Jiggywinks!

 Made my friend Matt a hat. Red Heart Acrylic.  First hat I've made in a couple years!

 For Christmas, I kept busy!  My brother Jon got an extra-large, zigzag bulky afghan in a grey Puzzle acrylic--he snuggled in it immediately! My brother Michael got a granny-square bulky throw in a variegated blue/red/grey Puzzle acrylic, with a grey scalloped border (grey from Jon's blanket). I wrapped it and mailed it to him and he sent me a video when he unwrapped it! He also snuggled in it immediately. I love my family!! And I love making things for them. For my coworkers (whom I also love!) I crocheted cotton scrubbies. Everybody got two, and a bar of handmade soap that I bought from my friend Elaine. 

 Apparently, this is a rabbit, but it looks like a pig to me haha!  I made three dresses without a pattern, plus two little hats! That's one of the things I like about crochet, you just keep going until you're done! With knitting you need to have a pattern! Cost: Used cotton yarn I already had for dishcloths. This was a commission from a friend of mine. We ended up bartering three crocheted dresses of mine for one of the Ukrainian eggs she paints!

December of 2018, my mother-in-law asked me if I would complete a family project on her behalf. Her mother, my husband's maternal grandmother, made crocheted afghans for each of her grandchildren, but had passed before she could finish the one for my youngest brother-in-law.  I laid it out on the floor like this December of 2019 to use as a reference when I crocheted them together! Remember the vintage leftover yarn I used for the orange and yellow baby blanket? This is it!! I retrieved the tub of yarn and had a quick lesson in crocheting granny squares, and got to work. Grandma Wright had completed two dozen squares, and I sewed a little charm into the corner of each one so that it was known which ones were Grandma's.  It took me two years to finish all the squares and put them together, but the last six months were just waiting for yarn to be stocked in my shade ("eggshell") due to the general run on yarn from COVID-19.  Cost: about $15 for yarn. Made good use of ev...

 Used up the last of the pink yarn from my 15-year afghan and a partial skein of red heart to make a small baby blanket.  About six inches from the end as I was edging the blanket with pink, I ran out of yarn! Ended up using the trimmed ends from the squares tied together to make it to the corner! I wove in the ends and knots as best as I could, but I just had to remind myself that its ultimate destiny is to be chewed and spit-up on.  Cost: $0 (leftovers)

It's always a joy when you're able to clean a stack of projects out of your UFO pile. Yesterday I had my wisdom teeth pulled, and so today I was about to sit still and do a bit of work! First off is this knit lace blanket. I made it as a replacement for a knit blanket I made for a nephew of a friend of mine. When I ran into the mother last summer, I asked how Henry liked his blanket--and she said "oh he loves it!... He chewed a hole through it..." So of course I had to make a new one! It's a gift...a part of my heirloom guarantee I guess haha! I just feel so bad that I knit the original too loosely and that just wasn't a good plan with a small child who likes to pull things. Next I started making a crocheted blanket, also to go to Henry. This will be much more durable... Maybe the knit blanket will be put aside until he's older. Then, I made a small granny-square baby blanket the leftovers--I love using up all my odds and ends. This one I...

I was just paid $20 to embroider a child's name on a tai kwan do uniform. It turned out okay, but don't do what I did--go buy a protractor and actually measure the angles! I did a little bit of general measuring to make sure I drew the letters about the same size and spaced them out a bit evenly, but for the love of mike I just lucked out. Four rows of chain stitch in black, instead of the more traditional satin stitch. Not only was it faster, but it will be easier to rip out when it's the sibling's turn to wear the jacket (the real reason for embroidery as opposed to a black magic marker). Cost: Nothing to me, I had black floss laying around. $20 for my time.

Greetings Lovely People! The big question (for whoever ends up reading this blog) is why such the big gap? Did I not work on any projects? The answer is of course I did! Since July of 2019, I was cast as Christine Penmark in MTG's "The Bad Seed", a 1950s horror-type play about a young mother whose world spirals out of control when she realizes there's something sinister about her 8-year-old daughter Rhoda. So, I was busy rehearsing my first lead role (!) until the show ran for the first two weekends of October. Not only that, but I was busy with preparations for MTG's "Beauty and the Beast", which is scheduled to run the first two weekends of December. At first I was stage manager, but then I ended up helping play piano and rehearse with actors for their auditions, and I played piano for all the auditions, which were in August. Encouraged by an email to audition "just for the heck of it", I did. Never expecting to be cast, merely wanti...

Ever since we moved into our lovely apartment, I knew the empty space over the kitchen sink needed SOMETHING. In a house, it would be a window. In our cave of a kitchen with my spice bottles stored on the counter, it was a spice rack! Cue the "Mission Impossible" theme as I searched online for a suitable candidate. And searched. And searched. I quickly learned that for someone who wanted only a shelf to house her own spice collection (plus knicknacks) and not a pre-arranged counter set, this was going to be difficult. And expensive. The type of rack I wanted--the cheapest one I thought--was a simple wooden rectangle with shelves. Nope. Every shelf option that was reasonably priced was for counter storage, sized with accompanying bottles I didn't like, with guard rails (so I couldn't show off my knicknacks) or too small for the space. If I found one that kinda-sorta was like what I wanted, it was on Etsy for over $60! NO THANKS. I went to Menards and bought two of th...

I went to the Green County Fair and came back victorious!! For a graduation present in June, I made an ugly sweater that, on my baby sis, is transformed into a thing of beauty. Go figure. I used Lion Band Wool-Ease in a blend of colors guaranteed to camouflage anything she spilled on it, machine washable, and oh-so-quick to knit! First time I ever made a sweater, and I learned a couple new things along the way, like twists! Here's the thing: I slapped it together in a couple weeks, sewed the seams using the ends of the yarn, and didn't even bother weaving in my ends. I didn't follow the neck pattern and fiddled with it to make it a little bigger so it wouldn't smoosh her hair which I should NOT have been doing because I don't know what I'm doing. I also ignored the gauge (which I should not have done) and knit it tighter so it was warmer. When I dropped it off for judging I found a lose bit of yarn I forgot and I had to take apart a child's first aid ...

Sadly, I forgot to take a "before" picture, but my sister gave me a lamp when I moved out of my parents house. It had fake plastic flowers in it, and ugly fake-brass. What did I do? I sprayed that ugly brass hardware to an ugly antique brass color (at least it was different!) and reassembled it with origami cranes inside.

One year, I determined to have a hammock. It was AMAZING. I bought some canvas and grommets from Walmart, rope and hardware from Ace, and had a blast. Nothing like reading in the shade on a hot summer day. Wasn't expensive either! Sadly, the canvas proved more to be of the upholstery caliber than support-someone's-weight caliber...it ripped! At the close of the summer, I cannibalized it and folded the fabric up for another project. I didn't have to look far--when I moved to my brother's house I saw he had a towel binder-clipped to the rod over the laundry room window! The material was just enough for simple casement curtains. My first time, and I'm real proud of myself! When I moved out I left them, of course. 

When I moved to my brother's house, I was seized with the fix-it bug. The first project to get the treatment was a dresser given to me when I moved. The interior drawers were prone to snagging my clothes, and the hardware didn't look like it went with the rest of the dresser. First thing I did was line the drawers with wrapping paper--I bought it for this especially because it didn't have straight lines and you couldn't tell if I put it in crooked or not! I rubbed the drawers with soap so I could get them in and out easier, and then I went on my search for new hardware. I settled on an antique oiled-look with porcelain, as it matched knobs already on my nightstand. This dresser made it to my new apartment, but it quickly left to make way for a piano.  Next to get the treatment was a desk. I removed the glass top, painted it "chic yellow" (I remember the paint saleslady at Walmart calling it "chick yellow") and put new knobs o...

About a million years ago (about 8 years ago), the daughter of our church pastor was in trouble. Her Barbie had been played with for so long the one dress she had was in tatters. (I gather that her parents weren't that fond of young-women-looking dolls, and this particular one had been a gift from a grandparent). Anyway, Barbie was now living under the bed because she wasn't under fit for public appearances! Anyway, I borrowed my cousin's doll as a model, begged some fabric scraps from my sister-in-law, and dug through my sewing box. Next thing I knew, I had a small little wardrobe to give to the little girl (I forget her name) next Sunday. I wouldn't mind having some of these clothes myself! The first dress I made was actually part of a sheet scrap, if I remember correctly. I made the bodice first, sidestepping the dart problem by making neat diagonal folds down either side of the bodice and basting. The skirt was measured to Barbie, machine-basted and gat...

This year my baby sister will be graduating from high school. Coincidentally, I was hired by the high school to play synthesizer for a production of "Bye Bye Birdie" at the last minute (essentially three weeks rehearsal before the show opened--and I am by no means a professional musician). I walk into rehearsal, and who should be there but my little sister, playing flute? Despite Jocie's help getting me caught up, it was by far the most stressful show I've ever been involved in. Important practice though, and it made me appreciate my MTG shows all the more. The band director asked if I would be interested in coming back next year, and I said "definitely--if you let me know earlier!"  In the end, Jocelyn played beautifully, and I struggled valiantly (I shot the director the deer-in-the-headlights look more than once!) and together we made it through. Love you sis!

So, over a year ago when I was planning my wedding, I hauled off and bought a bunch of vintage postcards, that I immediately realized I could NEVER use as decoration because what if they got ruined??  I love these little pieces of history! So, when we moved into our apartment together, I wanted a way to display them. It took a while but when open frames went on sale for half-off at Hobby Lobby, I grabbed one! A few measurements with a ruler...a few dots of hot glue and some fishing line... and some mini clothespins and voila! I have many more vintage postcards, so I hope to have a lot of fun changing and updating them. Fun fact! I bought these postcards on Etsy from a vendor in the UK--and most of these are from UK and Continental European locations. HOWEVER... second row from the bottom, second row from the left, is a postcard I think is probably a hundred years old--and it depicts our state capital of Madison, WI. WOOHOO! $20 for the frame, and I think maybe $5 fo...