handmade::to market, to market

Last year I had planned to make my bestie a market bag.  I had found this orange hemp yarn (Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy) at a local shop on crazy sale and scooped it up.  I mean it’s orange!  And hemp! And awesome!  After some debate on what to do with it, I finally settled on a market bag.

It’s the free pattern Everlasting Bagstopper from Knitty, and is seriously easy.  So easy.  You can knit this bag in a day if you’re a superstar knitter.  If you’re not a superstar knitter you can knit most of this bag in a weekend, then get to the last 10 rows and put it in a basket.  Then move it to a bag.  Then back to the basket.  Then the bag.  Several months later pull it out and look at it.

Put it back in the bag and wait a few more months.

Then pull it out and finish it in half an hour.  Now put it back in the bag.  A month or so later, take it out of the bag and put it in the basket.

A year past the the Christmas you were originally going to wrap it up and give it to your friend, take it out of the basket and spend 15 minutes sewing the handles on.

to market, to market

Then keep it because you love it.

ANYWAY.  It knits up super fast (if you’re normal).  My handles are a thrift store find from a few years ago - embroidered fabric ribbon that was in this huge $3 bag of lace and ribbon and whatnots including the owl and bird ribbon on the kid’s nature bags (which are still in heavy use, I need to make one for Anna).  I love how that thrift store ribbon is perfect for the color and style of this bag without any planning or forethought on my part.  It’s like the hippie universe aligning.

to buy a locally raised, grass-fed, free range chicken

hello, hello

I’m still here just, I don’t know.  Uninspired I guess?  Busy and tired and when the end of the day comes I don’t feel like writing.  I haven’t even started my Christmas newsletter which is ridiculous considering I have a photo for it that I paid for (or at least, will have to eventually pay for) and then what?

My first completed project for 2012 was the kid’s 2011 Christmas ornaments.  Hey, at least I’m predictably late but I finished them before Christmas 2012 so I WIN.  ha!

callum's penguin

claire's snowman

anna's snowman

the entire gang

The whole gang includes ornaments for other lucky kids.  I just mailed them yesterday, so you know, their mothers are going to be cursing me when they have to dig out the Christmas box to store them.  oops!

recrafted::a little bit of summer happiness

It has been raining ever since Steve and I got back from Niagara Falls on Tuesday (where it also rained.  Rain.  Rain.  Rain.  BORING.) and it is sucking every ounce of energy from my body.

oh yeah.  Steve and I went to Niagara Falls.  It was lovely.

The list of things I need to do is long and tedious and boring and all adulty but the rain is making me heavy and lazy.  Adulty is fun when it is just you and your lover doing adulty things, but not so  much fun when you’re paying bills and grocery shopping.

Recycled leather cuffs are fun, though.  That sentence sounds dirty in the midst of the above paragraph, but it isn’t.  Recycled leather cuffs are just pretty.

recrafting leather belts. well, one was leather, the other was vinyl.

I lie, the decorative belt was vinyl, but it is still pretty and summery and makes a pretty cuff.  Clearly I took this picture when the earth used to rotate around a sun.  ah, sun.

I made four cuffs in total, two for me and one each for the kids.  I was wearing the leather one last week while putting Callum to bed and he lost his mind demanding I give him the cuff because it was his.  Except it isn’t. IT’S MINE KID.  His had gotten lost so he just decided he’d claim mine.  He’s still small and I can totally take him, so the cuff has remained in my possession and all his yelling and screaming did nothing for him.  Take that kid! ha!

If you’re itching to make your own leather cuff, here’s how:

1. Go to the thrift store and find yourself a leather belt you dig for $0.50.

2. Go home.  Leave leather belt in a box in your garage for a few months.

3. Buy snaps.

4. Add snaps to the box in the garage and leave for a few more months.

5. Clean up garage and remember that you have leather belts and snaps.

6. Stop cleaning the garage to cut leather belt to appropriate length and add a snap.

7. Voila! Leather cuff!

recrafted::doll quilt

On the Mother’s Day weekend (when was that?  It feels like an eternity ago) I made Anna’s birthday present.  The observant amoung you may realize that the Mother’s Day weekend was not actually Anna’s birthday.   My response to that is that when your kid is 1, you can break a lot of rules.  1 year olds have absolutely no idea when their birthday is.   Anna would be delighted if I made her a cake and fed it to her tomorrow and would not at all care that her birthday was a month and a half ago.  1 year olds are awesome.

oh,  I wasn’t a total slacker.  She got a present on her birthday.  well, the weekend following her birthday.  The actual day of her birthday was busy so we just pretended it was just another day and did the birthday thing on the weekend.

She was one.  I have three children.  Shut up.

On the Mother’s Day weekend I made a little doll quilt that I had meant to make in time for Anna’s birthday and then didn’t because I was making wedding favours.  See?  That’s a very reasonable excuse if I needed to provide an excuse to the one year old, but I don’t so I’ll stop looking for excuses.

This little project was made entirely from odds and ends in my stash either left over from other projects or repurposed.  The backing is an old crib sheet that ripped, the binding was thrifted, and most of the fabric on the top was from a bundle I bought for the other doll quilt I made.  I’m really pleased and I’m starting to dig quilting, at least in minature.  Like I need another hobby.

pinky patchwork

an old sheet = perfect backing

That little cradle was also thrifted – $3!  I had big plans to have it painted by her birthday, but that didn’t happen.  I gave her that cradle for Christmas and had also planned to have it painted then, too.  Maybe by next Christmas.  This also just reinforces the awesomeness of 1 year olds.  I’m pretty sure 13 year olds would not dig a $3 Christmas present that I didn’t even bother to fix up.  Of course, there is no way of knowing if the 1 year old digs it either, but the 1 old year isn’t complaining.  Yet.

suzy, the dollie, isn't complaining either.

handmade::joy

We got hit hard with a nasty stomach virus this week and while it wasn’t horrific (unless you’re Steve, who is the worse sick person I know), it wasn’t a party either.  It was 24 hours of ick.  24 hours ain’t so bad, you know?  Not like, say, the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.

Sadly it meant we had to postpone Claire’s birthday party.  She was cool, though.  Took it in stride, just like she takes being sick in stride.  This girl, a bundle of mixed messages is what she is.  Of course she still got presents and a cupcake with pink icing and a sparkler so all was right in her world.

When the masses were all sleeping this afternoon I did this mad clean of the entire house, and finally got around to taking pictures of these little Joy Boxes the kids made Steve and I for Christmas.  They each painted and stickered a box.  I had limited the paint options hoping to unify the boxes somewhat, and was surprised to see how differently they still turned out!  I had also tried to limit the sticker options but I wasn’t organized enough to have the stickers out before little people were present and then of course, little people had opinions.

The stickers still get moved around pretty regularly by little fingers, and I’ve noticed that my box is now just a j y box.  I’ve been robbed of my joy!

Each box is filled with little round notes from the kids, or little pictures they’ve stuff in there when the mood strikes and in my case, a rock painted red.   I took a moment today to pause and go through my box and smile.  I certainly needed a little jolt of joy this week.   Or, you know, j y.

Joy to the world!

a stack of joy!