Does un-knitting a sweater count for the SAM KAL?

One of the coolest features on Ravelry has to be the Groups. One of the groups I joined is called Thrifty Knitters and it was there that I found out (in detail) about buying sweaters at thrift stores, and raveling them for the yarn. I had a coupon for our newly-opened local Goodwill store, so we went to check it out.

C. found this men's size large 100% lambswool Old Navy sweater for $5. After my coupon, it was under $4.50.

And after washing, drying, and raveling it, I got:



(an awful lot of wonderful yarn!) Here's a closeup:


C. wants a sweater of some sort knit out of it (so I WILL be eventually knitting another sweater). But I'm addicted to this! I did some more research and found that cotton is another good one to ravel. There were a lot of mens and womens cotton sweaters at Goodwill, so one of these days I'll have to go back.

Oh, the possibilities!
(and C. said it wasn't breaking my yarn diet if I was buying SWEATERS... Oh, how I love that girl!)

:)

p.s. if you're interested in doing this yourself, here's a link to a great tutorial. The big thing to watch for is to make sure you buy a sweater that is knit, then seamed. If you have one that's seamed and then cut, the yarn will be in lengths the width of the sweater! No good...

Gifts for a new baby

For the first time in a LONG time, a friend of mine had a first baby! Check out the little cutie:


:)

I'm sending them (they used to be local, but moved away four years ago) the following care package:
It includes:

A pumpkin hat, knit roughly from any of the fruit hat patterns you can find online
A taggie, modeled after these
Decorated burp cloths (just cloth diapers with ribbon stitched down the middle)
A picture frame
Hand-made cards from my kids
A home-sewn sling, from directions from my friend Wendy. I started making slings like the Maya wrap, from these directions, but Wendy's pattern has a padded pillow and rails, so I like it a lot!

I was going to link to the directions for sewing a sling from Wendy, but the directions are not online. If you'd like them (in a WORD document), just email me (bfmomma at yahoo dot com) and I'll forward them to you.

Wendy does beautiful photos, so if you're in the metro Milwaukee/Waukesha area, be sure to give her a try. I asked if I could link here, and she said, "I could offer a special sale for anyone coming from your site. How about a mother/child photo in their sling (baby, toddler, whatever size) and/or nursing photos. I'll do a $10 sitting fee if they tell me it's a referral from you or your blog (normally $25). Prints are at my standard prices found on my website. Conditions: I travel to parks and homes for portraits. If they would like a "studio look", it must be done in my home. Expires Dec 1, 2007."

(So look at her website and tell her you came from bfmomma's spot!)

The Craft Meme

Snagged from Grumperina, originally from BellaKnitting, I guess.

Four choices--list crafts that you are familiar with, in the categories you'd choose:

1. Love it! This is my thing.

knitting, cooking

2. I do or have dabbled in it.

embroidery, cross-stitch, macramé, quilting, sewing, dyeing, felting, gardening, origami, rug hooking, scrap-booking, baking, cake decorating, balloon animal making, pottery painting, calligraphy, collage, photography, stenciling, acting, music (flute)

3. I'll give it a try.

card making, spinning (some day!), crochet, wood carving, pattern-writing, graphic design, music (guitar)

4. I've got absolutely no interest.

weaving, flower arranging, doll house making/decorating, etching, glass blowing, glass bead making, lace-making, mosaics, pottery throwing, soap making, basket weaving, book binding, candle-making, stamping, needlepoint, jewelry making, papier-mâché, paper-making, painting, drawing, cartooning, doll/toy making, film-making

I tag MamaFitz, RawMilkStar, PancakeGoddess, Suzee, and any others who want to play!

Pay It Forward Meme

This is a really cool one, I think!

I got this from Mo.

Pay It Forward meme

I will send a handmade gift* to the first three people who leave a comment requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don't know what that gift will be yet, but you will receive it within 365 days. The only thing you have to do in return is "pay it forward" by making a similar agreement on your journal.

(my "handmade" specialties are knitting, cooking [for locals], and limited sewing--mostly taggie blankets, actually! I do have some tie-dyed kid stuff, too. )

*The "gift" you send doesn't have to be handmade--choose your specs when you post it on your blog.

Project Spectrum... red, black and metallic

New two-month color change on Project Spectrum. I'm hoping that, by the end of July, I get at least ONE thing created in red, black and metallic. OK, I do have one thing done already.

To match our black, white, gray (and lime green accent) bedroom, I FINALLY got a copy of a picture taken at one of my best friend's weddings almost exactly three years ago. It's a pic of me (matron of honor) nursing M. (flower girl) and it's done in black and white. Here's a picture of the picture, now hanging on my wall:

In knitting news, I've been working on the same two projects (small ones) for over two months. Not great knitting time and weekly knitting club (1 1/2 hours a week) isn't enough to really complete anything!

I am also working on T's Star Wars comforter, which will be mostly black and red, so I'll count that! :)

Door Decoration

June is my month to decorate T's classroom door. I combined two "themes"--a looking back one (the kids love to see baby pics of each other) and a moving on to fourth grade one. I'm posting pics for no other reason than the sheer amount of time I spent on this darn thing! :) I'll put it up on Tuesday. (the blank shapes are for kids who haven't turned in pics yet--and the small flowers hold their class pics from THIS year while the bigger shapes are the baby/toddler ones--same shapes and colors so they can match baby pics with this year pics)

Easter Eggs

Since the kids' Spring Break starts tomorrow, I realized that Easter must be fast-approaching. I dug the baskets and eggs out from the pile of packed things, and boiled some eggs for decorating.

Here's the pictures:



And the finished products:

Vintage Button Swap

While surfing through some crafty-type blogs, I somehow stumbled onto a blog that is doing a Vintage Button Swap. I had to ask exactly what defines "vintage" (I was told that pre-70's qualifies), and then I signed up!

When I was little, my grandma (my dad's mom) had this cool pedal-powered sewing machine. In three of the drawers of the sewing machine she had buttons that she'd cut off of every piece of clothing (I think) that she'd ever worn. And I loved to play with those buttons! I'd sort them by color or size or any other fascinating characteristic.

And so when my grandma died, I made my request for her buttons. I've been adding to it a bit since that time, and I hope that my kids (and grandkids) have as much fun looking at all the different buttons in the collection.

I went through that collection and chose 12 buttons that I had duplicates for (I didn't want to give away anything truly one-of-a-kind) and then I signed up!

If you want to sign up, too, here's the place to go:
Vintage Button Swap

The curtains are done!

I finished them today. They need to be steamed to get out some wrinkles (I'm actually hoping that just hanging will get rid of them, but...), but they are done and hung!

Open:


Closed:
Project Spectrum: 1 item done
New Remodel: 8th item done
Sanity: Slowly returning (oh, please don't make me sew anything else!)

The curtains

Do any of the rest of you have wonderful vision, but difficulty carrying things out? I really should know better by now. I tell myself I have my father's eye (he was a carpenter and a master of visualizing things), and I do think I'm pretty good at saying what does NOT look good, and what doesn't look neat or done right, but I'm not so good at fixing those things.

So I think I posted about buying these quilts for the girls' room:

Nice, simple, thick blue jean material. One in full size (bottom bunk) and one in twin (top bunk). I even splurged and bought the pillow shams! I figured this was easy to change up with accent colors/funky sheets and that jeans are cute enough for a 4 YO, but also mature enough for an 18 YO (I told C. I'm not buying new stuff till she moves out!).

The room that the girls will be moving into (currently our room) has three nice-sized windows that face the road. We live on a pretty busy street and there are vehicles (including emergency rescue vehicles) that go by all night long. These windows need double coverage (blinds AND curtains) and the hideous curtains (ok, drapes) currently on them are functional, but...well...hideous! See? (these actually were originally navy blue with that pattern, but I bleached them and bleached them and came out with a tan/pink shade that was at least somewhat less obvious)

So I came up with the brilliant idea of making some tab-top curtains out of jean material. How difficult can that be, right? After trips to two fabric stores, I realized that I had to do something else. I needed 8 yards of fabric (originally thought 10 yards, but it ended up being 65" wide) and no one had a full bolt. I did end up ordering online from Joann, where I had a 50% off coupon. 10 yards for $40, plus $8 shipping. Bought jean-colored thread and a neat brownish top-stitching thread for accents, as well as a pack of leather needles. Of course, then I found tab-top curtains that exactly match the comforters I bought:
but at $18 a panel (I need 6 panels), I was still coming out way ahead.

The fabric arrived and this weekend I sat down to sew. Cutting went...okay. G. helped a lot, but really it's just cutting out rectangles. I ironed and seamed the sides of each panel (hey, I NEVER used to use an iron when sewing--this was a big deal!) and then the top. I figured I'd save the bottom to hem when I saw that all of the panels were the same size. Then I started on the tabs. My livingroom tab-top curtains have 8 tabs per panel, so I decided to do that. Do you realize that that means forty-eight tabs? I quickly decided to cut it to 7 tabs a panel (easier to space if I put one in the exact center. I cut out tabs and seamed them, then wrapped them around the top of a panel, threaded the machine with the top stitching thread, and.....
{insert your choice of curse words here}
too many layers. I couldn't even feed the stack into the machine.

OK, so here's my "solution":
1) I'm taking each tab and sewing that cute little X-box thing at the base of one side.
2) I'm loading the machine with the jean-colored thread and tacking each tab in the middle if I can feed it into the machine
3) On the very ends, I've opened up the seams, cut out some excess, and used fray-check on the ends, and then done the same as in #2 above
4) I bought seam glue to get the rest of the tab ends to stick down neatly.
5) I'm only doing FIVE tabs on each curtain
6) I'm crossing my fingers that these do not end up looking like complete crap

If you're keeping track, I've now spent about $60 on materials alone. My house is trashed from the sewing stuff, and I'm STRESSED! I'm beginning to wonder if it was worth "saving" $40 after all of this. Too late now, though...

Here's a shot of the one I've done so far (sans bottom hem):

and a close-up of the tab attachment:


At least the curtains are blue, and therefore qualify for Project Spectrum!

Opet Festival

I just have to say that history/Social Studies is a lot more fun than it was when *I* was in school!


My kids' school district follows the "Social Studies Alive!" curriculum and I'm pretty impressed with it.

One of the cool activities that C's class participated in was an Opet Festival to celebrate the culmination of the unit on Egypt. They mummified cornish game hens, and played Senet, and dressed the part for the big feast. Some pics of C's costume:

Project Spectrum... signups open!

I had read so many blogs of last year's Project Spectrum participants, and decided that I really wanted to sign up if they did it again. Well, they are!

sign up here: http://www.lollygirl.com/spectrum/join.php

Don't know what Project Spectrum is? Let me steal the write-up:

Colors inspire. Colors elicit deep emotions and memories. Colors symbolize life events and the changing of the seasons. We surround ourselves with color - in our homes, in our gardens, and even on our dinner plate.The idea of Project Spectrum is simply a celebration of the colors around us, and taking the time to notice them. Participants can dye, crochet, weave, decoupage, spin, build, stitch, knit, paint, scrapbook, construct, sew, quilt, cook, grow, collage, photograph, bake, or bead items in that color group (of course all arts and crafts that I missed are totally welcome as well!).

It is really about expressing yourself creatively - making something beautiful, and creating something unique with your hands. It is also about thinking outside of the box - perhaps taking up a new hobby, or a long neglected one, or finally dabbling in design.

You can choose to make one thing out of the designated color(s) in the two-month span - or twenty things! This is a no-pressure project. You can simply make a photo essay - you carry around your camera with you and post pictures of the color objects you see throughout your daily travels.

Projects can be big or small - whether you plan to tile your kitchen or photograph a blooming tree in your backyard - it is not a race, it is just about sharing your creative work to inspire others and express your spirit!

You do not have to have a blog to participate. If you would like to share your work with others, think about joining the Project Spectrum Flickr Group! You simply have to have a passion for creating and expressing yourself through your work, and encouraging others to do the same. This is a create-along! It can easily work with any crafty obligations you may have - whether they are swaps, planned gifts, etc.

Project Spectrum is about expression and creating beauty with all of the colors of the rainbow - and there are millions of ways to do that! Let's discover them together!

February / March
Blue, White, Gray

April / May
Green, Yellow, Pink

June / July
Red, Black, Metallics

August / September
Brown, Orange, Purple

I'm hoping to knit at least one thing each two-month period, and do at least one other crafty-kinda project. Won't you all join me and we can encourage each other??? :)

Freezer Paper Stencils

As immersed as I am in the knitting world (ha ha), I had never (gasp) heard of freezer paper stencils until I read about them on Grumperina's cool knitting blog. Aren't they the COOLEST thing? So I did some googling and found more here and here and here. And I still have a big roll of freezer paper from making a fabric marker quilt, so I thought I'd give it a try.

First I found a decent clipart picture. Then I cut a piece of freezer paper to fit into my printer. I printed the image on the non-shiny side of the freezer paper. I carefully (using an exacto-type knife on clearance at Target) cut out parts of the pattern to make a stencil.

Here's what the back looks like:

I ironed it onto an old, solid-colored tshirt I had (and ironed extra freezer paper on the inside so that it held the fabric stiff):

I surrounded the iron-on with old rags so there was no overspray:

Using spray-on fabric paint from Michaels, I covered the stenciled area:

I let it dry most of the way and then peeled off the stencil and let it dry the rest of the way. This morning I have:


Cool, huh? I don't like the little fuzzy strings hanging off, but those are because it's a 2-year-old tshirt. I also was under-whelmed by the spray-on fabric paint and I'll use a sponge and "regular" paint in the future.