Ah, Nuts!

So it seems like all I want to do these days is work on things for the baby's room. In related news, I have been through 7 paint samples...all blues and greens. I think it's between the last 2 that I tried so at least there's progress. The nursery theme is forest friends...you know, woodland creatures and such. We got this Carter's crib set. Although the Gnome loves squirrels, there are no squirrels featured in this crib set. To make up for this slight against squirrels, I decided to feature them in one of my crafty projects for the room. 


I saw a project in a magazine a while ago that involved cutting out a shape multiple times in different patterned papers or fabrics and then placing them in a framed grid. The project I saw had a grid of teapots with a teacup in the bottom right corner. Enter my Cricut Expression and Give a Hoot cartridge. There are actually several squirrel shapes in this cartridge. I chose some patterned papers from my stash and swiftly ordered my Cricut to cut some squirrels. I got a little squirrel-happy and cut too many out, but that left me with more of a selection so it's okay. There's also an acorn shape on the cartridge so I cut out one of those too for the bottom right corner.


For the grid, I used my Martha Stewart 12 x 12 cutting mat and some scrap yarn. The frame I bought was a 12 x 12 frame so I used a 12 x 12 piece of textured cardstock for the background. I taped down pieces of yarn to outline exactly where each squirrel would be placed. Here's what the grid looked like:

I got out my adhesive roller and started positioning those squirrels. Here's what the page looked like after gluing and grid removal:

And here is the completed project:

Last week, I ended my post with a peep of a project that was still in progress. Well, it's still in progress, but here is a pic of the next step:

I used my Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL) software to cut out the tree. LollyChops made the tree .svg file, which you can find here (the tutorial for her original project is also in that post). I cut the leaves out of different colors of felt and cardstock. The buttons are from my grandmother's stash. I haven't glued the tree down yet (in fact, the buttons aren't even attached). I can't figure out what to do next. LollyChops put some strips of felt along the bottom with the word "home." Any suggestions?


That's all for now! See you next Friday!


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..."

Straight Off the Vine

Last week I was working on a Flower Vine Scarf from a pattern in this book:

The pattern calls for bulky weight wool (size 10 needles). The yarn I ended up using is Ella Rae Bamboo Silk (size 7 needles) in Apple (The pink is for the flowers, but I can't remember the color name). I really like knitting with it. It's super-soft and smooth. My LYS suggested I use size 8 needles and increase the number of cast on stitches by 100 to make sure it would be long enough.

Here's the scarf at the 300-stitch stage:

A close-up:

It's starting to curl already! Then, I had to increase at each stitch (600 stitches). And then, increase at every stitch again. That's 1200 stitches people. This is what 1200 stitches looks like:

There's just a wee bit of my needles peeking out of all those stitches. The pattern only has 6 rows, but it sure took me a long time to knit a row with 1200 stitches.

Here is what the scarf is supposed to look like:

And here is what mine looked like after binding off:

It spiraled pretty nicely for about the first 50 or so stitches bound off, but then it started forming something more like V-shapes rather than spirals. I probably should have used a bulkier weight yarn, but I'm hoping I can change the pattern somehow to make it look better. I'm going to take it to my LYS tomorrow. I'm guessing there's definitely going to be some frogging involved :( especially since it ended up being about 10 feet long instead of the 5.5 feet in the original pattern. I'm thinking I need to start over and use the prescribed number of cast-on stitches and maybe increase the number of rows to make it more bulky so it will curve instead of bending into a sharp angle. I haven't tried knitting the flowers yet, but they are made from the same pattern with fewer stitches cast on.

In household news, our dryer started making some crazy noises yesterday, prompting the Gnome to turn it off and take it apart completely. Nothing appeared to be wrong with it. Once it was back together, we started it up, and it sounded fine until we put clothes in it. Spooky noises again. Then, as mysteriously as they began, they stopped. I have a load drying right now. Sounds fine. Maybe we have a haunted dryer :) Just in case, we have been researching front-loading washers and dryers. Anybody have any front-loading recommendations?

Stay tuned for pictures from our local pumpkin festival :) The weather has been lovely here...until today. It's really overcast and rain's a'comin'.


Leaf out.

Casting on

I've been working on several things since my surgery. Some things for gifts, some things for me, and some for the shop.


My mom's (?L) birthday was yesterday, and she requested that I make her a wristlet purse.  ?L chose the larger flower print above. It's called Blooms Main Floral, and I got it at Joann's. I found the coordinating Blooms Medallions pattern for the lining of the purse. Here's the finished product:

I also whipped up a card for the ?L covered in cardstock dragonflies I punched out with a Martha Stewart punch you can find here:

I've been working on two knitting projects. One is a spirally scarf embellished with 3 knitted rosettes called Flower Vine Scarf (I can't find a picture online and only have the picture from the pattern book I'm using). I have to cast on 300! stitches, increase to 600 stitches, and then increase to 1200!!!! stitches. Luckily, there's only 6 rows. That should be interesting. At this point, I'm still casting on. 

And lastly, I've been knitting something up with this lovely yarn:

But that's a secret to be revealed later ;) The yarn knits like butta. I love it.

Have a great week everybody!

Leaf out.

Helmar Halloween Howler Hop

Happy Sunday everyone! 


Helmar is hosting a blog hop today with 17 hop stops and 15 projects. There is a guest designer blog stop (hint: she happens to be my favorite blogger(chops) tee...hee). Hop along and check out some of the great projects. Start here!

Check back tomorrow for my latest projects!


Leaf out.