or a terrible brown wool yarn I "saved" from a particularly horrible sweater (guess it was the yarn, not the sweater that was horrible).

Ugh. If you live in the Boston area and see anything in the picture you like, PLEASE ask me for it. You don't have to take all of it if you don't want it, but even just taking one or two skeins would be wonderful. Or if you want a hat/scarf made from any of the above colors, I would be happy to knit it up for you as a birthday or christmas present (I'm mostly referring to my real life friends, but hey, if I have corresponded with you before on this blog, then ask away).

The quilting bug

2010-06-24T17:53:00.001-04:00

I've been hit with the quilting bug. The quilt from my wedding is all put together and is at my mother-in-law's house to be quilted and since then I've been wanting to start another one. In April, Obsessively Stitching, a blog I follow, created her own quilt-a-long. Since I was in South Korea for most of her current posts about the Q-a-L I wasn't able to participate. I found a lovely site online to buy pre-arranged fabrics and made the decision to start a new quilt. The final purpose of this blanket is to be our picnic blanket for when we want to eat outside but not in the grass or dirt. I've been wanting one for a year or two now.

Unfortunately I was way too excited to start cutting to take a picture of all the fabrics. Here is one of the 9-squares:

The pattern for this quilt is a disappearing 9-square. I made a ton of 9 squares (as pictured above), then cut it into quarters and sewed them back together randomly. Here are the 9 squares cut into quarters:

Most of the fabric is shown here in the big squares. Isn't it awesome? I can't wait to put it all back together again. The batting was on sale the last time I was at Joann's so I went ahead and bought some, but don't have enough fabric for the backing yet. I figure it can wait.

How do you like the colors?

Taggie blankets

2010-06-21T21:16:00.000-04:00

I LOVE taggie blankets. They are one of the quickest, simplest sewing projects. It takes no more than an hour from beginning to end.

I made one for a college roommate when her first baby was born 7 months ago. She recently asked me for another one because her girl loves it so much. I was more than happy to oblige.

This fabric just jumped off the shelves for me to use. Isn't it wonderful? I'm not so much of a pink person but boy is my old roommate. She'll love it.

Paaarrtty!

2010-06-17T21:01:00.000-04:00

Last weekend we held a couple's shower at our apartment for our two friend's who are getting married in two weekends (in South Carolina). Our apartment was just the venue, we didn't host the party. Dana, a bridesmaid, hosted the party. She bought the decorations, food and drinks and brought them over. But I wanted to help, so I made some pretty awesome paper flower strands from this tutorial by Prudent Baby.

These were pretty easy to make. The longest part was the actual sewing of the tissue paper flowers together, which took about an hour for 5 strands. The silver tissue paper had a hard time in the sewing machine and had to be helped along.

The theme was black and creme (she was going for an elegant theme) so I found tissue paper in creme, silver, and polka dots. It turned out so great.

And a fun action shot:

Lots of knitting

2010-06-14T17:45:00.000-04:00

Sometime in February I decided I wanted to knit a sweater for myself. I found a fantastic deal on Cascade 220 in what I refer to as Grass Green. I checked out the book Fitted Knits from the library and found the sweater I wanted and started almost immediately. It took several months of inconsistent knitting to finally finish it up.

It's not the most fantastic sweater. I haven't blocked it yet, which would hopefully solve the problem of the collar rolling down. It's slightly too long because I didn't accurately account for the difference in gauge for this yarn. But hey, I made a sweater! And in about 3 months too. Just in time to put it away for the summer. Oh well.

It's been a long road

2010-06-11T17:28:00.004-04:00

... getting from there to here." Any one recognize it? It's the first line of the opening song from Star Trek Enterprise. For some reason it is stuck in my head. The reason for the long delay in posting is because I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep this up. For a while I was trying to force myself to post more regularly and treat this like a real blog instead of what it is: a place to update people on my crafts. I don't like posting things multiple times a week if I haven't done anything. I NEVER edit my posts. I write them up and am done with them, not looking back for a second to make them better. So that's what I'm going back to. Onto the crafts:

My younger stepsister is getting married in less than a month. About a month ago she asked if I would make her a garter to wear. I was so excited to be asked to make something for her and immediately started looking online for ideas and tutorials. There are a ton of ideas out there. In the end I chose Modest Maven's tutorial. And here it is in all its glory:
Isn't it fantastic? I am super proud. The poppy flower tutorial was found here. Essentially melt the plastic material just a little around the edges of a fabric circle. The beads in the center are a bit more purple.

And this was a very quick sew. I was done in just an hour without the flower and the flower took a little longer. If anyone in my circle of family and real life friends would like one for their wedding, I would be more than happy to make more (I want to make more anyways, but don't have a good excuse to).

South Korea

2010-04-19T18:58:00.002-04:00

If you are wondering where I am, check out my other blog

Vacation

2010-03-31T17:27:00.003-04:00

Andy and I are planning on going on vacation soon. We're heading to South Korea for 10 days. Random, right? My college roommate is this awesome person who loves to travel and live in foreign places, and is currently living in South Korea. She's teaching English to students there for 1 year. She asked us to come and visit her, and since we would probably never visit South Korea for any other reason, we're going.

But with a trip like this I start stressing out about what we are going to see once we get there. What the heck is there to see in South Korea, besides the DMZ. I bought the Frommer's travel guide (cause I like Frommers) and have been steadily reading through it, tagging pages with interesting activities. Now I am starting to stress that I haven't finished reading the book, and I haven't looked at all the links that my friend sent me to look through. I'm afraid that if I don't read this book and the links before I leave then we'll miss something to see or do in Korea and never get the chance again. It's not the end of the world.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm a stressful traveler even though I try very hard to keep it to myself. I like to have things semi-planned where we know what we want to see but will see it just whenever we feel like it during the trip. The last two big vacations (Hawaii and New Zealand) went that way and they were fantastic trips. Heck, when we flew to Hawaii we didn't read our travel books until the plane ride over. So I know I shouldn't stress as much as I am because the worst that happens is that we may not see something that we could have.

Happy St. patty's Day

2010-03-14T12:20:00.004-04:00

Hooray! Hope you are wearing your green! And have power (for those of you in New Jersey).
Edit: Right, I just realized that it's not St. Patty's Day, but the St. Patty's Day parade in Boston happens today.

Also, Alexis Miller is having a fabulous giveaway for a Nikon D80. Check it out here

Avoider

2010-03-10T22:32:00.002-05:00

I am an avoider. If there is something that I should have done but haven't yet, the longer I don't do it, the more I don't want to do it. For instance, I was planning on blogging last week about a purse that I am super-duper proud of, which would have meant that I would have posted 2 blog posts in a week, score! But things came up and I didn't post, and more things came up and I didn't post, and suddenly I haven't posted in over a week. Then I start actively avoiding my blog so I don't have to see the disappointment in myself at lack of blogging. Seriously.

How about: I have to contact my photographer to pick a design for an album cover. We were supposed to have a phone call about a month ago, but either she forgot to call me, or there was a mis-communication about who was supposed to call who. Either way, this decision HAS to be made before April 10th (6months from the wedding) or we have to pay extra money for this album. But I haven't contacted her to find out why we didn't talk a month ago because I'm an avoider. It's what I do.

Or how about: my best friend since high school took her boyfriend on this amazing trip to Europe for his 30th birthday, and it was her first time out of the country, and I meant to call her a week or so after she came back. At first I would think about calling her while I was at work, so I would wait until I got home and then would forget to call. Or when I wake up I'll think about calling her, but it's too early, or it's too late. That happens to me a lot. After 2 weeks of not calling her though I started getting NERVOUS about not calling her because it had been too long, how can I call her and ask about her trip it was two weeks ago? Well now it's been 2 MONTHS and I never called to ask about her trip. In fact, I haven't called her at all because I feel too guilty about not calling her after her trip. It's not that I don't want to hear about it, it's just that I hate awkward conversations about why I haven't called.

(Picture by Meghan McSweeney at my wedding reception of said friend giving toast at reception)

Re-knitting?

2010-03-01T11:43:00.000-05:00

I have a small pile of things that have been knitted (or crocheted or sewn) that just didn't turn out good enough. They sit there until I get around to fixing them, either by re-blocking the pieces, or by ripping them out and re-knitting them. Does anyone else do this? Or am I the crazy person? Here are a few things that are waiting to be re-knit:
The pattern for this hat is Capitan. See those long knitted stitches hanging out below the knitted strip? There used to be a brim there, but I didn't understand the pattern and I knitted it wrong. Once I realized what I did wrong, I took out the brim with the intention of re-knitting it. That was 2 years ago. I now wear the hat without the brim, with those crappy stitches hanging out. Part of me also wants to re-knit the top to make it longer because it doesn't go over my ears, which I hat in a hat. I love the yarn, I got it in New Zealand.

Next up:
I LOVE this scarf pattern, but hate the scarf. I altered it so it wouldn't be as wide, but now it won't lay flat. The seed stitch edging curls over the double helix so when I wear it you can't see the pattern! I have blocked this scarf twice now to try and get it to lay flat, and it will for a bit. But the more I wear it, the more it curls. So I want to rip it all out and re-knit it to the original pattern. Yarn is from Knitpicks, wool something.

Hat:
This one isn't so bad. It's my own pattern, using more yarn I bought in New Zealand. I added those little ear flaps later because it wasn't quite long enough and I didn't want to re-knit it completely. But it turns out that the flap on the right side of the picture I sewed in funky and it is permanently pointing away from my head, and defeating the purpose. I haven't tried blocking this to fix it.

Sewing mistake:
This is supposed to be a cup cozy, but since I don't accurately measure things, it is very large. I'm toying with the idea of ripping out one side and just resewing it a bit smaller, but haven't yet.

And the mother of all things re-done:This blanket was first crocheted in 2004/05 while finishing up undergrad. When I first crocheted it, I made it a ridiculously huge blanket. I ran out of pink and white yarn, so I just used what I had, a little yellow, some blue and green. It was really ugly. But I used it. Then in 2007, when I was writing my thesis I decided this blanket had to be re-crocheted without all the colors. Sticking to Pink and white, I made the basis for this blanket. But then it was too skinny. So about a half year later I bought some red yarn and added the red/white border on the side.

But I love it now. It is showing a bit of wear now, which is really sad. Since I crocheted a new blanket, I am going to give this one away. Originally I was just going to drop it off at the Goodwill. But when I told a couple people that, they expressed interest in acquiring the blanket. So I'm just going to give this to a friend.

Alright, anyone else out there crazy enough to re-knit/sew/crochet something because they don't like it the first time?

Dinner

2010-02-27T22:37:00.002-05:00

Andy has been out of town this week. In celebration, I ate whatever the heck I wanted to for dinner. It's nice to have an excuse. Want to know what I ate this week?

Dinner #1: Nachos, cheerios, 2 slices of oatmeal molasses bread, and 2 beers

Dinner #2: Leftover Butternut Squash soup, 1 slice of oatmeal molasses bread, wine

Dinner #3: Homemade pizza with goat cheese, green pepper and onion topping (super easy and healthier than nachos), wine

And that's the end of interesting dinners. Then it was eating out or leftovers. Oh, if you are in the Boston area and want something fun, check out Uburger. I LOVE their veggie burgers there, and you can get them in any style the regular burgers are made in.

Handkerchiefs

2010-02-20T09:03:00.000-05:00

This winter I have begun to notice how many tissues we go through in our house. Since moving to Boston I have had a perpetual runny nose which causes me to use (and sadly re-use) a TON of tissues. Like a box of tissues every 2 weeks. That is a lot of tissue waste. So I started researching handkerchiefs as a re-usable eco-friendly option. There isn't much in the way of tutorials except for Purl bee's rolled hem tutorial. But since that seemed like a lot of work for something I wasn't sure I would even like, I just made up the pattern as I went. I cut 11 inch squares from my cotton fabric of choice and sewed around the edges with a zig-zag stitch to keep it from unraveling. Voila! Super quick and fantastic.

I've been using my first set (not pictures) for about 2 weeks now and realized that I need more! I use a clean one every day and when I get home it goes straight into the laundry (ideally). Since I only made 5 the first time, it was just enough for a work week. But I lost one in the metro on the way to work the other day so it was time for more. They definitely aren't as soft as tissues and probably not good for a cold when even the softest tissues irritates your nose from such frequent use. But I just need something to wipe my nose on during my ride to and from work. What do you think? Grosses you out, or great idea?

Giant granny square blanket

2010-02-18T08:42:00.000-05:00

If you like seeing other people's knitting and sewing finished objects, Check out Eleven Stitches. She is amazing and completes many many projects a year. Earlier this year she posted about crocheting a giant granny square blanket to use up scraps of yarn. Well I thought that was such a great idea that I immediately went through my stash picking out similar yarns. I decided on an alternating pattern of a row of "light" or "colored" yarn with a row of dark yarns. That way I wouldn't end up with a clownish blanket. I also only choose yarns of similar weight and style, no fancy or boucle yarns.

After rounding up my yarns I then had to learn what the heck a granny square is and how to crochet it. Youtube has a plethora of videos on how to make a granny square (and how to crochet or knit if anyone needs that too). After just a month of crocheting I have finished and let me tell you, I love it.
I added about 15 rows onto either end of the square to make it rectangular and added a shell edging for a more finished look. Although I used a ton of small bits of leftover yarn,the blanket did not use up as much as I thought it would. I still can't fit all of my yarn into one plastic storage bin (which is a general goal before I allow myself to buy more yarn), but I'm close.

Sewing Goodness

2010-02-14T08:25:00.000-05:00

Sometime early last year, I taught my friend from work to knit during an after-hours knitting group. And she has really taken off with it. Since then she has knitted more than a dozen hats (mostly christmas presents for everyone in her family and friends, including me!), but lately has been wanting to branch into fingerless mitts, namely Endpape r Mitts (which also happen to be my favorite pattern). Just a few days ago, she bought 12 sets of double pointed needles from Ebay, ranging from size 0 to size 11 in preparation. For a really good price I might add. She has been carrying them around in a large plastic bag, each set in an individual plastic sleeve. It pains me to see this, so yesterday I decided to sew her a carrying case for her needles. Want to see it?

It's enough to hold 15 needle sets and a small pair of scissors, rolls up nicely and instead of a button I used a pendant that I had bought forever ago for ... something.

The outer fabric is my leftovers from my bridesmaids gifts. But, because I am terribly impatient and I do not measure very accurately, one side is slightly larger than the other. I found this out after I had sewn the large piece together and was making the pocket. You can see in this last picture the pockets don't line up with the edge.

Oh well!

Homemade things

2010-02-11T12:58:00.003-05:00

In the past couple years I have become more conscious about my decisions and how they affect my health and the environment. Mostly I do this to make myself feel better about my choices. I feel healthier when I make my own food, cut out trans-fat and high fructose corn syrup. I feel like I am doing my part to save the earth by using post-consumer recycled paper towels and toilet paper. But a little bit of me feels like this:

"I also wanted to make my own because I thrive on the Stick-It-To-The-Man feeling I get when I don't have to buy basic necessities that most people assume you have to buy, you know? I find it thrilling."

Angry Chicken wrote this in her post about making deodorant. I find it thrilling too! One day I will move on to making my own deodorant and shampoo and fruit leather and all those things that you thought you had to buy.

Downer

2010-02-03T07:22:00.000-05:00

Hi. I don't know if you've noticed but I've been kind of down lately. Hence the lack of posts the last month or so. The feeling has been lingering longer than that but it has really started to affect me lately. Overall it's the lack of direction my life seems to have right now.

My work life is stagnant. I haven't had a real project with deadlines and expectations since April of last year. Unless you count moving our entire lab to the back of the building, which I don't. At first, it was glorious! The prospect of coming to work and playing on the computer or bringing a hat to knit. But that feeling wore off after just a week. Then a month went by... and then longer. Sometimes a project would come along that would require 2 or 3 days of work. Yes! I reveled in the feeling of being useful. But hey, at least I have a job, right?

My life outside of work hasn't been much more exciting. After coming home from a day of sitting in front of the computer I sit down in front of the tv or computer for most of the night. Sometimes I'll drag out my knitting as if that will make it all okay. Recently I've been trying this new thing called reading a book but we'll see how that goes.

What's worse is I think this feeling is compounded due to winter. Freezing and windy and snowing just aren't my thing. It's downright depressing. At least the days are getting longer again, so I am no longer leaving work in the dark.

But you know what does make me feel good? Chocolate. Chocolate chip cookies and no-bake chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies and molasses cookies (which don't have chocolate but are sugar-y, fatty goodness). So I will sit here and eat cookies and get fat until I can play outside again and have work to do. How does that sound?

My life isn't really all that bad, and I know it (especially after reading this sad, pathetic post) but I thought that if I just said a loud the things that were bothering me I might not dwell on them so much. And you know what? Life looks much better in the morning. So thank you for listening to me moan and complain for just a little bit.

All pictures posted here are from our honeymoon in Hawaii. Just looking at these pictures makes me feel much better.

Stenciled onesies

2010-01-28T17:02:00.004-05:00

Oh, I don't think I've shown you these. I made some stenciled onesies for my stepsister's baby shower and they are some of the cutest things I have ever made. Partly because baby stuff is always cute. To make the stencils I printed out some images from the internet, and used a couple of cookie cutters and traced them onto freezer paper. Then just cut out the freezer paper as a stencil, iron onto your clothing and paint with fabric paint. I then just followed the directions on the fabric paint bottle to set. Okay, ready?

These are the four that I made. The Elephant and duck are the cookie cutters.
My favorite though is this one:
Isn't he fabulous? I just found him online searching for robot images. My stepsister is having a boy, hence the blue robot and ufo. Isn't it great?

Guest quilt

2010-01-11T18:21:00.003-05:00

My first ever quilt. Instead of a guest book for our wedding, we had people sign a partially sewn quilt top. There were four large pieces (essentially the four corners) that I had sewn before the wedding for people to sign. It isn't finished it yet, but it is coming right along.
Let me note that I would not have done this without the help of my friend Serenity, who has been quilting for almost 10 years now. About once a month (more before the wedding) I go over to her house and we cut and sew and talk. It's really nice for the social aspect of it. She helped me design the pattern on this awesome computer program, took me to the quilt shop to buy fabric and held my hand all the way.

The Wedding Ceremony

2009-12-30T10:00:00.001-05:00

My Dad walking me to and down the aisle. I have absolutely no idea what we were saying to each other because I was so nervous.Our ceremony. The guests are sitting just to the left of the picture.I made it through most of the ceremony without crying. There were just a couple times and both Andy and I forgot to bring tissues to the ceremony, even though we both thought we were going to bring some.You may now kiss the bride!The sun came out just at the end of our wedding. We are now married:Hooray! There are so many professional pictures from our photographer Meghan McSweeney, it's hard to pick out the best ones to post without posting hundreds of pictures. Also, did I tell you that I made my sash? Total cost was $10 for the fabric and about a half days worth of planning and sewing. Best idea ever. I was looking for sashes online and they ran anywhere from $30 to $100 depending on the length and type of fabric. Plus I got to pick the exact color I wanted.

Belated Christmas tidings

2009-12-28T18:10:00.003-05:00

I hope everyone had a fun filled holiday! I sure did. This was the first year away from my family and although it was sad, I had a lot of fun with my new family (Andy's side). There are a lot more kids in Andy's family so that was fun hanging out with them. Here is our christmas tree:This is part of my walk to work, isn't it gorgeous covered in snow?

Before the Ceremony

2009-12-23T21:34:00.000-05:00

Here we are on the beach, waiting for the ceremony. Oh, did I tell you that me and the groom are running equally late? We both showed up at the ceremony site in separate cars at the same time, about 5 minutes after the wedding was supposed to start.

Our ceremony was at First Landing State Park. Here is our bamboo arch thing that we stood in front of and under. There is a white piece of cloth connecting all of the poles. My mom and I were running out of time to find one and the rental company we were using for dinnerware had this for rent. The first time I saw it was walking down the aisle, but I love it. It's very simple and earthy, just what I wanted. And that black sign is our wedding program! It turned out amazing. We bought a cheap framed cork board, painted it with Chalkboard paint and wrote on it. Originally I wanted a chalkboard program because of the lack of wasted paper. But boy was that a good idea because of the incredible amount of wind on the beach. Programs would have been sent flying.

Here are Andy and the groomsmen waiting for my bridesmaids and I to get set up on the boardwalk.
My bridesmaids helping me take off my shoes for the ceremony. Two of them went to the ceremony to see if we should come down now.My Aunt and Uncle's dog. Isn't she adorable?
Waiting at the front of the ceremony, watching me walk down the aisle.

Cookbooks

2009-12-15T18:18:00.005-05:00

Growing up we had a cabinet full of cookbooks (an pens and pencils and miscellaneous things) and I rarely saw my parents use any of them. Occasionally I would pull one out, you know, just to look at. Otherwise the books just sat there. Now I find that I'm the same way kind of.

We have 21 cookbooks on our cookbook shelf and that is not including the food magazines. Of the books, I regularly use 4, maybe 5. A couple of them are new additions due to christmas and wedding presents, some of which I use (Betty Crocker and Fannie Farmer) and some I haven't really had the chance yet. A couple I bought because they were on sale (story of my life). Is this just me or is this a common occurrence? In case you are wondering, my most used cookbooks are How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, Betty Crocker, Fannie Farmer, and Help, My Apartment has a Kitchen. I need simple recipes which all of these books have. Betty Crocker is mostly for baking though, most of it's recipes are for meat meals, which I tend to avoid. If you want a decent review of vegetarian cookbooks, read this blog post. That's how I acquired "How to cook everything vegetarian" and Moosewood.

I'm definitely not a vegetarian. I eat chicken when it's too inconvenient not to (eating at other people's houses or at restaurants) and I love seafood. I'm more of a meat avoider. An article in the BBC about vegetarianism introduced me to this term and I really love it. Also the term "meat reducer". I am both. As best as I can I avoid red and white meats (I haven't eaten red meat in 13 years). We haven't made a chicken dish at home in months. My daily diet is grains, beans, vegetables and fruits. And after reading this post from Making this Home, I'm really glad that I avoid meat as much as possible.

This post came about because I was making a bi-weekly (once every two weeks) grocery list. I choose the meals we will be eating for the week, semi based on food we already have in the house. Then I determine what we need to get. I try really hard to use the cookbooks we don't regularly use, but their recipes are often intimidating or made from strange ingredients so I shy away from them. So I fall back on my same few books.

What about you? Do you have a plethora of cookbooks, or do you weed out those you don't use?

Wedding Pictures; getting ready

2009-12-10T21:57:00.007-05:00

I am so excited, I received our professional wedding pictures this week. Our photographer was Meghan McSweeney from Richmond, VA. She was down to earth, fun, and not snobby at all! This was my first real experience with a professional photographer so I was a tad nervous about how to act around her. We met for the first time for our engagement pictures. This is a really great way to learn about your photographer. The setting was a casual jaunt around Richmond, getting to know each other and taking pictures at the same time. The picture taking was fabulous. It was mostly "go over there and just talk to each other" with the occasional "look at me." Which is exactly what we wanted for our wedding pictures, and it really shows.

Here is the first installment of our wedding; getting ready.
I went to the salon to get my hair, make up and nails done with one of my bridesmaids, who got her nails and hair done. The salon I went to was ridiculously expensive and I will never ever spend that much money at one place ever again, but overall it was worth it. My only complaint is the woman who was to do my makeup spent 15 minutes at the beginning of my appointment helping another customer to select makeup, which made me run 15 minutes late for everything else. Also, my nails looked like I could have done them myself, and was a little pissed at spending money on them.

I had to rush home, grab all my bridesmaids, rush to the hotel to get ready and take pictures because we were 15 minutes late. I wolfed down a turkey and cheese sandwich while at home and was such a great idea.

Finally, at the hotel:First step, getting the dress ready to put on.My cousin preparing our wine glasses. I drank more before the wedding than I did at the reception. I had a mimosa at the hair place, and a glass of wine in the hotel. From a coffee cup.Tying my sash, which I sewed myself. Sashes are expensive to buy online. My cost $15 for the fabric and about 2 hours of my time. Plus I got it in the exact shade I wanted.Bridesmaids bouquets. All of our bouquets we made ourselves with flowers from the grocery store we bought the day before. All 5 of my bridesmaids bouquets cost a total of $2 because they were going to throw the flowers away because they were old. We snipped off the brown leaves and had beautiful simple bouquets. My cousins and bridesmaids wrapped all the bouquets in fabric cut from my wedding dress.

Somewhere between the hotel and the wedding site we lost one of the bouquets (probably left somewhere at the hotel). It was quite funny because there was nothing that could be done since it was 5 o'clock and we were already late for the wedding. So my maid of honor (sister) went down the aisle without a bouquet because she held my bouquet for most of the ceremony anyways.It was a lot of fun having all the girls in the room helping me get ready. Fixing my dress and jewelry and hair. I think the wine glass really helped me to not overstress about being late. We didn't leave the hotel until 5pm, and we were still 15 minutes away from the wedding site. Also, the groomsmen were getting ready in the same hotel and left at the same time as us. We had a bit of a juggling act getting me out of the hotel without running into the guys. Luckily I had 5 girls to run in front of me while leaving the hotel and scope out the area. There was a close call where the guys were in the stairwell as we passed by, but they were required to stay in the stairwell until we were passed.

Thanksgiving Dinner

2009-11-28T19:13:00.006-05:00

For our first Thanksgiving dinner, we did really well. Two of our friends (who are getting married in June next year) came over to cook and eat and celebrate with us. It was a lot of fun. We put on the Macy's Day Parade until noon then turned on christmas music and prepared the food. Of course, the turkey was in the oven by 11 am so we could eat it theoretically by 2. But since it was our first try roasting a turkey and we only have one oven in the house it took longer than anticipated. While the turkey was roasting we also baked green bean casserole, homemade stuffing (recipe from Betty Crocker), and rolls all in the oven with the turkey. The little temperature gauge in the turkey didn't pop until 3 o'clock. But we had a lovely dinner and we all over ate because we didn't have any lunch or anything.

Here is Andy carving our first turkey. For the whole turkey business, there was a lot of referencing our cookbooks, Betty Crocker and Fannie Farmer. There was also a lot of "Ummm, maybe like this?"
Here is our "beautiful" kitchen table (which lives most of its life in the basement). I didn't think about a centerpiece, so Mike grabbed a little snow globe off of a nearby table and made it our centerpiece.
It was our first time using all of our new serving platters. I love our new plates, they are fun. And these are our friends, being weird, just like us. Meet Mike and Laura (Mike had no idea she was behind him):
And today I put up most of our Christmas decorations. I am a firm believer of "Thanksgiving, THEN Christmas." Like my snowflake? I made it using blue garland and tape.
I also put garland under our cabinets and on the front of our "pantry."
Happy Thanksgiving, I hope you all had a lovely one!

Thanksgiving dinner prep

2009-11-22T23:25:00.004-05:00

Tonight Andy and I went shopping to prepare for our first Thanksgiving dinner. We are having a couple friends over and each of us are preparing dishes for the day. It was a big shopping trip and wanted to go when the store is less crowded. So we went at 10 pm tonight.

Things I learned at the grocery store tonight:
1) Most eggnog has high fructose corn syrup in it
2) The only brand that doesn't is Lactaid, which also doesn't have lactose in it. And it's yummy
3) All pre-made stuffing has high fructose corn syrup in it
4) Margarine is not vegan
5) Most margarine has milk (whey), some have fish oil,
6) Under ingredients: Partially hydrogenated oil = trans fat
7) Turkey breasts don't come in sizes smaller than 13 pounds (and ours was half off)
8) Some things only come in plastic bags, like brown sugar and rice
8) I LOVE using all of my reusable bags in a shopping trip

Okay, so I didn't learn about trans fat at the grocery store, but I do look for it in the ingredients. A huge pet peeve of mine is food labels that say no trans fat in a serving but there is partially hydrogenated oil in the ingredients. This means that there is less than 0.5 grams in a SERVING. How many servings in a box? More than one. Okay, I'll stop ranting.

All in all it was a good shopping trip.

Baby crafting

2009-11-17T22:22:00.000-05:00

There has been lots of baby crafting going on in this household because my older stepsister is having a baby! My sister and I are planning on road tripping out to Michigan for the baby shower in January (please don't blizzard). In preparation for this, I have pulled out all my bookmarked pages about baby crafts. Want to see what I've made?

Here is the beginning of a taggie blanket:And here is it finished! It is about 12 inches square, just large enough for the little kid to carry it around with him but small enough to not be a nuisance.I love it, hopefully the kid will too. Next up, soft blocks.Andy's mom turned me onto these when she showed me she was making them for my nephew (her grandson). I did a little research online to see what other people have done, and have since gone to town on these bad boys. The one in the front of the picture I decided to make each side from different materials and add ribbon to it. It's more of an exploring cube than anything.

A while ago I tried my hand at recycling crayons. Take some crayons, peel off the paper and break them into bits, then put them in a muffin tin (not one used for food). Melt them in the oven then let them harden up again and you've got giant round crayons that the kid can try to eat but won't be able to. They can also grasp it better than stick crayons. Oh, I also made the little bag they are in too.And finally, fun fake food. For dinner tonight we are going to have one egg, broccoli, a strawberry and an apple. Sadly these food pieces may stay with me because the felt doesn't stand up to drool very well. This is more for older kids who don't put things in their mouth. But I just couldn't resist making them while I was making things.

Going shampoo free

2009-11-14T14:15:00.000-05:00

Since stumbling upon this blog I have been fascinated with this idea. No, you don't stop washing your hair cold turkey, you just switch from store bought bottled shampoo to a more natural cleaning solution; vinegar and baking soda.

Doing a simple google search turns up lots of webpages and blog posts about the subject, both positive and negative. People make this change for a variety of reasons, from reducing the amount of chemicals put on their bodies and living a more natural way to allergies.

I like this idea because it reduces the amount of chemicals on my body, reduces my waste (no more shampoo and conditioner bottles), and is much cheaper! But I refuse to try this until I finish using up all the shampoo and conditioner I have stored in my bathroom. Why do I have 2 and half bottles of shampoo and an extra bottle of conditioner in storage? I am determined to use these up instead of just throwing them away, because that would be wasteful. Ugh.

Rehearsal

2009-11-08T09:36:00.006-05:00

The Rehearsal. Here we are taking pictures on the porch. I love how silly we are all, it makes getting together lots of fun. What you don't see in this picture (or can see on the railing) is the beer we drank beforehand. I was pretty nervous by this point about the wedding and a little about the rehearsal.
Off to the rehearsal we go. We get there and half of the bridal party is stuck in traffic, including the reverend. So to pass the time we started playing foosball, which really helped in calming my nerves.Everyone arrives just as dinner is supposed to be starting, so the guests who are just coming for dinner get to witness the craziness that is the rehearsal as well. Have you tried to round up 10 people and get them to pay attention to you while their friends and family are standing around having fun. It took a while.This is the best picture I have of our rehearsal dinner venue, Doc Taylors. This restaurant is an old beach house that's been converted, and the owner knows my mom. Or rather my mom helped convert his first restaurant from an old beach house (and possibly this place as well).And my awesome bouquet for the rehearsal that was made from my ribbons and bows from the bridal shower.I'm delaying posting the wedding cause I would really like to show you the professional pictures, but we'll see.

Zelda costume from last year

2009-11-03T08:28:00.004-05:00

Last year I went as Zelda from the Legend of Zelda games for Halloween. Because I hadn't decided what I wanted to be for Halloween until the day before, this costume took me a day to make. I used old white bed sheets as the skirt, an old purple tank top cut to shape, some craft foam painted gold for tiara and shoulders, and craft felt for the skirt panel thing. The gold "hems" you see on the gauntlets and bottom of skirt are sharpie pens. The designs on the shoulder pads and tiara are made from hot glue, painted gold.

Favorite costume ever!

Mrs. not Miss

2009-11-02T08:28:00.003-05:00

I got married! It was the best wedding I've ever been to. Everything went well, and other than everything starting 15 minutes late, there wasn't a single major problem. There were minor problems that were at the time and still are now pretty funny to look upon. We went to Hawaii for 2 weeks a couple days after the wedding for our honeymoon. It was really incredible. I am planning on uploading some of my favorite pictures and tell some stories over then next couple weeks about the wedding and the honeymoon. But I really want to get back my professional pictures from the wedding before I show you those.

First here are some pictures of the week before the wedding:

First up, our escort cards to let people know which table to sit at. They are seashells that several people wrote on with a couple different colored pens. It turned out gorgeous! Next is my cousin and bridesmaid writing signs to be posted to direct people where to park and where the wedding was (since it was on the beach, they had to walk out on a boardwalk and you couldn't see the beach from the parking lot).

My roommate from college and bridesmaid wrote our program on the chalkboard cause she has great handwriting. And my now husband making chocolate covered pretzels. We dipped over a thousand pretzels into chocolate for our guest favors. It took 2 people at the stove 2 long days to complete this, and then we had to stuff them into bags as well. But it was totally worth it! Everyone loved the pretzels.

These pictures show 3 of our DIY projects, the escort cards, guest favors, and programs. For those of you wondering, we made our chalkboard from a large cork board that was already framed and used chalkboard paint on it. This made it much more affordable than actually buying a large chalkboard. That's all for now, more pictures and stories soon!

One week to go!

2009-10-03T19:21:00.003-04:00

I haven't updated any of my efforts lately because I've been so worried about getting everything done in time. Tomorrow I leave for Virginia to spend the week preparing and buying little things for the wedding before it happens. My biggest worry was that I wouldn't finish my knitted shawl before I left, even though I had a good schedule set up and was following it very well. Here it is blocking on the floor:
I bought blocking mats and lace knitting needles for my birthday this year and this is the first time I got to use them. Notice something odd? Apparently the blocking mats came in an odd number, so I had to leave out one of the sides so I could block either end. It turned out fine, but it was very strange. As my first real piece of lace knitting, I LOVE it. I don't know if I would do it again on such a large scale (mainly cause I don't know if I will wear it past my wedding day).

One of our first wedding presents was from Andy's Grammie:
My first homemade quilt. I love it! It looks so nice on our bed in our little cubby hole, it really brightens up the room. It is a great weight for the summer as an alternative to our heavy comforter we suffered under this year. I really can't express how incredible this gift is and how much I love owning a hand sewn quilt. It's just amazing. Alright, enough of my gushing. Sadly you won't hear from me again until the end of October when I get back from Hawaii! We've decided not to take our computers with us out there and just enjoy our honeymoon and the natural beauty of the island. I can't wait!

2009-09-11T16:29:00.005-04:00

Oh how the summer has flown by. I can't believe it is the second weekend in September right now. Less than 30 days until the wedding.

What have I been up to? Well, the invitations are all out (except the one sent to the wrong address). To the right is the back ground for our invitation. My wonderful mother printed out all of our background designs on her home printer, then we chopped them and rounded the corners with a corner rounder, my favorite tool! If you get anything in the mail from me, chances are I will have rounded the corner cause it's just that awesome.

Here is the assembled invitation. We glued down the ribbon so it doesn't fly away like in the picture. It's a vellum overlay which we printed out on 8x11 sheets and cut with a paper cutter my fantastic father-in-law lent us, and also rounded the corners. I picked the fonts out and had lots of help with the wording.

My friend Christine came over after work one day to help Andy and I glue and tie ribbons. And oh my goodness what a good thing she did too, cause it got us to actually start assembling our invitations (a week later than I wanted them to go out). This has been my big craft project for the summer. The final project is wonderful and I love our invitations but I am relieved to have them finished and out of the house.

The next big thing we have to complete is buy our rings! We kind of kept putting it off and it turns out the ring that I want will probably have to be custom made, which is super dumb. I just want a white gold band with an indentation on it so it fits right next to my engagement ring. But at the places we looked they only had indented rings with diamonds all over it. And I definitely don't want diamonds in my ring, no matter how hard the saleswoman tries to convince me that everyone loves diamonds (if I say I don't want it you need to stop trying to sell it to me).

Alright, that's all for now. I have some other wedding craft stuff that I will be doing, but I'll tell you about them as I am making them.

Craft area

2009-08-30T15:37:00.002-04:00

This is my craft area. Last weekend Andy had 7 guys stay in our apartment (Bachelor party) and we moved all of my craft stuff downstairs. As we were moving it up today I realized that I don't like my craft area very much. I love having a place to store my supplies and pieces in progress, but I just don't like my set up. What you don't see in this picture is the tons of stuff that get "stored" under the craft desk in cardboard boxes or stored behind the chair along the wall under the window. It's a wreck.

I've known this for a while, but just can't envision how I want to remake the space. Should I buy more drawers to store under the desk or window? What about using the wall space in front? I don't want to block the window with anything. Ugh, what do I do?

Invitations

2009-08-28T20:49:00.002-04:00

Oh my goodness, we have spent the last week working on invitations. Tying, gluing, addressing and stuffing. We have ribbons on ours that had to be cut, tied and glued down. Then 20 invites get rsvp cards (everyone else is rsvp'ing online). Then we had to write something up for people invited to the rehearsal dinner. Many many phone calls to mine and Andy's parents throughout the week verifying and rechecking. Last night was the big push to stuff all the addressed envelopes, and this morning we went off to the post office to send them away. Oh and we printed our own return address labels (but since our printer is dumb, a couple people had to have hand addressed return labels).

I am SOOO relieved to have them gone. For the last two weeks they have been staring at me, pleading with me to play with them, make them pretty. Guilt about them not being finished was just weighing over me. Alright, I'm being a little over dramatic, but it does feel really good to have them out.

No pictures of them yet, I'll show you next week when I think everyone has received them.

Plant update

2009-08-14T08:20:00.002-04:00

Our patio garden is growing great. First, our tomato plant is doing well. Our first two tomatoes:The left tomato is deformed, it just grew that way. It had holes in the bottom so we just tossed it. But we are currently eating the right one with sandwiches. This tomato on the vine has since ripened and it's going to be eaten soon. Do you also see the tomato at the top left of this picture? We have a couple that are green and still have some ways to grow.
And finally our green pepper is fruiting. It's still tiny (those are my fingers for size) but it's growing! And there is another little fruit on the plant also. Nothing like my mom's patio garden (she has tons of green peppers and tomatoes) but better than last year.

2009-07-27T16:54:00.005-04:00

I am so excited! A friend of mine from work has been helping me with planning our guest quilt. Have I told you that instead of a guest book for people to sign, I'm going to have a guest quilt for people to sign. It's going to be a lap quilt that will hang out on our couch for everyday use (which was a requirement for my guest signing) and for showing off. It'll be my first quilt and both my mother-in-law and my work friend have offered to help (and both are super excited about this idea as well). So last week I went to a quilt shop with my friend and we spent a good hour and a half tearing the place apart grouping different colors and comparing different shades. It was quite the ordeal. Finally, we chose all the colors we needed.

It may not look like much because they aren't in any sort of shapes, but it'll be fabulous and bright. The colors I think are a bit brighter in real life, more vibrant I think. As I make progress with it, I'll keep you updated.

Want to see what else I've been up to? I made an embroidered something or other. I don't want to say too much since it's a gift, but I really want to show you a picture. The words are all my handwriting (I just wrote freehand on the fabric) but found a picture of the coffee cup and drew that on the fabric.

I'm working on one or two other things but don't have pictures for you just yet.

Invitations

2009-07-17T16:16:00.003-04:00

I want to let you know that I am in love with our wedding invitations. It's bright and colorful, has a beach scene on it, and yet professional (in my opinion). I bought a rounded paper cutter that rounds off square edges. I can't tell you how much that makes the whole invitation look more professional. Also I downloaded fonts online from here so they aren't your everyday fonts. We picked out our background design from here (it's the only beach image I think). And it's got a ribbon on it. We actually have 3 different shades of blue/green/teal because there wasn't enough of the one color I really liked, so some invitations will be a little different.

I'm not going to show you our invitations until they have been sent out because I want everyone who is getting one to be surprised. I'll post them once the invites have gone out though and I think you'll like them!

A little bit of everything

2009-07-10T08:34:00.006-04:00

Look at our beautiful tomatoes! Now that it has finally stopped raining everyday and the sun is out, we have 3 gorgeous tomatoes. There are one or two more that are tiny and just starting, but I wanted to share these with you. The one on the left, the funky looking one looks like something made it into the bottom of the tomato, but I still want it to grow.

As for my crafty update, look! I've started embroidering. It's so much fun. the hardest part is picking out the design. To the left we have a cow hanging off of a moon. I actually bought that design for $1 and boy do I love it. The middle and right pictures are of parts of gifts for my bridesmaids, but I'm not telling you what the gifts are. Can anyone tell what the image on the right is supposed to be?

There are tons of different stitched for embroidery. I have used a back stitch (says a google search). I like it cause it makes a continuous line. But there are stitches for coloring in spaces and making knots for eyes and all sorts of things. For me, this craft started when I was at the craft store and saw a bag of embroidery thread in a ton of colors for I think $5. The loop was only $1 and the needles were about $1. I love it! It's quick and relaxing. I finished each of the above designs in about an hour or less.

Screen printing

2009-06-29T18:00:00.000-04:00

I have been reading about screen printing invitations. The idea strikes me as a fantastic way to keep your price per invitation low, without sacrificing quality. The two popular easy to use screen printing kits are Gocco and YUDU.

Sadly, Gocco is no longer being made by the company. There are still many of these awesome little machines on ebay and other various websites, and the company is still selling supplies (I think), but prices keep going up and up for these awesome little machines. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out savegocco, or the wikipedia article about it. This blog has a lot of examples of what exactly you can do with Gocco. I'm bummed I didn't hear about this great little machine until after it was discontinued.

The other option, a YUDU. This machine is mainly marketed for screen printing on t-shirts. There are some great tutorials on how to screen print on t-shirts. But can it print invitations and text? The best conversation I've found about what it can and can't do is over on etsy. It seems that with the screens sold by YUDU, there isn't enough resolution to do small printing. There may also be an issue with with ink and certain types of papers.

Here is why I'm telling you this. If anyone who works for Provo Craft (the company that makes YUDU) stumbles upon this post, I want you to know that if you were to send the YUDU to my house for me to experiment with, looking at different meshes and inks on different types of paper, I would be more than willing perform experiments for you for free. I am a scientist and have copious experience with setting up and executing experiments with controls and sample sizes and everything.

I would love to test different mesh sizes to get the best resolution for printing text onto paper. I'd be willing to supply my own paper to determine what can and cannot be printed on. Please, if you or someone you know works for Provo Craft, consider "hiring" me as a freelance scientist. My fee is a free start-up kit including the machine and inks.

It never hurts to ask :)

Living by yourself

2009-06-24T17:17:00.007-04:00

Hello. Starting yesterday, I have the whole apartment all to myself for a week. Andy is in Va visiting family and going to baseball games. Sadly, I didn't take the time off of work to attend (didn't think I'd have enough vacation days). So here I am, all alone.

Now I remember why I hated living by myself (for all of 2 months in college). I have absolutely NO motivation to make myself food. We barely have any food here. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but everything we have needs to be prepared. Why should I spend an hour preparing food for just myself? Never mind the fact that it's boring preparing food by yourself.

Last night, my first night alone, I decided to make mac and cheese. Yay! Wait, there is no butter in the house. Oh well, I'll just make it with extra milk. Hmmm... I don't know how old this milk is. That's okay, I'll use it anyways without tasting or smelling the milk to determine it's freshness. Weird, the mac and cheese smells funny after I added the milk. I'll eat it anyways. I took a huge bite and realized that the milk was indeed bad and tossed the whole thing down the sink. What a waste of a perfectly good box of mac and cheese.

Tonight I'm treating myself to a trip to the craft store (and dinner, probably at Panera). There are some things I have been wanting to try out but don't have the supplies for. I'll share when I get pictures (good or bad). In the mean time enjoy these beautiful flowers Andy left for me yesterday while he is gone.

Terrible at updates

2009-06-17T16:48:00.008-04:00

Hey guys! A big thank you to the people who commented on my last blog (and others who just listened to me complain). It was pointed out that you should do as much as your budget allows, and until it stops being fun. And it wasn't fun anymore. So I'm gonna stick with what I've chosen and move on to other things.

In the mean time, my plants have been growing!

(before) (now)

It's bigger, but looking at these pictures it's not as green. I think that has to do with the soil I used and the lack of fertilization. But I just bought some organic tomato fertilizer, so hopefully it will be better. Here is one of two tomatoes growing on it.

Unfortunately my green pepper plant still has not even produced a little fruit. It looks almost exactly the same as last time (what a month or more ago?). It's sad. It flowered, and I can see where it's supposed to turn into a vegetable, but nothing yet. What else... oh, my lilies!

Sadly this is the only one of 6 plants that flowered, the rest are resolutely staying green. I think it has something to do with the soil and the nutrients. Guess what this next plant is?

It's peas! I think they are going to be snap pea (or snow peas... some kind of pod pea that you eat whole). They are really taking off. A couple of weekends ago, Andy and I were up at his parent's house, and we asked if Andy's dad could make us another 2 window box planters and he did! One is dedicated only to peas, the other is half peas and half wild flowers. It's exciting.

And here is our lavender plant. It just kind of hangs out and grows some. I have no idea what to use the lavender for. I bought it cause it smells lovely! What should I do with it? Probably pick some and let it dry?

That's all for now. Next time I'll update you on my indoor plants. I think I might be overwhelming Andy with plants :) I love it!

Wedding planning

2009-06-04T21:15:00.001-04:00

Phew, I didn't even realize how long it's been since my last post. Recently I have dived into the deep end of wedding planning. Invitations, ceremony songs, ceremony minutes, readings for the ceremony, ceremony programs, but mainly paper, paper, paper. Mostly what I have been doing is looking for eco-friendly invitations. The original invites we picked out were 30% post consumer recycled (I'm now shortening to pcr), and I was excited about that. But the more I read up on things, the more I realized I could do more. 100% pcr paper, paper with seeds in it or tree-free options! There is cotton paper, hemp paper, linen paper, banana leaves, mango leaves and denim jeans paper for goodness sakes. It seems like the options are limitless.

But how far do I go with this eco-friendly vibe? My wedding dress is a sample dress, meaning it was made for a bridal store that used it for a couple years and was just going to be tossed away. Plus a new dress from new materials didn't have to be made. My programs will hopefully be made from seed embedded paper, so you can just plant the paper after the ceremony and have pretty wild flowers sprout from it. And the invitations. We've decided to not have an inner envelope and we're doing online r.s.v.p.'s to decrease the amount of paper we use. Is that it? Is that all I can do for the environment? Do I need to do more?

Part of me feels that if I use regular petroleum-based inks to print my invites instead of soy ink, this will totally negate my tree-free or 100% pcr paper invites. Or if I use regular decorative non-recycled paper for the labels of my guest favors THAT will negate my efforts. What if I use clear plastic bags for my guest favors to go in? Should I worry about my flowers then and how big their carbon footprint is? Isn't it enough to worry about the invites and programs?

What's your opinion?

Random craftiness

2009-05-20T17:12:00.009-04:00

Let's see, what to show you. Oh, I finished those mitts that I screwed up the thumb. I love the swirl pattern, from Kultalankaa. Although the website is not in English, if you click enough times on the page you'll eventually find the pattern. I adapted the swirl pattern to fit Endpaper mitts (which are my favorite fingerless mittens to knit, so far 3 different pairs). And I still have a ton of yarn left over from just 2 original balls.

But those have been done for a while. Recently, I have been knitting baby stuff again! My cousin (really my step dad's niece's daughter who is my age and in essence my cousin) just had a baby boy, Riley. Since I love knitting baby things, and I'm sure she could use a few hats for the fall, I am knitting a couple baby hats for them. This is the first, which you may have seen before, I just love the pattern:

The second hat is still in progress then I'll send them off. Last weekend though I found that I had some free time and didn't know what to do with it. As I was rifling through my bookmarked craft websites, I came upon an embroidery how-to. I thought, I should try this and found a t-shirt that I didn't like the pattern (which I had created myself using a bleach pen). Then I pulled out my embroidery hoop and thread (which I just happened to have bought on my last trip to Jo-anns) and started. It turned out awesome. This picture just doesn't do it justice, the tree looks fantastic when worn now.

I wore it to work and my friend asked me if it was a new shirt and I proudly told him I made it. Awesome!

Un-craft related, Andy and I have redecorated our apartment with a Blik. What is Blik, you ask? Check it out HERE. They are wall decals that you put up and it looks like you painted the walls. It's awesome. When you move out you just peel if off again (and sadly trash it since it's one time use). Here is ours:

Awesome, I know.

Wedding surprises

2009-05-15T21:43:00.000-04:00

Alright, I have been lying to you for months now. The Tree of Life blanket I have been making the last couple months was not for myself. It was actually a wedding present for a friend of mine who sometimes reads my blog. Well, the wedding was this weekend and it was gorgeous! It was a noon wedding at a church in Pittsburgh PA. Although we were late for the ceremony (because Pittsburgh has 3 different roads named Baldwin), it was lovely and inspiring. The reception was at a local country club at 3pm and was LOADS of fun. A live band, friendly table mates, dancing and good weather.

Congratulations John and Kate Magruder!

Urban Garden

2009-05-11T08:12:00.000-04:00

Hi again. Let me tell you about my garden. In my planter boxes, we have lilies. Those green shoot things coming out of the ground. They start as bulbs.

Next to the lilies is the cilantro. It's not faring too well because of the wind that whips through, but it is surviving.

In a pot on the ground is the lavender. It smells gloriously! I bought it because after my first trip back from Home Depot, I had an extra pot but no extra plants. So I HAD to get a plant to fill it.

This is my green pepper plant. I don't have high hopes for it because last year a wild animal came and ate the only pepper my first plant produced (not to mention all the basil and some of the wild flowers).

Lastly, the tomato plant. I'm trying not to get my hopes up for this plant, since tomato plants notoriously don't grow in pots. But I bought the biggest pot there was, so I'm crossing my fingers.

Sadly, I bought a hanging planter with beautiful flowers to hang down from porch (out of eye sight), and promptly forgot it was there. It didn't get watered for a solid week and a half. But I've brought it up to where I can see it and have started watering it again and it's gaining strength back! I'm so surprised.

And that is my beautiful urban garden. Do you have a garden? What do you plant in it?

Wordle

2009-05-08T11:15:00.000-04:00

















How awesome is this?  This is a visual representation of number of times I've used a 
particular word on this blog.  I find it strange that "foot" looks like the largest 
word. It's from Wordle, this interesting website that will make one of these for any bulk of
text or website I discovered it when my friend posted his thesis through it.
Makes me want to find my thesis!

Mistakes and all

2009-05-02T14:32:00.000-04:00

If you will remember, I knitted a fingerless glove while I was home sick from work way back in December. Since then I hadn't gotten around to casting on the other glove until earlier last week when I was looking for something to knit after I ran out of yarn for my blanket. So I cast on and knitted away all week. It wasn't until I was mostly done that I tried on both gloves to see how they look. Unfortunately, that is when I noticed this:

Do you see it? Those are two right hand gloves (you're looking at the palms). How sad! So I ripped back to redo the thumb on the other side. These will probably sit in my ufo (un-finished object) box till the winter.

On the other hand I bought more yarn to finish my blanket, just in time for the summer!

Granola

2009-04-20T15:31:00.004-04:00

I made granola today, which is Patriot's Day. What is Patriot's day? It's a holiday that Boston celebrates because the Boston Marathon is today. In other words, it's incredibly difficult to get into the city so we just call it a holiday. So I made granola.

First up:
This granola was too soft and didn't clump at all. It's also not very sweet. The Recipe.
I took some of the original granola and added ingredients to try to make it clumpy and better. For my first try, I added a dollop of peanut butter, some honey, and maple syrup. It clumped up nicely, but remained sticky. It also turned out very sweet.
My last try today I added the same amount of peanut butter, less honey and a little maple syrup. I also added applesauce and a bit of flour. This turned out really well. Not too sticky or sweet.
I am also making some gifts, but I don't want to tell you yet.

Blanket!!

2009-04-14T17:54:00.004-04:00

Isn't it pretty? I am still working on the border for it, but it should be done this month!!

What else have I been working on? I made this hat:
It's my own pattern, it has a couple rows of seed stitch in the middle. Took one night and have since added ear flaps because it wasn't quite long enough. Its made from yarn I bought in NZ!

Baby Hat!! Isn't it cute?
Found the pattern here. I think of it as a tomato hat, but when given as a present they said it was like a strawberry. Either way, yummy!

And here is the final lace scarf that took me 3 months to finish. But I love it. I haven't blocked it yet so it's still scrunchy, but it's gorgeous. I don't think I will be knitting anything lacy in the near future though, too much work.

Sewing Machine Adventures

2009-04-04T14:56:00.005-04:00

I played with my sewing machine this morning. I could here my machine calling to me from under it's bedding. So I went and played with it. And it turns out, I can use a zipper foot! Yay! This was my first time ever trying to remove or add a foot to my machine and it was SUPER easy. There is a little blank button you push and your foot falls off. Then put the new foot where the old foot was, push the black button again and attach the foot.

With my new talents, I decided to tackle splityarn's zippered wristlet tutorial. And it was pretty easy. Much easier to sew a zipper on with the zipper foot, holy cow. Pictures:
Isn't it great? Since this was my first time doing it, I chose some scrap yarn and the zipper I pulled off an old skirt I didn't wear anymore. The fabric is very plain, so I stamped it using one of my rubber stamps and silver acrylic paint (someone online somewhere said I could). I don't know what I will use this one for, probably to organize my purse better, but I definitely plan on making more. With better fabric than thin quilting cotton. And maybe for presents!

Quick Update

2009-03-26T23:13:00.002-04:00

I have nearly finished my blanket. The main body is done and all that is left is a border. I am wicked excited that I have come this far without quitting or putting it down for months and months. I just wanted to let you know. I am hoping that the border will be all knit up within the next week and then sewing it to the blanket the week after that. Woo! Be excited with me.