Loving these little sculptures

Found these on Etsy today and had to share.

Purl Bee and Mimi Kirchner

Not sure if anyone saw these amazing doll patterns that the Purl Bee “commissioned” so to speak from Mimi Kirchner.  I fell in love with them at first sight.  They have a very turn of the century feel, but still modern and updated.  You should check out all of Mimi’s work.  I’m new to it but thanks to Purl Bee have been really inspired.  I have a few felt dolls in the works for Mazie, but I think they might take a back seat to making these.

No more bird poop on these

Another project undertaken over the last stretch was to recover some of our couch pillows.  I used to have a nice lovely arrangement of pillows on the couch and then came kids.  Two little girls (ours and my friend’s daughter who watches Mazie while I’m working) have successfully transformed the once beautiful pillows into some weird science experiment that I’m sure have made all of my guests’ stomachs turn as we suggest they sit on the couch.

So I’ve decided in general our house needs a bit of freshening up but I didn’t want to spend any money.  So I had this old cashmere sweater that had seen better days and turned that into a pillow cover.  I’ve also had excessive amounts of this rather bland beige linen and I’m struggling to find uses for it.  Truthfully, I don’t really like this fabric, but I had lots of it and it’s clean, and it’s better than the ones before.  I kid you not, I think one of them had some residual bird poop on it from when the girls dragged it outside with them and then in a freak incident it was pooped on.  No matter how much you clean I don’t think all that stuff comes off.

So here they are.

I now hate the two pillows from the original arrangement that were not nasty and disgusting.  They just don’t work with these so I’ll have to find something else in my stash to recover them, but that’s for another day.

My bedroom is the next item on the list.  I think once you have kids your room is always the last to get any attention.  Still have the same comforter from before Robbie and I moved in together.  It was mine immediately following college and was the nicer of the two options we had — mine from post college or his from college.  His swiftly went into the trash.  I couldn’t even donate it.

Hats — See I told you I had been doing something

So I finally had a moment to get my s#*t together and upload and organize some photos.  I’ve been meaning to post the hat I made for my husband for some time now and here it is finally.  He received this hat actually pretty early on in the winter considering the previous attempts at making a hat for him were horrible.  I know, you’re saying “seriously dude, it’s a men’s hat.  That’s really not that hard.  What the f%$k where you doing.” Well I don’t know they just stunk and even though there is something kind of funny about insisting he wear them because he loves you and you made them even though they are horrible and look funny on him.  I thought that might actually look bad on me so I released him from bad hat wearing duty.

So here’s the good one.

And no I didn’t make Mazie’s sweater.  But it is handmade and absolutely adorable.  I picked it up at Crunchy Granola Baby. Insert shameless plug here: Crunchy Granola Baby (owned by my good friend Jennie) is a great place for all your natural baby needs. AND their website (designed by my very cute and talented husband) is a great resource.

It’s the Jacques Cousteau Hat pattern by I found on Ravelry translated by Kaisakaisa.  It’s a great hat to knit.  Completely mindless and quite soothing.  Once you establish the rib and then place the markers for the decrease there is no thinking at all until you’re done.  Love it.  My father in law got one of these for Christmas this year too.

So I needed a new hat.

This is the Side Slip Cloche Hat from Boutique Knits by Laura Irwin a book in which I am IN LOVE.  I think I might have to knit up every item in here.  Also let me just say that I’m not in the practice of posting photos of myself, especially like this one with sort of a goofy look on my face, but I wanted to show you the hat and Robbie was kind enough to get some photos of it for me.

It’s not quite like the pics in the book.  Laura’s seems to be a bit rounder at the top.  Maybe my head is just bigger or something, but I do like the way it turned out.  I have to admit that I NEVER would have picked out this yarn (Rowan RYC Soft Lux) just from seeing it in the skein, but when it knits up it’s quite beautiful.  It has little gold threads running through it and would normally be a bit to “jazzy” for me, but maybe I’m trying to step up my game or something.

Priceless

Thank you Liana at Mixed Plate for bringing this video into my life.  I especially love the shiny yellow pants.

The obsession with Coraline continues

Ok so I was so excited when I heard Coraline was coming out, even more excited to see it, and absolutely can’t wait to buy the DVD when it comes out just so I can watch all the behind the scenes stuff about the handmade goodness in the movie.  But this… THIS I am so excited about.  What an unbelievably smart marketing tactic.  The makers of Coraline sent 50 mystery Coraline boxes to 50 bloggers across the sphere.  You can check many of them out here.  If I were the recipient of one of these goodies I would have talked about it 6 ways to Sunday.  What a great way to reach out to influentials and get them excited about the movie.  It’s something we can all learn from in our business endeavors as well.

However, I’m also excited to see how others are taking this idea to a whole different level.  My Little Mochi came up with a great idea for an indie craft mini-mystery box swap where crafters could sign up to participate in the swap. You can see where these amazing crafters have taken this project/challenge in the Coraline Mystery Box Flickr pool.  Super neat.

Spring fever projects and my creative space

Thought I’d share my a couple of my spring fever projects today and what’s in my creative space.  Truthfully not feeling all that creative today because I’m SICK AGAIN! I’m going to have to scrub my entire house with Thieves Oil to disinfect it as I’m sure we are just recirculating these bugs.  However, it is a relatively warm day here (50’s ish) and sunny so it’s lifting my spirits.

Spent way too much on yarn yesterday, but excited about the projects on the docket.  These lovely pastels are for some bunnies I’m making — One for the bunny contest at Seed Stitch Fine Yarn and the others to fill Easter Baskets.  I’m not going to give up the pattern I’m using for the bunnies until after the Seed Stitch contest.  Don’t want to tip my hand.  When I’m done, I’ll show you the finished product and share the ingenious pattern I found online.

The sage green, which is hard to see the exact color way in this pic, will be for this great pocket zip vest from my new Debbie Bliss book. How cute huh?  Thought I’d make it in a gender neutral color so should we have a boy in the future it can do double duty.  I think Mazie will love stashing all sorts of treasures in these pockets.

All this yarn is Rowan All Seasons Cotton and I LOVE it.  It’s my first time knitting with it, but has a nice hand and is easy to knit.

Stepping back, I’m also spending the morning on the computer seeing what others are doing, finding inspriation via my tweeters, and looking forward to reading my new Mix Tape, which arrived last night.  Yahoo!

An Army of Frogs

For Valentines day this year, I made an army of frogs (this is an ode to a line in a song by Debbie and Friends).  I found this great pattern from the Purl Bee and it brought back nostalgic memories of a similar frog I played with at my grandmother’s house.  Her’s was made from scraps, just as these are, with a corduroy belly and paisley back.

For a Valentine’s day touch, I gave each of these lovelies a little wool applique heart.

I couldn’t post this until I delivered the last one to my new godson, who was the recipient of the blue frog.  Each of these is filled with lentils and has two little jet black beads for eyes (sewed on extra tight as to not be a potential choking hazard).

It’s been like the sick ward at our house, so apologies for the delay in posting.  I’ve not had much energy to talk about my crafting, cooking, homemaking, and new cool products, although there has been some going on and will continue to keep you guys updated.  It’s a snow day here as well and I’m enjoying the suprise day around the house with the family although my poor husband who managed to fend off our germs for so long has finally sucumbed and is feeling rotten.  I’ll have to try and whip up some soup tonight for him.

New Magazine - Stitch

So last night I came home to new copy of Stitch Magazine.  Well two copies.  I didn’t mean to order two, but Interweave, the publisher, says I ordered two and it’s silly to send one back so my friend Kristy will be the lucky recipient of the second copy.  She doesn’t know yet so: “Hey Kristy, I have an extra copy of this cool new magazine I think you’ll like. I’ll give it to you next time we see each other.”

Some pretty great stuff in this first issue.  I haven’t had a chance to read cover to cover yet, but with a quick flip through I think I’ll have to order a subscription.  Not a big maker of my own clothes.  Historically, I have had some REALLY bad attempts at making my own clothes.  One hat termed the “condom cap” by my college roommate, one HORRIBLE skirt with a Hawaiian print fabric that seriously must have added, oh I don’t know, 200 lbs to me! AND some quilted mittens I tried to make (I know, you’re saying “Quilted mittens”?) that ended up as oven mitts in our college apartment.  Thank you to Nicole, my college roommate, for putting up with all my attempts at sewing clothes and only making moderate fun of me.

Anyhew as you can see my sewing is predominantly focused on other non-clothing projects, but I’m going to attempt this skirt on the front one day and will report back.  Wether the result is good or bad, you’ll know.

A little knit softie for my baby

I’m so excited about the completion of my latest projects.  I’d be even more excited if Mazie loved it as much as I do, but she does proudly tell anyone who will listen that “Mummy made this”, which is quite nice.

Below is the finished product, a very cute knit doll from a Debbie Bliss pattern.  I used a bunch of yarn remnants from my stash, not all Debbie Bliss.  The doll’s dress is made from left over yarn from a sweater in the same color I made for Mazie so she and her doll now match.

This one was so much fun to knit and I think she may end up with some little friends in the coming months.  With the left over yarn I still have I can see many different color variations and personallities.  Super fun project.