Things I've Been Meaning to Do

Yesterday I made some more t-shirt yarn and whipped up a rag rug. I'm not sure why it looks black, it's really a dark green. I'm also not sure what happened to the shaping. It's supposed to be oval, but ended up having some uniqueness to it. Perhaps tension? Perhaps not being exact in my yarn making was enough for the difference? For a free, rag project, I'm not too concerned about it.

I've decided to include some things I've been meaning to do as part of my 10 UFO's/WIP's for the month. They kind of count as UFO's, right? So, here are two items that I've repainted for the new house.

These 3 projects bring my total up to 7. I have one more re-paint that should be finished tomorrow and I am really close to having my Pottery Barn knock-off mirror complete. I might just make it after all.

T-Shirt Yarn Bag

We have tons of unused t-shirts here. I've been wanting to try making yarn from t-shirts and finally did last Sunday. It was so easy! I chose to make a rag bag, featured in Erika Knight's book:

This bag took 5 men's t-shirts (the pink were breast cancer awareness shirts) and worked up well on circular needles (the straight needles killed my hands first!). I used the cut off hems from the t-shirts to make rolled fabric flowers and attached them with safety pins so that I can take them off when washing the bag. I wish the picture showed the colors better. I mostly worked on this at the park and it was a great project that was easy to take along. My favorite part of this project is that it was absolutely FREE!

This brings my total to 4 UFO's/WIP's completed. I should have another to add by Monday. With a move coming next week, I doubt I'll make it to 10 in the month, though I have a few in the works that are really close to being finished.

Whispers of White

WIP/UFO #3 is complete tonight. I love Vanna White's crochet books. They are probably my crochet pattern books that are most used. This baby afghan, Whispers of White, comes from this book:

I am very happy with the way this afghan turned out. I will use this pattern again and may switch it up and try another color. With my current, cheap-o camera, this is the best picture I can get of the entire (or most of the) afghan. . .

. . .with a close up on details.
There are some mixed feelings about giving this afghan away, but I started it with a recipient in mind and it will go to her.

Flower Box Baby Quilt

I started this quilt about 6 years ago as a gift for a friend who was having a baby. The quilt is simple enough and you may wonder why it took so long to finish, but I couldn't figure out how I wanted to quilt the border and other projects & life worked their way to the front burner. I finally decided to just carry the quilting design to the edge and completed this UFO last night.

Excuse the wrinkled appearance. It doesn't seem so wrinkled when I look at it-- perhaps I didn't spread it out well enough when I took the picture?

This makes 2 down and 8 to go for my goal to finish 10 UFO's/WIP's in one month.

Pardon Our Dust

I am trying to update this blog and find that my left column is lost and my right column has found its way to the bottom of the blog. Hopefully I can get it figured out soon, without Rich looking into the code for me. For now, I need to go play with a 4-year old.

Road to Go

We're heading off for a long drive tomorrow (3 hours). Since Rich won't be accompanying us, I thought Zack might need something to help keep him occupied in the car. We do have a portable DVD player, but Zack has been known to get car sick and has never made this particular trip without getting sick. Needless to say, I want something that will clean up fairly easy and will not be ruined should he get sick.

Somehow I had a stroke of genuis. Since I'm not spending any money on crafts this month, I found an old cookie sheet that never gets used because it's rusty. You can pick up a new cookie sheet for as little as $4 at Walmart if you don't have one lying around.

Spray paint your cookie sheet. I chose to use black. If your cookie sheet is rusty like mine, you may want to sand off the worst of the rust to eliminate the blotches you can see in the photos. I didn't really care about it, since I knew that I would be covering them.

I used my Silhouette to cut out the stop signs and the race track, then I used Mod Podge to adhere them to the cookie sheet. I'm a bit of a Mod Podge novice and didn't get all of the bubbles out, but I'm sure Zack won't mind having some bumps in his road. One down fall of my cookie sheet: because it was small, I was limited as to the road I could use and the signs didn't really fit on the road like I had envisioned. I had a plan of a more realistic traveling road/city, which I could have fit on a larger cookie sheet had I bought a sheet instead of using what was on hand. Oh, well. He'll never know the difference, right?

After using the item, I actually found that this was the perfect size. The cookie sheet fit perfectly on his lap and was just large enough to rest on the arm rests of his booster chair.

These Hotwheels are fairly new on the market-- they are magnetic! Zack loves that they will climb up doors. I will love that they will stick to the cookie sheet and not fall off as he's playing or when he puts it away, causing problems while we're trying to drive.

Seriously, they don't fall off! They do drive down the sheet with good ol' gravity working on them, but they don't fall when they're vertical.

I have plans for the back of the cookie sheet as well. I thought about checkers, tic-tac-toe, etc. but those games all require a second player. I came up with something that I think Zack will have a lot of fun with, but I haven't had time to create it, yet. I'm excited to surprise Zack with his new game tomorrow and will try to have the rest of it done for another surprise before our next long drive.

Linking up:

Fifth Time's the Charm

I needed a bag to hold everything we needed to go play at the water park a week or so ago. I was unable to find anything that met my needs, so I thought I would make a bag. I knew I could make something simple that would be large enough to hold the items, but then I found a pattern that fit what I needed AND had a zipper AND had a lot of pockets. Zippers are always a plus. I picked up all of the materials, went home and spent the night working on the bag so that it would be ready to go the next day. *Note to self: just because you are awake and can't sleep does NOT mean that you can function well enough to try a new type of pattern. Also, don't try to complete an entire bag the night before you want to use it.

The first time through I somehow managed to sew the zipper inside the bag. I mean completely inside the bag-- in between the lining and the outside fabric. I unpicked, sewed the bag together again, only to find that I had the zipper piece sewn in upside down. I grabbed my trusty seam ripper again, then set to work sewing the bag for a third time. I didn't understand the instructions of the pattern because it was not working out properly and I couldn't figure out what to do with the ends of the zipper piece. I tried sewing them in, but that was obviously not the answer. Frustrated, I gave up at this point. The next morning, I ran to Target as fast as I could before we left for the water slides and found this bag:

I wish I could say that I saved a ton of money on the bag that I made, but the materials were the same price as this bag that I purchased at Target. It doesn't have nearly as many pockets as the pattern bag, though. With a finished model, my bag pattern now made sense. I knew what to do with the zipper piece. So, now that my bag pattern made sense, I started unpicking again last night. I sewed the bag together again. It was one of those perfect times when the stars are aligned and you run out of bobbin thread right as you finish your last seam. I was so pleased. Then I looked at the bag. I lined up seams of the lining and seams of the bag, but the lining seams were its center and the bag seams were its corners. The handles and the bag were skiwampus. I unpicked, yet again, and on the 5th time I finally managed to get the bag right.

The correct way to handle the zipper piece:

Beautiful pockets on the sides, ready to hold water bottles:

Two pockets on the front of the bag. They're pretty big, so I'm not sure yet what will go in them.

I didn't take any pictures of the inside pockets. I did a bit of adapting to meet my needs here. I ALWAYS need to have pens in my bags, so I made some narrow pockets that will house pens and/or pencils. The lining also features some larger pockets, so that it has a total of 8 pockets.

Here is the final bag:

May it see years of service and may I come to love it after all of the seam-ripping pain it caused me.

This makes 1 WIP finished for my month of no spending on crafting supplies. I also used some leftover fabric to make some bean bags. I have plans for those for another time.

Twist Collective

One of my favorite blogs to read is a knitting blog, Alaskan Purl. I love Allison Haas' writing style and her designs. One of her designs is featured in the Fall 2011 Twist Collective. So, I thought I would swing over and check out the patterns. I have this problem with knitting patterns-- the problem being that I fall in love with them and I have to have the pattern. My knitting skills are usually not up to snuff to actually make the product (though I hope to remedy that in the near future), so the patterns sit and collect and my pile grows ever larger. I am in love with so many patterns from Twist Collective! Here are just a few of my favorites.

If only they weren't sold separately for $6 or $7 per pattern. I would be more than happy to pay a book price to have a collection of the patterns, but how do I choose to buy them separately? How do I afford to buy them all separately? With the promise of fall and winter on the way, I am itching to get some needles out and attempt to finish some sort of cold weather project. This in no way helps my problem and these beautiful patterns are taunting me.

Pink Swim Robe

I made a swim robe for Lena. I went back to Walmart for beach towels and discovered the price was 3 times what I paid when I bought Zack's! I couldn't believe they had raised the price that much in just a few weeks. I made a trip to JoAnn's to look at terry cloth, finding that they had some cute patterns but it was only terry cloth on one side. Does that make sense to anyone else? I ended up picking up some regular bath towels at Target. It's nice and soft. I'm pretty sure I want one for me. Just a nice, soft, plushy robe.

Sarah and I made a quick and easy craft yesterday, but I'm not posting pictures because I am going to make a few as Christmas gifts and I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Update

on the matter of my Pottery Barn Knock Off Mirror, it was too hot when I put on the last coat of lacquer finish and it crackled. Now I have to sand it all down and begin the painting over. Again. I may just wait until the fall for some consistent temperatures, even though I really want to have this project finished before moving into a new house.

on the matter of the Kaleidoscope QAL, I started sewing my blocks together. I ran into problems and I knew I was going to run into problems because I didn't have enough float on my piecing to make the blocks fit together nicely. Still, I crossed my fingers and plugged away anyhow. Now I must unpick and/or decide if I should start over or if there is anything salvageable from the wreckage.

I did, however, finish crocheting this bag:

It's actually huge. I didn't read the pattern to notice that it was going to be 44 inches circumference at its largest point. It was a stash buster project, so it worked out just fine. I wish I had placed the stripe a bit higher, but I was deviating from the pattern (which had no stripe) on that point. I have no idea what to use it for. I suppose toting swimming items seems the most likely.

Sponge Bombs

Yet another item that has been making an appearance just about everywhere in blog land-- Sponge Bombs. These took me about 10 minutes to make and the kids are loving them. They're inexpensive, too. I originally found them by Whipperberry but featured on A Little Tipsy.

Lena wasn't sure that she wanted to be throwing them at Zack or have them thrown at her. The kids were tried to find the bombs that had the same color combinations to make matches and they had fun splashing them in the pool. Until Rich joined in the fun and showed the kids how the throwing was done. After that, it's been a completely fun game of water bomb tag.

These were definitely worth making! They are less time than filling up water balloons and I didn't have to get wet like when I fill up the balloons. Not to mention they don't have the scare factor of a popping balloon for little kids, such as Phoebe. She can carry them around and have fun, too.

Swim Robe

Swim/beach robes are very popular right now. I first found them on Made and when I decided that I would make one for Zack, I went there to purchase her pattern, only to find that the largest size was a 4 and I figured Zack would need a 5. I looked through patterns at JoAnn's and found a McCall's pattern (M4643) that was similar and McCall's patterns happened to be on sale for $.99 each. Score! I let Zack choose a beach towel at Walmart (carefully steering him away from ones featuring large pictures such as Transformers or Spiderman. . .), bought 2 for $3.84 a piece, then went to work cutting them up. The pattern ended up only going as large as a 4, so I added to the pattern to what I guessed would be a 5.

He's loving his new "suit" and has worn it all day. Not too bad for my $10 investment, especially considering I've seen other blogs talk about creating them because store-bought versions are running as much as $70. I love that I can put it on him when he gets out of the pool and it will stay on him.
It ended up being a bit big, but that's fine because it will hopefully work for this year and next that way. I'm glad to know he'll have something that will be easy to put on and take off, something to keep him warm when the wind picks up and he comes out of the cold water at Bear Lake next month.