Knitted Lace With a Twist Cowl(s)

Ahhhh...I am loving the arrival of football season and the cool, crisp air that invites one to snuggle on the couch and work on handwork.  I've been really into knitting these days. I found a booklet at Hobby Lobby and fell in love with the cover project. Only, I couldn't find the yarn in the stores I frequent. So, I first made the project, a knitted Lace with a Twist cowl, with some multicolored  Loops and Threads yarn (a Michaels brand of yarn) called Seaside. While the colors are very nice and will coordinate well with my coat, I still pined for the yarn used on the front cover of the booklet.

I took advantage of an essentially free shipping promotion at Joann.com and bought the Red Heart Boutique Midnight yarn in the color Harvest Moon. I finished knitting the cowl the other night and just finished sewing it together. Gah...I love those colors. The camera hasn't picked it up, but there are strands of gold thread throughout the yarn that give it just a slight sparkle. 

Oh and I discovered that a different Michaels, one a little further away, does carry this yarn...in several colors. May have to pick some up sometime!

I'm currently working on knitting a hat for Amy. In purple, her favorite color. Will share when it's finished.

Thanks so much for stopping by. 

 I have some more projects (cards) to share. 

It's feast or famine with me, I guess.

 *Ü*

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Thanks for the sweet comments on the clothes I’ve created for the girls’ dolls. They really made me smile.

I have another project to share with you. Jessica found a book I bought several years ago and then tucked away with the grand intention of making some clothes for the girls’ Barbie dolls for Christmas that year. Um, that never happened and I kind of even forgot I bought the book. Here is a link I found for a paperback version on Amazon. I actually have the hardback copy. So, anyway, Jessica found the book and immediately started looking through it. Next thing I knew, she had sticky noted several projects. She asked me to work on one of these projects rather than another 18 inch doll outfit, because the Barbie projects would take less time since they are smaller. I guess you can’t argue with her logic. And she was pretty well right. Here’s the first effort from the book:

The reason behind the title of this post, if you are interested, is this. My mom made some clothes for my Barbie dolls and my Ken doll. Some she sewed and some she knit. They have been passed on to the girls. And the stand out project I remember that she made for me is a Fisherman Knit sweater for my Ken doll. I don’t know where it is at the moment, but I really liked that sweater. Maybe in part for it’s ability to hold my Ken doll’s head on. One of my brothers cracked the neck and in those days you didn’t get another one, you made do with the one you had. ;) I remember being in awe of the little stitches and feeling very special that she made something just for my dolls.

When I saw the sweater in this book, I knew immediately what my first project was going to be. Jessica originally wanted it in pink, but that sock yarn is hard to find in solid pink, so she okayed using the Heart and Sole sock yarn from Red Heart as a distant second choice. She is very happy with the final result, so it’s all good.

And I got to do for my daughter something my mom did for me. And that is a very good thing in my mind.

Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope you have a great start to your week.

Happy Birthday, Jessica…the Big 1-0

And now I can reveal why I haven’t had much crafty stuff to share the past week or so…I’ve been getting ready for Miss Jessica’s 10th birthday party. Screeech…what? There is no way that she is 10 years old. In fact, Steve kept telling her that we weren’t going to have a party after all so she would stay nine. She was on to that idea. She knew that wouldn’t stop her turning 10. Darn.

Warning…picture heavy post coming up…click on pictures to enlarge

Here’s the birthday girl this morning.

  

She’s wearing a necklace my friend made and sent to her for her birthday.

And this is the main reason I haven’t posted. I know I said I wasn’t much of a knitter, but when Jessica found this book in Michaels several weeks ago, she pleaded ever so prettily about my getting it. Of course I told her no, we weren’t there to get that in my mean mom voice.

Obviously, I knew I was going back without her to pick it up and to work on a project for either her birthday or Christmas, depending on if I could actually create a project. It is knitting after all and I’m not much of one.

So…I’ve spent several school hours working on the purple dress you see on the cover and I managed to finish on Friday.  Ta-da! Oh and a time or two I left a piece out and had to finagle a way to hide it so she wouldn’t notice.

 

I had one happy 10 year old when I came out with Jessica Anne wearing the dress. Yay, mom says with a fist pump. Guess maybe smaller projects are okay.

The theme of our party was Pirate, inspired by the tv show, Jake and the Never Land Pirates. Jess enjoys watching it in the morning before school.

 

Here is the cake table. Thanks so much to my friend, Susi, who graciously loaned us the candelabra, chest AND jewels to set the mood.

 

 

The girl pirate on the show is Izzy and we made these little bottles of pixie dust for the girls who attended. Izzy wears a pouch full of pixie dust to help the fellow pirates out on occasion.

 

The cake is my take of the idea shown on the Family Fun website here. Thanks to Susi’s kids for loaning us the mini figure pirates and cannon.

 

I knew the cake wouldn’t feed everyone, so we made some simple cupcakes, too .

A couple of more shots of the cake. It is reminiscent of Bucky, the ship in the Jake and the Never Land Pirates show. Jessica colored the sails and Amy added the Rolo candy for the Crow’s Nest. I personally liked the plank on the back end. LOL Anyone remember rootbeer candy? Or am I totally aging myself? We added some to the cake because they make great barrels. I ate one and was instantly transported back to when I was growing up.

 

Our pirate girl ready to par-tay. I found that shirt at the thrift store yesterday by a totally serendipitous fluke. The hat, too only we added the skull to it.

  

Some of the decor. I found some great pirate themed party supplies at Hobby Lobby and took full advantage of their 40% off coupons. The die cuts on the window are cut from my Cricut using Life’s a Party. My friend, Felicia graciously loaned me that cartridge. Thanks, sweetie! I need to take a picture of the front door where we had a map and the phrase pirate party.

 

Playing a game where you drop a penny into the water. At the bottom is a small bowl or shot glass that you are trying to get the penny into. The kids seemed to like it.

 

Birthday girl looking pretty happy.

 

We also played the same dice game that we played at Amy’s party and the Cookie game as well.  This  young man sure likes this game! He’s pretty good, too.

 

And after the party, Jessica had a great time putting together one of the gifts she received.

Oh and the cake…

Destroyed…but in the best way. Yay!

Whew, I’m pooped, but happy to have another party under the belt and a happy 10 year old.

Thanks for stopping by and reading this, if you even got this far!

Hope you had a fun weekend and are ready for a brand new week.

Circular Afghan for Baby

Thank you so much for the warm welcome back to posting. I appreciate that you still stop by even though it’s been a while.

Here’s a project I worked on that seems to have sparked the flow of creative juices. The teacher that Amy had last year is pregnant. She is the same teacher that Jessica had when she was in 2nd grade. This means we have a pretty good relationship.  Anyway, of course once I heard she was going to have a baby, I wanted to make something for her and the new baby. I decided to make an afghan. Originally I wanted to use teal because that’s one of the colors she said she was using, but I couldn’t find a good teal color, so I opted for yellow instead. And I liked the idea of making a circular afghan. It’s sort of like an oversized doily!

Here’s the finished project:

I’m really happy with the end result. It wasn’t hard to do as it’s mostly double crochets (my favorite stitch). The color is a lovely buttery yellow, so snuggly!

As I was working on this project, I had gone into Michaels for something and they were having a demonstration using some yarn I’ve seen in the stores, but had NO clue as to how to use. The gal showed how to knit the yarn and when you are done you end up with this:

   

Isn’t that neat? On the last picture, you can see what looks sort of like a web. I thought that you had to add that to the yarn, but it’s already there! It’s from Red Heart and it’s called Boutique Sashay. You are basically just working with the top edge of the yarn and as you are doing the stitch it starts to become all curliqued. So neat. I had this done in a couple of evenings(because I had to get the hang of knitting again). Love the colors too, so rich and fall like. You can see what the yarn looks like in the skein to understand why I had no clue until the demonstration.

So, working on these two projects is what sparked the creative juices. Yay for fun projects!

Thanks again for stopping by. Hope your week is off to a great start!

Why I've Been MIA This Week...

You might remember this post, where I shared the frog I knitted for Amy's teacher as an end of year gift. After I finished Freida, I started to work on the project I'd planned for Jessica's teacher. She is retiring this year after 28 years of teaching. She must have started when she was in her tweens because she is still very young, in my opinion. I had asked Jessica to ask her teacher what her favorite animal was and after a few tries, I found out that one animal she really likes is the polar bear. This was terrific as I had just found a pattern for a knitted baby polar bear! It took some time for me to find the right yarn. I had wanted to use the yarn I got from Susan at MaryJane's Tearoom, but I couldn't find a coordinating color in the right weight. I found some Sinfonia yarn at Hobby Lobby that had all the colors I wanted and it was the cotton type I was looking for. I've been working on it fairly consistently, but with the end of the year quickly approaching I decided to devote most of my time to the project this week. I am happy to share that I completed the project this morning! Yay!

I'd like to share with you, Candy (which is the name on the pattern):

Here she is sitting pretty on the teacart. I must apologize for the not so great photos. It's been awfully dreary in my neck of the woods (you might have heard that we had 2-3 inches of snow on the ground yesterday morning) and the sun wasn't cooperating when I took these shots.

Standing up now,  you can see a peek of her legs below the dungarees and above the oh so cute shoes and socks.

It was harder than I thought to get a good shot of her standing up!

I chose safety eyes and I even found a plastic nose...anything to avoid doing a lot of embroidery on yarn, although I did attempt a mouth this time. 

Here's the bib on her dungarees (love that word!) I did embroider that lazy daisy stitch and I didn't even have to look up how to make it. I remembered how all on my own. Yay, me. Her jumper (sweater) is a fun stripe pattern.

The straps even cross over on the back side. Here you can see the stripes a little better on her jumper.

Let me tell you, doing one part of the dungarees was an exercise in endurance...I had 121 stitches on my shortish needle and I had to knit 21 rows with 121 stitches on each row. But it was definitely worth it, I think! I'm just amazed I got it done and didn't procrastinate on that part. LOL

Love the little bow on her ear...

And the bows on her shoes. These bows were fun to make. And so were the shoes and socks.  They are one piece! Love that!

One last view so you can see her sort of okay looking mouth. She looks a little shy, but all in all, I think she came out pretty sweet.

And if you haven't figured it out by now, I got the pattern here at MaryJane's Tearoom. If her shop isn't open when you stop by, you may want to hop over to Ravelry and sign up(it's free). You can find the pattern there, too. I just love the adorable animals that Susan comes up with! They are fun to knit (not too complicated at all) and have such adorable personalities!

I sure hope Jessica's teacher will like her!

In addition to working on this, the school is having Walking and Wheeling week this week (even though it's been rather, shall we say, less than spring like). I'm helping out passing out healthy snacks to the kids who are participating. We also had skate night at the local roller rink to celebrate W/W week and the girls really wanted me to come along, so I did. It was a lot of fun. Jessica has Daisies this week and a field trip on Saturday to a local fire station. Guess you could say we are in a whirlwind of end of school year activities. LOL 

Thanks for stopping by. I sure appreciate your visits. I hope to make it back here soon, but if the weather cooperates, I really need to work on the weed patch garden to prepare it for planting this year's flowers.

Meet Freida Frog and I'm Still Cleaning...LOL

Hi there!

We've had a few days of wonky weather, but hopefully for the rest of the week it's going to be nice and spring-like. On Tuesday morning, seemingly out of the blue, we had a hailstorm. Nothing destructive, but tiny styrofoam looking balls. The girls told me as I drove them to school that I didn't need to use the wipers because they'd bounce right off the window. ha, ha! Then yesterday, we woke up to snow! Thankfully neither episode lasted long and now the sun is shining. Yay!

I'm sure you didn't stop by to read about crazy Colorado weather, so I'll move on. I switched from cleaning/oiling slatted laundry closet doors to working on the cabinets in the kitchen! Do I know how to entertain myself or what? LOL

Just before I got busy, I spotted this little cutie on our breakfast bar! She was a little skittish, but I got her onto my finger and put her outside, where hopefully she is one happy little ladybug.

This is what I have to work with in my kitchen. I don't know if I've mentioned it here before, but the owners before us did a lot of their own projects on the house. The story, as told to us, was the lady of the house wanted the wall that separated the kitchen from the living room taken out. Apparently her husband didn't get to that project fast enough to suit her, so she knocked a hole in the wall herself. The result is the extra large breakfast bar. I'm grateful she had the idea because I love how open my kitchen and living room are. The job was definitely a diy project as the cabinet doors can attest. Not that they are horrible to me, but definitely home-made. Good thing I'm not someone who insists on an upscale kitchen. Even if I was, I'd never get it, but I just want function mostly. So, we have these wooden cabinets. That have door fronts that don't get cleaned all that much. Gosh, you guys are gonna think I live in a pit the way I'm confessing, or rather that I've not been a very good housekeeper. Well, maybe that's true, but I have been a bit busy these past years. LOL

I've attempted to do surface cleaning, I promise, but nothing real deep. Honest to goodness, I never thought before to use Murphy's Oil Soap. But I thought of it after my closet door cleaning. So I got started this morning. Now mind you, I'm not showing you what it looks like INSIDE the closed doors and drawers, but the first picture is the before and the second picture is the after. If you don't see much of a difference, bless you. I sure do! Hubby likes to make waffles, which are yummy, but he's a messy cook and not the bestest cleaner-upper. I've scraped off countless drips of dried on waffle batter. The girls are a bit messy, too and I took off a few globs of jelly. Just keepin' it real. I was going to work on the top cabinets, but decided to save that job for another day (ie, I was tired of cleaning). So the waffle drips and jelly globs are gone and the doors/drawers are drinking in a generous portion of Murphy's Oil. Yay!

I've been working on a new knitted doll this past week or so, when I've had the chance. I finished her last night. She is going to be Amy's teacher's end of year gift. Amy told me once her favorite animal is a frog and her favorite color is green. When I saw this pattern on Amy Gaines' Etsy shop, I knew just what to do. (Dang, if you buy this pattern right now, it's on SALE...shoulda waited. LOL)

The name Freida popped into my head so I'm calling her Freida Frog.

I think she came out pretty cute. The hardest part for me this time was finding three shades of green that coordinated! I never thought that would be difficult, but it took some hunting to find the yarn I used. Basic Red Heart, but not every store sells coordinating colors. Go figure. 

Thanks so much for stopping by! I sure hope you are having a good week. The weekend'll be here before you know it!

Meet Jamie Giraffe!

Well, I didn't actually finish until about 9pm or so last night. Whew! Amy made me promise to put the giraffe next to her in bed after I was done and so I did. This is how I found them this morning while she was eating her breakfast.  I think this gives you a pretty good perspective on just how big this giraffe is! Even I didn't realize just how big she'd become. Amy has decided (for now) that her name is Jamie (the first name of her beloved kindergarten teacher). She may even call her Miss Paul.

Amy also asked if I was going to blog about these pictures. But, of course! Hee, hee! *Ü* Amy took Jamie into the van on the way to school, too. And made me promise to bring her when I picked her up from school.

There are 11 pom-poms and 11 spots. The horns have short pieces of straw in them to keep them upright (very clever idea and not one I thought of). I actually had to make another horn because one of the original ones wouldn't fit the straw no matter what I did. Let me just say, trying to knit on double pointed needles with just TWO stitches per needle was an exercise in patience. I ended up putting covers on the points so the needles would stop slipping through the TWO stitches and falling onto my lap. LOL

All in all, I think she came out pretty cute. But I think I'm putting down the knitting needles for a bit. Amy said, FINALLY! when she saw her giraffe. She told me, it took you FOREVER to get her done. Maybe not forever, but believe me, I'm just as excited to be done as Amy is! I have some crochet projects I want to work on, and that always goes faster for me. I'm sure glad though, that I've figured out double pointed needles. It opens up possibilities for future projects. Yay!

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by. Your encouraging comments mean more to me than I can ever express!