For this wreath (ravelry link), I ended up using Brown Sheep Burly Spun in Fuschia to cover the form and crochet one of my favorite ornamental edgings. Then I went to town on flowers and leaves, using my free Autumn Leaves pattern and the flower patterns I teach in Crafty Crochet Embellishments, modified to have 8 petals. Of course, any flowers and leaves you like will do. I used a variety of yarns in my stash: Harrisville Chunky (the pink flower the bird is on, and the large leaf), Noro Cash Iroha (light pink flower), Anzula Cricket (the leaves and flower with hand-dyed tonal variation that goes perfectly with the birdie), and Stitch Nation Full O’ Sheep (the purple flower). I also started a blue and white rendition, and you should have seen the MESS I made trying to dig out and mix all of the yarns. I loved every minute of it….but I didn’t love putting it all back in its place.

I even blocked the flowers before I sewed them on, which I thought I should show you so that you believe me. I actually used every last T-pin to spread out all of the flowers and leaves. People always ask me if they should really block things, even after I’ve spent several sentences explaining the benefits. “But what about afghans? And small things? And acrylic? Is it really worth blocking them?” Yes, in my opinion, it really is. Try it, and you’ll see. There is no harm in trying.

If you’re in San Antonio (or nearby), I’d love you to join me in making a wreath at Yarnivore on Saturday, December 3rd from 3-5 PM. Classes are always more fun when they are full, because we can share our ideas and stories as we crochet. We’ll even pick up the wreath forms for you if you sign up in advance.  I’ll also give you free patterns for all of the flowers and leaves I used, and I’ll probably save my blue/white wreath assembly for that day. Hope to see you there!

Crocheters, dig through your scraps and whip up some of these festive autumn leaves using my pattern/tutorial at Craftstylish. Each leaf takes oh….five minutes to make? Use various yarn weights to change the sizes and you’re good to go. I like the idea of scattering them on the table, or connecting them with a long chain to make a garland. Be sure to block the leaves to get the points in shape.

No matter your skill level, you can make your own place cards, which can be just as simple as stickers on a sheet of paper (as seen in the leaf photo). Here, I sandwiched different patterned and solid papers with felt flowers and sewed them all together for crafty effect. Check out my tutorial here. If you use cute cardstock, there’s really not a whole lot else you need to do to make your table fun!

And just in case you need something to show off your homemade rolls–the best part of the feast in my opinion!–sew up one of these coiled fabric baskets. Making them is mesmerizing, and might be a welcome break from your holiday stress. They also make great hostess gifts. Here’s my tutorial, again from an old Craftstylish post.

Hope your holidays are full of fun and sharing!

One of the things that sprung up this week was a pest. Something took down one of my Scarlet Runner Bean plants over a two day period. I asked around and many told me it was probably a squirrel. So, Paul helped me build this cheapo wooden frame, to which we stapled lots of netting. I can still get in and out of there quite easily, and so can the bugs, so I think it will be ok. I’m also using it to tie up my vertical supports, which the three remaining bean plants will be relying on very soon!

Another thing that screams summer to me is our clothesline. I may have mentioned this before, but we’re living in my grandma’s house, which doesn’t have the modern convenience of a clothes dryer, dish washer, or a second bathroom. But I really love it, living small. The Texas sun can dry my clothes as fast as any commercial dryer, and it gets me outside and moving around, which is always a good thing. If you have a clothesline kicking around in your back yard, why not try replacing the wires with plastic clothesline (won’t rust)  and bringing it back into use? Your electricity bill (and mother earth) will thank you.

Meanwhile in crafty news, I’m trying to do some sprucing up around the inside of the house. There is so much work to be done that it’s hard to even want to get started. The perhaps-plan is that eventually we might just move out, get the whole thing remodeled, then move back in. That makes it hard to want to spend too much time fixing things that will eventually get replaced, but, as I’ve moved around a few times in my life, I know that I want my home to nice no matter how long I will be there. So I started off by sewing some new curtains for the kitchen. I used a yard of  fabric I bought at Ikea  which was nowhere near enough, and paired it with solid green and a graphic black and white print. It’s a happy mix of organic yet not overpoweringly girly, so Paul can live with it too. I sewed a smaller set of  curtains to go over the kitchen sink, which was a mess at the time this photograph was taken. Who am I kidding, it is still a mess! Currently the kitchen is a faded buttery yellow with faded minty green cabinets, and black and white appliances, and these curtains are my happy way to tie them together.

And finally, in news not having to do with the house or the yard, I started a new crochet project for myself (ravelry page link). We had a slow day at the store which always gets my brain going about what to make next. I’m hooking Dora Ohrenstein’s Kristy Cardigan from the Spring 2010 issue of Interweave Crochet. I chose Arucania’s Ruca (viscose made from Sugar Cane) and it’s *so* soft and drapey. Word of warning, the yarn is a little splitty, which can get frustrating when you are working the post stitch patterns, but otherwise doesn’t bother me. I chose this light blue color which I almost never work with or wear. I think it’s going to end up looking great, but it was hard to step out of my usual purple palette. I’m hoping to finish it for TNNA. I can’t actually imagine wearing a sweater, even a short sleeved one, in Texas during the summer except maybe in an air-conditioned restaurant. Or maybe next year, when I’ve adjusted.

What’s going on at your house? What are you working on, and what are you looking forward to?

The book has six different ornaments made by six awesome bloggers, and each will tickle your different areas of interest. For example, my ornament is crocheted, Kayte and Betz’s ornaments are sewn, Susan’s is made with jewelry/wire techniques, Patricia’s is paper crafty, and Diane’s is straight up crafty-crafty. All use materials that you probably have on hand, meaning you can stash bust and make gifts at the same time. And just in case you’re not familiar with them, e-books are pdfs that you can download and print right after you purchase them, meaning that if you’re ready to start making rightthissecond, you’re good to go.

Each ornament comes complete with step by step instructions and how-to photos to walk you through the project. The ornaments lend themselves to your own personal touches, whether it’s the fabric you choose or what you embellish them with.

I’m really excited that Diane contacted me about participating in this project. If you read her post announcing the e-book, you’ll see that one of her goals was to produce a collaborative project where the collaborators actually get paid. That’s an idea I can support, and I’m proud to be included. And the icing on the cake is that we all agreed to donate 15% of the proceeds from the e-book  to Project Linus, a nationwide charity that distributes handmade blankets to children who are suffering from serious illness or trauma, or otherwise in need.

Here’s a close up of my Crocheted Flower Ornament. Not including my experiments with basic crochet stitches, my very first real crochet projects were these stars made from crochet thread. I’d like to say that the flowers I designed are even easier to make, and  if you have any crochet experience at all, you could hook up a whole batch of these while watching a few hours of TV.  And with a ball of crochet thread running about $2.50 these days, these will totally fit your budgetary needs. Try them out with any weight of yarn (hello scraps!) for a range of colors and sizes. I hope you’ll try them out!

Click here for more info on the e-book.

But we are settling in to the new place here, and when I was unpacking I found my Owl Banner that I made back in 2007.  Now that we live in a house, I can actually display it where other people might see it. My grandma (whose house we now occupy) already had some hooks set up on the porch so I used them, even though it means that the banner is a little off center. They were screwed in so that they *just fit* the banner so I went with it.

Here’s a photo of the process from 2007. I still really, really love the simplicity of this project. I figure I might have some new readers by  now, so I thought I’d share it again. You can find some general instructions for how to make the banner by reading my old post. But if you want lots of detail (including info on how to make your own foam stamp), check out the Party Flags I made for Volume 10 of Craft– they are essentially the same idea, but with cupcakes.

Happy early Halloween! I can’t believe I haven’t eaten any candy corn yet.

And since I’m terrible at keeping surprises, I’m just going to show you this one ornament I made without telling you where it’s going. It’s a cozy little house. I was a little sad to ship it off, but I can make more.

Hope you are all staying warm where you are!

“Now, you can’t have any till I photograph it. Oh screw it, let’s eat!”
(Edited to add: the recipe for this pudding is in the comments on my flickr photo. I add a little heavy cream to top it off.)

After that Paul went to the studio and I stayed home dyeing eggs. I only dyed 7 since I’m really the only one who likes hard-boiled eggs. And actually, that left plenty of room for experimenting. I decided to use wine glasses to hold the dyes and they turned out to be the perfect size.  Here are the tablets dissolving in vinegar:

This year I wanted to try wrapping the eggs in lace, which I saw in Martha Stewart Living. On top of that, I wrapped them up tight in hosiery to hold the lace in place (seal the hosiery with a twist tie). I wasn’t sure it would work but figured I would try some other things while I was at it, too- so I also tried metallic mesh, rick rack and paper flowers. Here’s one of them about to go into the dye bath.

The added benefit of the hosiery is that you can run a skewer through it and then hang just part of the egg in the dye bath. As a girl I used to sit there with my wire egg dipper, ever so patiently. I once tried to make a plaid egg using all of the different dyes– I don’t recommend it.

Here’s the finished lace batch. I don’t quite understand why the lace works at resisting the dye but the pantyhose don’t affect it.  Easter magic, I say. I love the seeping in quality of it, too. On the red/yellow one, I first dyed the lace-wrapped egg in yellow, then moved it, hanging skewer style, into the red bath. The dye creeped up the hosiery and gave it a weird marbled effect, which I like.

And here are the eggs I made with the other materials. The paper flowers worked quite well- almost better than the stickers (which made the hearts). The heart egg was also wrapped in metallic mesh which gave it a cool faded grid effect. To get the yellow flowers on the blue egg, I dyed the whole egg in yellow first, let it dry, then added the flowers/hosiery combo and let it sit in the blue dye.

I also made one with rickrack at the far right of this photo (see me removing it here). You can see more pics of the process over at flickr. Hope you’re all having fun, wherever you are.

Here it is, in all its glory, our joint project: a hat tree! Paul helped me make this from dowels, doll head knobs and a strange bun like  furniture piece that we found at home depot. It’s not the sturdiest thing ever, but it will help get my hats up off the table and hopefully attract some attention. I’ve been cranking out some new hats just in time for Saturday, and I’m excited about meeting more crafty people. If you happen to live in Bozeman, please stop by the Emerson Bazaar and say hello.  If you can’t make it, I’ll likely be placing most of the leftovers in my etsy shop, just in time to ship for the holidays.

I also went to a local craft fair as a shopper this weekend. The vendors were *very* traditional, but I was excited to find these hand crocheted snowflakes for $3 a pop. I know how long they take to make, and I’d much rather pay someone else to do it. Plus, they were starched so perfectly! I love that each one is different- this is kind of important to me as a shopper, because it makes me think the person at least had a little bit of fun figuring something out while making it. I scooped up six to hang in the windows, along with a gorgeous doily that I’ll have to photograph later. I also got a hand carved wooden ”Animals of Yellowstone” mobile with gorgeous pieces of oak, apricot, locust, cherry and black walnut dangling from it- in the form of moose, bears, and bison of course. I bought an ornament from the same guy last year, and I love his simple shapes.

Supplies:
-Assorted scrapbook paper in solids and patterns. If you have 8 x 8 paper,  cutting the 4 x 4 squares is a breeze.
-Ruler
-Scissors and Decorative Edge scissors
-Felt flowers (I used pre-cut flowers from American Crafts, you could also cut your own, use paper flowers, stickers, or whatever you want!)
-Sewing machine
-White Gel Pen or letter stamps and white pigment ink

Making It: Determine how many tags you’ll need. Cut that number of 4″ x 4″ squares from patterned scrapbooking papers. Fold each square in half. Next, cut that same number of 3 1/2″ X 1″ rectangles from  your solid papers with decorative scissors to make the name rectangle. For each card, center one rectangle over the bottom (”front”) half of a folded square. Place flowers on top as desired. Put the whole shebang under your sewing machine needle and stitch around the name rectangle with a long stitch. If you’re nervous about the flowers and papers moving while you sew, you may secure them with a glue stick, just make sure the glue dries before you sew so your needle won’t get sticky.

 
Note: The needle will  dull from sewing through paper, so you may want to mark it and set it aside for your next paper project– don’t sew fabric with it after sewing paper.

And voila! Place cards! To finish them off, I’m either going to write or stamp the names in white ink. There will be fifteen people at our dinner, so I’m going to wait until I have a list to do that part.

Gobble Gobble!

I finished my halloween garland today. It was a relatively simple project idea formed  while I was in the Martha Stewart Crafts section of Michael’s. I first saw the owl stamp on someone’s blog (can’t remember where, but they recieved it in a swap). I walked all the way around Michael’s with the itch to buy something, then wandered my way back to the MSC section in a daze because I wanted to make something halloweeny, but not disposable.  Here’s what I did:

First, I sewed some fabric flags  that were slightly larger than the stamp. (With wrong sides facing, fold a piece of fabric twice as wide as the stamp plus two inches or so in half. Sew up one long and one short side. Turn inside out, press). I made twelve. I painted the foam stamp with acrylic paint and stamped each flag.

(Tip: Start with white paint, then orange, then black. It’ll just be easier!)

After that, I trimmed all of the flags to the same height with my rotary cutter. As you can see, I’m in the middle of some other projects which I had to push out of the way.

I pinned each flag into the fold of a double wide bias tape, spacing them about 2 1/2″ from each other. I sewed a straight line for the length of the tape, making sure to catch all of the layers, and voila! A garland!

Although I intended to hang it the wall somewhere, it looked best on the couch with its other handmade friends. Now I have a halloween decoration that’s not just junk I’ll throw away after this month is over. Plus, I busted some of my stash. Mission accomplished.