Current Projects

I really try to update my blog more than just once a month, but it seems like I can't seem to make it. So, this is going to be a fairly large post considering I have been working on a lot lately, or at least finishing up a lot of stuff.

The first thing that I finally finished was the baby sling. I didn't have a baby sling with my first child and I was remembering my tired arms from carrying him when he was really little, so I thought a sling might be a good investment. I found this free pattern online, which incidentally was pretty much identical to one of the slings that I found in a boutique for close to $70. The pattern was easy to make, I ran into a few snags because I made it reversible and I tried to make a few short cuts. Take my advice, no short cuts when sewing!!! But other than that it was easy. I will say that it was difficult to find the size that fit me the best. I made a few practice slings out of some extra cheap fabric that I had, to get the perfect size before I used my good fabric. It was also hard to judge the size because I don't have an infant that I can take for a test run and I also have a large belly in my way :-) I made the final sling with Amy Butler fabric and so far I really like how it turned out. I will find out in a few short months how it works and I will let you know.

The next thing that I worked on was another baby blanket. I knitted one for my first child by using 2 different colors simultaneously to create a variegated effect and I knitted it in a seed stitch. I wanted this blanket to be similar but different and I stumbled on this pattern ... so I made it. It was VERY easy to make; it was simple crochet using 3 different colors at the same time with a size 35 crochet hook (or what they call a speed hook). The only adjustment I made was the size; the pattern called for 6 skeins and I used 9 in order to get a similar size to the one I made for my fist child. I really like how thick the blanket is... this will be a winter baby and I think a heavier blanket is going to come in handy.
I have a cousin that was due last week with her first child that is supposed to be a girl. So, I wanted to make her a blanket as well. Luckily I had a pink and white baby blanket that was almost done just laying around the house. A few years ago I had a friend that told me she was pregnant and I immediately thought that she was having a girl, so I started crocheting her a blanket. Right after I finished crocheting it she had her sonogram that proved me wrong and the blanket has been laying around here ever since. I decided to tuck in all the ends and get it ready to send to my cousin. It was lucky that I had that left over, otherwise I don't think I would have had the time to make her one.
I would also like to knit my cousin a small stuffed toy to send with her blanket. I made the reversible dolls for her brother's twins earlier this year, and I think it would be nice to send her something little too. The dolls take me way too much time (which I don't have right now) sooo I found this pattern for a small knitted bear. I haven't even started on this yet, but it looks like it will go pretty fast and I have plenty of yarn at the house so I won't have to go buy any. I haven't heard if she had her baby yet or not... so I still might have a little time to get it done. Another project that I would like to get done in the next week or so is an organizer for all of my knitting needles and crochet hooks. I usually keep them in my Grandma's old knitting bag, but it is hard to locate specific sizes. So last night I drew out a plan for an organizer that will hang from the wall or can be folded and rolled like most knitting needle organizers. It is going to be pretty large but very easy to sew. Hopefully I can get this done in the next week or 2 and post a picture of the final result.
Since I have been looking for projects to complete around the house, I finally got my granny square afghan done!!!! I am glad to finally have it done, but I was a little disappointed by the size. It is much smaller then I thought, but I figure someday when I am really bored I can get some more yarn to make more squares and super-size it.
What else? Oh, so last week I got sucked into the "Twilight" book series by Stephanie Meyer. Each book has a bout 500-600 pages and I read all 4 in 5 days!!!! Since I am not a teenage girl and I have a firm grasp on reality, I felt a bit strange reading this series..... but Meyer seems to have a way to keep you reading right up till the end. The series was getting a lot of good reviews and all 4 books are on most Bestseller lists, so I figure it was definitely worth checking out. After having this intense need to read for 5 days, when I was done reading I felt extremely bored. I decided that I needed a new project to keep me busy so I didn't pick up another book that consumed my ever free minute. I then found this pattern for a shrug. I have been wanting to knit a shrug for a while and I thought that this was the perfect time to do it. All of my maternity clothes are for the summer... and since the shrug doesn't extend to the belly, I thought that I can get away with wearing this before and after the baby gets here. I am not quite done with it, but it is getting there. The pattern is fairly easy and straightforward and I am definitely refining some of my knitting skills like picking up and knitting stitches. :-) I will show the finished result when I get that done. I also made some thank you cards from my son's birthday. Elsie Flannigan had a few baby pics that she posted on her blog a while back that I used as inspiration. She took the pics of the baby on a large round hay bale and I got an idea. I hooked up with a friend of mine and we took the kids to her dad's farm, where low and behold... he had some round hay bales. Well, anyway here is how they turned out:

Front:

Inside:

I think that covers all of the things that I have been up to lately (as if that's not enough). Now my brain is going crazy thinking about the things that I need to get done before the baby comes like.... make my son's Halloween costume, make the birth announcements (as much as I possible can at this point), make my Christmas cards so that all I have to do is add the picture and sign them, get a few things made for my cousin that is due at the same time as I am, and that doesn't include getting ready for the baby. Hopefully I can get some of those things done really soon so that I have more time to rest before I don't have the luxury of resting :-)

Photo Shop Pic

Every year for my son's birthday I take him to get professional pictures. I still can't quite figure out why, since I take billions of pictures of him anyway.... but none the less I still do it. I usually take him to a JC Penney Portrait Studio to get them taken and when I was looking on their website recently I saw one of their fine art effects that looked like an Andy Warhol. Super! I loved it and when I asked about it, they said that it wasn't available at this time. I am not sure why, but I had my heart set on that picture and when I was talking to my friend, Emily, she said, "why don't you make your own, you have Photo Shop on your computer." I said, "Well, I don't really want to spend the time... and blablabla." Well, since I couldn't get it through JC Penney I was bound and determined to get one made... even if that meant that I had to do it myself. Now, I haven't really used an Adobe program since College... I have dabbled a bit with it but nothing significant. So I found a GREAT tutorial on Melissa Clifton's website for an Andy Warhol look and after making a few adjustments, I got exactly what I wanted. The best part is..... that I had it printed at Kinko's on glossy paper for $1.59. YOU CAN NOT BEAT THAT. I don't know how much JC Penney would have charged for their Andy Warhol pic, but I would bet that it was much more than $1.59! Here is what I came up with, this is the scanned version of the printed image. It is a little choppier than the original, but you'll get the point.
So now my mind is racing with all other kind of enhancements that I can make to my photos. :-)

recent projects

We realized recently that it was time for our toddler to move out of the baby nursery and into a "big boy" room, especially since we are going to need the nursery soon. So I stripped the wall paper border, compliments of the previous owner, and I also had to sand the walls. Yes, sand the walls. The border was a "beach theme" and she mixed sand into her paint before she painted that room. Surprisingly it came off quite easily. I painted the room blue and bought fun car and truck decals from Target. I LOVE these because they are basically just stickers... and even though they stick to the wall nicely, you can remove them very easily. So if he decides he wants a more "grown-up" look in the room in a few years, then I can just peel them off. So, since I LOVED these decals soo much, I decided to make a stuffed plush toy that looked like one of the trucks. The truck turned out HUGE!!! The dimensions are about 23" long, 14" high and 8" wide. I also decided against making it out of felt (which would have held its shape a bit better) and made it out of fleece. Basically I designed this to go on his bed and the fleece is just a better choice for something you might be sleeping on. Well, since the shape is a little distorted, my son now calls it his motor home, when in reality it was supposed to be a large box truck :-)

Decal:

Motor home:
I also made birthday party invitations. Last year I made birthday invitations for my son's 2nd birthday and I really enjoyed making them and loved how they turned out. So this year I decided to make more. I took a picture of my son and altered it in the program; HP Image Zone Plus using the solarize tool. After I had the pictures printed, I thought about screen printing the text onto the picture or possibly making my own rub-on for the text but ultimately I just printed the text right onto the photo using my desk jet printer. On the front of the card, I used various stamps, the 2 bolder stamps I actually made with block printing rubber and there is also a 3 made from a label maker. The card is a Paper Source A6 card in the color curry, which I bought from Urban Arts & Crafts.

Past Projects

I have had absolutely no time lately to do anything! The first weekend this month was just crazy and I am still trying to recover from it! However, there are a few things that I have been able to put together with some of my limited time that I am super excited about.

I found these two sculptures that I made in a ceramics class in college. They are abstract figures depicting my husband and I when we got married and they have been collecting dust ever since. When I was cleaning up some of the clutter in my house I also found this "shadow-box-shelf" that I bought a long time for an entirely different reason and never used. Well, I put one and two together and waaaalaaah:

I know that displaying my figurines in a box isn't that creative, but I am really excited that I was able to display them for free. Who isn't excited about the word Free??

Another thing that I am really excited about are these things:

I am not sure what their technical term is but they are party favors (I assume for a kid's party) and they are plastic cones with a textured piece of clear plastic at the end. So you can look through them and see the world in different forms of distortion. I received these as a favor for a bachelorette party that I recently attended and immediately put them up to my camera to see if it would focus through them. And indeed it did. I should also mention that I was using a "pocket sized" digital camera (Sony Cyber-shot) with the front lens measuring about 1/2" in diameter. I don't think it would work with a large camera lens, but it would be fun to experiment. Here are some fun pics of the 2 different "lenses".

So, like a big dork, I am going to be looking for more of these so that I can really play with my pics. And I am definitely going to keep these in my camera bag for all occasions.

And as I have stated before... I have no time, BUT I have even more to share. I recently purchased a mirror from a garage sale for $6 and I LOVE IT. It was originally a brass color, but the frame is plastic and whoever had it before, spray painted it with a high gloss black paint. I think that maybe that person didn't like how it turned out? It didn't look like it had been hung before and looked almost brand new. But as they say, "one man's trash is another man's treasure" and oh what a treasure it was.

So I decided to hang it next to my "Jewelry Box". I also found this frame at a garage sale and it was just a frame; no glass and no picture. It looked like it was made in the 70s and although it was made out of wood, it was painted to look like a more expensive and interesting wood (you know, with painted on wood grain). There was also a part of the frame that was covered in a faux suede that accentuated it's 70s-ness. I think I bought it for $5? and I painted it in a high gloss black and covered the fabric section with a zebra print fabric that I just had laying around the house. Then I had my husband build a shallow box behind it and hinge it to the frame. I cut a piece of Styrofoam to fit the inside, covered it with black fabric and placed it inside. For less than $10 I have a great display for my jewelry and even though it looks like a piece of art on my wall, it is also functional because the frame opens like a door on the front. :-) I used dress maker pins to hang up each of the pieces of jewelry and I LOVE IT. I made this long before I found that mirror and when I saw the mirror, I thought that it would be a perfect addition to my wall... which I am just starting to realize is exclusively yard sale finds.

At the same yard sale that I found the frame above, I also found 4 small framed Norman Rockwell prints. They didn't have any glass in them either and the backing was just cardboard. I think I bought each of them for either 25cents or 50cents. Either way, they were a great deal. So I also sprayed them with high gloss black paint and until recently I was using them as photo frames. I backed them with a stiff piece of black card stock and displayed large wallet sized pics (printed on my home photo printer) inside the frame, held in by black photo corners. I didn't have glass for the frames and by using the photo corners, I could change out the pictures as often as I wanted to.

But, when I hung my mirror, these photo frames weren't quite working. I remember seeing a DIY "recipe" for an earring holder made from a frame, screw eyes and wire. So I changed one of my frames into an earring holder and I really like how it turned out. I used what I had... the screw eyes were too large and the wire I used was a scrap piece of heavy duty picture wire, but I like how it gives more of an industrial look. The frame is small so it doesn't hold a lot of earrings, but I don't change my earrings that often so this size works perfect for my small collection.

I like how all the pieces look together and I am itching to find some more functional ways to transform the 3 other small frames.

Well, that is all for now... maybe the next time I am super busy, I will have equally as much to share ;-)

Necklace

I am attending a wedding in a week and a half and I decided it would probably be smart if I bought a dress. Since I have to get a maternity dress, the selection is pretty minimal. Luckily this is an outdoor wedding and not super formal attire, so the selection for summer day dresses is a bit larger than for formal maternity dresses. Anyway, I found a dress that worked (which is VERY red) and for some reason I decided that I needed a necklace to go along with this dress. I found a necklace on Etsy.com that I really liked but it was orange and lime green, it would have worked if it was red and lime green so I was on a quest. I bought a few things and ended up using the least expensive beads that I bought and a silver necklace from my jewelry box that I was never going to wear. I used red coral beads, lime Jade beads, and Lucite flowers. Unlike the Etsy necklace, this one I decided to make asymmetrical. It is the first necklace that I have that isn't symmetrical and I really like it. I think it turned out great and I really like it with the dress... the flower might be a bit much with the pattern on the dress but OH WELL.

I was also thinking about making either earrings or a bracelet to go with this. I don't normally wear bracelets, so I thought earrings. I can't decided between the one on the left and the one on the right. But now I am thinking that the earrings might be a little much?? I am probably thinking about this way too much!

Bravery

I decided to make my own Sushi last night. My mom makes sushi all the time and I thought, if she can do it, then I can do it. I found this really great recipe from Martha Stewart.com and I mainly used the recipe for the sticky rice. I don't have a rice steamer but this recipe worked perfectly!!! I also made a few veggie rolls just like the recipe, and they turned out o.k., but I also made a Philadelphia roll that was EXCELLENT!!!!!! I know that this was a very brave (and very time consuming) feat... but it was well worth it!!!

Garden

For the past few weeks most of my time and energy has been spent on building a garden. That might sound like an easy task to most people, but I had to (or I should say my husband had to) build a fence to keep out the animals that live in the treed area behind my house. Ever since I planted the veggies in the garden, I have been on the lookout for a nice way to mark my rows. When I was in Target today, I found these plant markers in the dollar isle... a package of 5 for a dollar to be precise. They had some that were silver and some that were copper, I picked the more classic copper ones to use in my garden. Each package came with a black marker to write out the plant names, but I ended up getting out my trusty alphabet punches and they turned out great!!!!

Garden:

necklace

I went to a bead show this weekend and found Water Buffalo Horn that was sliced, polished and drilled for jewelry. I thought that it was so unique that I bought a strand to make a necklace for my Mom for Mother's Day. I knew that I wanted to hang something in the center of the horn but I really struggled to find anything that worked. I ended up having a piece of Jasper that looked pretty good in the center so I found some beads that matched and threw it together and here it is.

Small Projects

Things have been CRAZY around here. I haven't had the time to do anything!! I was working on the afghan a while ago and had to put it down. I don't know if it is my posture or what, but I was experiencing pretty severe back pain so I stopped working on it and the back pain went away. We will see how long it takes me to pick it back up again. And since then, I have been so busy I haven't had any time to create.

Last night my sis-in-law brought over a 1 pound Chihuahua puppy that was whining because it was cold. So, I hurried up and knitted her a sweater before my sis-in-law left. The sweater turned out o.k. but I made the arm holes a little tight and because the sweater weighed more than she did, she had some trouble walking. Regardless, she was super cute... I guess you can be the judge of that.

I also made a cake today. I felt like some chocolate and found the first recipe that I could that had chocolate in it. It is a Kraft recipe called Chocolate-Covered Oreo Cookie Cake... and it turned out great! I made one change and that was instead of the chocolate mixture they suggested for the topping, I made a simple chocolate ganache. That is all for now.... hopefully more to come soon.

Current Project-Afghan

The knitted dolls are done and shipped to their intended owners!!! I LOVED knitting the dolls and my favorite part was stuffing and assembling them. I think everyone finds that to be the best part about making any kind of stuffed animals, because that is when they actually come to life! And even though I loved making them.... I am really glad that they are done!

While I was knitting the dolls I decided to watch my entire collection of Harry Potter DVDs (during nap time of course). And that is when I saw Mrs. Weasley wearing the coolest sleeves on her housecoat.

I searched the Internet for a pattern for the sleeves and I found them in this book:

However, the sleeve pattern that they have in the book is not even close to the ones that Mrs. Weasley wears in the movie. In Charmed Knits, they have a poof at the top of the shoulder/base of the "epaulet" and the bells at the end of the sleeves are much smaller than the real ones. I did find this pattern that looks very accurate but I think that I am going to take a stab at making my own pattern. In order to do that I decided that I should probably brush up on my crocheting skills. I haven't crocheted anything substantial in a while so I found this afghan pattern and that is what I am working on right now.
I have more than half of the Granny squares crocheted and I just started on Monday... so I think it is moving along quite nicely.

Completed Project-Knitted Doll

My cousin just had twin girls last week and in addition to getting them some useful things, I decided to make dolls for the babies. I found the cutest knitted doll in this book:
It kinda reminds me of a doll that I had when I was little, my mom made it and the head of the doll had different faces on each side and it spun around so that you could show different emotions on the same doll. It sounds a bit possessed but it was fun when I was little.

The doll that I made is called the "Upside Down Dolly" and the best part is that it is two dolls in one. The doll is a take on Cinderella, where one side of the doll is Cinderella pre-fairy god mother, and the other side is Cinderella after. One doll is completely done and it turned out GREAT! Mine turned out to be 15" high, which is a bit bigger than the pattern, but I think I like the bigger version better. It was really easy to knit because everything was knitted flat and then you sew up the parts to make it 3-dimensional. I didn't do as much embroidery as in the pattern, but I think that is o.k. too. I also thought that this doll is perfect for twins!!! Now I just have to get the other one done.

Never say never.....

I went to an auction this weekend and I was pretty much just along for the ride. My husband was going to look for coins for his and his brother's collections and that was about it. While he was trying to look at the handful of coins that they had, I walked my 2 year old around just to see what else they had. It wasn't until the second time around that I found it!...... An antique sampler hidden behind glass, jewelry and other more sought after items. So I quickly signed up to bid and realized that it was in lot # 411, which means there was 410 items to be auctioned before the sampler. Well, to make a long story short it was 4 1/2 hours into the auction before the sampler was sold and it actually worked to my advantage because at that point there was only 1/4 of the people there. AND it is mine!! I only had to bid against one person and I got it. I am not quite sure how old it is because there is no date but I think that if I wanted to research it I could probably get an estimate ( I am too worried about that). It is also not in the best condition, but I think that it looks great and I am still in shock that I actually have an antique sampler!!

Completed Painting

The painting is DONE!!! WOOOHOO. Sally really wanted a pinup in the picture and I think that it turned out to be more of a naked cowgirl than a pin up, but I still think she is going to like it. I still feel as though there is more that could be done on this painting and things that need to be improved. But if I do that it will be over worked and I will have to spend even more time getting it back to where it was.... so I have learned the hard way that this is my stopping point.

I have done my fair share of life drawing (and at the risk of sounding like a prude) this painting was pretty racy for me... my usual subject matter tends to be a bit more 'G' rated. I am not the best at portraiture, but since this portrait was abstract, I think that it turned out o.k. I did really enjoy painting her face, so I think I might end up doing more portraits after all. And even though this painting is a decent size at 24"x36", I tend to work a lot larger than this. I think that I am going to really challenge myself on my next painting and paint super small!!!

Current Project-Painting

I was encouraged today to paint more, so I decided to complete my Sister-in-law's painting that I started months ago. My objective behind the painting was to give her something colorful to hang behind her couch. She has decorated her apartment with very colorful accessories and I thought that a really large, colorful painting would bring everything together. The painting was supposed to be a surprise but then I got stuck, so I decided to show her the painting and see if she could direct me into any sort of direction. And that she did... Sally is really into vintage pinups, infact her next tattoo is most likely going to be a large pinup. Since the painting has taken on a "tattoo" like quality, I thought that a pinup would look great! I was trying to get it done for Christmas present, and I was SOOOO busy before Christmas that I just didn't have the time. Actually, I don't really have the time now either, but I am super motivated so I am just going to have to make the time! Here are a few pictures of my progress (not much right now but I am pretty confident that I will get this painting done soon). I am also thinking about making prints of several of my paintings and selling them on Etsy!