Win a $50 Gift Certifcate to the Fat Quarter Shop!

Ah...so many things I could do with $50 at the Fat Quarter Shop! I'm sure you could do a lot, too...so head over to P.S. I Quilt to enter your chance to win!

My Two Favorite Things...Together!

There are two things I love: knitting (you knew that) and classic movies. Doing the two together brings me great joy. But then when I'm knitting and watching classic movies, and then the actor/actress in the movie is knitting, it makes me giddy. Here are some of my favorie classic actors/actresses knitting.

Katherine Hepburn...LOVE! She is my all-time favorite.
Favorite Katherine Hepburn movie: The Philadelphia Story

Cary Grant...sigh, so dreamy.
Favorite Cary Grant movie (so hard to choose): Arsenic and Old Lace

Rita Hayworth...the most beautiful woman ever. (And probably THE woman my husband would leave me for if she were still alive and they were the same age.)
Favorite Rita Hayworth movie: Gilda ("Decent? Who me?")

Bette Davis...an amazing actress
Favorite Bette Davis movie: Now, Voyager (although, I still need to see more of her movies)

Ingrid Bergman...so elegant.
Favorite Ingrid Bergman movie: Notorius

KnitPicks Lace Sampler = Savings!

Depite my woes with my other lace yarn and not finding the right project, I couldn't pass up the deal the KnitPicks was offering on lace yarn samplers. Each hank below is 440 yards, and I got all of them for $24.99!

This is the "Riverstone" color pack.

There are four color packs you can get. The top left is "Atoll." The middle left is "Coral Reef." The bottom left is "Riverstone" (the one I bought). And the right is "Deep Sea." It was very hard to choose!

All of the hanks in one pack can be used to make the Chinook Shawl on the left, or one hank can make the Pyrifera Scarf on the right. The sampler packs come with the patterns for both. I'm not sure if I'm going to use them for that, but I'll have to see how my lace knitting is coming along. It takes great concentration...and I'm lacking that lately.

Here is another look at the Chinook Shawl spread out. So pretty!

One More Try

Yep. Down below is a picture of ANOTHER new pattern for the lace yarn I bought back in January. If this pattern weren't going so well, I'd think this yarn was jinxed. I think it would take two hands to count all of the projects that I've started and pulled out with this yarn. It's so bad that the yarn is starting to look a little fuzzy in the beginning. But, I'm not going to let that stop me from FINISHING this one! It's going to be a shawl...maybe a Xmas or birthday gift for someone. This pattern is working really well, so I think it will stick...then again, I thought that about the last pattern this yarn was raveled up in.

Holy Drool!

I feel like the luckiest duckiest girl in the whole wide world! Just lookie at the wonderful RAK I received from memoe33 on Ravelry! Fabric! Lots and lots of fabric! On my July wishlist, I had asked for scraps of designer fabrics or fabrics in patterns that look similar to the designers I like. On a knitting site like Ravelry, I didn't think it would go far, but boy-oh-boy was I very wrong! I can't wait to get started on all kinds of projects. Now I just have to figure out what those projects might be.

Still drooling!

memoe33 also included two quilt patterns she created. Such a great RAK package!

Cupcake Bouquets

When you need a sweet little bouquet, this project is perfect. Head on over to Inspired Ideas to see the tutorial for these cuties.

Itty Bitty Blueberry Pie

Over at Whip Up there was a Whimsy Girl tutorial link that shows you how to make the sweetest, teeny felt pie using a bottle cap. It's seriously takes about 10 minutes to make one of these, so how could I resist? (And a borrowed camera is how I took these shots.) Bon Appetit!

So cute and calorie-free!

Dee's Blanket

Nope not a baby blanket this time. This is the blanket that I donated the owl square to for a friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer. Squares came from all over the country, and then one person crocheted them all together. I think it turned out beautifully!

Can you spot my owl? It's in the last column (on the right) and six squares down.

Pretty cool, huh?

The Final Baby Blanket . . .

...well, for now anyway. This was the 4th of 4 blankets that my knitting friends/coworkers did for other pregnant co-workers. This was Shelley's blanket, which was knit by Judith. Shelley was part of the knitting group AND the pregnant group. Since she knew about her blanket, she got to pick the colors. And in this case, she actually created and dyed her colors. I love how vibrant it is! And the colors go really well with the new baby's (Mr. Callum...aka "Moose") room, which is being shared with his older sister. Nicely done, Judith!






And if you missed it, here are the other blankets: Julie's and Kristi's (I don't have pics of Kendra's...darn it). And here is Moose's other knit gift.

Saffron Craig...I *heart* you!

As I wandered down some random craft blog link path (which I'd love to give you, but got lost along the way), I came upon Saffron Craig. It's filled with all kinds of whimsically cute fabrics and projects. This site stole my heart, and I think it's going to cost me a lot of money to buy it back!

Car Craft Caddy

Whip Up posted a link to a Craftzine tutorial for making a Car Craft Caddy. This is cracking me up more than I can say. Do I think it's useful? Yes. Could I use one for the next time we have to drive home to see the family? Absolutely! BUT....Would my husband make fun of me to no end every time I hung it in the car, making this project SO not worth it? You're damn straight! Still...I do think it's a good idea. Especially since I'm pretty sure we traded in our last car with an extra knitting needle it. I hope the new owner is a knitter!

Oilcloth Projects

Over at The Purl Bee, they featured different patterns of really pretty oilcloth. I can't get these fabrics out of my mind and have been thinking about what kind of projects I could do with them.

These are Echino Oilcloth. Aren't they all just so lovely?

Here's the fabric used as a reusable grocery bag. A good idea, but I have a ton of those. If you don't have enough, you can learn to make the above one here.

I found this sweet slicker by cristalle on Flickr here, but I aside from my niece Hannah, I don't have any little ones to make for. And, my apparel sewing skills aren't quite up to par.

This little lunch sack was made my morganmoore on Flicker, but I have a lunch sack and it seems more wasteful to make a prettier version than to just stick with the more functional one I use now.

Before oilcloth....wait for it...

And after! Now this might be something I can do. This set was created by citychiccountrymouse and posted in the Furniture Redo group on Flickr. Unless I gave it away in my moving craze last year, I have an ugly old fold-up table just like this. Oilcloth, you may have found a new home!

Win a Cute Quilt!

Broken camera, I will not let you keep me down! Kati Cupcake's blog is giving away a sweet Porch Pots quilt, flled with all kinds of lovely Amy Butler fabrics. I'm not sure when the contest ends, so head over soon and check out how you can enter to win!

Butter Fingers

Well, I had hoped to bring you pictures of the lace top I'm knitting or maybe an update on that scrap blanket I was working or or maybe even pictures of my new haircut (about 5 inches off!)...but in the process of taking some blog pictures, I dropped my camera on the ceramic tile floor. Below is not my camera (obviously it was be hard to take a picture of my broken camera with the broken camera), but it's a pretty good representation of what mine looks like. I'm not sure what this all means for the near future of my blog given that I don't see a new camera coming home soon (we take FOREVER to make decisions around here). But, I'll do my best to do some highlights of blogs I like, Etsy stores I enjoy, and overall random crafts on the Web. Bear with me. And now a moment of silence for broken camera. R.I.P

Shoe Break!

It was like Christmas here the other day! I had found some great deals on shoes through a store on eBay, and they all arrived on the same day. Did I need all 3 pairs? No, of course not. But I got an extremely good deal...and they were all in my size! With size 11 feet, you don't know what that means!

Lookie how cute they all are. So sweet and wonderful. Welcome to my closet, ladies. I can't wait to wear you all!

See...just like the good parts of Christmas. Boxes, paper, and happy stuff everywhere!

Craft Room Chair Makeover

Now that I have an actual sewing table, it was due time for a chair to go with it. I had been just lugging a dining room chair in, but that gets old.

I found this chair at Goodwill for $4. It's comfortable to sit in and very sturdy, but the denim seat cover was grossing me out.

I found some pretty upholstery fabric at JoAnn's to recover it. It would've been a simple project had my staple gun not been such a jerkoff, but overall, I'm very happy with the results.

And for my the sake of my physical therapist (well, really, my aching lower back), I used the leftover fabric to make a little lumbar pillow. It's only attached with Velcro at the moment, but I'm looking for a more permanent solution.

Another Bully

Remember all my big ideas for what to put over the bed? Decals? Painted hoops? Others that I can't even recall? Well, let's just say I never got around to those. I had the day off last Thursday, so I decided it was finally time to do something with big plain white wall. Come hell or high water, I was bound and determined. I spent hours scouring resale shops looking for something "blah" that I could turn into something "wow." And just when I was about to give up, I found a 3-foot square frame in white, just sitting hidden in the corner of this huge resale warehouse. I had no idea what I would put into it, but for $2.50, I couldn't pass it up.

When I got it home, I considered framing a piece of fabric or even just a cool piece of scrapbook paper. But really, I had no clue.

I was surprised to find all these messages on the matte when I opened up the frame. From what I can gather from the little notes, a teacher was leaving and the students were saying good-bye.

Shane said we should put a picture of a bulldog in there, and then it dawned on me. I had ripped out the above picture from W magazine months ago for the very reason of one day framing it. However, it had completely slipped my mind. The picture, which is of Angelina Jolie's legs and her bulldog and was taken by Brad Pitt, fit perfectly. I framed the outside of the picture with some scrapbook paper I bought months ago (also for use in the bedroom).

I wasn't planning on painting the frame at all, but the white on white on white, was too much, well, white. So I spray painted it orange to match the quilt. I threw yesterday's bully pillow on the bed and called it a day.

Embroidered Bully

I'm sort of ashamed to say that I've never really embroidered anything. I've always loved the look of it, but just never really got around to giving it a try. I cross-stitched a little when I was a kid, but I never really stuck with it. But then after looking at sites like Feeling Stitchy and Sublime Stitching, a magnetic force seems to be pulling me toward stitching.

So I did a little bulldog pillow in honor of the bulldog Shane and I will someday have.

I found a photograph of a bulldog on Flickr, and traced the outline onto wax paper. I made a few drawing adjustments to make her look super cute and kind of silly.

I then used double-stick tape around the edges (the part not drawn on) to attach the outline to my fabric. I layered my fabric on a piece of leftover quilt batting and then put them both in my embroidery hoop.

Then I just backstiched all the way around her. I used three different colors of embroidery floss: a light blue for the body, a black-blue color for the face features, and a coral for the floppy, sloppy tongue.

When I was done, I carefully peeled the wax paper off. I used tweezers to pull out the parts that got trapped under my stitches. It's not as time consuming or tedious as you'd think.

And there she is, all done. I sewed some fabric to the back, did a light stuffing, and threw the little pillow on my bed. It was lots of fun and didn't cost more than $2 since I had everything but the hoop. Now I can't wait to do more of it!