FO: Iron On Transfer Onesie

I decided early on that our nephew needed a onesie depicting his dad's favourite phrase.



Especially since he's about to start figuring out this thing called walking.



It was a huge hit. I just hope it fits him because he's big for a 9 month old.

Sleep is Entirely for the Weak.

You know when you sorta, kinda have an idea of what you want to make for someone? Then you waffle. Then you waffle a bit more. Then you can't decide on yarn or a pattern. Then when you have the pattern, you don't have the needles. Then when you get all the materials, you decide that the person would like something better? Then when you actually have your shit together, it's five days before Christmas?

Yeah.

*felt beads*

OR ... you finish knitting a cowl or hat and then you look at it and think "Man, that looks really pathetic. We better go get them something else".

I lament the fact that I can't just give someone one thing. One?

Not possible.

*i'm trying to be soothing and calm*

So I totally ran out of time on this handmade christmas thing, but I gave it a good go.

Final tally:

- two hats
- five cowls for girls
- three cowls for guys
- one handwoven blanket for my mom, a second one WILL. BE. done by tomorrow evening
- homemade granola
- two pairs of fingerless mitts
- one flower brooch

(Now that I have tallied this, it looks a little sad. That's IT?)


I still have to do:
- applique on a tshirt
- sew up a couple of stuffies
- three cowls for girls (two can wait until the 25th)
- three cowls for guys (not due until the 25th)
- one pair of armwarmers (not due until the 27th)

I did not manage to:
- knit socks for my sister's boyfriend, even though he asked super nicely and it's the only thing he wants
- knit socks for R, even though he really needs another pair
- weave a blanket for my sister or my dad
- finish the rag quilt for R (didn't buy enough fabric for the border and no matter how I do the math, I will need to buy more fabric for the f*$@ border)

However, I did find out that it is entirely possible to measure out a warp, thread 432 ends through heddles and reed, and weave 3/4 of a blanket between Friday evening and Sunday evening - while making granola and completing a cowl from start to finish.**

** Please note: it is not enough time to simultaneously make breakfast, clean, make dinner, do groceries or walk the dogs. You will also feel dehydrated and a little wonky from lack of sleep and a steady diet of chocolate and sugared dried mango.

Felt Stones

December is a whirl wind.


Just a reminder to find a few moments of quiet and solitude.


In anticipation of a huge family Christmas, I'm already looking forward to when it's just the four of us again.

Happy Belated Anniversary to Me!

So my four year blog anniversary came and went very quietly. I toyed with the idea of doing a giveaway but given the eclectic collection of people who read this blog just for my postings about my parents, there really wasn't anything I could give to a "winner" even if I could get you guys to delurk and make a smarmy comment.

What I did do was spend some time going through my archives. Unlike most of the blogs I read, I don't have a focus for this one. I used to think I had to make it about one thing or another but then I realized I've never done just one thing. Ever. And really, my target audience is me. Anyways, I loved going through my old posts and reliving my theatre work, remembering Nori as a puppy, and all these anecdotes about my family that I never want to forget.

I pulled a list of some of my favourite blog entries together.

This was the time I almost developed multiple personalities because science hadn't perfected cloning humans in time for one of my theatre shows :: here ::

Then there was the time when Nori was on speed and went through withdrawal for three days. :: here ::

What amuses me to no end is that Dayna is truly THE second child. I used to know the consistency, density and viscosity of Every. Single. One. of Nori's poops. Now... I couldn't even tell you if either of them did their morning business. We (okay, just me) freaked out over everything Nori did or didn't do. Last night, I heard some painful sounding yelps of the Dayna-variety...but did I rush upstairs to go see what was wrong? Nope. I was in the middle of crafting and I didn't hear my name being bellowed so I figured everything was fine. Terrible. (Dayna caught her tail in the door but she's cool. That's another thing we've had to get used to ...a dog with a tail that thumps into things.)



Anyways... I digress again. R and I often talk about how much fun we had at my cousin Jen's wedding a couple of summer's ago. It was such a fun weekend away for us and we missed most of the family drama but it was awesome hearing about it afterwards. It cracks me up how much they worried about R (aka "Rostol") being my boyfriend given the initial sleeping arrangements prior to the wedding. :: here ::

Then there was the progress made when my parents finally realized there was nothing they could do about us living in sin - already a cult favourite :: here ::

Well, despite all that HAS changed in the past year with R going back to school and our move to a new city, our relationships really hasn't evolved that much from this :: here ::

On a crafting note, I've definitely noticed that the more I do, the more I want to do. (Ya think?!?) My projects from four years ago seem so juvenile to me now but I was pretty happy with them back then. I spent the weekend working on a bunch of new things.



I'm REALLY happy with the way they turned out. I wonder what I'll think about them four years from now?

Last Minute Gifts

R and I don't go to many birthday parties anymore, but we found ourselves agreeing to attend one a few weeks ago. R boycotts shopping for the sake of gift-giving in general but I hate showing up empty-handed. So we always try to compromise and pass along a bottle of wine or I try to make something.

This time around, I was really stuck for something. A couple of hours before the party, I grabbed an empty moleskin notebook and some fabric scraps and pieced out this baby.

The idea comes from the book "Last Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts" by Joelle Hoverson.

I love the way this turned out and have ideas for embellishing more notebooks in the future.






...added a fancy pen et voila! Good to go.

Mexican Fiesta Baby Shower

Here are some highlights from the latest baby shower I worked on for the past few weeks.  

The mommy-to-be is R's sister and we're super excited to meet the new baby who is due sometime next month.  Wanna know a great way to give my parent's a simultaneous aneurism? Excitedly announce at the dinner table that R and I are going to be aunt and uncle. Deep silence ensued while my parents worked that one out in their heads.  For that long, agonizing moment, they forgot that R had a sister.

The theme was a Mexican Fiesta and I volunteered to take care of the favours and decorations for the party. No way was I going to be responsible for poisoning a guest list of 60 people. I work much better with glue and paper.   

Originally, we were going to do a jungle theme because the momma wants to decorate the baby room as such. However, I stupidly thought that I would find more stuff going with a fiesta theme.  Newp.  Michael's had jungle wall decals with parachuting monkeys, safari felt shapes, animal wood shapes, plastic animal figures - you name it. Monkeys everywhere. Do you think I could find a sombrero or chili pepper lights in London? Ha!  I bitched to everybody who would listen how much I missed having easy lunchtime access to Kensington Market and Chinatown. At times like these, I even miss IKEA.  As it turns out, a good friend of mine called a dozen places in Toronto trying to source out these tacky things only to find out that they no longer stock chili pepper lights because these are not CSA approved.  It was difficult, but I had to let go of the obsession. 

My first brainstorm was to buy a bunch of mini cactuses as favours. Unfortunately, they're not really in season and they cost at least $2.50 to $2.99 each. Totally not in my budget for the number of people coming. Then I thought of doing up packages of salsa/hot sauce, mojito mix or spicy popcorn mix... but I didn't want to go to all the trouble and expense if people were going to just let it sit in their cupboards.  I decided to go to a local nursery to check out their selection of cacti and succulents anyways and I ended up having the epiphany that I'd been waiting for. I love when I have these!

I knew that I wanted to make mini pinatas weeks ago, hence all the balloons that got blown up. So I spent (you really don't want to know how many) hours making tissue paper pinata bases.

 [Tip:: I used 2 parts glue to 1 part water. The thicker it was, the faster it dried. If it was too watery, it just ripped the tissue paper. Believe me, you don't have time for the tissue paper to rip and get stuck to everything except the balloon.]

Here's the packaged product. After 45 balloon pinatas, I realized I left the opening way too big to close up with tissue paper alone. But I needed it that big in order to get everything inside. You better believe that at three in the morning, I was not happy when I realized this. After a significant amount of stewing, I let go of my initial ideas and improvised. I'm really happy with the finished display.

I varied the colours based on the tissue paper I had on hand. There really wasn't a specific colour theme again. I've discovered that I can't pick one or three colours and go with it. At least, this time around I just wanted everything to be colourfull and it worked well with the theme of a fiesta.


Wanna see the goods inside? I know you do.

At the nursery, I picked up a few packages of seeds for tomato, jalapeno and sweet pepper plants. I used a ceramic baby foot mold I picked up at Michael's to create plantable seed papers. You can also find them :: here ::  I blended some paper in our blender with water, strained it and plopped the mess on top of the mold. I layered on about 7 or 8 seeds. Then plopped another layer of paper mess on top.  (Plopping is a very key technique. I'm not even kidding - if you don't plop it on the mold in one lump, it won't bind when it dries.) Then, I pressed the water out with a sponge and dried it with my embossing gun. Ideally, I should have just let it sit and dry before taking it out of the mold but I didn't have the time. I have no idea if the seeds will germinate now that they've been blasted with concentrated heat for two minutes. Oh well. I never said I had a green thumb.  

Lastly, I packaged up some potting soil and placed it in one of those biodegradable pots that can be planted when you're ready to transfer the plant outside. I included planting & harvesting instructions and a recipe for either a tomato salsa, jalapeno salsa or greek salad. While I was gluing the recipes to the card stock, I realized I should have typed up a recipe for some sort of sweet pepper mexican dish. Too late. Aish. Greek Salad...seriously, what was I thinking?

Other side projects included :  

Mexican Mustaches as an ice breaker for the party guests. I LOVE these.

*R and my dad indulging my whimsy*

Turning a Curious George pinata into Jorge the Curious Mexican.

Felt garland. 

Succulents wrapped in tissue paper for room accents.

A baby name banner.

Fake flowers on colourful tea towels for a more festive feel.

And I finished the blanket...

I can't wait to do another fiesta themed shower. Pinatas are awesome. They're especially awesome when you crush them with your hands and the glue-y paper crackles while it crunches. It's better than popping bubble wrap.

Sisterhood of Crafts with Vices

I had a crafty retreat this past weekend with a few girlfriends. No structure. Just lots of food, movies, girly chatter, and sangria fueling our inspiration. I rearranged my basement workshop and absolutely loved having people over using the space. I normally spend my weekends working on some project or another, so it was awesome having these quirky gals over for the company. I was joined on Friday night by blogless Heather, Inge, Sue and blogless Laura.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the camera out fast enough to capture Friday night's orgy of crafting and eating. I was too excited. From what I recall, I was speaking in exclamation points all night and it was one giant Show 'N Tell. As I was laying out the smorgasboard of food, Inge made sangria. Hello! I think it needs to become a dietary staple around here.

For the most part, I just fluttered around checking things out. There were scrapbooking magazines to flip through, cool gadgets and doo-dads to inspect and lots of catching up with people. It was therapeutic just being able to share, trade ideas, laugh and talk. The girls discovered my 1" button press early on and it got a steady workout during the night. About the only thing I really accomplished was turning a heel on a sock and part of this secret project for later. I almost squeezed my brains through my ears trying to get these blown up:



Nori had no idea why I was doing this, or really, WHAT I was doing... and it kept freaking her out. Balloons are evidently yet another thing on her black list of "EXTREME DANGER. FIGHT OR FLIGHT".



On Saturday, the group dwindled down to just me, Inge and Heather. I was completely overstimulated, as Heather pointed out, and didn't get much sleep...but WHO CARES? I didn't get out of my pajamas until it was time for dinner. After a monster breakfast, I decided my brains could handle additional trauma and spent the rest of the weekend staining my new toy. Inge and Heather would periodically call out to ensure that I hadn't passed out from inhaling all the toxic fumes. (Sneak peek!! I'm almost done!!!)



Inge was a power house scrapbooking ninja and was really close to accomplishing her goal of 20 scrapbook pages. Here she is working on a starbucks travel mug insert. Super cute! Besides the importance of sangria and bellinis in our daily life, Inge also imparted this bit of wisdom: "Everything looks better with a little glitter." Very key. In turn, Inge discovered hot water bottles at 3am.



Heather finished a whack of cards which were her goal for the weekend. (Sorry, H! I didn't get a picture of them!) We finally got ourselves mobilized on Saturday night and headed to the mall for some dinner. The shopping got thrown in at the last minute while we waited for our table at Milestones. The girls tried on some clothes and shoes while I embraced my inner "crotchety old lady" and tried to restrain myself from laying the smack down on some teenagers. In cahoots with Heather, Inge's hubby, discovered where we were going for dinner and ordered us a bottle of wine to celebrate Inge's birthday. We also ordered a round of bellinis to start us off which almost finished me off for the rest of the evening due to the overwhelming brain freeze I suffered after my first enthusiastic slurp.

And as for R...he was a saint as usual. After everybody left, we had this enlightening conversation:

R: Do you know what the most expensive thing is about having a bunch of girls over?

N: No, what?

R: Toilet paper.

When I first moved in with R, he once tactfully asked me how many squares of toilet paper I used because he couldn't believe how fast we were (read: I was) going through his TP stash. Up until that point, it never occurred to me to count. I think I said "4".

As R has also pointed out many times now... I lied.

Simple Something

I needed to make myself something that would hold threads and scraps of fibre that I would otherwise brush off my lap and onto the floor. I've been meaning to sew a thread catcher but haven't had the chance yet.

This weekend, I grabbed a jar I had handy and it did the trick. I just happened to have some rub-on transfers in my stash so I thought I'd spiff up my new thread holder. It was instant magic and now I want to use rub-ons on everything. There's a sex joke in there somewhere.



Email me if you don't have the supplies handy and I can put together a kit for you.
You'll want to rub-on everything in sight too.

Holiday Photos

Happy New Year!

If I ruled the universe, we would have the entire month of December off from work to get ready for the holidays. Although, I suppose then that the entire month would be a holiday and the chaos would just get pushed back six weeks. Anyways, if it were up to me, I'd spend December baking, crafting, shopping, decorating, visiting friends and family, singing carols, walking in the park with R and Nori, and hanging out by the fireplace.

But since a lot of that had to happen in a compressed amount of time, I'm just catching up with myself in 2009. You know me, late for everything.  Unfortunately, I didn't manage to take any good pictures of the presents I made for people, so you'll just have to take my word for it that they turned out awesome.

At some point between 1am and 2am on some unknown date pre-Christmas, I decided I really needed to make a felt circle garland. So I made three. 

I knit a little elf hat on the hopes that some little elves who needed clothes would come along and be so grateful that they would stay and help me with the stuff I had to do. No luck. 

We never did get our Christmas Tree this year and we even failed in our attempt to get one at a boxing day sale simply because we couldn't bear the thought of going out and facing the crowds. I made some ornaments anyways and hung them up for fun.  I love them so much, I might just keep them up year round. 

We didn't get to hang up stocking on our mantles either, but I did manage to decorate them a little. My new red sequined tree and Seussical-like elf hat make me smile every time I see them.  I don't want to put these away EITHER. I kinda like this festive feel to the living room. 

 


...and then there's my lopsided little wool tree. I need to make him some new friends this year.

I'm super excited for all the crafting possibilities this year. I was thinking of making a goals list but decided I'd rather not pressure myself with something like that. So ... I'm just going to wing it and find joy in what I do manage to create this year.  What's next? Not entirely sure yet... but that's the fun part.

In our own little world

Preserved a little bit of the greenery outside before the ground froze and the snow fell.



It's so easy to let time swoop by and run us over. This is just another reminder to myself that spring will come again soon, to slow down ....and enjoy.

Popping In

I've lapsed into another blog silence by accident. Just busy settling into our new life here in a different city. It's been fun adjusting. There's been a lot of:

Unpacking
Exploring
Reorganizing
Meeting of the neighbours
Remembering to take the garbage out to the curb.
Not being able to sleep because you're wondering if the raccoons are going to throw your garbage around the street in anger because all they've found is empty soup cans and unwanted take out menus.
Debating whether or not we should rake the leaves because everybody else on our street has.
Deciding that the novelty of raking leaves has quickly lost its appeal seeing as the trees are still shedding and give up after making five neat piles in the backyard. (Note that after five minutes, piles have disappeared)
Ploughing down students on my way to work because clearly, my body is still programmed to walk at mach five toronto commuter pace.
Screaming at every single spider I see and scaring the be-jaysus out of Nori.

So ya know. The usual.

Anyways, hope you're enjoying the fall weather! We certainly are.



These days, R studies... while Nori tries to help him procrastinate



We've been enjoying our walks a lot more since Nori's been off leash for almost two months now. She's definitely enjoying this freedom to run and explore, but she's also become more obedient as a result. It's SO awesome. She continues her personal mission to destroy sticks, but you can't win them all. A girl has to have a few vices.



I haven't been doing much knitting these last few weeks but I have been collecting acorn caps.... cute, huh?



Things are good. (Miss ya!)

Everything Nice

Along with "Sugar and Spice", comes a little bit of gluttony and a bombardment of those things which are considered cute and sweet. Thought I'd share a few of the decorations that I put together for a baby shower we had on Friday night. As always, I prefer creating decorations that can be reused by the mommy-to-be at a later time. I may or may not have gotten slightly carried away with this candy theme.

The washcloth lollipops were incredibly fun to make. Not an original idea of mine, but I figured out how to put it together on my own after seeing a few online. I used two washcloths, a baby spoon and some cellophane and curling ribbon. Love the way they turned out!



I purchased glass baby bottles and filled them with candy. Gumballs worked the best and I thought they looked the cutest.

We put candy necklaces around the wine glasses to carry on the theme.



More washcloth lolli's and a receiving blanket to make a decorative focal point.



I rolled washcloths and placed them in paper muffin cups with a bit of ribbon. They were supposed to be cupcakes but it didn't quite work out that way. They just ended up being weird petit-fours, so I went with it. I also rolled receiving blankets with cellophane to create giant colourful "candies".



Lastly, there were my swiss rolls! I rolled brown facecloths with white onesies to create these. I love how they turned out even though people weren't entirely sure WHAT they were called.



Unfortunately, I was stuck working with a lot of pink. A shade which, if it was on your face, you'd want to blot out with a lot of concealer. I didn't necessarily want to have a pink party. They just don't make girl stuff in awesome colours like cranberry red, deep blues, rich greens, warm oranges and chocolate browns. No. Pink it was. Unless you wanted to be stuck with sickly yellow, underbelly of a fish-green and washed-out blues as alternatives.

Dear Baby Designers:

There ARE other colours in the spectrum. Just wanted to put it out there.

Thank you.