There is a person who really makes my life easier. I was really excited about getting to meet her and give her a gift. She’s a quilter, so I had to make her a pin cushion. Somehow along the way a butterfly theme developed.
This pin cushion is made out of recycled sweaters (a little touch of cashmere on the top), recycled buttons, fresh embroidery floss, and fresh quilter pins.
I can’t wait to give it to her.
It always happens during the holiday season…I begin working on gift crafts that I can’t show on my blog. It really tends to constipate my blog. This year I didn’t make many things, but I did make a really nice rug for my mother-in-law. The patter is from OneSkein. It is the best solution for scraps!
I cheated a lot with this one. I used the thickest pillow cord available (1 inch) instead of the suggested size (1/4 inch). I started running out of time, so half of the stitches were done on the knitting machine. The 20-stitch width and yards and yards of length is ideal for my knitting machine. I HATE casting on with the knitting machine and I hate casting on wide widths of knitting even more. Sometimes it feels like dealing with the wide cast on causes more problems than it is worth.
With the short width, I could just keep moving my toothed weights as the work progressed.
I gave one of these rugs to my mother, and she has it hanging on her wall. My mother-in-law placed hers on the back of her recliner. Half of the fun of giving these rugs is seeing where they end up and how the colors and textures interact with the environment the receiver chooses.
A few holiday seasons ago, I made wine bottle coozies for many of my aunts. They’re fun to use to tote your wine around, or fun to give away with a bottle of wine.
My husband Ty, who likes white wine suggested that they could help keep the white wine cool when taking wine to a summer party.
When I found out my sister-in-law was getting married, I offered my crafty services. She wanted me to make two types of felted items for her:
1) A Dollar Dance Bag
I’m constructing this out of white boiled wool.
2) Champagne Coozies
My sister-in-law (Darcy) and her fiance (Tim) are having an outdoor wedding. They are planning on having a champagne toast, and need something to keep the bottles on the tables cool.
The Champagne Coozies are perfect, the wool adds some insulation, but also absorbs any moisture on the surface of the bottle. As the moisture evaporates, it actually helps the bottle to stay cool, much like when pioneer women put a wet towel around the milk pitcher.
Darcy’s colors are pink with orange and green accents, I’m going to mix in a little cream/white for some pop. After she had outpatient surgery in February, Tim took her by the second-hand clothing shop, and she stocked up on old sweaters in bright colors for me to use. It sounds like she had a good time picking out sweaters before all of the surgical drugs had worn off!
So….I’m constructing 20 champagne coozies, and embellishing them with embroidery and crochet. I think Darcy only needs 17, but there may be a problem with one or two. Who knows, maybe I’ll even put it up in my defunct etsy shop.
So far, I have 15 structurally sound, and the other 5 are just hacked off sweater arms.
I’ve been posting so much about fiction writers and poetry writers, that I almost forgot this is first and foremost a craft blog!
I’m super excited about my fellow former Nebraskan crafter Garth Johnson’s new book 100 Ideas for Creative Reuse, due out in November.
I zipped over to amazon.com to see if any of my projects made the cover, or if I made it into the first few pages browsable by Amazon’s Look Inside! feature. After a few clicks on the Surprise Me! feature, and there is one of my projects at #242!
One of my favorite things about this book is that it has a single picture of each creative reuse project. There are no patterns and no instructions. It is a book of ideas, but it is also a fantastic book of possibilities for people who consider crafting as interesting and as engaging as solving puzzles or gigantic systems of equations. The picture of the finished item is proof that the puzzle can be solved, or that a solution exists. As a crafter, you can infer a few things from each picture, but the path you take in utilizing the creative reuse idea is completely up to you!
Earlier today at my new job, I had to fill out a section of my Corporate Resume about my published works and publications. I wonder if they’ll let me add my recycled sweater coozie to that list? I’ll post a little about my job this weekend.
My husband Ty has this thing about birthdays and giving gifts on consecutive days. Last year I didn’t have much to give him, but this year I’ve had the time and the resources to really find some cool gifts. His birthday is tomorrow, but I’ve been giving him gifts all week.
He still hasn’t received the coolest gift, that one is reserved for tomorrow. He has received all of the handmade/recycled/hand-modified gifts.
First off, if you don’t know Ty, he likes to wear vintage shirts. He looks really good in them. Some of the shirts are super light weight, and perfect for wearing to the horse track, or for the summers in The South. They usually have metal snaps on them. I found a second-hand lime green shirt from Sears in the 1970s, and embroidered the pocket with his initials.
After seeing the Sparkle & Twang exhibit of country & western wear from famous folk on display at the Old Statehouse Museum last year, I was inspired by Nudie Cohn to embroider flowers on western-cut clothing. I developed a list of favorites to quiz my husband about to camouflage the important favorite, “What is your favorite flower?” I admit, it is an odd question to ask a man, and I almost ended up just guessing Bells of Ireland or Mohawk flowers to honor his heritage. He answered me with morning glories, and even told me the story about when he lived in Denver, he’d plant them every year next to the trellis that covered his bedroom window. One year he even planted the ones that only bloom at night.
With a story like that, I knew I had found my answer and went on an internet search for morning glory line art. After finding some, I modified it and transferred the pattern and the mirror pattern to an awesome white, short sleeved country western shirt.
I used Appleton wool to shade the flowers and leaves, fill in the vines, and french knot the stamen.
Tomorrow I will attempt to make him “Grandma Jo’s Wacky Cake”. It is a cake recipe developed to only dirty one pan. Ty’s mother usually just mixes it in a 9×13 glass casserole dish. She showed me how to make it in October for my birthday, and even left me a xeroxed copy of the mimeographed copy of the recipe! Here’s the recipe:
Grandma Jo’s Wacky Cake (Wacky because it has vinegar in it? Wacky because it asks you to “make holes”? Wacky because it is a miracle of modern science!)
3 C flour
2 C sugar
6 T cocoa (heaping)
2 tsp soda
1/4 tsp salt
Sift together in baking dish. (Recipe suggest 8.5×13 pan)
Do not grease.
Make 3 holes:
In one hole put 3/4 C vegetable oil,
in one hole put 2 T vinegar,
in the last hole put 2 tsp vanilla.
Then pour 2 cups warm water over all and mix thoroughly.
Bake at 325F for about 30-35 minutes or until done.
Top with only freshly whipped cream! One can only greet another orbit of the sun with freshly whipped cream, and my husband definitely deserves it. Happy Birthday!
My friend Katie helped me build my 8′ x 4′ x 10” raised bed planters in March. I’ve been trying on different careers, and Katie suggested that I become a Life Coach via High Density or Urban Gardening. I believe she said that people who could afford a life coach would benefit from getting a little dirt under their nails, but only if they didn’t have to sit on the ground. When I told her I’d be up in Nebraska for a little while, she said I could help put in her garden.
I’ve read a few Square Foot Gardening and High Density Gardening websites. When I planted my garden, my parents influenced much of the layout, wanting to plant things in rows. Also, the soil was chosen for me: cotton gin waste with healthy lumps of gray clay. So far, winging it, everything has turned out great…even a little scary. While I was in Nebraska, Ty wrote to tell me he counted 23 tiny tomatoes. Last night he came in and claimed to have counted 90. (Keep in mind many of these are just Cherry Tomatoes!) The scary part is being able to eat everything before it goes bad, or before the next vegetable becomes ripe.
Katie and I are of similar logical minds, but she tends to go more by the book. This is possibly because she remembers more of the book, or had the energy to actually track down the book.
The Joseph Family has a very special smaller planter containing their hops plants. We crisscrossed that planter with lettuce and spinach. The hops are a rhizome, and will come back every year. They’ll produce for the first time next year. Katie’s husband Amos Joseph has become a avid brew master over the years, and he’ll use them in next year’s kegs.
Katie and I planted most of the 48 square foot plots on Saturday morning. She planted the 8 tomatoes on the end, and trellised them using the recommended square food gardening net and conduit.
The next row over we planted squash and cucumbers, to either train them up the trellis, or train them over the edge of the planter. We ended up filling the rest of the squares with spinach, lettuce, carrots, beets, peas, beans, radishes, and swiss chard.
It was very weird planting a new garden, while leaving my almost full grown one for Ty to care and water. He did a very good job peeling off the suckers on the tomatoes, and keeping the spinach, lettuce, snap peas, and radishes harvested.
The back yard of the Joseph house recently suffered the loss of a gigantic maple tree. After falling on their garage, this got them a practically new garage and a back yard opened to the sun. To give the back yard some more character, Katie wanted 2 rosemary plants in large planters. The idea is to bring in the plants during the winter, and then use them as shrubbery, air freshener, and fish seasoning for the rest of the year. We looked all over town for rosemary plants. We finally ended up at the high-end Finke Garden Center, who had the last 2 rosemary plants in town. The plants were huge! They were the perfect size for people who intend to keep the plants going for years.
The Joseph hound, Hank, appreciated the new shrubbery in red pots. Hank is a blue healer/basset hound mix. I really love the blue healer, part dingo breed because that is the dog my father really bonds with. They are very smart, and love to please, but can be a little too energetic. Hank’s basset hound part of the family makes him the dog I wish my dad’s dog Sophie could be. Sophie will only rest with you late at night, thinks everything is a licking game, and never gets tired. Hank needs a few naps a day, knows when you should take one, and curls right up against you to help on your way to dreamland.
I inherited a small trunk of acrylic yarn from a lady who was like a grandmother to me. More acrylic yarn was given to me by an overambitious weaver. This resulted in many skeins of durable, unwearable yarn in all sorts of colors and even patterns.
My craft ideas aren’t always big, but this is the largest gauge I’ve worked with in crochet. This is the closest I’ve come to any sort of extreme crochet or extreme craft.
The pattern is forthcoming. I even took step-by-step pictures. The hooking was done with a 15.5 mm tool.
I thought after living here for a while, I thought I was being too hard on Conway about public courtesies I had grown accustomed to in Nebraska. After my parents visited, I heard them saying the same things:
“Where are the sidewalks?”
Today in the local paper, The Log Cabin Democrat, there was a story about Conway pricing a bus system. That is pretty exciting, but I don’t understand how there could be a bus system without sidewalks to the bus stops.
My friend David is spearheading the effort to get some sidewalks in Conway with his website and group, the Conway Association of Pedestrians. Looks like we’re going to start meeting soon!
For other Conway, Arkansas folks who believe in alternate forms of transportation, or at least ones where you can keep the mud off of your feet, there is also a bike association too!
Finally, the Faulkner County Association for Sustainable Communities is meeting April 4th. They do a lot to connect people interested in making sure the growth Conway is experiencing is sustainable.
In other news, the victory garden just got dumped on! In the past 1.5 hours, we received 1.25 inches of rainfall! Ty and I had to walk through it! Thanks for the rain gauge Mom and Dad.
Garth Johnson at Extreme Craft has extended the deadline to submit items for his new book.
Thanks Katie for the heads up! I found seven projects to submit. Some were unique, some were variations on old themes. At the first deadline, I didn’t think I had anything unique enough.
New beverage holders are in the shop!
The “Sprout” one turned out OK, but it could’ve been better. When there is a shadow, it is hard to read the “Sprout”. I am in total love with the rest of them.
