Knitting Sandwich

crafty catchup

good grief!  time waits for no man indeed! how is it that it is already november 20th!  sheesh..  i'm going to run a quick crafty catch up post to cover most of the projects that have been happening around here...

back in september lily's bff had her 10th birthday party - it was a whole family party, with costumes.  the theme was greek gods and goddesses, it was super fun, and i was pretty pleased we managed to pull off four finished costumes in a short time with a new baby around.  wanna know my secret?

the hot glue gun!!  true story!  the only thing i actually sewed was lily's dress, and that was just a basic sheath out of a sheet:

 here she is, nike goddess of victory!  she did all her own accesories, except we did purchase the wings!  

i hot glued the heck outta thora's costume:

she was persephone, and so needed a tempting pomegranate  on her shirt and a springtime themed laurel wreath (the pink tutu was conveniently given to us as a baby gift)

i went as medusa, and just hot glued a bunch of rubber snakes to a bunch of hair clips.  luckily i already own a pile of black clothes!

 brian was on his own, but i think he did a fantastic job of creating his bacchus costume (bacchus is roman... but i'm forgetting the greek equivalent right now... dionysus?).  here's a shot of the whole family:

 it was a super fun night!  i love that we have friends who throw funny costume parties!

now on to october... 

with halloween fast approaching i was working to crochet a mermaid tail skirt for my sister.  she had seen that link of the mermaid tail blanket and requested a skirt for her airel costume.  i used the crocodile stitch skirt pattern (rav link) with the mermaid tail fin pattern (rav link) attached at the end.

 i had also volunteered to make some door prizes again for this year's earth conference - a set of napkins and a crochet market bag.  i can't get out the sewing machine without lily wanting to sew as well!  her class has just started learning recorders in music class and she decided to make a bag for her recorder!

 she was super stoked that i let her use the rotary cutter!   here's her fabulous finished bag:

 i got my napkins done too:

and also the promised market bag (although i had originally planned to make two... no one seemed to mind that there was only one).

 i've made this bag a couple times before, it's the five-hour market bag (rav link) and i always enjoy making it!  the mesh section seems like "magic" when i'm working it up!

one more project to share, it's a lily project that involves the hot glue again, and i pretty much saved the best for last.  

backstory: our good friend and neighbor evan and lily were talking one day about how lily loves to dress up in matching clothes with thora but since evan is single and doesn't even have a dog he doesn't have anyone to dress matching with... so lily came home and made him a dog out of a milk jug complete with minnesota twins sweater, so he could have a matching buddy!  that girl cracks me up!  

okay, that pretty much catches me up!  but i'm not caught up with y'all!  as you've probably noticed i'm waaaaaay behind in my blog reading.  so far behind that i feel i will never catch up.  my new plan is to just mark everything as read and start over, i'm going to put bloglovin' on my phone, as i seem to be able to use my small phone easier that the big computer when nursing thora.

but then i've missed out on 3+ months of posts, which i feel bad about... so i am apologizing and hoping that no one is too offended!  

-melissa

ps - those photos of thora are two months old.  need a more recent one?  here she and lily are yesterday morning.  that's about as current as it gets!  onwards and upwards! 

 

blissed out on baby

as you can probably deduce from my prolonged absence from blogland, not much crafting's been happening since thora's arrival.  to quote the smooth talkin' lando calrissian, "it's not my fault!" 

 i just want to stare at this face all day!

 now to be fair, we do more than just stare at her.  there's a fair bit of this going on:

 a whole heck of a lot of this going on:

 but when i try to focus on something non-baby related i just get distracted by something like this:

 i mean, look at that face!  can you blame me?!?

it took me until almost the end of august to even touch any yarn!

 and i'm still not quite done with the squares for august!  but there has been a wee bit of other craftiness going on around here.  lily and i have jumped on the coloring bandwagon and signed up for alisa burke's summer & fall color me bundle.  it's been nice to have the monthly reminder to sit down and spend some time coloring together.

 

 lily and i also collaborated on a quick little project for miss thora - "they" say that babies are supposed to look at black and white images to stimulate their little baby brains (or something like that) so we made a little book of black and white patterns for thora to read.

 so just to sum up - i've not been productive in the yarn department, but it's not my fault, because, look!!  baby!!

 -melissa 

2014 Unblogged

Happy New Year!!

I was looking at last years pictures on my phone and found a lot of blogable photos.  So in the spirit of closing out 2014 here is some stuff I could/should? have blogged. 

The birth of a new quilt

 

The birth of a sewing room

 

A growing pile of blankie

 

The most fun craft project inspired by a children's book.  (I might actually get around to writing a review of this book with the project, the book is THAT good!)

Finding inspiration a MFAH

More inspiration at the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair

And even MORE inspiration at the International Quilt Festival

All that inspiration led to a new super hero: RAINBOW GIRL

Here's hoping for an inspired 2015!

-Lindsey

the 9 3/4 party

lillian's 9 3/4's birthday was november 17th, and to paraphrase the immortal words of hagrid, "it's not every day your young lass turns 9 3/4!"  a potter-themed party was definitely needed to celebrate.

the invitations:

 the house decorations:

the last was a photobooth set up for people to pose and take pictures all night long... lots of silliness was found on that camera, but this one, of my goofball husband, is my favorite!

we had to have harry potter themed snacks as well...

lily made the broomsticks and snitches herself!

and what birthday party would be complete without a cake?  "made it myself, words and all... i may have sat on it a bit."

everyone came in costumes:

 from left to right we have: neville longbottom, hermoine granger, fleur delacour, harry potter, draco malfoy, luna lovegood, and ron weasley!

the grownups dressed up too:

 again, from left to right: minerva mcgonogall, hagrid, professor sprout, bellatrix lestrange, madame hootch, albus dumbledoor, professor trelawney, rita skeeter, severus snape, and the minister of magic cornelius fudge.

everyone had so much fun!  but especially lily, which made me especially happy!

 -melissa

Butterfly Birthday Sweatshop

We took Sabrina and some of her friends to the Butterfly Center for her birthday.  It was the perfect low stress solution after returning home from vacation (and not having enough time to really clean house). 

That is, until my mom had a brilliant idea.

"Why don't we make butterfly wings for all the girls?"

This was Thursday night.  The outing was Saturday morning. 

But the idea was inspired.  And my mom is an artist.  She made us homemade costumes every halloween and would obviously be up for a sweatshop. 

So I drew up a sketch and took measurements.

Then I went to JoAnne's fabric during lunch break on friday to see if anything struck my fancy.

I found the perfect wing fabric and supplies.

Then I remembered I had some black corduroy that would be perfect for the thorax. 

So Friday night we had a good old fashioned sweatshop.

I sewed the wings.

Mom painted them.

And did a late night model session. 

It really was a brilliant idea, and the girls loved them.

Sabrina has worn her wings all over the neighbourhood.

My little butterfly had a very happy birthday. 

-Lindsey

 

Welcome Spring!

I hate daylight savings time, but I love spring.  Instead of dwelling on that lost hour of precious sleep, this weekend we craftilly celebrated spring. 

Inspired by this tutorial, Sabrina and I pilfered paint chips at Home Depot and bought a wreath form at Hobby Lobby. 

During nap time I did the more detailed work of cutting out the paint chips.  -I went with dragonflies after I accidentally cut off a butterfly wing. 

We wrapped the wreath form with left over quilt batting and pinned it into place. 

 

Then Sabrina decided where the dragonflies would land and I pinned those too. 

Then I think she channeled her inner cat because she decided to sit on the wreath. 

We hung it on the (newly painted) front door on a ribbon.  Hung and re-hung and re-hung, Sabrina needed it very low so she could admire her handywork. 

I know it is a bit early, but we are ready for spring!  Are you?

-Lindsey

luna's loss could be your gain

luna got this book for christmas from my mother-in-law's insane cat.  a very funny gift, but as it turns out i already own a copy.

i decided luna doesn't really need her own book, since she can't read and doesn't even have thumbs she can't really do many crafts anyway.

sooooo.... if you'd like your very own copy of "crafting with cat hair" (and who wouldn't?!?!) just leave a comment.  if more than one person is interested, i'll come up with some clever way to decide who wins.  (if you want to up your chances you could leave a cat hair themed poem or somesuch silliness.)

i'm happy to ship anywhere - spread the cat-hair-crafting love, i'd say.

-melissa

and i can't even blame lily, because she was at school

i made this today... all by myself.  yep, just me and my piles of glitter.

i saw this on pinterest a couple weeks ago and have been wanting to make one, but we've been out of white paint.  soooooo, i channeled my inner glitter-crazed 6 1/2 year old (which i wasn't even aware i had until today) and came up with this sparkly baby:

know what?  glittering is kind of fun.

-melissa

ps - there's still time to enter the handspun holiday giveaway!  i'm loving reading all the comments and finding so many new fun blogs to visit!!