A Baptism Outfit

This past week we had our little one baptized, finally. In our denomination most people baptize their babies as infants, but circumstances being...this was our first opportunity, at almost age two! It's so funny, Daddy has been teaching him over and over to say "one" when asked how old he is, and now he will have learn that he is "two." Anyway...

I knew that our rough and tumble little guy would look ridiculous in a froofy white gown and bonnet, but I wanted something special and a little unique. There is always another pattern out there that I am wanting to try. I am terrible at drafting my own patterns and I'm a bit of a pattern junkie! I was dying to try Made-by-Rae's Charlie Tunic. I could really picture it as a little baptism outfit paired with Rae's BBBPs.

I decided I wanted linen. I made the trip over to Joann's and was astonished at the price per yard for 100% linen. I decided on two shades of a cotton linen blend. After getting the fabric home I was a little disappointed in my choice for the pants because it was quite thin, which would make it very airy and comfy, but also not as durable for a toddler. I went ahead with my plan because I didn't want to waste the money spent on fabric and it was only a few days away.

Since I'd made the pants before, they sewed up quickly and without any issues. I double stitched the crotch seam hoping this would prevent any tearing as a result of the fabric being so thin.

The tunic began to go together quickly, but then I got held up at the yoke part. I had to rip out and resew several areas of this part, but it was the first time I'd tried it. All in all, the tunic was not difficult to assemble, just a little tedious. If you enjoy sewing for the sake of sewing, then you might find this very enjoyable. I enjoy sewing for the sake of the finished product and grow very impatient with the detail. That being said, it is all the little details that really make something special.

The tutorial is very nicely done, and I was happy with the completed tunic. I should have measured his arms more accurately and I would have shortened the sleeves, or maybe sized down one.

I thought he was absolutely adorable in it. MS commented that he looked like a little Bishop. I kept telling him that if he saw a picture of a Bishop he would not think this. Someone else said Arabian Prince, another said Medieval. I just thought he was precious!

This was his first time wearing sandals since he was a little baby and he didn't know how to walk!

The LEGO Minifigure Display Case

If you have a child that loves Legos like mine does, you already know what I mean when I describe the Lego invasion that is currently occurring in our house. It's more like a hostile takeover, really. I keep designating places for Legos: large underbed boxes, stacking drawers, divided storage boxes, bookshelves...

It doesn't matter how many places I designate, those Legos will have their way with my house! I can almost guarantee that I could find Legos in every single room of the house--okay, maybe not my bathroom. Anyway, still on my quest to contain the invaders (and they've had 13 years to build up their armies), I thought it would be a fun project with MS to build a hanging display shelf for his favorite minifigures. I know you can buy these, but they are not cheap, and they only hold a few minifigures. You see, one of MS's favorite activities is creating interesting minifigures and showing off rare ones. As a result, he can never bear to put them away and they litter every surface of his room. It just looks like so much clutter! Where was he when I taught the place for everything and everything in its place class?

So last week when I was buying lumber for my yarn swift project, we decided to pick up some bits of lumber for a minifigure shelf. We really didn't have a design per se, but I kind of knew what I wanted to do. We ended up buying 4 pieces of 1/4" 2x3's. We got them home, and using a minifigure as a measuring guide, we came up with a plan and began cutting our wood.

Initially I thought that we would be able to nail pieces together, but the wood was entirely too thin. I had some Gorilla wood glue, so that was our next effort. We had two side pieces both marked with where the shelves should go. It would have been nice to have something that bonded instantly because holding a little 1/4" thick piece of wood  completely straight, waiting for it to dry, is no fun--not to mention I was doing all the shelves at once. When we felt those were fairly secure, we went about gluing the other side piece on. Somehow all the shelves were not exactly the same size (could it be the haphazard way I go about doing everything?). NO amount of pushing on the side piece would get the board to make contact on every shelf. Fortunately we had a bit of wood left over. MS had decided we would create a roof of sorts on the top with those pieces, but instead they went to bracing the back. Now we were in business.

Finally we were at the part MS was interested in, the spray painting. He had picked out a can of Lego red and was just itching to paint! We laid out a big piece of cardboard on the lawn and away he went. We tried to teach him about distance, even spraying motion, thin and repeated layers. After a lot of exasperation on my part that for some reason he couldn't perfect a spray painting technique that he had never attempted before, it seemed finished. We left it on the patio table to dry. 30 minutes later I looked outside to see the rain coming down. We ran out and picked up the wet, sticky, red shelf and hoped for the best. The next day it was dry, but very rough feeling. Hmmm, in our impatience to finish our project it never occurred to us to do a little sanding. I decided to lightly sand the little shelf and let him have at it with the spray can again. Much better.

The last part of my plan was to glue two rows of 1by's (Lego speak) to each shelf so that the men could be staggered from front to back. I did this step with tacky glue. After getting a sore back from digging through the giant boxes of Legos for the pieces we wanted, we had a pile to work with. I know, the Lego purists would gasp-- gluing down your Legos! If the men are not secure on the shelves, this whole exercise was pointless. Anyway...

Despite imperfect wood cutting, a little Gorilla Glue and some red paint yielded us pretty much exactly what I had envisioned. A small, lightweight shelf that would hold a lot of minifigures (close to 30). I wanted it lightweight so that we could use those Velcro wall mounts instead of hammering into these plaster walls. We still have to get the wall mounts, so for now the shelf is another Lego thing cluttering up a surface in MS's room!

I just did a disgusted walk through of the house and realized that Legos aren't the only thing taking over. In nearly every room I found a ball or hank of yarn or a knitting project lying about!

I Built My Own Yarn Swift!

A few days ago I saw a tutorial on FB on how to make your own diaper sprayer for rinsing cloth diapers. While I was excited about this project, I remembered another DIY project I had been wanting to do. This DIY yarn swift tutorial has been bookmarked on my computer for months, but I kept putting it off. For one thing, in the house we are in right now, there is no workshop and all of our tools are stored in a small, spidery storage closet that is not pleasant for me to access. I had actually found a swift on Etsy that is nearly the same price as what I paid for materials (before shipping). My father-in-law had almost convinced me to just fork over the $30 for the premade one, but I guess I was feeling like a challenge.

I had priced materials at two hardware stores and found that Lowe's had the best prices for what I needed. Yesterday I went with list in hand to buy my bits of lumber and hardware. While there, we also picked up some wood to build my middle son a Lego Minifigure display shelf (more on that one another time).

These pieces of wood are actually for MS's project.

As soon as we got home, and got little one down for naptime, MS (as my middle son will be known) helped me overcome the spiderwebs and haul out the portable work table. We dug through the tool boxes and found the few things I needed as well as my handy dandy Black and Decker cordless drill with jigsaw, circular saw, sander and router attachments. It might have been the best Christmas present I ever got! Yes I said I, and I did ask for it. I've had it for years, and despite being dropped and some of the attachments being a little warped from being dropped, it's the best little tool a gal could have.

At any rate, I didn't have a hand saw to notch out the cross bars, so I figured out how to do it with my circular saw. I was pretty proud of myself and the nice tight fit I got, until I tried to even things up to perfection and nearly ruined it. The result was that instead of having a portable swift that comes apart, my crossbars are shimmied and glued together. I will remember this boo-boo before making one for my mom. I could have just bought 2 new pieces of wood and started again, but the notching out part was the most time consuming of the entire project.

I had quite a few 3/8" holes to drill out and a very dull drill bit. Instead of waiting and getting a new bit, I tried to make the best of it and almost ruined the arms with off-center dowel holes. They are a little wronky, but not unusable. The hubs came home, saw my dilemma, went out and bought a whole new set of drill bits--drilled through that poplar like butter!

Finally I am ready to assemble it. Low and behold, I have brought home the wrong size dowel for my pegs, AND the hex screw is the wrong type. This is the only thing I found vague about this tutorial. In the list of materials, it tells the size of hex screw, but not that it should be threaded all the way down. I don't know what those are called, and my hardware store didn't have any. Today I went back to the hardware store for a new dowel and hex screw.  Because they didn't have the screw I needed, I substituted a screw with no ends and added a stopper bolt (?). I was totally winging it because I don't know the real uses for any of this hardware!

Does it work? It does! Was it worth it to make my own? Well, what makes it worth it? Saving money? The experience? The gratification of completing a project? For me, today, it was worth it. The cost for the actual wood and hardware was just a smidge under $15--not bad. I also had to purchase a woodfile/chisel (which was a fun little tool) which ran me $8, and today I picked up more sandpaper for $5.

Just something funny my son did!

Now I just need a ball winder to really get the benefit of my yarn swift. No, I will not be engineering a ball-winder, and yes I have seen the DIY ones on You-Tube. For now I will continue to use a wooden spoon as a nostepinne, and my swift is far better than the back of a chair!

I should mention that I made version 1 from the tutorial. Also, I could not find 6' long 1x1's anywhere, but was able to use two 3' 1x1's. Also, I used an oak dowel for my yarn pegs because it was much less flexible than the others available, which I assume were pine.

This week...

We've had family in town, basketball tournaments to prepare for, extra archery tournament practices, stomach bugs, and a meeting with the session of our church in order to join, BUT I am still managing to fit in some sewing and knitting.

I'm working on sewing my little one a baptism outfit using Made.by.Rae's Big Butt Baby Pants and Charlie Tunic patterns. I'm not sure how I'm going to like it yet. I'm making it in brown and cream linen cotton blends. I'm not in sewing mode, so I have to drag myself to the table occasionally-- it has to be done this Sunday!

I have the pants mostly done, even further than this photo shows.

I have just finished up this soaker in some spring colored wool I dyed myself. The colors are really more of what my mom likes to knit in (I'm more of a Plain Jane), but I read somewhere that you really have to knit with the wool you've dyed to love it. I don't know if I love it anymore now than I did when it was twisted into a pretty hank because I loved it pretty well then! At any rate, I like how this soaker came out, and I just have a drawstring to complete.

I'm still working on this pinafore pattern. I had to put that one on hold while a dyed a trim color to match. It will have wait a little longer yet because I have another custom sock monkey in the works!

Isn't it interesting how the patterns in the wool work out? For the bottom half I got the exact same pattern of red orange blotches even with alternating skeins every inch or so. Then for the second half I got the same sort of column of red orange with alternating skeins. I can see how alternating the skeins did not change the pattern because I laid these skeins side by side and dyed them exactly the same. Does this mean I needn't bother alternating skeins if dyed this way? I can also see why the pattern changed--because the orange red bits were not evenly spaced or the same width in the sections I dyed. I'm learning! I don't know if this will change the way I dye yarn or not. I read a very scientific tutorial on calculating for creating a self-striping yarn. While it might be interesting to know the exact (or close to exact) effect you will get from your dyed yarn, I almost think it is more fun to be surprised. If you have already calculated where and how far apart each color will be, you've taken the fun out of being poised over your yarn with a paintbrush waiting for the creative juices to guide you!

I've enjoyed dyeing my own yarn so much that I have scheduled a class to teach home school girls and moms how to dye their own wool. I had enough interested that I will have to schedule a second! What a fabulous crafty project for young girls who enjoy knitting. Their finished project will truly be one-of-a-kind!

On My Needles...Finally!

Well, I'm having a stab at this pinafore pattern. I am decidedly not fond of flat knitting. I have been knitting everything in round for so long now that all those long rows of purling have become onerous to me! I will soldier on for another 5 or 6 inches until I get to a part that is something other than just knitting. I watched an hour and a half of BBC's Sherlock Holmes and only progressed by a few inches. Sadly, we have watched all the available episodes or I would try to get another few inches done--oh wait, nap time will be over soon, so that wouldn't happen anyway!

Not What I Expected

I have been waiting to try this pinafore knitting pattern until I had dyed the perfect yarn. I didn't even know what colors I wanted. I kept searching Etsy and Hyena Cart for hand-dyed yarns to use as inspiration, but so far hadn't found anything. Then, yesterday I saw a little cotton shirt that had such a great mix of colors I knew I had my inspiration! I quickly wrote down the colors and couldn't wait to get a chance to make some magic. Well, I had a few free hours after dinner last night and it looked like a chemist's shop in my kitchen. I mixed and poured and had about 20 jars of not-quite-right colors (and I was only trying for 3 main colors). I knew I didn't have what I wanted, but the yarn was prepped and I had all those jars of colors... The result:

I think it looks Tye-dyed. My husband said it looked Aztec or Native American (minus the aqua, which he didn't think looked right, and which is my favorite part). My 12-y-o said it looked like a tropical bird of some kind. I think he meant a macaw, but he said something else funny that I can't remember now. My 16-y-o came in this afternoon and said how pretty it was. I liked his comment the best. My toddler had no comment, but he did learn to say "yarn" very early on. He says it more like "yon". I wonder why this word was learned before so many others. Could it have been the repeated, "don't touch that, that's mama's yarn," which I always say in the sweetest of voices? At any rate, this yarn which was designated for dyeing for this particular project is now dyed and will be used as designated. I only hope the intended recipient likes bright colors!

Revisiting Experimental Yarn

One of my first yarn dyeing projects was to try overdyeing some plain baby blue wool I had found in a half-off bin. It was perfectly good to use as was, but I was thinking it would be nice to give it a little boyish oomph! The problem was, in Kool-aid colors, all I had boy-wise was red. Well, every kindergartner knows that red and blue make...purple. Not a very boyish color. So my color choice was poor and my execution was lazy. What I ended up with was a slightly more interesting, but maybe not better looking yarn than what I first had. I had already wound it into balls to hopefully knit into something, someday. Yesterday I decided to undo those balls, wind them back into skeins, and put them back into the yarn-to-be-dyed pile! Today I hope to try redying these skeins into something I actually want to knit with, but my toddler is making very unhappy noises over the monitor, so there may be no yarn dyeing today...

Okay, little one is happily ensconced in a cozy spot with his new favorite movie, Toy Story (so long, Curious George). I am handpainting this one remaining skein of blue with three greens and a blue. To do this I am using Sunshine Yellow, Amazon Green, a combo of those two, and Coral Reef Aqua. Here is a test bit of yarn I did.

For the other funky purple and blue skeins I will overdye half in a full strength Amethyst dye bath and the other half in partial strength Amethyst and see what I get...Well, I let the first half stew too long and used up most of the dye bath, so I poured in a little more Amethyst for the rest of the skein, twice, and still wasn't happy. So I'm winging it some more. Why not add some Ruby Red to the dyebath? Now I think this is really lovely!

My handpainted yarn is steaming away and in a few minutes I will see if it is lovely too...In the meantime I will remember that I still have a family to feed (Do we really need to eat? There are these perfectly good, if not a little stale, animal crackers spilling out of the bag onto the counter. They have managed to satisfy my hunger pangs.) and prepare dinner. What are you having? Anything good? I am uninspired with my meal plan menu these days. By the way, my dyeing book, Hand Dyeing Yarn and Fleece (which is a great one), says never to cook and dye at the same time. I concur with this because not only is there not enough room in my kitchen to dye and cook, but you really don't want the purple Kool-aid looking dye stock to end up in a sippy cup! So as soon as my steaming pot is finished, then I will begin boiling pasta water and buttering garlic bread.

I have just finished putting my leftover dye stocks high in a cabinet where little ones can't get to it, and bigger ones can't accidentally knock them over looking for something. Currently, my jars are covered with plastic wrap and rubber bands. I had no lack of glass jars in the recycling bin, but hardly any lids. They will sit there, tempting me to another experiment in dyeing. While there is yarn in this house that lacks color...oh it's so much fun!

I have pulled my painted yarn out of the steamer--oh disappointments, the aqua color has not set! I'm not sure what to do. I have sprinkled some vinegar over the yarn and now I am steaming it for a while longer. Maybe the blue needed more acid to stick? I could probably look it up and find out...nah.

 After more steaming, the aqua is still not fully absorbed, but my fingers are a lovely shade of blue green. My last ditch effort and making this color stay is to toss it into a pot of water with a little citric acid.

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

 Do you hear the music?

Here it is. I like it, and dinner is well under way--with veggies too. Yay, Mom!

Don't forget to do something creative today, even if it's macaroni art with your preschooler! That counts too.