11 posts tagged “crafts”

Since we moved into this house, we've been "making do" with the office room.  We jammed our desks and entertainment center in here with two fold up chairs initially.  Then we rearranged and took pieces of the desks away so we could fit our couch in here.  But it certainly hasn't been perfect.  I have to sit sideways when I use my laptop, and the couch is falling apart (I bought it for $50 used from our neighbor's grandma back in 1998).  Plus, there wasn't room for a craft desk, so all of my crafty stuff has been shoved in the closet and I work out of the overflowing bins when I do a project.  We spent more time in this room than anywhere else in the house, between our desks, the playstation, and the TiVo.

So it's time for a little more rearranging to make this more livable instead of just making do.  The last few weeks have been for trips to IKEA, first for brainstorming, and then for making lists and plotting.  Of course, some time in Visio recreating the current layout and then rearranging digitally instead of with our muscles and that helps when comparing which furniture is better to buy.

We are going to redo the office and turn the guest room into my crafty room.  The old couch is moving in the craft room, because it's just fine for one person to sit in still, it's only when there's two that the cushions split.  So I can sit and knit with it.  The office will get a bit of new furniture.  The craft room will use the shelves that were previously in the closet and a small desk that had the phone on it in the office, as well a new desk/shelf unit and some tables for projects.

I've been cleaning up a storm, clearing out a ton of old junk and then moving things around to make room.  I still have a bit to do, but every day I'm making steady progress.  It's amazing to throw stuff away and realize just how old some of this stuff is and that there's not a time I'll ever really need it.

Of course, if I just lived in IKEA, that would save some money and time ;)  But I'm so excited about all of this, it really is a welcomed change and a very worthwhile project!  

IKEA had one room they had set up as a craft corner, with a beautiful countertop and even wrapping paper and ribbons on rolls. Love!

Where do you get recommendations for new books to read?

My favorite resource is actually looking at what other authors write for other publishing houses that I like.  I've been reading books by Bethany House Publishing since I was 8 years old, when my mom first bought me a Mandie book.  She read Janette Oke (tagged books), the first few books of multiple series, and then when I got old enough, I bought the rest of the books to those series and read more from the library.  So now, it's easy to recognize the spines of other Bethany books on the library shelf.  They have expanded their number of authors all the time, and so that makes for a larger selection too! 

As far as my novels go, I don't tend to read what other people are reading, so it's not as easy to just skim through sidebars here at Vox.  So things like going to the bookstore and browsing the aisles is a good way for me to learn of new authors that I may not have heard of yet.  This is true in the crafting/knitting area, and the Christian fiction (tagged books).  I did used to troll the romance aisles, but I just can't find anybody I love as much as my favorite Romance author, Jude Deveraux (tagged books), so I stopped trying.

When I'm trying to see what new knitting books I want to read, I like to go  to a site that sell knitting books and see what is the most popular, like Knit Picks' bestseller list.  Then I search for those on the library site to see which ones we actually have.  General crafting books or cookbooks (other book loves of mine), I'm more likely to go browse the library shelves until I find something interesting and somewhat current.

I organize my reading here on Vox, and then in the last year or so, I've enjoyed working on author pages on Wikipedia (my wikipedia profile has some links) to keep up the book lists and info about the authors I'm enjoying the most.  I tagged all of my books here on Vox with the series name and the author name so it's easier for me to see them when I'm looking to remember what books I've read from which author or whatever.

I'm interested to see if anybody in my neighborhood answered this qotd, it was definitely interesting to me!

Jamming all the essentials for flowers into one bin. We are just doing a few bouttineers to go along with the florist's but i like to be prepared!

Decopaging a box with tissue and hand painted paper :)

It's been a while since I've made a knitting post (posts tagged "knitting")!

Recap of 2006: Back at the beginning of November, I had the idea to learn to knit so I'd have something to do when we were driving down to California on our trip.  I started with a long scarf, and knew I wanted to keep learning more.

When I was done with that, I quickly cast on for my next scarf, a softer one out of Lion Brand Homespun in Barrington.  I'm using a pattern from The New Knitting Stitch Library which is *p1, k1*, p1 on right side, and k3, *p3, k3* on the wrong side, using 18 stitches (stitch pattern is 6 stitches plus 3).  It's making long stripes, and with the homespun hides all patterns slightly so I wanted something slightly more interesting to try and show it more, and this works well. 

At the beginning of December, I decided I wanted to try and make some potholders for my mom's Christmas present.  3 is always the perfect number in my head, so I set out to make 3 different colored potholders using the Lion Brand pattern.  I originally got Lion Cotton in Poppy Red, Seaspray, and Sagebrush, but then I wasn't sure this was as much my mom as it could be.  So I decided I could make some for my Mother-in-law, too, and the Seaspray and Sagebrush were much more her.  I found some Sugar n Cream in Black and Americana Ombre for my mom and Seashore, great match for my mother-in-law's other colors. 

As I worked on these, my wrists got sore of pulling hard to work with 3 strands held together at all time, and I started trying out continental and that helps, but slowed me down some!

So I finished my mom's a few days before Christmas, and started in on my Mother-in-law's on Christmas morning.  I ended up finishing them once we were at their house, and telling her what I was doing.

Here's the finished sets, all tied up together with a crocheted chain, folded nicely to almost look like a heart in the center!  You can see them in process here, too (photos tagged "potholder")

That ended out 2006 nicely, with 1 scarf and 6 potholders finished and 1 scarf in process.

Where I'm at now: My scarf in progress is doing VERY well - it's over 60" when I measured it the other day (my first was 99", I'm trying to get to that same goal or somewhere near it.  If I sat down and knitted consistently on it, it would be done, but I'm using it as my fun knitting during TV because I have the pattern so memorized I can do it without thinking!

And then that comes to my newest project.  I really want an afghan.  I have one that's crocheted that a friend made me that is on our couch all the time, but I'd like to make one that I like.  So I figured this would be a good way for me to learn a variety of techniques.  I'm not quite as crazy as to start on Barbara Walker's afghan because 1-I don't like all the old patterns (created in the 70s or 80s) and 2-the squares are much larger than I prefer.   I've been pouring over stitch books like the aforementioned New Knitting Stitch Library, and now the Stitchionary (some of these were on the Lion Brand site to start with, but now I have the real book from the library), and I'm coming up with my own patterns and colors. 

I'll be using Lion Brand's Wool-ease this time.  So far, I have Forest Green Heather, Mushroom, Woods Print (a varigated color), and Dark Rose Heather.  I hope to get Cranberry, Avacado, Rose Heather, maybe Cocoa, maybe Purple (it's a really barney purple, so that doesn't quite match).  I've got 3 1/2 squares done.  First is Forest Green Heather in Small Diamond Brocade, Second is Mushroom in Purl Ridges, third is Woods Print in Simple Basketweave, and the one in process is Dark Rose Heather in Sugar Cubes.

To make it the size I'd like, I need 96 squares that are 6"x6" (which actually doesn't take too long to make depending on the complexity of the pattern).  I'm seeing this as a long-term project, and will always have something going in the background, I think.

My goals for early 2007 include finishing my scarf and continuing work onh my afghan squares, and purchasing the rest of the yarn for that.

I'd also like to make some things for the favorite kids in my life.  I'm not sure what yet, but at least a simple hat for Baby Leonard, and maybe a scarf for Leah.

Later on in 2007, I think I'd like to try socks.  I'm not sure if I'm good enough to do them yet, but I'd like to try.

As well as the actual knitting, I want to keep reading books about knitting and getting inspired.  Our library has a nice collection and I'm alternating my fiction reading with educational books, and I'll keep doing that until I run out.  I'm also enjoying TiVo-ing Knitty Gritty on it's special run on HGTV (We don't have DIY, where it's really from).  That's very inspiring.  Finally, continue growing my bookmarks and feeds for knitting blogs, wow there are some great people out there on the web who knit!

Oh, and blog more about my knitting, it sure is nice for me to see where I've come from and how I'm growing!

See the first part: I painted plates for my family members for this Christmas, and then made a variety of baked goods to go along with them.  

It wasn't hard to decide what baked goods to put on the plates.  A nice mix of the family favorites, and my favorite things to bake were important. But I did want it to be a balanced plate (which usually to my silly brain means and odd (instead of even) number of options) and be very pretty.

Earlier this summer, I found silver balls (dragees) that I was eyeing for a long time and found that even though some stores don't sell them anymore for health concerns, you'd have to eat like a whole container of this brand to be harmful!  So I knew I wanted to do some sugar cookies with those.  I love decorating sugar cookies anyhow, so that was a must-have.  I was in the middle of baking sugar cookies when the power went out, so that batch ended up not turning out well, so I did start again the next day with a different recipe (but chilled to be able to be cut out cookies) and that was much better.

Russian Teaballs was a must because that's an old family favorite.  We wanted Fudge, but E wasn't as happy with last year's marshmellow creme kind, so we found this recipe, and that was a good one, although I'd probably use the microwave to melt together the chips and milk next time.  Peppermint bark is such a fun idea, and I'd made it last year, so I was excited to try it again, this year using candy melts instead of white chocolate chips.  And finally, pumpkin bread is my favorite kind of special bread, and it's an easy recipe so I knew that should be part of it.

I mapped out my weekends in advance to make these just at the right time to have them all perfect in time.  The pumpkin bread freezes well so that could be done a little bit early, and fudge/peppermint bark could be done at least a few days in advance without a problem. Sugar cookies and Russian teaballs were done towards the end.

And then my favorite part of the plan was to get to go to each person's house and deliver them.  We weren't quite sure how well that would work, but we wanted to try... if nothing else, it was a good chance to try and see each person's Christmas tree. :)

So I baked and planned and ended up with a bunch of pretty things:

And then they all got put together on plates:
My creativity woke me up one morning with an idea for a tag to put on the plate, and so I sat down with illutrator and some ideas and made something that could be printed out and mounted on card stock.  We also had gotten red plastic wrap to put on them because we figured that when we delivered them, we didn't necessarily want people to figure out that the plate was special until they ate down and realized it was for them handmade. ;) sneaky, aren't we?

And voila!  the cookie plates were ready to be delivered.

We made it to see Matthew and mom right before she left for work last Saturday, and then saturday night we stopped to see Megan and Andrew.  Sarah and their family picked theirs up from Eric's birthday party the next day, and Matthew brought Lisa and Jon theirs that same day because they were at home sick.  So everything did make it to their homes, with the exception of the plate for my inlaws, which is coming with us on a trip this coming week.  They won't have the same assortment because it was going to be hard to make them and take them all with us.

I'm really happy with how these plates and their baked goods turned out.  I felt all Christmassy delivering them and it really was a fun experience for me.  Hope you enjoyed the story!

Back quite a while before Christmas, I decided that I wanted to give out plates of treats to give out to my siblings and their families.  I decided that the way to really make them special, for even the people who didn't eat treats, was to learn to hand-paint plates to put the treats on.

I started looking into what would need to be done to paint on plates, and started the many trips to JoAnn's. We found nice heavy glass platters to paint on, and I started sketching out designs.  I read a lot of books (books tagged as "painting") and even found a video at the library with the techniques I wanted to do.  I learned that the best way to paint on glass was to use a reverse painting technique, to keep the food away from the paint (interesting fact - the paint itself isn't a problem, it's the thought that bacteria could get UNDER the paint).  That meant starting with the smallest details and working my way upwards.  The most information I could found on this technique was from Donna Dewberry's One Stroke painting and the assocated Plaid paints, so I went with that.

I had never really done any painting before like this, I had done smaller things and a mailbox for my mom once, but most of my knowledge was in digital painting!  But I figured that worse come to worse, they turn out crappy and my siblings threw them away after getting the cookies, and it wouldn't be a big deal :)

Here's how I did it:

First you need to have a good newspapered workspace.  I did the card table and the floor too just to be safe because I'm such a clutz.

Then you need to completely clean a plate with rubbing alchohol.  The biggest problem was these terribly stuck on stickers that they had on the back - that took forever to scrape them off and then the cleaning wasn't hard.

I had a sketch for each plate idea before I went and bought paint.  I just made a rough estimation of flower shapes and where leaves and other elements would go, and then made a list of which colors would go into that.  I had purchased worksheets that had various ideas, like the one on the right that shows bees - that was actually a reverse painting worksheet so it showed how to do each portion of the bee in order so it shows up looking like a bee through the front of the plate.

Taking my sketch one step further, I actually drew on the fronts of the plates so I'd have an idea of where to paint once it was turned off.  One of the books had suggested this, saying to use a sharpie, but I was just too worried that may not come off.  So I dug in my craft closet to find old washable fine-tipped crayola markers.  These were actually ones I used in college, I could tell from the color set because my bible has matching highlights in various places :D

Again, this was a rough estimation, nothing overly specific.  The most helpful of this is not only the placement of the elements, but the lettering that had to be painted on backwards and it was easy for me to get a little confused in the middle of the word and want to write a "s" the correct way instead of backwards.

To begin painting, I started with the most intricate details first, like the centers of the flowers, and the letters that said "Merry Christmas", and the stripes of the bees (for this plate, each one was different).  This picture on the right is several layers into the process.  This was the first time I'd tried roses shapped like this, so it was a little more challenging, but they came out okay.  I did a few leaves at this point, but really added most of them later in the process so they were under the flowers.

With each layer, you had to let things dry quite a bit so as not to smear them, so it was a big process that way.  I worked on one plate at a time, rather than doing the same first steps on each, and that helped me stay focused on the one at hand, too.

As I got each plate done, I learned more about what types of motions would do what types of things, and that made them go more smoothly each time.  After finishing each, they went upside down (painted side up) on the floor in the corner to just continue drying.  When all 5 were done, I baked them in the offen to set the paint on (that's what the label on the paint suggested).

Here is how all 5 of them looked when I was done (in order of painting):

I finished up my scarf over the weekend and even went and got more yarn!

As I was getting further into doing it (see also Adventures in Knitting), I was less excited about how it feels.  With my scarf I bought at the end of the winter last year from Lane Bryant, I was happy playing with it and touching it.  This one just wasn't very soft yarn, and so even though it looks really pretty, it will not be my favorite ever.  That being said, this was really easy yarn to work with, and I could see every stitch nicely, so that make it perfect for my first attempt. (Red Heart Super Saver in 0315 Artist Print)

Here are some "in process" shots:

The scarf ended up being 99" long without the fringe on the bottom.  I wanted to be sure I had enough for fringe, and so that's why I stopped where I did.  I love the color, that turned out so nice with the varigated colors.

I probably could have done more fringe.

And there's one row that I messed up a little, just half of the row, and I didn't notice it until 2 rows later.  I'm calling that my "dancing with the stars" row because It's all Mario's fault that I was watching him instead of keeping track of my knit/purl combo :D  It's not super noticable though, so it's okay.

I'm pretty proud of myself for finishing my first project.  Not bad for only knitting for only a couple of weeks.

My next project is going to be a softer scarf.  I know, that's repetitive, but I think it's going to make me happier to have a scarf I'm really super happy with showing off.  Basically, I went to the store and touched every yarn with the intention of finding one that was nicer to the touch :D  E helped, he loves my newfound craftyness and having to go to JoAnn Fabrics so often ;)  I'm testing out a few different stitch combos to see if I can do something more creative this time around.  (i've tried probably 4 or 5 diff things in the last few days and haven't picked yet.) I bought two different yarns, one that I'm going to use for a scarf and I'm not sure what I'll do with the other yet.  The first is Lion Brand Homespun in Barrington (this is the one I'm using first - a nice purpley color, a bit deeper than the first scarf).  The second is Bernat Soft Boucle in Forest Shades.  Both are SUPER soft.  They won't be *as* easy to knit because it looks like it will be harder to see each stitch with the interesting texture of the yarn. 

You might also get a kick out of my "yarn bowl" picture - we had this larger tupperware bowl upstairs with leftover halloween candy, and my yarn kept falling in it.  So now it's the official yarn bowl. :D 

This is what happens when I have to close my browser and end up with a ton of things opened that I didn't want to loose!

I don't seem to have found any super duper starting out knitting sites yet.  Any recommendations?  I'm really not interested in starting something big like a sweater yet, but afghans and scarfs and small things aren't too intimidating. 

BTW, My first scarf is almost done, in fact, I'm worried that if I don't start making the fringe on the bottom, I won't have enough yarn, so I really need to stop knitting :D  I took pictures of it in process yesterday and must get them off my camera at some point.