dontcallmebecky

Holiday Traditions Exchange

Sew Liberated has been running the Holiday Traditions Exchange for the past two years and my December schedule was light enough this year that I was finally able to join. I put together a little package of recipes, my holiday traditions, my favorite Christmas music and this stocking for my partner, Carrie, at sweetmommydreams.

I've been eyeing this Elf Stitchette pattern from wee wonderfuls ever since it was published a few years ago and finally had an excuse to stitch it up and turn it into a stocking. 

I based the pattern for the stocking on these stockings that I made a few years ago. The stocking is lined with a green polka dot fabric and a layer of thin cotton batting. I had fun in the trim aisle and used an iron on rick rack and a pom pom trim that I secured with a zig zag stitch. For the foot and toe, I used fusible webbing to adhere it to the stocking base and then used a zig zag stitch to applique it to the fabric.

local light show

A family in our town puts up a spectacular light display each year in their yard. They are giving the Griswold family of Christmas Vacation a run for their money with these decorations! It is truly a sight to behold.

They've got lights, figurines and inflatable filling every inch of their yard. People park their cars and take a few minutes to walk up and down the sidewalk to see all of the decorations on display. I think this house is a local landmark at Christmas.

This choir lights up in rhythm with Christmas music that's playing through a loud speaker. And, if you look closely, you can see the countdown to Christmas clock on the left side of the photo above.

They've got a huge nativity scene set up and nine reindeers pulling Santa's sled.

Ever since I first discovered this house about five years ago, we've been bring friends and family by the house during December to see the display for themselves...it's much more impressive in person!

adventures in felting

I've never tried any fulled knitting projects until now. Someone in my summer knitting group did this Noni pattern and I loved the outcome of her bag so much that I bought the pattern and yarn to make my own version.

I used Paton's Classic Merino, doubled, for this. Previously, I used the same yarn on Jon's Cobblestone sweater and I don't remember it being as soft and squishy as it was this time around (maybe I'm just becoming more acclimated to working with wool?). It was quite satisfying to go through so much yarn so quickly and I love the contrast of the lemongrass and dark grey together.

I didn't get an after picture with my bag and water bottle, but the felted bag is now the height of the water bottle.

I finished up the bag, took one pre-felting photo and stuck it in the washer for one hour of agitation. It was so exciting to see the bag start shrinking. After it seemed small enough, I ran it through the final spin cycle and set it out to dry. The next morning I starting making a lining for the bag. Due to some measurement errors on my part, I made the lining too small. Because I didn't have any extra fabric, I stuck the bag back in the washer to let it felt some more. After another 30 minutes, the bag finally shrunk down enough to fit my lining.

yay for having fabric in my stash that matched and using what I had on hand!

I followed the directions on the Noni site for adding more reinforcements to the bag (think giant plastic needlepoint canvas). Then I added the handles and sewed in the lining.

I've been procrastinating posting this project because I wanted to find the perfect flower for the bag, but, as you can see, that didn't happen. I think I'll eventually make a fabric flower using this flower tutorial, but for now I'm calling the bag finished. This is going to be a new project bag for new knitting projects that I start.

Pattern: Medium Sized Carpet Bag by Noni

Yarn: Paton's Merino, doubled

Needles: Size 11

Ravelry link: craftr's Carpet Bag

It was fun to try out this felting pattern, but I don't think I'm going to become addicted to felting just quite yet. It's a bummer to lose stitch definition due to felted fabric, so it's hard to want to spend a lot of time knitting something that is just going to be felted.  I do have two more smaller felting projects that I'd like to try, though: Felted Ballerina Slippers and the French Press Slippers.

End of May Hat & Handspun Scarf

I finished up the End of May hat on Monday night. This project was so much fun and I'm officially addicted to stranded knitting. I've got lots of yarn left over, so I will be making the matching mittens to go along with the hat.

Here's the details:

Pattern: End of May Hat by Zig Zag Stitch

Yarn: Berocco Ultra Alpaca

Needles: US4

Size: Large (next time I will do the smaller size and use size 3 needles)

Notes: I guess I had some gauge issues with this hat, because it turned out a tad too big for my head (width and lengthwise). I remedied the situation by tossing it in the dryer for 10 minutes. The hat fits much better now and doesn't cover my eyes when I pull it down all the way.

Rav link: craftr's End of May

I've been trolling Ravelry for fun colorwork patterns now that I can officially add colorwork as one of my knitting skills. I discovered SpillyJane Knits through a Ravelry ad last year and now I'm ready to take the plunge to make up some of her cute mitten patterns. My favorites are the Swedish Fish Mittens and the Carrots and Beets Mittens.

Before I stock up on fingering weight yarn and tiny needles, I plan to make the Chevron Love Mittens with this Farmer's Market Kit that I bought last winter. It hurts me a little to wind up these cute little hanks of yarn into balls, but I've got to bite the bullet, right?

I also finished this scarf made out of the handspun that I bought last Saturday. I based it loosely on the Noro Striped Scarf pattern.

Here's the Details:

Yarn: Handspun by hands + notions (130 yards of wool locks, silk and alpaca)

 Takhi Sedona in off white (2 skeins held doubled)

Needles: Size 10.5

Pattern: Cast on 17 stitches. K1p1 alternating between 2 rows of natural yarn and 2 rows of handspun yarn, slipping the first stitch of each row.

Size: 5 inches by 84 inches

Notes: The Sedona yarn was really great to work with. It's a nubby thick worsted and really soft. I'd definitely use it again. Now, I think I'm a little hooked on handspun yarn. I will be desperately trying to keep myself from picking up another hobby. Wish me luck!

Rav link: craftr's Handspun Scarf

• • •

We had a very productive day at our house! We cleaned it from top to bottom (including the fridge!) and we put up all of our Christmas decorations.

Bring on the hot chocolate and Christmas tunes on repeat for the next month!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We're leaving soon to head to my grandparents' house for Thanksgiving dinner. The butternut squash and sourdough stuffing are baking away as I type.

I love Thanksgiving dinner and I love stuffing...I would eat it every day if I could. Here's my all time favorite stuffing recipe:

Sourdough Stuffing

Ingredients

1-pound loaf sourdough bread

8 tablespoons non-dairy butter (I use Earth Balance)

10 ounces cremini mushrooms, sliced 1/2-inch thick in both directions

Salt and freshly ground pepper

4 stalks celery, halved lengthwise and sliced

1 medium onion, chopped

10 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves stripped from the stems

12 fresh sage leaves, chopped

3 1/2 cups vegetable broth

3 tablespoons chopped Italian parsley leaves  

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 2-quart baking dish and set aside. Cut or tear the bread into 1-inch cubes and spread it evenly on 2 baking sheets. Toast the bread in the oven until completely dry and beginning to crisp and brown, about 20 minutes. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.  

Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and a few pinches of salt and saute, stirring occasionally, until golden brown, about 6 to 8 minutes. Add celery, onion, 2 tablespoons butter, and thyme. Once the butter has melted, cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables have softened, about 5 minutes. Add sage and remaining 4 tablespoons butter. Add vegetable broth to skillet and stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.  

Transfer toasted bread cubes to a large bowl. Pour the vegetable broth mixture over the bread cubes and toss to combine until the bread cubes absorb the liquid. Pour the mixture into the greased baking dish, and sprinkle with parsley. Bake in the center of the oven until heated through and the top is golden brown, about 40 minutes. Remove the stuffing from the oven and allow to cool about 15 minutes before serving.

Blurb book

I put together a blurb photo book of our Europe trip and finally received the finished product.

I ordered the book from blurb and used their design it yourself templates for Adobe InDesign. This is the program that I use at work all the time, so I am comfortable with the software and the templates were very easy to use. The album I made is a 12"x12" hardcover book. I set up each page with a 3x3 grid of 4-inch blocks and then added and resized my pictures to fill the blocks. Some photos fill one block and others fill up to 6 blocks of the page. It was a little overwhelming to fit all of the pictures in the book, so coming up with a simple grid to use made the book easy and quick to put together.

I stuck with one color bar for each city that we visited and added some of the text from my blog entries and some of my own additional commentary. Friends and family are having fun playing "spot the typo." Luckily only two have been found so far!

Blurb was great to work with. I used Blurb for my parents' anniversary album earlier this summer. For the Europe book, I used the cover wrap option which turned out nicely. For my parents' album, I used the dust jacket option, which turned out nice too. Here's two tips that I discovered myself through purchasing two books and through reading Blurb forums.

1. Don't pay to upgrade from Standard to Premium paper - it's not much of a quality jump to justify the cost.

2. Don't pay $15 extra to remove the blurb logo from the last page (custom logo option). I was able to tear out the final logo page myself for free (blank white page with a tiny logo at the bottom center).

For past trips, I have just put photos into 2-up or 3-up albums and written captions and information. The scrapbooks and photo albums are starting to take over our house, so getting a photo book like this printed is a great space saver for the amount of pictures that it can include. It fits easily on our bookshelf and is only about 1/2" wide.

A coworker of mine has had great success using Walgreens for photo books, too. She came up with the best idea for creating a yearly album. She started a new book on January 1 and adds pictures to her online album layout throughout the year when she has a chance (once or twice a month). At the end of December, she'll have a complete album with all of the pictures she's taken this year included in it and won't have to scramble around to remember what she did or where she misplaced photos of a certain event. I think I'm going to try this method out for 2010.

on (and off) my needles

I've been doing lots of knitting lately. It's a great break from studying and is a lot less of a mess than sewing or quilting, so I don't have to worry about cleaning up after myself when I pull out the needles.

As with all of my sweater projects, I tend to get sick of them about halfway through and want to cast on anything but another sweater, so my Amelia is waiting in the wings right now until inspiration strikes again. I still hope to finish it by the end of the year, but I have to get a couple small projects finished up before I start on it again.

My first break from Amelia was for this Red Scarf Project Scarf. I've been in a bit of a purple rut lately, so it was so refreshing to use yarn that is not purple for a bit. The yarn I used for this project is called Shepherd's Wool and it's from Stonehedge Fiber Mill near Traverse City, Michigan. This yarn is Michigan's best kept secret. It's similar to Cascade 220 because it is a solid worsted weight yarn that comes in lots of colors. But, it's 250 yards/skein, is a lot softer than Cascade 220 and is thicker and woollier than Cascade. It's great for felting and it's super soft to wear on your skin.

I pulled out my old bamboo needles for this project. They are my first pair of needles and the pair that I learned to knit with and it was fun to use them again. I mainly use my interchangeable circulars for all projects now, but wanted to use these for nostalgia's sake.

Here's the finished scarf:

Pattern: ScaWiNoNa or Scarf with No Name

Size: 6"x72"

Needle Size: 9

The Red Scarf Projects is taking donations until December 15. Check out their website for details. Thanks, Melissa for spreading the word about this great cause.

Also on the needles are this Big Montana Tunic from the Fall Interweave:

I was sort of in denial for a while about how this sweater would look on me and then I saw something online about how women with larger chests should not wear sleeveless turtlenecks and it kind of sealed the deal for me. I'll be ripping this one out and starting on a different project. I've got six skeins of this yarn to work with, so I think I'll use most of it to make Wrenna from French Girl Knits. It's a short sleeved cardigan and I think it will work much better with my body type.

My weekend project has been working on the End of May Hat, this beautiful colorwork pattern from Zig Zag Stitch. I am slowly getting the hang of knitting in both hands and it's been fun to see the pattern progress as I go. I think the yarn that I chose for the project is a bit too close in value, so the colors won't pop individually, but I'll save my final judgment for when the hat is finished.

• • •

Finally, Jon, my sister and I went to the Detroit Urban Craft Fair yesterday. My sister got a stained glass Michigan necklace, Jon and I got a couple of screenprinted designs stretched on canvas from All Things Grow for our offices, and I bought my first skein of hand spun yarn from hands + notions.

In the words of my sister, "I really like how it smells. It's sort of gross, like sawdust or something, but it smells good to me." I agree. Ahh...the smell of wool! I'm going to pair this yarn with a cream yarn and make a striped scarf similar to the Noro striped scarf. I'm so excited to work with handspun for the first time!

Marie Claire Idées & a craft challenge

I picked up the September 2009 issue of Marie Claire Idées at a newsstand in Paris (still can't believe that I can say that!). I have loved looking through this issue. The styling is beautiful and there are some really cute projects to try out.

• • •

I don't know if you're like me, but I have a great library of craft idea books that don't get used very often. Is anyone up for a "make-a-project-out-of-an-ignored-but-beautiful-idea-book" challenge? Off the top of my head, I've got a few great books in my stash with projects I'd like to make but have never gotten around to it. The project can be big or small, from a book or magazine, and made for you or as a gift. If you'd like to join, post in the comments and maybe we can report back in a bit with our progress.

edited: Let's plan on making this a challenge to start in January.

Last Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts

Weekend Sewing

Material Obsession

Stitched in Time

knitting projects

Here's two knitting projects I finished recently. I've had a busy semester so far and it's been hard to get any crafting done other than knitting lately. These two garter stitch projects were the perfect projects to give my mind a break.

First up is the Quincy Hat from Made in Brooklyn:

Pattern: Quincy

Yarn: Filatura Di Crosa Zara Solid

Color: 1706 Eggplant

Yardage: 2.5 balls, yarn held doubled

Needles: 10.5

Notes: This was such a fun pattern to knit. The construction of the hat is genius! I hope to make many more projects from the book soon. It's a soft, thick, and warm hat and a great variation on the typical knit hat.

Ravelry link: craftr's Quincy

Next is the Baktus scarf:

Pattern: Baktus

Yarn: The Plucky Knitter Merino Cashmere Nylon Fingering

Color: Bosherton

Yardage: 1 ball, 385 yards

Needles: 10.5

Notes: This project would have been so much more successful if I had a micro scale and weighed the yarn before I started! The basic pattern of the scarf is to cast on 4 stitches increase every four rows until you've used up half your yarn and then decrease every four rows until 4 stitches remain. I knit more than half of the yarn before I started to decrease, so I ended up with less yarn at the end. 

When it started to look like I was going to run out of yarn, I started decreasing one stitch every row until the end. I think that I was able to decrease to about 15 stitches remaining. Then, I ripped (cut) out the cast on row and ripped the beginning of the scarf back until I reached 15 stitches and bound off the original cast on side. The ends of the scarf are no longer pointy, but they are the same width.  They kind of curl up in a point when I wear it, so I'm going with it.

The scarf is nice and warm and perfect for the cooler weather and I absolutely love the color of the yarn, so this project is still a great scarf for me to use. Next time, I'll make sure to weigh the yarn first!

Ravelry link: craftr's Baktus

LivyLou Designs

Chris, one of my former coworkers, just started a new blog and online store. I miss hearing about all of her painting, home decorating projects, baking and crafting adventures every day. Work just hasn't been the same without her!

Rumor has it that she's quite talented in the Christmas tree decorating department, so I'm looking forward to her posts in December (hint, hint, Chris!).

Be sure to check out her blog, Livy Lou Designs and store, LivyLou Designs