Creatively Christmas 2014

While I haven't been blogging...
I HAVE been making.

Much of my making was Christmas gifts.  However, I have a bunch of patterns to share for things I've created and projects I'm in the midst of.  So if I keep on blogging you will have that to come...

Here are some snippets of our Christmas:

One of my favorite moments is on Christmas Eve when most everyone has gone off to bed and only the indoor Christmas lights brighten the room.  Under the tree is loaded with gifts.  It's very quiet, it's totally serene.  I have to stop myself from taking photos to try to make that special time hold still...

 

Once the morning arrives and the crazy kids awake (4 of these kids are mine, 2 are my sisters and the one at the top of the steps is my youngest sister who is 20 years my junior - so she is lucky enough to get to be part of the batch of kids yet), the Christmas crazy begins.

 

 



For the past several years it's been my goal to use all non-traditional wrappings.  My attempt is to use no paper wrapping at all.  Most of my wrap gets re-used from year to year.  In these photos of the wrapped gifts you can see a variety of wrappings: old clothing, sweaters, pant legs, shirts, skirts etc... made into wrap bags and tied with re-usable ribbons.  Only the handmade paper gift tags get tossed.  Also in the mix is mailing envelopes (you can see one on the far right with a tree drawn on it), handled shopping bags (which are then given as part of the gift), flannel backed and plastic table cloths (which I buy at the dollar store and re-use year after year - works great for bigger gifts), paper grocery bags, the paper and bubblewrap that comes in the shipping boxes from amazon, etc.... Once a gift is open the family returns the clothing bags, ribbons, etc... and I store them in a box to re-use the following year.

For my little niece Maisie, my husband and I co-created doll beds and bedding.  Maisie has three dolls (handed down from her mom, my sister).  There is a blond, brunette and red-head doll.  My husband fashioned them beds that stack in bunks or come apart as separate.

We trash pick wood and re-use old furniture quite a bit.  My husband probably didn't buy anything new to create these beds - he fashioned them all from the odd bits of wood and molding strips already in his garage.

Likewise - I did my part to dress the beds.  After all, these dollies needed a bit of soft and warm for proper sleeping:

Each doll bed had entirely handmade bedding (by me).

An old ikea curtain provided the means to sew hand-tufted mattresses stuffed with leftover couch pillow stuffing.  Atop the mattress was a double-sided flat sheet (easy for a toddler to make up the bed).  Once the doll was on the sheet she'd need a place to rest her head so I sewed a pillow and a coordinating pillow case (to match the sheet and other bedding).  Most of the sheets and pillow cases were made from thrifted vintage sheets.  Atop the doll were then a quilt and a blanket.  The quilts were all handmade (sewing machine made) by me.  Each quilt had a traditional pieced side and a more modern side.  Then, each doll received a crocheted blanket.  There were three total bedding sets, one each with a pink, orange and green theme.  My sewing machine was in the shop for 6 weeks before Christmas and I just barely got it back in time to complete the bed sewing.  WHEW!

I hope Maisie will love the doll items for years to come.

And then there were the hats.  My daughter got 4 (because I like to make hats in front of the TV while watching sappy Hallmark Christmas shows)!  The first one is slouchy and kinda Rasta in an acrylic-cotton blend.

Then there was the acrylic-wool blend purple and turquoise slouchy.  I should have photographed all the hats before giving them so you could see the actual hat other than just seeing it perched on a head with all the detail missing.

 

 This one was again, wool acrylic with a  very chunky yarn and a pattern I got from Moogly blog. Consequently - the white hat was my personal favorite and I might make one for myself.

This final hat was a beret with a pom pom - of course which you cannot see!  It's made from 100% Peruvian wool in a double green/blue twist.

Finally, I winged one final hat - in royal blue with red and white accents in my son's college colors.

It's an unwritten tradition to wear everything you get on xmas morning - so my son has a bow tie, a football jersey and a crochet hat all together.

An annual tradition is for each kid to have a crochet college bunting to hang in the dorm room.  This one is for the son on the left to hang at his college, Shippensburg, and has two little ships wheels included (I made up that ship wheel pattern and will share it).  I also used the capital letters pattern from moogly blog.  Do you love that blog? It's one of my favorites!

Remember what I said about wearing everything you get - take a crazy pj outfit and start adding hats and purses and OH MY!

In a house full of teenagers and twenty-somethings - this group gift was a HUGE big hit and they cheered for about 5 straight minutes.  The gift was a card game called "Cards Against Humanity" which is a very inappropriate version of Apples to Apples.  They have been wanting this crazy and very non-PC card game for a while.  Yes it got played that night - and I and my hubby joined in.  It's very inappropriately funny - but those of you with high morals or young kids would be abashed (I have neither the high morals or the young kids).

A few years back I suggested that the Christmas dinner meal be a casual one.  Since everyone stays at my home for several days before and after Christmas, things are a bit hectic... I figured an easy meal would help with the strain and stress of heavy cooking duties and it does.  Here is our Christmas table in which everyone dresses as he or she pleases, pjs are welcome.  We have 3 pots of soup (2 vegan since most of the family is vegan, and 1 organic but not vegan).  This year we had vegan veggie, vegan creamy broccoli and organic chicken noodle.  Typically I also provide a salad and this year it had arugula, baby kale, baby chard, baby romaine, baby spinach, organic tri-color quinoa, heirloom rainbow cherry tomatoes, roasted yam, dried cranberry, homemade sweet and salty pecans and balsamic dressing.  Often there is homemade bread but this time we had a few organic store-bought.  One whole grain and one with rosemary.  A big pitcher or pomegranate iced tea, some alcoholic beverages and the meal was a done deal.  I don't have fancy dishes enough for everyone, so each third of the table had their own dishes pattern. 

Around mid-day we had eaten some hearty appetizers: peppered salami and sharp cheese for the non-vegans and all the rest was vegan: hot salsa with chips, bread with spinach artichoke dip, anti-pasta salad with olives, peppers, artichokes and mushrooms, roasted veggies with cauliflower, carrots, onions and zucchini, tapenade with crackers, hummus, salted nuts... and a variety of other things that kept us fully satisfied with simple to serve type food.

 And a big bonus this Christmas for me?  I got to sleep in a bedroom and in a bed while the guests were here!!!!  Usually I have to give up my bed and my bedroom and I end up sleeping on a couch or a floor (as does my hubby).  But this year we re-did the "boys" room that was rather teenage boyish and yucky and turned it into a bedroom that we could offer to a guest. SO I then got to sleep in an actual bed in my own room.  And that was Christmas bliss.

I love to make and to give gifts at Christmas.  I don't as much like getting gifts.  However, my hubby gave me two bottles of wine, two yummy little boxes of chocolate and two new indoor scarves... all good stuff!

How was your Christmas?  What are your traditions?  Do you celebrate another holiday or a different religion?  If so, what do you do on Christmas when others are celebrating with lighted trees and holiday wrapping?

Next up - all the making and creating that's been happening for the past 6 months... to include some new free patterns for you!  TA TA and Happy New Year's Eve!  Sher

Creative Christmas 2013

I always feel very pulled in opposite directions around Christmas time with respect to blogging.  I am usually making more things than at any other time of the year.  However, so many of them are gifts that I don't feel I can blog about them.  At a time when I am receiving awesome inspiration from other bloggers, I offer none.

The best I can do is to offer the after affect of all that was hand made and given.  Maybe a few of these gift ideas will end up on someone's pin board for next year's gift making!!!

Here we go with a journey of holiday gifts via photos:

I had a strong desire to work with felt and embroidery for this year's gifts.  So, I purchased a holiday pattern set from Betz White.  Go here to see Betz's posts about her holiday ornament patterns.  They were available separately or as a set.  I purchased a set of four ornament patterns but didn't really like pattern #4 so I made only the first three.

Above are the hot cocoa ornaments.  OH MY were they cute.  Simply adorable.  However, the process of making them involved a LOT of gluing.  I have wonderful and very tacky fabric glue but it's so sticky and messy that I prefer to only use it in bits.  This ornament project involved lots and lots of gluing in almost every step.  So, the drying time between glued steps caused these ornaments to take a super long amount of time.  I loved how they looked but I probably would design a more sewing-related version were I to make them again.  I only made these four.  I gave away three and kept one for myself.

Another of Betz's ornaments was this peace dove.  I love it!  It was a lot of sewing and attaching little parts together.  I preferred this one to the cocoa cup in terms of the skills required to make it.  However, I only made two.  I gave one to my daughter and one to my youngest sister who is just beginning to collect her own handmade ornaments for her tree.  I would make this lovely bird again!

A third ornament from the Betz White collection was these felt wreaths - again, so so cute!  I made about 8 of them and gave away 7.  The pattern involved a lot of individual knot tying which got old after a while.  The pattern was ingenious and though I didn't like all the knot tying, it was so cute that'd I'd make them again.

Note the star bunting in the photo with the wreaths...  I loved loved loved the star pattern that I found on the MOOGLY blog.  It was a free pattern and so simple.  It is made in only two rounds and it was super simple and formed the most perfect star.  I will go back to this star pattern again and again.  I made a multi colored star bunting for my daughter and a red and white and black star bunting (santa star bunting, not pictured) for my other sister.

Another thing I crocheted this year was soap socks.  I purchased some special organic scented soaps from Trader Joes and crocheted a little packet for each of them with a draw string top.  I gave them as gifts to my daughter, my son's girl friend and another friend.  They can be used in the shower with the crochet part becoming a scrubby and the soap re-filled when dissolved or in a drawer as a sachet.  I made a very simple rectangle and folded it in half, stitched up one side, turned it inside out, stitched up the bottom, and threaded it with a crochet chain drawstring, no pattern, just winged it.

Here are my projects sitting in my craft room waiting to be finished.  Top left corner there are two double sided pot holders for my son.  One side was in Maryland State Flag colors and the other side was in Towson University colors.  All used 4 different stitch patterns.  One of my favorite pot holder patterns is what I call linen stitch.  I loved doing it in four colors - it turned out great and I didn't trim any ends when I switched colors, just let the old color hang until I needed to pick it up again.  It worked out great and saved time.  I wrote up a pdf pattern for my basic linen stitch pot holder but never posted it.  I'll see if I can find it and post it on Ravelry.  Find me HERE ON RAVELRY and stay tuned for that free pattern.

On top of my son's potholders is a little black box containing 6 Maryland colored coasters.  I forgot to photograph those before giving them.  Maybe there's a shot of them at Christmas time that I haven't discovered yet.

My daughter also got a set of colored and stripey pot holders.  I used linen stitch on the top one as well as just basic single crochet stripes.  On the bottom photo, I did a stitch new to me that I also learned on Moogly - it was wonderful and made a sort of a plaid design.  I loved it and will use it again!  Check that pattern here.

Above are three more close ups of the little soap sock.

Lastly, I made name buntings for my niece and nephew.  I used the same bunting pattern that I used last year to make my sons' college buntings.  However, I hand cut sticky backed craft foam to use for the letters on my niece and nephew's buntings.  My niece's bunting was pink/purple/yellow (her favorite colors) with a white scalloped border that I just made up.  My nephew's bunting was green/blue (his favorite colors) with red and a black pointy border that looked like little triangles.  I'm really hoping I kept the notecard of how to make the little triangle bunting so I can post it an make it again.  It was a great invention and I want to repeat it sometime in the future as well as share it with you.

Here are my sweet little niece and nephew with their buntings!  Fortunately my sister snapped a few photos for facebook when they opened them.  Oh yeah, I added little silver bells to the tip of Maisie's bunting and little blue bells to the tips of Quinn's.

Hope you enjoyed my holiday making this year.  I had tons and tons of other ideas for things I wanted to make for gifts, but... I didn't get to them.  SO... I have lots to do for next year!

Sugar Skull Bunting

Ready for Halloween?  How about Autumn?

Every year I like to make a new bit of Halloween/Autumn decor to install around the house.  This past weekend and up until yesterday mid-morning, the weather was freaky warm... hot and humid even.  It was not October.  The skies were grey the leaves were blowing around on the streets but the temperature didn't match the rest of the scene.  After a few wet downpours, the temperature dropped and dropped and now it feels like fall!  Welcome cool and windy weather - LOVE IT!

I've been eyeing up some groovy skull buntings on pinterest and yesterday I sat down and crafted one of my own - can I tell you something?  IT IS AWESOME...just exactly what I wanted and now it's hanging across the mantle just waiting to scare all who enter my living room.

Want to make one of your own?  Well here's how.

I found this cute skull pattern here.  It's from a blog called Kristen's Krazy Knits.  It is crochet however.  I pretty much followed the pattern as written.  I'm not sure if there's an error in the instructions or if I made the same error six times repeated, but when the instructions say," This should get you back to the chain 2 you made to create the nose," I found myself off by two stitches every time.  Nonetheless, I did manage to make it work and I'm happy with my rainbow colored skulls.  I used sugar and cream cotton yarn and an H sized hook to make the skulls.

I also loved the sugar skulls in this crochet bunting from Red Heart.



Red Heart provides an entire pdf with instructions for this bunting.  I could have just used it entirely.  I did look at the photo up close and figure out that the white skull part was a sc circle with a rectangular off one end to place the teeth, but I didn't follow the pattern, just winged it on my own.  I liked the eyes, the teeth and the flower on the forehead - however, I wanted a heart for a nose.  I also winged the teeth.

I used this flower pattern for the eyes.  I had this heart pattern saved in my crochet heart board on pinterest. I added a row of crochet chain stitch to the heart and attached it upside down.  I used this pattern for the forehead flower but winged a set of double leaves to look like the sample.  The forehead flower pattern is in a non-English language and even with translation, I couldn't quite follow.

Most of the sugar skull was made with the same sugar and cream cotton yarn.  Most of it was done with an H crochet hook but I did switch to an F sized hook to make some of the skull face parts a bit smaller.

I stitched the parts to the white background with a weaving-in needle and a bit of knot tying to the back.

The whole thing was assembled into a bunting using the H hook, some black cotton yarn, and a bit of chain stitching.  It looks just like I wanted!

With the drop in temperature I decided it was full time to hang my FAVORITE crochet wreath back on the door... check out my Autumn Wreath Pattern here - one of my most loved crochet creations.

Sherbet Waves Blanket

Hello!

The last time I posted it was back to school time - now it's full on Autumn (tho. today seems more like summer weather and my fall/winter clothes are still packed away in the attic).

At the end of the summer (and right before my vacation) I started a baby blanket project for my cousin.  Her baby shower is this weekend.  She is having her first baby, a girl.  I could not attend the shower but my gift is somewhere riding in the back of a brown truck en route to the shower location.

The blanket is NOT a pattern of my own creation.  I found the pattern on pinterest and saved it in my blankets and pillows board.  You can follow me on Pinterest or just some of my boards if you'd like.

I didn't take many photos of the making along the way - not sure why.  But it was a fun and easy pattern with a lot of color and texture and it was a joy to create.  The name of the original pattern is: Wavy Baby Blanket and I found it here on Carina's Blog.  The blog has the pattern in a non-English pattern but also a translation is included.  I had no trouble following the translated version.

Here are the specs on MY version of the blanket which I have named Sherbet Waves.  This Sherbet Waves blanket is of the girl variety as I would have chosen other colors for a boy.  As recommended on the blog, I opted to use an odd number of colors in my pattern repeat.  My pattern was an 11-color repeat.

The yarn I used is Red Heart Creme de la Creme.  Although it is a worsted weight, I would consider it a light worsted.  I used a G Hook (4mm).

I chose soft and bright girl colors and mixed those in with a variety of off whites and a khaki color.  Though I cannot find my order form from the yarn and I have misplaced some of the skein wraps, my color repeat was:

off white (pink hue)
dark pink
off white (yellow hue)
lavender
khaki
off white (ivory)
light pink
khaki (the only color I repeated because I wanted more of this color)
bright yellow
true white
mint green

I didn't use an entire skein of any color, but almost.  I used a bit more than one skein of the khaki ( I had 2 of those).  I don't know the number of yards in the skein as it's not listed on the label but the skein is 70.9 grams and is a light-weight worsted, not quite as small as a dk or sport.

The yarn is 100% cotton, and though the finished product it a bit stiff, I think it will be less so after washing.

I'd suggest weaving in the ends as you go - the pattern calls for a color change at the end of each row.  I didn't and had SO many to weave in at the end.  UGH.

The reason this blanket isn't just a shell stitch blanket is because it has a row of single crochet in between each shell row.  The pattern has a 4 row repeat which is easy to memorize after just a few stints thru.  My finished blanket was about 32" long and 26" wide.  I chained 142 stitches to start.  You can do any length because the pattern is listed as groups of 14 + 2.  The finished blanket had about 150 rows.

I love it when patterns list all their data like yarn and hook size and patter repeats, etc... it makes for SO much easier math if I want to change size or use different yarn so thanks to all of your who give lots of pattern data on your blogs.  I find that when I add pattern data to my blogs, it gives me a great record to remember what I myself have done if I ever want to go back and use a pattern again.

I hope you enjoy this pattern - I will probably post a link to it on Ravely (follow me here) as well.

Flowers & Flutterbys Crochet Wreath

TA-DAH!  It's done.  AND...I love it!!!

Wanna make one?  Well here's how.  By the way, if you missed my preview of this wreath, see that POST HERE.

First, we'll start with the wreath itself.  Since this wreath is one of several in a series that I've designed, I used the same pattern for the wreath.  Click here for the wreath pattern.  For the Flowers & Flutterbys wreath I used 2 colors of yarn (Bamboo Ewe) for the stripes and a brighter green of the same yarn to stitch the two wreath sides together (the inner and outer join).  I used a size F hook to make the wreath dense and firm.

After making two sides of the wreath (identical), I joined the two sides at their inner ring.  I added the motifs to the front wreath side only.  I used the tails from the motifs to stitch them onto the front side.  The beauty of the two wreath sides is being able to just stuff all the ends between, not having to weave them in - thank heavens!

This wreath included 4 daffodils.  I didn't design the daffodil pattern.  I found it HERE.  I did a few things different.  ONE, I didn't use a pipe cleaner OR make a stem.  TWO, I added a separate flower middle.  The pattern for the daffodil middle is (make a magic ring, ch 2, work 8hdc into ring, tighten ring, join to first stich with sl st.  Finish off).

To keep the daffodils in a bit of a cup shape, I sat each one in a small glass dish, spritzed it well with a bottle of Stiffen Quik and put them in the microwave to firm up according to the directions on the bottle.  I did each one twice and they have held their cup-like shape.

There are also 11 Sweet Sevens (I designed a new pattern for the Sweet Seven Flower) you can find the photo tutorial for the sweet sevens HERE and also on my Ravelry site. 

Finally, I've designed a lovely new motif called Flutterby Butterfly!  I searched and searched for a butterfly pattern that looked just the way I envisioned but even with all the creations, none of them were what I was wanting.  So... after a long bit of trial and error, I designed my own.  I'm very happy with it.  I've made oodles of them now and they are quite easy.  I've prepared a step by step photo tutorial for the little sweeties and you can get the Flutterby Butterfly tutorial by clicking HERE.

There are FOUR Flutterbys on the F&F wreath.  All are made with cotlin dk.  Three of the four are made with an E sized hook and one was made with an F sized hook.

Once the motifs are made and stitched together, the outer ring of the wreath sides can be joined.

Usually, I just cut apart an old cereal box to form a cardboard ring and slip it between the two wreath layers but I had already emptied the recycle bin and it had rained and I didn't fancy a soggy brown board living inside the wreath.  So, I hunted around in my sewing room and found this stuff:

It's made to be insulation in window cracks and such.  I had purchased a bag of it at a hardware store going out of business figuring I'd do something crafty with it and now I have.

I also snagged a broken hanger which I re-shaped into somewhat of a circle and taped the insulation ring to the hanger circle. To assure that the inner ring of the wreath also held it's form, I made a smaller foam ring and simply stuck it between the layers after the inner ring sides had been joined.

As I joined the outer rings (I used sc and I go through BOTH loops of each wreath side - 4 loops - on every sc), I realized I could crochet up the hanger hook and cover the wire.  I did finish off and re-join my yarn after covering the hanger hook.

The new solution worked fine, but it was a bit of a hassle to create and I'm not sure I'd do it the exact same way again - however, this time, it is in - and done, and it worked, so alls well there.

If you haven't seen the other wreaths in my series, you can check them out here (and also on ravelry):

Autumn Wreath
Christmas Wreath and also HERE
Double Sided Winter/LOVE Wreath

For now, I am enjoying a pastel Flowers & Flutterbys wreath in time for all the spring colors outdoor to begin popping up and also in time to enjoy for Mother's Day!