Handmade

Baby G has had two baby showers thrown in his honor. The first shower was in my hometown with mostly family, and the second shower was in the town where we live with mostly friends.


Several people made us gifts for our little guy so I thought I'd showcase them here. Ready?!


First up is a baby blanket that my Aunt Sandra crocheted in pastel yarn:

My cousin Heather made Baby G this adorable little hat in blue and white:

My friend Alison over at Crafty Weeks made a neat diaper bag with an attached, fold-out changing pad. Here it is with the changing pad folded up and velcroed:

And here it is with the pad folded out:

Love this fabric! She also made a pacifier clip to match...it's sitting on the changing pad, but it's blending in because it's the same fabric. See if you can spot it...


One of the ?L's motorcycle friends (yes, the ?L is in a motorcycle gang) crocheted us a baby blanket in blue, yellow, and white:

My friend B* made us a cozy hooded towel with matching washcloth:

I'm not 100% positive how she made it (I forgot to find out her secrets), but it appears that she took a regular bath towel and sewed a hood made out of a matching hand towel onto it. The washcloth has a cute dinosaur fabric on one side and the matching terry on the other side.


And last, but certainly not least, my friend EG made us this awesome quilt using Moda fabrics:

You can see the reverse side here:

Check out those leafies and mushrooms! The colors are just great. I am always astounded by quilting. I've never attempted it myself. I should really quilt something. Perhaps that will be my next crafty endeavor.


Thanks to all you ladies for such wonderful, crafty gifts!


In non-crafty news, I found out that I don't have gestational diabetes! No pricking my fingers! That was a relief. The due date is getting close now!


Leaf out.

Cocoon

Happy Friday! I hope you have had a fantastic week! This week marks the last week of my second trimester so I'm in the home stretch now. That is a little scary, but also pretty exciting. We're halfway through our childbirth classes. I think we've both really enjoyed going to them and meeting some new people. Baby G has been moving A LOT. I think I experienced his first hiccups yesterday morning :)


Down to crafty business! Back when I found out I was pregnant, I found a pattern for a baby cocoon on Etsy here. I actually made the cocoon a while ago, but kept putting off crocheting up the hat. I can't believe I procrastinated for so long because the hat pattern has 10 rows. That's it! I finished it in about 45 minutes. Here's the set:

I used Lion Brand Homespun yarn in pesto. I have some blue/green yarn too so I might crochet up another one. The big wooden button is from Joann's. I have another pattern for a sleep sack/hat set from Bernat's website. It's a knitting pattern and is striped. I love me some stripes. So that's next in the knitting/crocheting queue.


Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there!


Leaf out.

Happy Friday!

I don't know how the weather is in your neck of the woods, but it is fantastic here. The thermometer in my car was at 68 degrees this afternoon. Unheard of for February here. In honor of the warm weather, I went with a couple of friends to get a pedicure in my flippie floppies. My toes are so very happy and pink :)


Alright, let's get down to the craft business. I have wanted to knit some fingerless gloves for some time and finally settled on a pattern. Here they are:

The pattern is from Knitty.com and is called Fetching because the cables on each glove twist "fetchingly" toward the thumb. These were my first cabling attempt, and I love it! I think I'll put cables on everything now. The yarn I used is called Ella Rae Bamboo Silk in Apple.


The gloves had a different bind-off technique that I hadn't used before so I got some instruction from my LYS. It's a picot bind-off. Here's a close-up:

So the technique creates these little bumps along the edge. The gloves haven't been blocked yet (and I knitted one more tightly than the other) so after that they'll look a little more uniform and not so curly at the edges. 


Nextly, here is the promised photo of the necklace I made for a friend's birthday:

And here is a close-up:

My favorite flower is the one in the center.

I have been working on an art project for our woodland/forest friends-themed nursery, but it's not finished yet. LollyChops made an awesome tree .svg file that she used for her tree artwork. I loved it so much that I'm making one too (thanks Lolly!)! Lolly has a video on UStream for the project here. Here's a peep:

Have a great weekend! See ya next week :)

Leaf out.

3 Months Later

Hello Again. I haven't posted in 3 months. Yep, it's been that long. I really have no excuse other than the holidays. Well, and there was also finding out my eggo is preggo :) I love the movie Juno.


I do have some crafty projects to share. Unfortunately, I repeatedly forget to take pictures of my finished projects. I'm going to have to get better about that. Before Thanksgiving, I made a bib necklace for a good friend's birthday. I went a little crazy crocheting and knitting flowers and leaves in some of her favorite colors. Just for some added texture, I threw in some felt flowers and leaves. Here is the disassembled necklace:

I am going to post a picture of the finished necklace soon. I promise. I also crocheted a flower and tie to dress up the wrapped package:

The other project of which I forgot to take a picture was the shawl I made for the ?L for Christmas. Remember this yarn?

That's the yarn I used to knit the shawl. I was supposed to get a picture of the ?L in it after she opened it on Christmas, but the giant snowstorm that arrived made us depart on very short notice. I'm still waiting on a picture from my parents to share.


I was looking for some new techniques for making cards so I decided to try embroidering cards. Here's one that I made:

I cut out the "birthday" using Sure Cuts a Lot (SCAL) software and my Cricut. I haven't played around with SCAL very much, but it's going to be a very useful tool. You can use any font on your computer to cut out words in one piece. 


I have a bunch of projects lined up for the nursery so I'll be posting pics along the way.


Glad to be back!


Leaf out.

Autumn Fun

Autumn in the mountains was beautiful...the reason I say "was" even though it's technically still autumn is that it has been super chilly here for a couple of weeks now. It's supposed to be "warmer" today, but it's still kinda chilly due to the wind. Most of the trees aren't letting go of their leaves just yet, but I'm sure with these cooler temperatures and windy conditions, they can't hold onto them for long.


In the spirit of fall, here are some of the pics from our day at our local fall festival/pumpkin patch.


This is the hayride that takes pumpkin seekers out to the pumpkin patch:

I didn't get any pictures of the pumpkin patch because we were diligently searching for the perfect pumpkins. This particular farm has both a pumpkin shooter and corn "cannon." We were able to shoot some corn cobs (really, really fun), but the farm was about to close and the line was too long to get to shoot a pumpkin out of their launcher dubbed "Dorothy." I love that the launcher has a name :) Here are some folks launching mini pumpkins with Dorothy:

And here is the corn cannon:

The Gnome would really love to have goats so of course he was excited to see that they had goats at the farm. The goats weren't horribly interested in us so they stayed at a distance, but check out the contraption they have for the goats to climb:

The farm also had a corn maze. It was the most complicated one I've ever experienced. The maze had two phases. We only made it through one phase before moving on to the next activity. We got stuck (for quite some time) in phase 1 in a section for which there was only one way out. At least we weren't the only ones...we kept seeing the same groups of people over and over again. There was a bridge you had to cross to get to the rest of the path. I stopped and got some great pics of the surroundings:

Isn't that view magnificent?! (all of that corn at the bottom of the photo is part of the maze) And because I haven't shown any pictures of pumpkins, here is the toddler pumpkin maze they have set up:

Now, for crafty news...I've been working on several projects, but sadly, some are presents so no revealing yet. (Sorry!) 

I've mainly been knitting and crocheting all kinds of goodies. I've been making flowers from two different books: 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet by Lesley Stanfield and Crochet Bouquet by Suzann Thompson. So far I'm liking the 100 Flowers book better. It is much more organized, and I love organization! 100 Flowers has the patterns divided into knitting and crocheting sections. The patterns are also organized by degree of difficulty within those sections. The main reason I prefer 100 Flowers is that each pattern has a picture of the flower directly below it. Crochet Bouquet has the patterns listed all together with a group of flowers pictured at the side so you have to guess which pattern goes with which flower. Both books have patterns for leaves so they both earn bonus points for that :) I find myself wanting to attach flowers to everything, EVERYTHING. Look out! Aahhhhhh giant flower!!!!

I stumbled upon a 100 Flower Scarf here. So I decided to try it! Here's what I have so far:

I haven't been able to make any amendments to my Flower Vine Scarf from this post because the lady that was helping me at my LYS is out of town. 

Leaf out.

P.S. I went with some friends to an Indigo Girls concert on Saturday night. We had a fantastic time and even got autographs after the show (we camped out on the street with a small crowd and waited for them to come out). It was a great show and a great crowd :) Now, I can't stop singing..."How long till my soul gets it right..."