a bassinet of sorts

When I was a baby, I slept in a basket hung from the ceiling. For the past 30+ years, my parents kept the basket and have now given it to me to use with our baby-to-be. When I slept in the basket, it looks like my parents just put me in there with some blankets and called it a day. Of course, I need to make things at least 85 times more complicated.

My dad made an amazing rocking stand for the basket and then I cut a bassinet mattress to fit the basket, and started to make the bedding. I found a tutorial that was somewhat helpful, but I had a lot of trouble making the fitted sheet. I'm sure it doesn't help that I am not great at sewing and I'm even worse at measuring. Finding instructions for making an envelope-style pillow cover and many emails between the knitting triangle gave me the breakthrough I needed (including one that gently reminded me that I needed to make more than one sheet...apparently babies can be messy).

Even with a few frustrating moments and a bunch of trips to the fabric store, I'm happy with the way it came out!

Annual Pumpkin Beer Pub Crawl House Party Craft

Due to the distance that separates us, the Knitting Triangle could not come together to create a party favor for the 6th annual PBPCHP. However not finding the lack of handmade goodness to be acceptable, I decided to dive in myself and make a craft.

Let's get one thing out of the way: I have always wanted to have an excuse to etch glass.

Etched pint glasses seemed the obvious direction to move in. A trip to the Dollar Tree yielded twelve shapely pint glasses for $12. No complaints there. A trip to Joanns did not have such success. I was led down a bad path by a sales associate who tried to convince me that frosting spray paint is the same as etching cream (it isn't) and that plastic sheets would work fine on the rounded surface of a glass (it didn't).

Two botched glasses later I was back to the Dollar Tree and then hit up Michaels, the craft store of the gods, where I was rewarded with the proper supplies, although they cost a pretty penny - etching cream ($12), flexible plastic stencil sheet ($7).

I designed my own stencil and cut it out of the sheet - easy. Very forgiving material to work with. And it stuck to the glasses like magic - goes to show that having the appropriate supplies can make or break a craft. Dabbed on the cream, waited 5 minutes (LITERALLY) and it was done. And all of my party guests took home a beautiful hand made glass that they can use to consume Pumpkin Beer until the next party.

Handmade Wooden Blocks

Kids love blocks.

From the time they are very small, babies love the feel of wooden blocks in their hands (and mouths!), to stack, knock over, push around, etc. Imaginative kids will use blocks as food, as game pieces, as buildings, as virtually anything their little minds can create! That's why I think wooden blocks are one of the absolute best gifts for young children. And handmade wooden blocks? Even better.

I set out to spend $0 on this project. Sure I love my nephew but gift giving is expensive (and of course I bought him clothes, stuffed animals, books, etc etc it never ends!) So I wanted something that was both cheap and handmade.

I started with scrap wood from my dad's workshop, and had him cut it into perfectly square blocks. Then I sanded the blocks which probably took the bulk of my time. But it's really important that they are nice and smooth for little hands. A couple of coats of acrylic paint were thrown on top, and I hand painted the letters of the alphabet. This wasn't a project I did alone either - my boyfriend and I enjoyed working on it together in the evenings.

Finally we coated the blocks with Non-toxic shellac. This was really important considering my nephew is only one and these blocks will spend most of their time in his mouth. In the future I would have made a bag to store them, but I simply ran out of time.

Total actual cost: $5 for the shellac. Not too bad for a toy that should last years to come!

Cynthia Treen's baby quilt

One of my best friends from high school just adopted a beautiful baby boy from Taiwan. After the months long process (with two trips to Taiwan), they brought him home to Boston at the end of September. It must be so amazing--you go somewhere and get to meet your child and spend some time with him/her, and then you have to leave and come home and wait while lawyers, etc work out all of the details and just wait for the call. And then that second trip must be even more incredible--you leave home as two and return as three! That flight home must be just amazing.

We're going to her baby shower this weekend, and I just finished making a baby quilt for them from Cynthia Treen's Last Minute Fabric Gifts. One of my other favorite sewing projects (cotton knit animals) also came from this book.
I really like the book--it's organized in sections--less than one hour gifts, one-to-two hour gifts, two-to-three hour gifts, and more than three hour gifts. There are also a lot of sewing hints and tips in the front and back of the book that would probably be very helpful if I would take the time to read them!

For the quilt, I tried to pick colors that would be good for a baby, but also wouldn't seem too babyish. I wandered the crowded aisles of Sewfisticated until I found fabrics that seemed like they would work well together. Here's the quilt:

Playmates for a Playdate

While trolling my usual blogs I stumbled upon a great rag doll pattern from Patty Young's new line of fabric, Playdate. Three of these adorable rag dolls come on a panel of fabric, and were quickly delivered right to my doorstep. I remember this style of fabric paneling from my youth, when my admittedly uncreative mom would cut Halloween costumes from panels purchased at Joanns.

The girls were easy as pie to cut - in fact I was able to do it while playing with the kids, which is no small feat. The kids were really excited to be involved too, taking each piece that I cut and matching the fronts and backs together. They stitched up in no time, and the stuffing was made easy by using a chopstick (I'm sure there's some tool for this, but the chopstick worked just fine!).

The next morning the kids came down to three new dolls who quickly earned a special spot in the "stuffed animal" army and were seen running around the house, having a spot of t, and riding dumptrucks.

Now I just think they need some cute clothes, don't you think?

love in circles

I haven't had much to post about lately because I've been working exclusively on one project: a wedding quilt. This is the first time I've tried to make a quilt for a wedding, and with good reason. It's been an incredible amount of work. However I also deliberately chose a pattern that would stretch my skills. I've learned so much, and next time I think it will be a bit easier.

All that being said, the wedding's in a week and the quilt still isn't done. The top is patched together, now I just need to get to the quilting. Maybe sometime this week, or maybe it will be ready by September, just in time for the cooler weather.

The quilt is Denise Schmidt's (who I have ALWAYS loved) Single Girl quilt - a new take on the traditional Wedding quilt. I love that the rings touch but do not intersect each other. I chose the colors based on items on their registry. The quilt involved cutting and then sewing 36 x 16 + 8 x 16 which, if you're not good at math is 704 pieces. Crazy. But fun.

Knitting in Pairs

After years of exploring different knitting projects: baby blankets, hats, scarves, even sweaters, I've come to the conclusion that the only thing I truly love knitting is socks. But each time I undertake this venture, I find myself regretting it once I get to the heel of the second pair, and I exclaim "DON'T EVER LET ME KNIT A PAIR OF SOCKS AGAIN".

Knitting socks, for those of you who have never tried it, follows a typical pattern, and the pattern is this:


"cuff - leg - heel - foot - toe"



or translated (and here I quote Stephanie) as:

"interesting - boring - interesting - boring - interesting"

It never fails that by the second sock, when I reach the first segment of "boring" I am just that, completely bored. And even if the yarn is some kind of super expensive super exciting self-striping magical adventure, by this point I'm over it. I'm ready for something new. I'm ready to not be knitting socks anymore.

And from this frustration, the greatest idea of all time was born: why not knit socks in pairs?
I don't mean pairs like one sock, two sock.
I mean pairs like two people.
Each knitting one sock. Cutting the "interesting-boring" cycle in half, and therefore the completion time.

Now for some of you (Emma) who pride themselves on precision, this may not be for you. But for those of us who don't mind a pair of slightly-different length and gauge socks, I highly suggest trying it!

You'll need two balls of matching sock yarn (the downside, as most of the time you can create a pair from one skein) and a willing partner. After some disgruntled text messaging arguing over needle size, you can get started! In a few short weeks, an unsuspecting friend can be the recipient of a cool pair of new socks. And you, my friend? You can move on to your next project...