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Sunday, May 27, 2007

UFO! >gasp<

Un-Finished Object from a long time ago. This is my attempt to use up my fabric scraps. I occasionally quilt and sew other projects, so I have a lot of oddly shaped remnants. If I cut them in to strips then glue them end on end, they become a ball of recycled and knittable fiber. And my scraps drawer gets emptied! This takes a little time, almost no effort when you use a rotary cutter, and just a little bit of glue. My ball of fiber is stripe-y, and I never know when a new stripe will appear. The fun factor for me is high on this. I also get to reminisce about the projects from the leftover fabric. This garter stitch rectangle may eventually become a rug or bag. This project is a winner all around.

(Now you are thinking, "Isn't she clever?" Not really. I got the idea from the thrifty homeschooler. I have seen similar things in kits as well. Maureen is a home school mom from Michigan, whom I met and heard speak about three years ago at a home school conference. Her daughters knitted back packs out of strips.)

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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Done with the Janis tank

I finished the tank top! And it fits! It makes me look very flat chested, though and that is a look I generally avoid. So I am not sure that I'll take a photo. Back to making more ornaments.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Our first CSA delivery!

No crafting this week. I ran out of the paper I was using. To keep the Easter theme going, I need to locate more. Knitting usually occurs at night when I'm chilling out. Haven't chilled out at night this week because I'm at the ball park so much. I have checked my garden a few times, eaten some salad from it, thinned my carrots, and am trying to stir up some perennial thinning and trading with friends.

So no crafting this week. That does not stop me from eating, though. Which brings me to: our CSA's first box of the year came today. I am splitting a share this year, so we are splitting: lettuces "Black seeded Simpson" and "Cracoviensis," green garlic, asparagus, radishes. And someone got an edible flower. Not sure where it went since it is so small. Happy weekend, everyone!

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Friday, May 11, 2007

Tiny clothes

The jumper you see here is from the book _Great Knitted Gifts_, by Andrea Shackleton. Yarn is Lion Brand Magic Stripes in Jellybean.

Zamozo asked what do you do with the tiny clothes?

Completely fair question. They are intended to be Christmas ornaments. I started with tiny mittens. Very cute. Red with white trim and initials on the back of the hand. Now I have moved to sweaters. I can't repeat a gift. That would be like re-gifting! The tiny clothes could also be decorations for every day, say along a clothesline in a laundry room, or a little girl's bedroom, a craft room, etc. They could also be doll clothes. The jumper I just finished is 6" long and 4" wide. Too large for our Christmas tree, but probably OK for a doll. I tried the single crochet edging, and looked just awful for me. So I ripped it off.

Why make tiny clothes? Another good question. To use leftover yarn. To finish things quickly, and I raise my self esteem. To continue making gifts without spending a lot money. I am testing sweater patterns and accompanying yarn to see what gives the look I want, pre-planning for Christmas. You want each niece/nephew to have their OWN ornament. I have 18 of them, plus my four kids. I don't put a lot of knitting on here because they are gifts that a family may see. No surprises if that happens. I can try different kinds of cabling and other stitch patterns without spending a lot of time or yarn on it before I decide that I like/don't like it. I still need to hold the sweaters next to the jumper for a size and scale comparison.

Paper crafting


My son came back from art class with these papers last week. Don't they look great? A set of stairs with seven generations and a chicken with a beak! His teacher also taught him to make durable construction paper puppets two years ago.

After teaching me to make pop-up cards like he did, he proceeded to teach the other children. They made pop-up thrones and glued little people and smiley faces to the pop-ups. They know how to make pop-up cards and books now, and are excited about it, as if they have a secret that no one else has (which they do). "G" was proud to show everyone how to this. I appreciated the low amount of scraps they created. Less clean-up than usual is a good thing.

Thank you to our art teacher!

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Janis tank update

My very first post was about a tank top I was making. Its three parts have been finished for some time now. Today I joined the two sides of the front and to the back.

The difficulty with fitted knitted garments is the sizing. You can gauge all you want, but this particular piece is made in three pieces, making it hard for me to tell if I needed to adapt the pattern. Adding to the difficulty is the stitch pattern being a very stretchy 2 x 2 rib.

Each piece by itself fit me when I laid them against myself. But sewn together, the garment is very large. I ripped out the back and plan to decrease the width by 12 (!) stitches. I will also rip out the straps and change them to be 9" long instead of 11." I will leave the right and left front as is. The tank top itself is quite cute. Just really large on me. Luckily, it works up very fast.

I wonder if this garment puts me in the realm of petite clothing....

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Tiny jumper

I checked out a book from the library that has knitting patterns for tiny socks, jumpers, scarves, hats, and cardigans. They require sewing (well, not the scarf), so I have chosen one with just a small amount of sewing, the jumper. I knitted the front this evening after we got home from a late softball game. We won, 0 - 4.

The jumper is much larger than I thought it would be, and my gauge is correct. So potentially not as cute as the tiny sweaters. Although the pattern says "until it is 3" long," the pattern's photograph has nothing to base scale upon (except the other tiny garments). I keep telling myself that the tiny sweaters, totally cute in size, might be scaled the same as this jumper-in-the-works, since jumpers can be full length in the skirt. It's just hard to tell by the photograph. I'll post details as soon as the jumper is finished. The colors are darling on it, so this project has some hope.

Saturday, May 5, 2007

HAPPY NATIONAL SCRAPBOOK DAY!



Yes, this blog is for the crafty part of my life. After spending a lot time out of doors, I took the dark night time hours to work on scrapbooking. Oh wait, I guess I did stop in the huge franchise store to do a free make and take. I left with having spent only $1.30 -- I love 75% off paper! What restraint! But I did not work on a scrapbook page until after dark. I only went to the store because it was close to the neighborhood where a one-day-old geocache was. I had to go find it so I could get closer to my goal of 100 finds. I have now found 92 geocaches. You can read more about my race to 100 finds, as well as other nature-y things, at my geocaching blog.

Here are a couple pages that I finished today. The weaving on the first page was totally new to me. I didn't do very much weaving, and it really doesn't look like weaving, but it is. It was involved, and I can't imagine doing larger projects with more strips of paper. Maybe it would be easier if the paper strips weren't so thin. Or maybe I am just a whiner. I would probably do it again as I like the effect. In fact, I think the upper right hand corner looks like it could use a little accent.

The title on the other page was sort of new for me -- stamping on paper, then cutting the letters apart to look like tags. Unless I have the clear acrylic stamps, my letters are crooked. So this technique was good for me.

The supply list for both: Most of the paper came from Close To My Heart (CTMH). I like it for it's price and coordinating colors. Some of the orange and blue paper is Archiver's generic. Susan Branch stamps. Too lazy to look up the ink source. Creative Memories brown marker.
CTMH black marker and tab sticker. Photo processing by snapfish.

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