Bad Blogger pt. 2

Ha! Isn't it great to have two posts in a row about how bad I am at blogging? Yeah, I know, super annoying.
 I see the last post I did was in August...wow. What's been going on since then? I revamped my Teacup Dolls pattern. They are now called Teacup Cuties and I'm really happy with their look now. Most obvious is MUCH better pictures. While I really love the original Boy, the Person and Pink Princess No-No (that's what my kids named those first two dolls) my photography skills have definitely improved since then.

Life is still just as busy. The scheduling at my day job has gone semi-computerized...I say semi because most weeks my boss goes in and fixes it so it's not stupid, but he went on vacation and the computer has some weird ideas as to what constitutes coverage.

This school year is coming close to wrapping up and I'm really looking forward to summer. We never got into a good groove this year and it's been such a pain in the mornings getting all 7 of us out the door on time.

I *am* (finally) working on some new crochet patterns, currently in the works are some Barbie clothes (because let's face it, I have two little girls, what else am I going to make?) and I've re-imagined an unpublished doll pattern of mine and I'm super excited about how it should turn out (once I sit down and work on it!).

The biggest news, which is also the most terrifying, is that we're buying a house!!! We're currently crammed into a MUCH too small apartment that offers no outlet for the kids to run off energy and of course we just have too many people and too much stuff for it to be a practical living space. My grandmother has decided to move to live with my aunt and is going to be selling us her house. I'm really excited because it means that the house my mother grew up in, and the house my siblings and I played in as kids (not to mention where I lived when I first started college) will still be in the family for us to enjoy. There are still details and banking to work out, so it still might all fall through (eek!) so keep us in your thoughts and prayers in the coming months, because we *really* need this to work out.

And shameless plug here: Check out my Etsy shop! With the impending move we're gonna need all the financial oomph we can muster, so why not pop on over and buy a pattern or two? or some baby shoes! Also keep a look out for a big sale when I decide I really really don't want to move all my stock. :-) OH! Also Etsy related: They've added INSTANT DOWNLOADS for digital items like PDF patterns, so no more waiting for me to check my email and send stuff! It's awesome and I love it!

Whoa, this was a long one! I hope it makes up for the internet silence over the (eep) months!

Fun stuff!

I've been crocheting a bunch gearing up for my very first market coming up May 12th. I'll be joining my sister in selling our awesome crafty goodness (she creates beautiful ceramics; I think she said she'll be featuring small jars and pots this time around) and our dad who will be selling produce from his farm at a Farmers' Market in the Dallas area.

Sadly I don't have many more details on it than that, since I don't have the means to travel and coordinate with them on this. I'll be sending them a box of crocheted goodies in a week or so, hopefully I'll have a nice assortment of stuff. Wish us luck!



Now here's a fun time waster! another blog mentioned the site tagxedo.com for making those word cloud graphics. Well I spent a good hour or two messing around with it yesterday. I mostly made clouds with the names of my family on it, but really quickly this morning I did this one:

It amuses me.

Careful though, as I warned my sister, you can spend HOURS doing nothing but changing the colors on the cloud.

Easter project aftermath

I was super ambitious for my girls' Easter outfits this year. I decided the sew (!) them some pillowcase style dresses *and* crochet them some cardigans. All this on top of dealing with an infant, my own lack of sewing expertise, and just trying to gain balance in life in general.

First off I made the dresses using instructions in the book MAKING CHILDREN'S CLOTHES The dress on the cover is the one that I made. Overall very easy to make (the major factor when I decided to sew), but I'm baffled as to why they call it a toddler dress. It's a one size pattern, and they basically say to hem it to the desired length. Well. My kids are small for their ages, and yet I had to lengthen the dresses quite a bit to get them to be actual dress length. for my 2 year old (definitely toddler age) I had to add 5 inches to the pattern to make it long enough. As printed it made an adorable tunic length shirt for her, but NOT a dress. For my 5 year old (who I will admit is the right height, just WAY SKINNY) I had to add 9 inches to get it long enough. Okay, so she's a bit older than a toddler officially, but still.
It's not a big deal really, but to say that it's a toddler dress and it not even be dress length on my little for her age 2 year old sort of bugs me. An easy fix though (really easy if I could do it).

I made several practice dresses before the real deals, to make sure the adjustments I was planning would work. For the final dresses aside from adding the length I also altered the lining slightly. The bodice is fully lined and you fold over the double layers of fabric to make the casing for the shoulder ties. I found that folding over both layers of fabric made the casing a bit bulky and didn't gather as well as I would have liked. So I cut an inch off the top of the lining so when I sewing the casing I was only folding over the single layer of fabric. I actually should have trimmed at least an inch and a half, but the result was still a less bulky casing, so it turned out all right.
I've yet to get a picture of the girls in just the dresses, or even of just the dresses themselves, but oh well.

I cardigans I made using the Bella Rebekah Cardigan pattern by Elizabeth Alan. I happened across her patterns sometime before Christmas whilst looking for a good baby boot pattern and I must say I just want to be her. All of her patterns are adorable, not to mention well written and easy to understand and execute. The cardigans worked up super quick, the only reason it took me longer than an afternoon for each one was because life was happening and I had to do other things (like get over my first ever encounter with Strep Throat) for a few days. In general I like Lily's purple cardigan better....the yarn is lighter and I like the drape to it. When I made Arlen's pink cardigan I was thinking it was too bulky. It's a tad big (again, she's a skinny thing), but actually after I had to wash the Easter chocolate off of it it's softened up and the drape improved.

 Lastly, I drove down to Dallas with the kiddos for Easter and surprised my parents. I *wanted* to either arrive while they were all at church (but that failed because we didn't make it to Vigil saturday night and still needed to get to Easter mass that morning) OR 'sneak' in with my kids and yell SURPRISE because I knew my family would all be hanging out in the kitchen.
That didn't work either because my 7 year old decided he didn't want to yell anything, and instead of just staying quiet and walking in with the rest of us he just sort of wandered into my parents house while I was getting everyone else out of the van and nonchalantly ruined the surprise. But whatever.

While we were there my mom and sisters helped me try out the super nifty technique of using old silk ties to dye eggs. I saw THIS on Pinterest and knew I had to try it. I hit up the Salvation Army store and got some old ugly ties for fifty cents each (actually 49 cents each) and we tried it out. We actually used a more in depth set of instructions (which really only adds that you put 1/4 cup of vinegar in the water) though.
The eggs turned out super nifty! We found by trial and error that we should have actually gone by the image I found on Pinterest. It shows wrapping the eggs in string after you wrap the silk tie around them. We did this on a few eggs (the top right one in the collage) and it provided better contact between the egg and the silk and the colors transferred much clearer. We also found that you can re-use the silk pieces. Nothing on either of the instructions we looked at said one way or the other, so I'm happy to report that you can get multiple uses out of the scraps.
To recap:
♪Get some old ugly ties for cheap (reds, purples, and dark blues seem to transfer better. Maybe it's just the darker the better)
♪Cut the ties apart and wrap the silk around the eggs, the right side of the fabric against the eggs.
♪Wrap string around the fabric covered eggs like a mummy. (the second set of instructions we used said to wrap the silk covered eggs in another piece of scrap cloth, like an old pillowcase. We aren't sure why, as it wasn't explained, but we think maybe just so the dyes didn't muddle together. My sister put silk, string, scrap cloth, and more string around her egg and it turned out the best).
♪Add 1/4 cup (ish) of vinegar to your water and boil the eggs for 15 minutes. We always blow our eggs out and we found we needed to weigh them down with a lid (I think that's what my sister used) to keep the eggs under water.

Ta-da!

So cool!

Sale!

Yay! I hit 40 sales in my shop!

To celebrate all of the patterns in my Ravelry store are 40% off through tomorrow! The discount is automatically applied, so no coupon code required!


In other news, I'm attempting to sew Easter dresses this year! I'm more than a little intimidated, *but* I have chosen a very easy pattern (supposedly) to try. I only need to make one slight alteration for my older girl (she's skinny, but tall) and add a few inches to the bottom of the dress, but that should be pretty simple to do.

Today I plan on sewing a practice dress, just to make sure, so we'll see how it goes.

Project progress

I've managed to follow through on several projects this week...at the expense of my housework, but I think any crafter would agree that's a fair trade (my husband doesn't seem to agree with me...)

I finished up several baby hats: one to post in my shop, one that I gave to a friend of mine who just had a baby, and one that I'm not sure if I'm going to post in my shop or not. The last one didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to, but it's in no way bad, just not what I was going for. So I'm on the fence about it.
I also made myself a little sleeve for my new Kindle. I really like how it turned out, but of course right at the end I changed up my stitch pattern just slightly to keep the right side/wrong side looking correct, and I found that I liked the new stitch pattern better than the one I used for the rest of it...much too late to go back and re-do the whole thing. I might make myself another one though.

With those little in-the-moment distractions out of the way (and the fact that my mother is coming to town this week) I will be finishing up those long overdue Christmas gifts this week. I'm such a slacker! Thankfully I just need to sew one seam for my little niece's gift (my other niece's gift is actually done) and make the cuffs for my mother's fingerless mitts. I do however get to completely restart the technicolor ant for my nephew. I had it 2/3s complete when my youngest took some scissors to part of it, and then my three year old son snatched another piece of it, declared it a spider and I haven't seen it since.

Lastly, I would *love* to post some great pictures....but the camera charger has, naturally, disappeared right when I need it. I swear I've seen it all week, but as soon as the battery died I could not find it for the life of me.

Stash busting!

Not only am I a procrastinator, I'm also a pack rat. The result is I have had yarn in my stash left completely untouched for long enough that the manufacturer has discontinued it. Now, depending on the timing of when I bought this yarn, that actually might not be as bad as it sounds, it's possible I bought it on clearance after they stopped making it...but I know I didn't. I know this because I bought two balls of Lion Boucle about six years ago in hopes of making something for a contest Lion was hosting to promote this yarn....yeah, that didn't happen. It has sat in my yarn box for years, lovely but unused until this last weekend when I rescued it from its unused existence and whipped up a little hat that I just *adore*.

Isn't it fantastic? I love it!

I'll be posting it in my etsy shop as soon as I work up the description and such.  The size is newborn to 3 months and I think it would make a great hat to wear for some super cute baby pics.


Speaking of pictures...why is it that I can never take fantastic pictures of my kids or my projects? I manage decent pictures (most could be better), and the snapshots of the kids are fine....but why, when I'm not trying to do anything but appease a sick three year old who wants a picture of his toy do I end up with something really great?

See? boggles my mind.

Crafting ADD

I've heard several other crafty people talking about 'crafting ADD'...the inability to focus on a single project at a time, or perhaps even starting one, then abandoning it in favor of a better project.

This is completely me, no excuses....except that my kids totally don't help when it comes to focus and finishing.

As for the focus part, my five year old daughter is constantly asking me to make her stuff for her Barbies, or other dolls, or hair bows for her, or whatnot. Most of these things are quick, small projects that don't truly interfere with my other crafting, and they can actually be beneficial to me because I am suitably distracted from my main project just long enough to fulfill the crochet wanderlust that comes over me in the middle of a larger project. But they still take time away from my other projects.

Now, the main problem the kiddos contribute to is the actual finishing of a project. I make a lot of toys, nice small projects that don't take weeks, don't require worrying overmuch about sizing and gauge and other little things that I don't want to mess with. There have been many times that my kids will see me working on something and 'claim' it before it's done...pieces go missing, whole projects go missing, and it's usually just faster to make another than to find where on earth they've managed to hide it when there are only so many places in one dwelling to stash things.

Last night as I was doing the dishes my five year old told me that her almost two year old sister was messing with some scissors. At the time I didn't think much beyond it other than taking the scissors away from the tiny toddler hands...but I later found out that she had some craftiness on her mind too...and she had snipped little bits of the ant head that was just waiting to be sewed.

Perhaps she wasn't being needlessly destructive...she might have been displaying an aptitude for extermination...

Perpetually late

I'm rarely on time...I think it runs in my blood or something.

About a week after I wanted to get the motifs done for the little purses I finished them! Yay! I've also completed one of the purses, but I haven't taken a pic of it yet.
 
I asked my husband "don't they look yummy?!?" and he seemed baffled by the description. Weirdo.

I think they look yummy...maybe because the colors remind me of Skittles?

Still on my list of things to do is of course piece together the second purse, then I need to make the ant for my nephew, and the gloves for my mom (and I need to find at least *one* of my dozens of yarn needles...where do these things go?)

I've also been searching for a good DIY nursing cover for the new baby, but I can't seem to find a style I like. Most of them just seem to be a blanket with a strap attached, and with my acrobatic eaters that will *not* provide enough coverage to suit my modesty. I guess I'll just go with what I've done in the past, when I converted a crocheted poncho pattern into fabric (why not crochet? TOO HOT! babies are little space heaters).

Works in Progress

I have three (well, four) Christmas gifts that still need to be finished. I was smart and told everyone that they would be late, but I was hoping to get them done today. Totally didn't though. I took a nap instead.
Okay, I took two naps...but the massive work in progress of gestating justifies it in my mind.

My nieces are getting little purses that I'm making using this beautiful motif I first saw on Pinterest:

Wool Eater Instructions


Check out the rest of her blog too...beautiful pictures.

Each little purse will be made of two motifs, and I'm using DK cotton yarn. I have three out of four motifs done and I was planning on taking some pictures of them, because they are pretty, but yeah...I took those naps instead.

My nephew is getting an ant made from my own pattern. I asked my sister what his favorite color was and she said orange and green, which works out *perfectly* because I have a bunch of orange yarn that I don't use for many projects. This little ant will be quite vivid and fantastical, but I think it will be rather nifty.

Lastly I told my mother I would make her some fingerless gloves...and I started them, but I was wanting to try out some modifications to the pattern, and those really haven't worked out so well. I figured mom was going to be the most patient of recipients, so I will revisit those after I get the kiddos stuff done.