Aprons and Kitchen Spruciness - Part 1.

The first part of 2010 has made this the year of the aprons for me. So fun! I've always wanted to make an apron and finally made the first apron from Anna Maria Horner's book, Seams to Me: 24 New Reasons to Love Sewing. It was for Jenny's birthday - the "Cup Half Full" pattern, thus a half apron. The fabric I've had for a while and really screamed Jenny to me, so I went for it - it's bold and vibrant just like Jenny-Jen. I hope this apron will help spark her creative spirit in the kitchen - not that her artsy self needs any help.. she's an artist and a teacher and a lover of cooking by nature. The fabric is by Alexander Henry, Pink Zinnia - purchased from Etsy. The pattern was very well written and detailed. There was no confusion.. or cursing .at all. which is not normal for me. I'm not the best with sewing patterns even when they're well-written and mistake-free. The waistband and tie design was very clever, I thought. You'll see what I mean when you try it - I'll definitely make another apron with this pattern.

The embroidered apron was made for Emery's 10th birthday. It was really fun to plan out, since she's a very crafty young lady and has many interests. Her #1 interest since a very young age is cats, so that was a no-brainer. The rest of the pattern pieces came from a sheet of kitchen designs, "Krazy Kitchen". All of the pattern pieces were the iron-ons from Sublime Stitching.

I've really enjoyed embroidery lately - love picking the bright, lively colors, love choosing a stitch for each segment. It's relaxing and allows for creativity - even when led by an iron-on pattern, you can add as much or little as you like for the look you want. Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching is so inspiring with her stitching - as are the many stitchers who post to her website and flickr group - they must be a lot quicker with their stitching than I am or at least much more patient, adding the accents and level of detail to take an embroidered piece from a project to a work of art.

Ollie Blanket and Felted Tote.

These projects are completely unrelated, but had to throw the felted tote in somewhere. I'll start with the baby blanket, though, since babies are more fun and I'm excited to introduce baby Oliver (Ollie) - Wade & Eve's little one. Meet Oliver (held by daddy)! He's a wee bit bigger now - this pic shows him around 2 months old and he's nearly 6 mos now. Crazy how time flies...

I delivered his baby blanket very late. Don't know how I got so behind with it, but I really liked how it turned out despite all the lateness. Very soft yarn and nice, simple pattern. J'adore the pale yellow edging around the boyish blue. The pattern is for the Hooded Baby Blanket from the Lion Brand site - you have to register to get it, but it's free. I didn't do the hood, but used the pattern for the square blanket, then added a few rows of crocheted shell edging to pretty it up. It turned out rather large, but seemed more appropriate since I didn't get it to them until he was nearly 3 mos old. Yikes. Hopefully he's getting plenty of belly time with it as more of a floor play blanket than a swaddler. :-)

This tote has been years in the making. Seriously. Years. I got the yarn and pattern from Knitch in Atlanta with Danielle ages ago and started on it immediately. The knitting took a long time, since the bag has to be at least twice the size before felting. It was enormous and like a fool, I naturally forgot to take a pic before throwing it in the machine. I knitted the first half within the first few months, then let a few other projects jump in, and before I knew it I had only handles to go for a year. Then, finished a handle and another year goes by with one handle to go. Finally, the week before heading to Renegade with Danielle this year (in May), I gave myself a good kick in the arse. It was ridiculous really. I just sat down, took about 20 minutes to finish the other strap, then threw it in the washing machine. In hindsight, I think I was really nervous about the felting - terrified that all that pretty yarn and all that knitting would be going down the drain as I somehow screwed up the final stage. Well, it really wasn't that big of a deal. Put in a just a touch of mild/natural soap and HOT water, then just keep agitating and don't let it drain until you can see that it's either the size you want it or not shrinking anymore - then you're done. I had one little mishap when I was running around doing something else and heard the machine start spinning the water out. Aagh! I ran in and stopped it, but basically had to refill the water and keep going - no real biggie, but a pain and waste of water. My machine doesn't have a convenient cycle for felting - obviously not designed by a crafty lady.

I couldn't be happier with the finished product. I LOVE my bag. It's not often that I start (much less finish) a project for myself, so it was really fun to finish this bag and take it to Austin to show it off a bit. This is the pattern for the bag and the yarn is from Cascade Yarns - not sure Knitch carries it anymore - the orange colorway is called burnt orange, but has some little speckles of color mixed in - the blue matches one of the color specks, but they don't show up so much with the felting. No matter, though, I still love the colors together. The first pic is of the drying/blocking process - the size wasn't a concern, so I just stuffed it with a ton of plastic grocery bags to shape it a little. It took a couple days to fully dry and I kept it in a room underneath a ceiling fan and turned it over a couple times a day.

In a perfect world, I would use the nearly full skein of orange yarn I have left to knit two large rectangles, then felt and sew them into a zipper pouch. I do have this plan, but it's not even on the official project list at the moment. Ang and I need to make make up some new project lists at our next craft night to focus ourselves. She's about to have a baby, so may not really have a list of projects for a while, but it'll be fun to think about anyway.

Birthdays - Scarf and Afghan.

So, this post is a birthday post - I'm combining a scarf I made for Kendra's birthday in February, an afghan I finished for my grandmother's birthday in March, and some slippers I just finished for Angela's birthday in early June.

The scarf was a nice, simple knitting project with super soft yarn I found at In The Making - a yarn store in Cahaba Heights. The pattern was free with the purchase of yarn - they had a great scarf display in the winter with many different yarns knitted up and labeled with yarn and pattern - many of the patterns were free which is how I found this one. I love this yarn - so sorry I'm so disorganized, but I did actually get up and look for the yarn tag so I could post the info - can't find it. I promise to be better about this in the future - keeping track of yarn and fabric stats with every project so I can post details. The yarn is bulky, super soft, and hand-dyed - very rich, warm colors. It was such a quick project that I actually delivered on time for the birthday and just in time for her to take it on her birthday NYC trip. :)

The afghan squares are from the PBS show Knit and Crochet Now. The link is to their website where they provide all patterns from the show for free. They have either a knitted or crochet square every week to eventually make up an entire afghan. I printed the pattern for the whole afghan (last year's), then picked four or five of the squares I really liked and repeated them with the colorways mixed up some. I wasn't crazy about every square in the blanket, so that was my solution. I really liked the fancy edging from this pattern, but I ended up shorting it a round, since I was out of time. I would apologize for this blurry and not-so-flattering photo of my grandmother with her new afghan, but she's still so cute blurry and un-smiling that I'm sure noone will mind. ;) I didn't get a photo before taking it to her for her big birthday bash, so this pic is from my sister's fancy phone. I cut it so close with time that I was embroidering and sewing in a fabric tag on the plane. Ha!

I LOVE these slippers. Saw them on the PurlBee blog (from Purl Soho) and knew I wanted to make them for Ang's birthday. I'll eventually make some for myself. They didn't take too long to make - it was fun to finish each of the granny square sets then seam them all together. The arrangement was a bit tricky and I ended up having to make a little sketch for myself to clear up my confusion, but not sure if my doodling would help anyone else. The instructions on the blog were very good, but I still had trouble visualizing. Wahoo! I actually have these yarn tags - three colorways from Manos del Uruguay (Wool Clasica), colors: Q (blue), 68, goldish-green, and 57 (fuchsia).

Handwarmers.

While looking for handwarmer patterns, I stumbled across this blog by an Italian chick who has quite the handwarmer obsession. I love her designs and really appreciate that she shares the patterns. She also sells handwarmers in her Etsy shop for those that don't care to or don't have the time to make their own. Both of the handwarmer styles I tried for Christmas gifts this year were using or based on her patterns, which can be found in the Free Patterns section of her Creative Yarn blog.

The first pic is of Angela's Christmas present this past year - they're a knit/crochet combo pattern that has a soft, fuzzy mohair for the knitted, cuff portion and a mid-weight yarn for the hand portion. The other pics are of the style I made these for Meg and Jules. It's a straight knitting pattern working mostly in a take on my favorite stitch - she's calling the double moss (aka seed) stitch. Both patterns involve knitting/crocheting a rectangle, then sewing together lengthwise to make a seam and leaving a gap in seam stitches for the thumb.

I'll admit that it took me a couple of months this past fall to really figure out handwarmers. I initially tried increasing and decreasing to make them more fitted and struggled with the weight, doubling light-weight yarns or using a heavier weight, then experimented with smaller vs larger hooks. With the to-shape-or-not-to-shape question, I decided on not, since most yarns have enough stretch to make them fit nicely. The thicker the yarn, though, the more it might be nicer to have some shaping, since the fabric won't hang as nicely. For Meg and Jules, I ended up doubling hand-dyed, sock weight yarn from Kitchen Sink Dyeworks. KSD is owned by Mercedes, who used to own Knit Nouveau in Homewood - was my favorite yarn shop. She's online only now and devotes most of her time to hand-dying wool.

I'm not always (ok, rarely) good about taking pics before I send gifts, so the best I came up with for the Meg/Jules style were these pics of us goofing off. One is of Meg (donning handwarmers) and me at our Elementary School... oh, the nastalgia - we all walked there from my grandmother's house. The other is of Jules stylin' it up with her handwarmers when they were on a hike. Oh yeah. There isn't a long handwarmer season in Phoenix, but these globetrotting girls will have plenty of handwarmer appropriate weather in other places.

Christmas Packages '09 - Part 2.

The rest of our Christmas packages were mostly completed in a single night. We did get the vanilla extract going about four weeks before the intended ship date, since it needs plenty of time and shaking to do it's thing. The big night was spent pouring extract into little 2 oz bottles, making peppermint bark, and wrapping up the gift sets. We had several helpers who should be mentioned. Casey and Ben were our candy cane crushers, Tim helped us temper the chocolate, and Nick helped us taste the chocolate.

The first task of the night was pouring the extract into the bottles. While I poured, Ang removed the vanilla beans and cut them into pieces that we could stick down into the little bottles to give it a more homemade feel and to allow the bean to continue strengthening the vanilla flavor. After sealing up the bottles, we cut out pieces of pretty paper with handwritten "Vanilla Extract" labels to glue onto the bottles. The vanilla beans were the most expensive part of this project - we used the Madagascar variety. With the rest of the extract (bottles and vodka) adding very reasonable cost, the total extract cost came to less than three and a half dollars per 2 oz bottle - much lower cost and higher quality than the stuff you can get in the store!

Tim's job was definitely the most challenging - he, Ang, and I worked together to heat, stir, monitor temps, stir, cool in ice bath, monitor temps, and more stirring - Tim doing most of the stirring. We all read about tempering chocolate from several sources before showtime, so we knew if we didn't get the temps just right that the whole process should be started over. We tempered the chocolate in two batches onto three cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. The dark chocolate layer was first, then a white chocolate layer, then the crushed candy canes. We repeated the tempering process for the second batch, since we weren't positive we hit all the temps right. The heating and cooling happens quickly and it takes some anticipation to prevent over-heating or cooling.

The finished product was gorgeous! Now I'm remembering (with the help of the photos) that we actually let it cool and set for a day. I came over the next day to help break up the peppermint bark and package it up before we arranged and wrapped the completed gift sets.

I would never pass up a chance to read books with Nick, and it's definitely become a holiday tradition to curl up in a chair by the Christmas tree to read books at bedtime. Can't beat that sweet end to a fun-filled evening!

Christmas Packages '09 - Part 1.

Our Christmas packages were SO fun this year. We decided to sew pretty fabrics on dishtowels, then package them with some homemade vanilla extract and peppermint bark. They all turned out great and we learned a ton in the process.













The kitchen towels were very manageable. Angela always makes more gift sets than I do - more family members to make for, and this year with all I already had going on, I only made packages for out-of-town relatives (mom, sisters, grandmother, great-aunt), plus Casey's mom and sis. This plan with a more realistic goal (for a change) was a great stress-reducer for me around the normally-stressful holidays. I found an amazing deal on the kitchen towels on this site and we shared fabric from our stashes, so this part of our packages was very budget friendly.

Ang and I read and browsed blogs and talked a lot about applique before starting on our towels. I decided that I wouldn't have time to fancy mine up with applique this time, but Angela went for it and did an incredible job. She had several different designs - pears, birds, trees, and even a coffee cup and saucer. We both used the basic technique of cutting strips of fabric, sewing them together right sides together on a machine, ironing the edges under, then either using the zigzag stitch to attach to the towels or using embroidery thread to stitch onto the towels. I mainly embroidered the fabric onto the towels, since it was a portable crafting activity in between our craft nights and I like the handmade look of the embroidered running stitches in contrasting or matching colors. It's funny how sometimes we want things to look or feel homemade and other
times we really don't. :-) Ang made so many towels, but they are all so unique and different that I wanted to post all of the different styles and designs.

Part 2 of the Christmas packages will come next. For now, I'm going to show off the rest of the recent crafting from Angela. My favorite thing she made this past year was for her son Nick's birthday this past October - it's a pillowcase with the top-side covered with all of his favorite book characters. It turned out amazing! It has Thomas and Percy, Pooh, Owl, and.. oh, I can't remember the bear's name. Nick so, so loves his pillow! :D He knew his mom was working on something for him and was so excited opening it - so sweet. Ang also made a pillow last year for the daughter of her best friend from college. It turned out really cute - perfect for a little girl and something I'm sure she will have for many years. I love the little ladybug and the bee. I got the tracing supplies from Sublime Stitching and we both use the transfer paper and tracing stylus to transfer images from books or anything else with a good design.

Also crafted by Angela were a baby hat and booty set for her sister who just had a baby in January. This was her second baby set and the neat speckled effect is created by holding a multi-colored sock-weight yarn with a mid-weight (not sure exactly which yarns she used).

Baby gift and sister's bday.

This blanket was made for the baby of an old, dear friend. Her baby was born in late July - very healthy and lovely. I loved this pattern when I saw it on the Purl Bee blog. I especially loved the seed stitch version, which is the one I used. I don't normally go for the yarn they use on the Purl blog because they are usually rather extravagant, yet luxurious. I couldn't resist this yarn - it's organic cotton and the softest yarn I've ever worked with (yarn details are in pattern - link above). The Spud & Chloe yarn also comes in amazing colors - I loved this bright orange color so much! For the edging, I searched and read around on people's blogs to find general instructions for a shell or fan edge on a blanket. My method for this type of thing is to decide how large/long I want the fan to be (matching the size of the overall project), then adjust around the corners as necessary to make a longer fan come around each corner. Basically, a fan on either side of a corner may need to be shorter or longer to make the corner fan occur at just the right place. Hopefully that makes sense - it's not an exact science by any means (for me, anyway).

The cute little piggy I found at a booth of Renegade Brooklyn with Danielle last summer. I only mailed the blanket to my friend around Thanksgiving (running a bit behind as usual), so have been hanging onto the piggy since then. I should know and report the name of the vendor, but I apologetically can't recall. There are several other great baby blanket patterns on the Purl blog site that I'm planning to try out soon - the stork is returning in the spring and then again in the summer among our friends.

I made this hat for my sister's birthday. It's made with Lorna's Laces Swirl Chunky ("Watercolor" colorway, I believe). It was the first hat I crocheted, and it was trying for many reasons... I can't seem to find the pattern link anymore - I was using the Droid in the car to search for patterns. Doesn't matter really, since the pattern wasn't good at all - I ripped out and started over three times before the sizing was right (much too large initially) and didn't even end up following the same stitch pattern. In the end, I used the pattern to get an idea of how to design the top and crown of the hat, then went rogue from there. I have a habit of just winging it with hats, which works most of the time with a knitted hat if you do just a bit of math up front, but this one was definitely a learning experience - with no method to my madness. I was happy with how the whole thing ended up and really loved the edging - seemed to tone down the color just enough and make it look more finished.

The edging is a worsted weight wool yarn - pretty standard spin with a gorgeous dye, but I can't recall the brand - picked it up at a yarn store, Broad Ripple Knits, in Indianapolis that I love visiting when we pass through. It's a really cute shop with a good yarn selection and in a great neighborhood - college area with fun shops, cafes, bars, breweries, etc. We've been to the Broad Ripple Brewpub twice now and enjoy their beers - they also have great food. We normally try to add in some couple fun to our holiday family vacationing, and have stopped through Indianapolis for a night the past two years on the way to or from Wisconsin to visit my mom's side of the family. This year, we also stopped in Cincinnati to visit from friends and that city is amazing! If it wasn't so dang cold in the winter, it would make it on a list of cities where I think I could live.

Wow. Ok, so this post pretty much catches me up to the recent holiday crafting, so that will be coming up very soon. Exciting. :)

Bread and Stew.

This post is a bit mismatched, since the bread pic is from the summer and the stew pic is from this recent holiday season. Oh well.

The purpose ties them together, which is that I love food. Love cooking. Last summer I started to get into baking bread and made some progress just before a new dimension in my life was begun, and I took a hiatus from bread-baking, crafting, cooking, blogging, etc. to focus on something new for about six months. Before all that, I read Amy's Bread by Amy Scherber (well, a good bit of it anyway) and borrowed Bread Alone by Dan Leader from Tim (which I still have and may be pushing the limits of the term borrow). Tim is an excellent bread-maker, so as I get more into the craft, I will continue to bounce ideas off him and see what he's experienced.

I really enjoyed trying the autolyse (resting period amidst the kneading and rising) that is championed in most bread books. I also tried the pan of water in the oven, but didn't mist as some people recommend. I thought this made a wonderful crust, but had tried so many things, it was hard to tell what made these loaves turn out so great... but they did and it was really exciting! Tim shared that he hasn't experienced a noticeable crust improvement from the water-in-oven technique, so who knows what really made the difference - will require more experimentation. :D

We've been making homemade pizza dough for a while now, which is really simple, and have tried several bread recipes with unimpressive results. This was a whole-grain bread with walnuts and it turned out amazing - I was proud enough of it to share a loaf with a new neighbor as a welcoming gift. One thing the recipe (from Amy's book) recommended was to let the loaves rest in the fride overnight after kneading the nuts to allow the nut oils to permeate the dough and give the bread a nuttier flavor. I did this and don't know how much nuttier that made it since I had no reference point, but it was nice and nutty, and Tim has mentioned that in his opinion any bread will turn out nicer after at least a night hanging out in the frige. All that said, I hope to dive more into the art of bread-making this year and share more hits and misses. :)

I heart soups and stews and cold weather that makes it feel right to slow cook a big pot of anything and fill the kitchen with the incredible aromas. It's so fun to throw all kinds of yummy things into a pot, cook it all down, spice it all up, and have a hearty meal. I usually freeze part of the batch for later and we'll eat the rest through the week, mixing small bowls with different wraps or sammies to mix it up a little, but the first meal is usually just a big bowl o' stew.

My SO's parents gave me this nice stew pot for Christmas and this is the first meal I made in it the very next week. It's a really great pot that can do double-duty in the oven, if desired. I partly followed a celery stew recipe, but really only used it for inspiration, since a friend brought me a bunch of celery and a head of cabbage from her farmer's market basket that she knew she wouldn't get around to using. In this stew is a pound of ground sirloin, a bunch of celery, a half head of cabbage, a few carrots that were in the frige, a whole onion, a can of crushed tomatoes, and some veggie stock. The main flavor of this stew for me is the cabbage, which I really enjoy. The beautiful thing about stews is how free-form they are, just go for it and throw anything you like in the pot - it'll turn out rich, hearty, and super tasty.

Birthdays '09.

Several birthday gifts were crafted in spring / summer of '09. I quite characteristically didn't get pics of everything before wrapping and sending, so this is just a sample. :)

The zipper pouch is actually one I kept - made another at the same time for Kristin and stuck some jewelry inside - a bracelet that I didn't get photographed. Her birthday was in March - the big 4-0. ;-)

The fabric used for the pouch shown is Joel Dewberry. I bought a zipper pouch at Renegade Brooklyn with Danielle last summer and discovered a much simpler way to sew the pouch without sewing the lining by hand - much too slow for me. It completely simplifies the process and creates a 5-minute zipper pouch! Awesome. I just used a rotary cutter / mat to cut four pieces of fabric at once - two for the outside and two for the lining, then ironed under a hem one side side of each piece (to be the top). Next, sew the lining pieces to the underside of the zipper. Then, sew the outer pieces to the topside of the zipper. Last, align all four fabric pieces so that the outer ones have right sides together and the lining pieces have their right sides facing out so you can see them. Sew all the way around and through both sides of the zipper, trim fabric and zipper pieces, flip right side out, and Voila - finito!

This wallet is from Amy Karol's Bend the Rules Sewing. I know I talk about this book a lot, but sheesh, it's such a good book with great projects. The instructions are not always the most clear, but there's a flickr group where notes, tips, errata, etc. are shared and discussed - can't beat that. So, the wallet was really fun to make and fairly simple - just a lot of steps. The flickr group is really a must with most of the projects in this book - in the case of this wallet, people pointed out that the dimensions should be adjusted slightly to properly fit your ID and/or plastic. I also kept checking this dimension while positioning the pockets and testing the folds.

I found some sew-on snaps in the sewing machine cabinet I recently acquired from my grandmother and gave it my best shot, but I attached the snap after the rest of the wallet was finished and it should really be incorporated at an earlier step to make the sewing easier and the snap more solidly attached. I was afraid that lining up the snap pieces would be frustrating, so opted to add it last. Next time I will think more about how to add it to the raw fabric pieces early on. This wallet was for Jenny's birthday in June. Included was a necklace that I was really proud of, but again forgot to take a pic.

These coasters were a super cute project I saw on the Purl Bee blog - creations of the Purl Soho creative people. Danielle and I visited their stores while in NYC for Renegade and it was so incredible to see them in person. There's a fabric store with a yarn store next door. The colors and displays are amazing to see.

The coaster pattern was for knit and crochet, but I only made the crochet pattern because I liked them better and have been loving crochet lately. The tops are a simple pattern that naturally roll up on the edges, but they need to be blocked before attaching to the fabric bottoms. That's what this picture is showing - I just pinned down the tops in the desired shape and sprayed them with a water & tea tree oil solution.

For the bottoms, you can use little pretty fabric scraps. I mix-matched different fabrics with the different colored tops. Each bottom has two fabric scraps, since one will show on the very bottom and one will show through a bit through the crocheted

top. Arrange fabric pieces with right sides together, sew around the edge leaving an opening, trim if necessary, and flip right side out through the opening you left. Easy-peasy. Then, iron and pin to the crocheted top piece. For these coasters, I used a sewing machine for this part going around a small circle in the center, then going around another circle close to the outer edge. This was tres difficult pour moi. Next time, I would definitely use embroidery thread to attach the tops to the bottoms, but however you have luck and enjoy the process more, go for it. I tend to lean toward the machine, when possible, because I guess I'll admit that I don't so much like hand sewing, but I don't mind it when it's the best method and sometimes even enjoy the relaxing and mobile aspect of hand sewing - you can take it anywhere. Anyway, these turned out perfectly fine for me, but were a touch sloppy because I wasn't that impressive with my machine circles. :) Oh! and these coasters were for our lovely friend, Sara, who had a big 4-0 party in DC last August. We were so very happy to be there with her to celebrate.