Random-Charm ·

Ice lanterns: an on again tradition

January 13, 2011 in crafting | 4 comments

I’m not sure when I started making ice lanterns. I don’t remember doing this as a child, but I don’t think I waited until we moved to Maine either, and I’m sure I couldn’t have accomplished this in Oklahoma. In any case, it’s fun and easy if you live somewhere cold enough that the temperatures stay around or below freezing for days at a time so you can admire your handiwork. These are fun to make for lighting your walk or deck for winter parties as well.

Ruth from Knitting on Impulse asked about winter traditions involving the celebration of light a while back on her blog. I was reminded that I hadn’t made these in a few years. I think the girl and I did build a tiny igloo with a candle in it two winters ago but I think it snowed again before I could get a good picture. When a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound if no-one is there to take a picture of it? (See? random.)

Anyway, I happened to have some smaller ice lanterns in the freezer waiting for the outside temperatures to cooperate at the time. These round ones were made outside in a 5 gallon bucket. Ice will form first on the surface of the water and the sides of the bucket. Once these edges get thick enough you will be able to carefully turn the bucket over, let the ice slide out and the unfrozen inside can simply be poured out. The top will be the thickest part and becomes the base of the lantern. I’m not a good scientist so I can’t give you any data on times or temperatures, etc. The temperature of the water to begin with, the size of the vessel and the temperature outside or in your freezer will all contribute to how clear or not clear the ice is. I don’t think it matters. One of these froze enough overnight I think, the other one was out all day and night. The smaller milk carton size will freeze in several hours. In fact, I have an unfortunate habit of forgetting to check on them and ending up with a solid block of ice instead. You can use those as candle bases in the bigger lanterns. A tea light will burn for several hours protected from the wind. The ice magnifies and fractures the tiny light in an earnestly wistful way. A nice warmth to come home to when the dark descends so quickly on winter days.

Too bad these are now buried under in a foot of new snow! I wonder if I should dig them out or just make new ones?

Tags: architecture, decorating on a budget, snow

The bunny suit: a rough draft

January 11, 2011 in refashioning, sewing | 1 comment

No, not that kind.

This is for wearing when you are taking care of bunnies. My parents now have three angora rabbits and my mother was wanting some sort of apron/smock to protect her clothes. I’m pretty sure she wanted it to be long sleeved somehow and long enough to cover her lap but not too hot to wear in the summer and easy to go on over a jacket in the winter. The space where the bunnies live is only somewhat climate-controlled.

The fabric needed to be something tough but slick, something that could stand up to the occasional clawed foot but slick enough to shed or at least not attract stray fur. I also thought it would be easiest if there was no hardware—no buttons or snaps, etc. So I used some leftover nylon or acetate lining material that is extremely lightweight but tightly woven and not likely to attract fur. I cut the collar and cuffs off an old knit shirt to re-use. I cut the long sleeves loose and gathered them into the knit cuff. I made the neckhole in a similar fashion. The threaded elastic through the cutaway back allows for arm movement but helps to keep the long front from flying away. Or at least that was the intent. That part still needs work. It could probably use some pockets as well. I have some alternate ideas but I was at a point where I needed to make a full-size draft to see how it actually worked. Here’s my mother trying out the bunny suit . . . bunny smock?

Tags: animals, remnants

Another pants rescue

January 8, 2011 in refashioning, sewing | 3 comments

The boy is a bit picky about jeans—he prefers them soft and on the thinner side. He usually wears every other pants in his closet before jeans but this pair he didn’t seem to mind. Unfortunately he tore through the knees and they were getting short but still fit amply in the waist as is usually the case with storebought pants for him. I grabbed the leftover pieces cut off a pair of khaki pants that had already been turned into shorts. I used the already hemmed bottoms to lengthen the jeans and then used a double layer of the khakis to cut patches for the knees of the jeans. A fast fix and it turned out rather cute. The mom of one of his friends thought I had bought them that way. I’ll take that as a complement.

Tags: boy clothes, remnants

Sushi Cat is too cute

January 6, 2011 in sewing, with/for/about kids | 9 comments

. . . especially in wool felt. The kids have fallen into ridiculously giggling mushy love with a cute little video game called Sushi Cat. They’ve been playing it on Rich’s iPhone. The game is very simple, sort of like pinball or pachinko. You drop the cat from the top of the screen and he eats any sushi in his way as he rolls and bounces to the bottom. I was already contemplating making the kids a Sushi Cat stuffie when I came across these sushi shaped erasers in the dollar aisle. Who knew? That sealed the deal and I sat up late one night stitching to get a pair of these done. You never see the cat’s tail in the game so I had to make that up myself. I decided it needed to be bouncy and springy!

I’m still hoping that their interest in things Japanese lately will eventually lead to eating more Japanese foods besides Ramen noodles.

Tags: animals, toys

The best handmade Christmas present

January 3, 2011 in crafting, pattern drafting, sewing, with/for/about kids | 2 comments

I have to say that the men in the house pulled off the best handmade presents this year. I helped a little but the ideas and much of the execution was theirs. The boy made his sister a monogrammed purse which she adores.

We traced and cut an oval from some stiff pink felt left over from another project. The boy used a fabric marker to draw a curly “S” in the middle of the oval and then arranged and sewed on felt flowers all around. I cut a very simple pattern out for a curvy purse with a large front flap, reminiscent of styles from the ’70s. I cut the pieces from some scrap leather I had. (I’m pretty sure it’s bi-cast or laminated but it looks surprisingly nice and I think it will hold up fine to loving use by a little girl.) The boy helped me machine sew the oval onto the front flap. He then used a fabric marker to stencil a sweet message on the inside to his sister. Later I hand-sewed the pieces of the purse together and attached the strap to rings at the sides. It looks great, the boy was quite proud of himself and his sister was over the moon! See the photos below for the play-by-play action.

Oo! Pretty!

SWAK!

Oh, man, she kissed me!

Tags: bags, embellishing, flowers, kids art, remnants, stencil

“This is the yarn that never ends . . .

January 2, 2011 in fiber arts | Permalink

It just goes on and on and on . . .”

A slight change from a silly little song that used to get tossed around in the music department in college.

But really, this started as 50/50 merino/silk mill end fiber that I bought for a great price from Susan at the Elegant Knitter at Goose Pond, a yarn and gift shop not far down the road. I bought a pound at New England Textile Art‘s SPA weekend in February 2010 and then visited the shop for another pound a few weeks later after deciding that I wanted to try spinning for a sweater.

Thereupon followed a serious of minor disasters of which there may be photos but it has taken such a long time to get to this point that I don’t even know where those photos are. Dyeing, carding and carding and carding, test swatching, etc. I decided that I would have the best chance of getting a relatively even yarn by just spinning what felt the most comfortable for the fiber which, not surprisingly for me, turned out to be quite fine. That was okay, my plan was just to fill all the bobbins and then ply three or four strands to make up a fingering weight. I made it through about three bobbins before I was ready to quit. Just not loving it. Fortunately I had traded for a jumbo flyer and it arrived about the time I was ready to give up spinning the singles. I usually really enjoy plying but it took forever! And there are quite a few knots, much to my dismay since the jumbo bobbin was able to hold the entire plied contents of the three regular size bobbins.

The result was nearly 800 yards of three-ply light fingering, about 16-20 WPI weighing only 5.8oz. I have not washed or swatched yet so those numbers could change a bit. I was actually surprised at the yardage, I could probably eke a sweater out of that. Or I could spin some more of the fiber and have more choices. Or I could spin it differently and/or overdye and make something completely different since there is still more than a pound left. At least the color is pretty much what I was attempting, a very light variegated icy blue. I’m reserving judgement on whether I really want to knit a sweater out of this yarn until after it’s washed and swatched.

Tags: color, fiber, spinning

More projects with/for kids

December 28, 2010 in crafting, needle arts, pattern drafting, sewing, with/for/about kids | 1 comment

I admit that I shamelessly copied this oogly eyeball from a picture on the internet. Unfortunately I cannot find the original source now to give credit but I see it’s not as unique as I first thought. I did make my own pattern and chose my own colors and my version is likely smaller than the picture that I looked at but it’s pretty much identical. I rarely if ever do that. Mostly because I’m not good at copying when I want to and moreso because I always have my own ideas on what and how I want to do things. The boy had wanted to make some monster stuffies and knowing how popular those are I thought we’d look around on the internet for images that we liked and then combine our favorite features into our own monster stuffie pattern. Along the way we saw these fabric eye balls that were just perfect the way they were. So we made wool felt eyeballs. This was the first and unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the second which the boy did most of the sewing on because he wrapped it up and gave it away about as fast we got it finished. Made with wool and rayon felt and a little embroidery, and filled with wool stuffing and poly pellets. I still want to make the monsters but these were more fun than I would have guessed. Sewing a sphere is never an easy proposition but felt makes it fairly painless.

Here’s the girl carrying a baby doll in a pouch style baby carrier that I made for her cousin. Don’t worry, I made the girl one too. Now I’ve made so many baby pouches I could practically cut one out without a pattern and that’s exactly what I did here. But the style that came to mind as particularly appropriate for a doll carrier, was inspired by a real pouch style baby carrier idea from my friend Jen. I traced the finished pouch so that I’d have the pattern for keeps. I may post the pattern here after I try it out on a few more kids and different sized baby dolls/stuffies. I’m also going to “stick a pin” here to remind myself to tell you a little trick I thought up regarding handmade presents.

Just last week my neighbor shared with me several bags of yarn she’d received from someone else. The girl had seized on a small ball of pink and white novelty yarn which I decided to turn into a sweater for her favorite doll. (Don’t ask about the “dress” she has on.) My first top-down raglan sweater, ha ha. Maybe I’ll feel better about starting on a person-sized sweater now. I accidentally left the little sweater out and the girl saw it. I thought the surprise was ruined because of course she asked who it was for. But I answered with the name of her doll. The girl replied very seriously that she would wrap it up so that said doll would not see it before Christmas!

Tags: kids art, knitting, remnants, toys

My thoughtful girl

December 22, 2010 in sewing, with/for/about kids | 3 comments

I am so proud of the girl. She has been making a list of all her favorite people and making gifts for them. Some of her choices have been interesting but I’ve done my best to help her carry out her plans. This faux leather wallet is for one of her boy friend/heroes. Though he is nearly 6 years older, he has always been kind to her and she looks up to him like another brother.

I was a bit dismayed when she said that she wanted to make him a wallet but after a bit of thought I pulled out this remnant of black vinyl. She sat on my lap at the sewing machine and chose one of his favorite colors, red, for the thread. We then turned the dials of my simple machine through the different stitch patterns and sewed parallel lines of red stitching against the black. I folded the rectangle wrong side out and sewed; her eyes danced as we turned it right side back out revealing the simple pouch shape. She chose a matching red resin snap to close the wallet.

It didn’t photograph so well, and it’s a bit on the bold side, but I think he will actually like it. She seemed matter-of-factly pleased with the finished project and immediately wrapped it and wrote the label. I had to retrieve it after she went to bed and carefully unwrap it to photograph it!

Tags: bags, boy clothes, color, embellishing, kids art, remnants, snaps

Seed Rows Stocking Cap

December 21, 2010 in needle arts, pattern drafting | Permalink

I originally bought this self-striping yarn to make socks for myself. I did but they were a little snug so the boy happily took possession. Then I made the girl socks out of the leftover. Then their Nana requested a hat made from the same yarn. Now discontinued. Ravelry saved the day—I posted an ISO on a Wednesday and had another skein in hand on Saturday!

I wanted to make something that showed off the self-striping yarn but didn’t look like just any storebought hat. So I used seed stitch, random texture and the stocking cap shape. I think it turned out fairly well. More details on my Ravelry project page.

It can also be worn with the seed stitch brim up or down and the point to the side or to the back. I also tried sticking the point down into the hat and wearing it like a slouch. I’ll make some modifications the next time I make one but it turned out to be the general shape I intended. All in all, I’m pretty happy with my improvised design.

Tags: knitting

GrabberMouth the Game

December 21, 2010 in crafting, free patterns, with/for/about kids | 2 comments

Coming soon to a dinner table near you . . .

The boy has been studying geometric solids in school and brought home a tetrahedron pattern (like a pyramid with a triangle base). We glued it to cardstock and then glued it together. He colored one, two and three dots on three of the sides and a set of scary teeth on the last side.

Then he made up a game, Grabbermouth, to play with his pyramid shaped die. Simple and surprisingly fun! Each player rolls the die in turn hoping to be the first to add dots to equal six. If the “grabbermouth” lands face down you lose all your points. This was easier for the girl using tokens so she didn’t forget how many points she had. He then set to making a similar die with a cardstock cube.

The rules for Double Grabbermouth got a bit more complicated. I was impressed with his creative use of the shapes and his ability to create the rules to a new game that probably owed a bit of inspiration to the dreidel game but certainly has its own character.

Links are included to templates from Zoomschool so you can make your own geometric solid shapes from paper.

Tags: kids art, paper crafting

Seasonal Stitching: math and design

December 15, 2010 in crafting, sewing | 1 comment

I’ve had in mind to make some balsam sachets for a while. I saved the needles from last year’s wreath and they still smell wonderful. My first step was to haphazardly cut up a scrap of muslin, quickly sew two sides through the serger and then stuff with the fir needles and leisurely sew up the last side by hand. I tried sewing up the last side with a straight stitch on the machine but it was more trouble than it was worth. There are some instances where I can handstitch neater and faster than the machine can.

I’ve had lots of different ideas on how to decorate the outer covers for these but this one popped up at the last minute. I paired up these toasty squares of wool felt and pulled out some embroidery floss. I then looked at pictures of balsam branches, drew some and forced myself to simplify until I had a pleasingly spare design. I then traced the final pattern onto tissue paper, labeled each dot with a letter and wrote down letter pairs in order of sewing. I borrowed this method from the boy’s second grade math homework. It worked a treat and the girl was pleased as punch to be able to follow the letters much like a dot-to-dot puzzle. The hardest part for her was sticking the needle up through the back.

The snowflake ended up being more complicated so I decided to try working out the stitching pattern before writing it up. Halfway through the boy wanted to help and I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only was he able to accurately stick the needle up through the back side of the work, but he was also able to figure out a thread conserving stitching pattern with very little guidance. Both were suitably impressed when we gently tore away the tissue paper to reveal the design. I finished the sachets by blanket stitching round the squares, stuffing the balsam filled muslin bags in between before closing up the last side. You can see we have a few more to finish. I will let the kids decide who to gift these to. We used to have one in the back of our car and the warmth of the heater in the winter or the summer sun would give the car just a hint of balsam fir fragrance.

Tags: embellishing

Sometimes being a packrat is worth it

December 12, 2010 in crafting, with/for/about kids | 1 comment

Last week I pulled out the ingredients for melt and pour soap. My crafty double boiler, some clear soap base, various fragrance and essential oils, a stone shaped mold previously used for plaster, a silicone mini muffin tin and regular old food coloring. Soap molding isn’t something I do regularly but I’ve done it a few times and some of the ingredients overlap with other crafts such as candlemaking. The girl and I started on this project one morning and once the boy saw what was going on I ended up having to get more soap base, creamy white shea butter. The boy ended up making most of the different combinations but the girl enjoyed making the labels, which I cut from full sheet label paper I had on hand.

Purple glittered gentle rain, light blue clove, light brown clove with actual ground cloves mixed in, clear green peppermint, pink jasmine, clear orange bergamot, natural white cinnamon with cinnamon sprinkles, and maybe a few others that didn’t make it into the picture.

This project is so easy and fast that it is fun to do with kids and I think I have mostly done it with kids other than mine until this time. You can even use a glass mixing bowl in the microwave to melt the soapbase and any plastic container can be a mold. Clean up is a breeze of course!

Tags: color, kids art, soap

Bling, yes I did

December 12, 2010 in crafting, refashioning | 3 comments

I actually wrote this on Friday but didn’t upload the accompanying picture until today.

I’m not a bling kind of person. I don’t wear much jewelry, beads, sequins, etc. But the girl likes bling. Apparently it goes well with the passion for pink. So we were passing by the clearance section of the craft store and she spotted some pink name appliqués. Despite the appearance of a number of unusual names, hers was not one of them. Too bad, they were quite cute. Before I could stop myself, I pointed her toward the non-personalized iron on jeweled designs from Jolee’s Jewels. She picked one out with glee and happily carried it to the register. When we arrived home I pulled out an almost new black shirt that I thought would work well. She agreed heartily and we set to work. Although the directions were a little strange it was not hard to do. And the results are admittedly quite pretty.

I am a little concerned about the durability of the now hand-wash, drip dry tee shirt. In retrospect, I wish I had trudged down to the basement and pulled out the heat press. Later, I confirmed my suspicion with a quick internet search which revealed that the crystals can be heat pressed at 350°, quite a bit higher than the temperature of an average household iron. That’ll have to wait since she wore the shirt to school. Hopefully I can give it an extra pressing tonight.

Tags: embellishing, girl clothes

Quick, what time is it?

November 30, 2010 in crafting, food, free patterns, needle arts, repurposing | 1 comment

I haven’t been posting so much lately. I’m not really sure why. I thought I would have more time to myself with the girl in afternoon kindergarten. It doesn’t seem to have worked out that way. But I suppose I have been able to volunteer at both of the schools.

Various photos:

This is the second pair out of the same ball of self-striping yarn. Matching socks for the boy and his sister.

These are scraps of an old wool blend blanket that the boy and I dyed various colors. It was originally a light green and the boy had a great time seeing what would happen when we overdyed with various colors. It took the dye fairly well but unfortunately it did not felt well. That may change the intended use.

Swatch of eyelet lace border that I originally improvised for the strangling vine lace scarf. Someone on Ravelry saw my project photos and asked about the border. I had already gifted the scarf so I had to look at the photos to try and figure out what I had done. I hope I got it right. Although the pattern is quite simple, I have a hard time remembering to stop and write down what I am doing. Probably why I didn’t write it down in the first place. So my Ravelry notes for this are now out there and I really hope there aren’t any mistakes for the sake of anyone who may try to knit from them.

This one because you need a food photo don’t you? Recently I have made chili with pulled chicken instead of beef in it and I like it very much. I use poached chicken thighs and pull the meat apart with two forks. And I always put the diced green pepper in just before serving so they stay nicely crunchy.

Tags: knitting, remnants

Girly Socks

November 9, 2010 in needle arts | 1 comment

Girly socks. Plain knitting, nicely colored commercial yarn. This is a wool/cotton/nylon/elastic blend from Patons, available in chain stores. We’ll see how it holds up. Quick knit done in short bursts mostly in the car or while waiting for something/someone. It’s getting easier to make plain socks as I go. And I’m glad that I do not apparently suffer from second sock syndrome – the difficulty of finishing the second sock in a pair. Soon I think I’ll be able to make plain socks without consulting my charts and instructions. Next pair is mine.

The girl wore the first sock mismatched as soon as it was off the needles. I finally finished the second sock so she wore them together today over her tights. I only used half the skein so I could either make a pair of mitts, another pair of socks or maybe a doll sweater.

Tags: color, girl clothes, knitting