completed projects.

WOW 2 posts in the same month... I am on a roll ;-) O.k. so in the last few weeks I have been a knitting FOOL!!!! I completed the background of the wall hanging for my friend's wedding. I am not sure that I like how the intarsia turned out. This was my first time attempting intarsia at this size and for the most part it looks o.k. but some of the stitches look a little wacky where I carried the opposite color in the back of the stitch. I think I just need to work on my tension in those areas. But either way, I don't know if I like the piece well enough to finish it and send it to her. For starters, it is HUGE... it is about 26" square and when I started this, I thought that it was going to be much smaller like 10" square. I don't know if I would even want to hang something that big in my house and I don't want to make her feel obligated to hang it just because someone she knows made it for her. At any rate, here is the picture of the piece so far.
If I were to finish it, I would make several eye cords to embellish the hills on the bottom, the tree and add some "leaves". I would also embroider their names and wedding date at the bottom (see picture). This project comes from the book, Closely Knit by Hannah Fettig. The project is really cute, I think in the end it was my yarn choice and lack of intarsia experience that has left me disappointed. (picture is of page 46-Tree of Love Wall Hanging).

And the entire time I was knitting this (which took me a long time) I was dieing to start knitting some baby stuff out of this book:
So the minute I was done I started knitting a hat, then another hat then some booties and then another hat. And now I am going to start on a baby sweater. It is probably my nesting instinct kicking in, but I only have a month (or less) before the baby gets here so I am trying to cram all of my knitting for him in before D Day!! :-) But I have to say that I LOVE THIS BOOK!!!! There are so many great, fast and easy projects in there and now I have a few go to items when people I know have babies. I check out every book from the library to test it out and see if it is worth purchasing... and this book I am definitely going to buy!!! Here are the projects that I have done so far:

I also have all of the paper goods to make the baby announcements. Since I don't have any of the information or the picture of the baby to start making them, I have just set them aside for when he gets here. I used Paper Source products; for the announcement I used the #10 card in the color Bluebell for the background and the 4-bar flat card in the color Leaf (for the text). I also used the #10 OE envelope to match the background card in the color Bluebell. I plan on printing the pictures and cutting them to fit the area adjacent to the 4-bar card... so we will see how that goes considering I don't have a picture for a size reference.
BUT when I was picking out the cards at Paper Source, I noticed these really cute address labels that were in the shape of clouds:

I thought that these were PERFECT for the addresses on the announcements but they are pretty expensive... $4.95 for only 8 labels. Considering I have to send a little over 60 announcements... we are talking $40 for just the labels. So, since poverty breads ingenuity, I decided to make my own. I bought ink jet address labels that are 3 1/3" x 4" from an office supply store and a 2" round scalloped paper punch from a craft store and WAAH LAAH. Now, they aren't clouds... but I think the effect is still the same and I saved a TON of money. The best part is that I bought 150 labels (so I can do the mailing address and the return address) and I have the punch for other projects or other announcements. Now I am thinking about getting a "Christmas-y" punch and making labels for my Christmas cards! Maybe that would be a little much....