Wheelin'

We took a few spins around the neighborhood on Rocky's 4-wheeler with the boys in the little yard trailer and as we were finishing up as a family we rode through some woods behind our home that surrounds the city's utility easement. We were quite a little ways away when we saw a black streak which surprised us since we had not let Diego out of the fence. After we realized what had happened we recreated the scenario by putting him back into the fence and driving down the path. As I looked over my shoulder I saw our dog jump from the top of his dog house to about 7' horizontal and 4' vertical away to the top of our 6' privacy fence and then over the fence and partially down hill to the ground. We couldn't believe it. We let him be with us, "his people." and he thoroughly enjoyed it for a few more rounds. This picture is after I got off, Rocky took the trailer off and the boy's got on with him. Diego had a while out and then Rocky put him back in the fence but we were still outside, less than a minute later he did it again so Rocky had to move his house. Hopefully he won't try again. If only he was smart enough to figure out that it's only a 5' leap off the side of the deck on the other side of the yard and he's free. . .

The first water play of 07

They had a blast, need I say more?

Twin loaves

They finally came out right! These were made from flour I ground with the grain mill. They were not too dense, they rose well. They have been yummy to eat. I hope that my future loaves can come out this way!

Making Peanut Butter

Charmie makes some carob peanut butter. He had lots of fun. Mardie gave moral support.

Sock Monkey cover

I temporarily used some of my other bags for a few months and my Grace Smarthandbag kind of sat to the wayside, but after I made my last bag I realized that this one is really a great size for my things so an earlier trip to the store yeilded this yummy Moda print Funky Monkey which had to come home to be my new bag cover. 20 minutes later Voila! I love this cover for spring!

still redoing

I finally finished folding the smaller yardage, bigger scraps and fq's. I folded those over my 4" ruler and stacked them again by color in the smaller bins on the baker's rack. I still need to find a bin or two for my scraps that are too small to fold.
After that the next steps for the room are to paint, put up shelves on the long wall above my work table to hold Genie, Peaches and Baby Kenny. I haven't decided if my 201 will go up there or not. It's so much heavier and bigger than all of the others so I think I'll feel more comfortable with it on the rack right where it is.
Lastly I want new flooring. We don't want to remove the carpet as it's perfectly fine for a bedroom and this room may someday be a bedroom again. I just need a workable temporary solution. I'm thinking of some sort of solid flooring I can lay on the carpet that is easier to sweep/clean and will allow my chair to roll. I'm still trying to work through that though.

Red silk handbag with fiber bloom

Red silk outer. Double straps. Handstitching at bag opening. Bag stands on it's own due to firm interfacing.

Striped silk lining. Magnetic snap closure. Four interior pockets for pens, cell phone, etc.

Free form quilted fiber bloom.
This was my first experiment with doing this and I like the look. I'll have to try this again. I think the plain red bag needed some sort of embelishment. This was supposed to be my new purse but it's just a tad too small. I'll have to decide if I'm going to sell it or save it.

new workroom

Before you get all excited I am still in the same room. I just love it now. I've been realizing how first my sewing work with the professional workroom to sew home decorations, and now the dance bags and other merchandise has been an answer to prayer. With both of them I was happy to have the work and potential for extra income, but didn't seem them for the GIFT that they truly are. Thankfully God has opened my eyes to see and I am so grateful. I am going to be in this room a lot more in the future creating so I needed to get it ready for work. The first thing was to organize my fabric and yarn stash. I had this idea a few weeks ago from one of my new knitting books to organize my yarn y color vs. by fiber type. I didn't want to mess with all of the yarn though so I put it off. That is until last night (Friday night) when I was reading a blog link my mommy sent and found a link for fabric stash organization. I really loved how her work looked so today when I put the boys down for nap I started folding the fabric. I folded all of my yardage and you can see it in the bins to the right. It's all organized by color. I can get 3 stacks per bin. I ran out of room when I got to the red so I stacked it on top. The white pile on top is wadding, stabilizer and interfacing. The large basket on top has been relocated and contains the yarn surplus.
To the left I finally organized my yarn by color and I LOVE it, both how it looks and the ideas I'm starting to get by mixing things up. Before I just saw all of the wool yarn and it looked messy and disorganized. Now I see the color values next to each other and can use them within the hue or across the spectrum.

This picture is taken several hours later after I had worked through some other issues in the room like moving the baker's rack. It has all of my fq's and scraps and still needs to be folded in collapsible baskets. It also houses the 4 vintage/antique machines I'm keeping. Singer 201, Peaches (301A), Genie (354), and Baby Kenny (1040). The other 5 I plan to sell.
Back to the stash. . . I also added a tier to my fabric stacker and put the red into it. I moved my postage supplies on top of that and moved the white stack over. I like it better here.

This is the room from the door. No I haven't finished my sewing room wall hanging, but I had forgotten about it so I pinned it up to remind me to finish it.
I moved SK to the middle so that I can more easily use Serge or BMK. I also gained a little extra room on SK's table for larger items I'm sewing. Rocky pulled my thread racks down so that I could move my baker's rack but they will need to be put up later. Right now they are cluttering up my flat surfaces a little but I'm so happy with my room redo I don't mind. One other thing I really like about this new arrangement is that my table has a long side against the wall instead of a short side so now I have plenty of room to walk between my work table and my sewing areas. Before I had to really squeeze to get through when my chair was there.

Dance bag #3

This bag is the 2nd bag I promised Gina this week. It is a mini drawstring messenger bag. Perfect for a Tween, but functional for older or younger . The strap is generous enough to be worn across the body on a grown person, but it is easily knotted to shorten it's length . It has three interior pockets, the center one is cell phone sized. The side ones are slightly wider, so a good size for makeup, hair bows, hair pins, keys, etc. I used three fabrics for this bag, the embroidered pink stripe, the chocolate micro suede contrast and the lining is a sparkly and slinky pink with iridescent metallic dots. It was very difficult to photograph the colors accurately. This bag is my original design.

Tighty Tealies?

As usual out of necessity I came up with a design. Here are some training underwear I just made for Mardie. He's been in underwear all week and doing very well at staying dry. I designed these off the Gerber brand underwear that I already have. I used two layers of poly fleece for the exterior. 1 layer of Pixar Cars flannel for the inner and that is backed by a double layer of micro fiber toweling for the soaker area. I used FOE to bind it all. The FOE is not strong enough to cinch the waist like I wanted so Mardie has a little plumber's butt thing going on in the back.

Dance bag #2

Here is the first of many bags I am making to be sold at the boy's dance studio. Ms. Gina, the studio owner and the boy's dance teacher asked me to make some bags to sell with the studio name on them.

This one is my original design. It is similar in size to Ms. Gina's bag meaning it's a larger sized tote. The base is wider than the top though you can't tell from this photo. It's a rich chocolate brown twill with chenille fibers forming the twill texture. It's very soft. The interior is a ballet/dance themed cotton print. I put in one small pocket for keys or phone, etc.

sample

Here's a sample knit from a combination of two yarns. I'm loving it, but let me know, what do you think?

You knew this was coming

My sis got around to snapping this self portrait with Jada in tow and I had to snag it for my blog. I hadn't seen them actually use it, thouh I heard many tales of the use in the airport and even attempted use by my bil. I must say I'm so glad that it's working well for them, and I absolutely love this front facing cary that Janet is using. I wouldn't have tried it. I guess I have my mind already set. . . but it's awesome! Way to go J and JC3!

Stolen without permission

OK, Jada is just too cute. I had to steal a copy of this pic from my sister's blog. Sorry Janet for not getting permission. I hope you don't mind.

Thank you bear

My wonderful sister saw fit to bless me again with some beautiful yarns. One of them was a colorgrown cotton Chenille that feels oh so yummy. I have admired this yarn for some time, as did Janet, but she didn't like working with it at all and didn't have a project in mind for it. That is until I saw it and asked for it. Then she thought it may be nice to make a bear for Jada with it. . .
Well after she gave it to me I didn't think it would be right to deny my new baby niece a handknit bear from yarn her momma got just for that purpose ;-}
Thanks J. I love the yarns. I intend to do lots with them. I hope JC3 likes the bear.

Wet Froggy day

Today I continued planning for future projects and frogged a project I made a little over a year ago, vesty. I never really liked how it seemed so bulky. Maybe I'm just not a vest kind of girl. I love the colors however and my attempt at stash busting. I plan to redo this into something that I will love to wear. My sis also gave me some scrap, sock and chenille yarn last night that she didn't want to work with and one of the types of yarn was in the process of becoming socks. I frogged that too. Now that the frogging is done, since it's so wet outside I'll just sit inside and knit. I'm working on a bag right now so my 2nd footie sock is on hold on the needles.

Changes

I know I posted earlier today, but this is a different subject so I get to do a new post :P
I'm changing what my blog is all about. I'm not taking away the crafting part because it's a big part of who I am, but I'm adding in some other pretty big parts too. I think I finally honed my blog description to set the tone. Don't get mad if you see me posting different kinds of things. It's my blog, it's my prerogative.

New addiction and some old ones too

OK, It's 11:55 and I just got done milling about 10 cups of flour. . . Something is not right with this yet it felt so good. It all started when I was looking over the cookbooks that my mom left with me, that progressed to me looking through some cookbooks I've had for a few months but haven't really utilized well. . . one thing lead to another and I figured that since I had just used my milled flour and most of my store bought flour, I may want to bake something and have a flour shortage. Hence the flour milling at almost midnight. As I poured the wheat berries into the hopper and watched the flour mound into a white mountain with it's golden brown basin feelings went through me that I can't quite describe. I think the best description would be a high.
On a separate yet related topic of books and addictions, 2 arrived in the mail today from Amazon. I love books. Most of my friends are slightly freaked out with the number of books they see in my home on various topics. I'm not talking about novels. Except for a few classics most of my books are non-fiction. The two that came are Sally Melville Styles and The Knitting Experience: Book 3. I've been pouring through them and their ideas while referencing back to Books 1 and 2. All the while finding patterns, ideas, future projects that I want to delve into NOW. I've been happy with everything I've made from Book 1 except for a vest. The problem with the vest was my poor yarn choice not the actual pattern or style.
I haven't tackled anything from book 2 but part of that was my challenges with finding yarn for the projects. I like how Styles helps with working through stash. That's a big problem for me, having plenty of yarn but not knowing how to approach a project from my stash and often not having enough yardage. Or sometimes having way too much yardage and feeling like if I make a project I'll have too much leftovers to justify "splitting" the yardage.
Sally in this book also demonstrates how just one ball of something I like can be very useful. I always felt that just one ball was a waste, but often find yarn I love and antagonize over not being able to afford enough of it to make a project, or over finding the right project for the yarn. I have to actually try to put the principles into practice but from what I've already read I'm looking forward to undertaking some new projects with different methods and techniques than what I've done in the past.
I've been stockpiling scraps of sock yarn from my socks and from whatever I can get my sister to give me so I've been planning a scrappy project. I haven't figured out exactly how I'm going to make it come together but I have even stronger feelings now about making this project happen.
I made a blanket in college that was this type of project. The blanket is a favorite of mine and now the boys. It's lapaghan sized and a huge variation on a granny square. It's made mostly of yarn I recycled from sweaters I got at the campus clothing swap. Because it would have been impossible to get all the same texture and weight of yarn this project has lots of texture and variation between the yarns but it works. I'd love to have some garments like this.

Quick mix and biscuits

My mommy came over today and brought some recipes for muffins. My original intent was to have yummy muffins by the time she left. We discovered in her recipe list a jem for a quick mix. It has the recipe to make basically Bisquick or a similar baking mix that can be stored away for later use. It also had instructions for what to add to make pancake batter, biscuits, muffins, cake, cookies, or cobbler from the base recipe. I couldn't resist because before I started this bread baking venture I really didn't even keep any baking things on hand other than Bisquick. I know that sounds horrible, but I probably didn't buy flour but maybe 2 times in our marriage before recently.
The mix is easy to make and yields about 10 cups of mix. I had everything on hand so I plunged right in. I used some of the store bought flour I had on hand. I've got to use it up somewhere. Here's the result.

Here's the biscuits made from the quick mix. The lumpy large one is the "leftovers" shaped into a biscuit. The "hole" in the upper left corner is from the biscuit the boys were devouring before I got to take the picture. So far I'm very pleased with this recipe. It yielded great biscuits. I'll have to experiment with the other variations to see if I'm equally as pleased.

Summer sock one of ???

I like thin, cotton, at or below the ankle socks in the summer. They have to be nonbinding and the MUST stay up! There's nothing worse than a footie sock that is swallowed up inside my shoe. Making lumps and bunching up around my toes.
I just realized that all of the socks that I was knitting were wool, and well above my ankle so I ran to the yarn shop and picked up some Brown Sheep Cotton Fine. It's a blend of 75% cotton and 25% wool. It's light and airy, looks like cotton and feels like yummy cool wool. The color is more of a berry/burgundy but the flash on my camera washed it out to this plum color. I had some grand ideas of mixing colors and playing with texture but when I started to knit I kept this first try pretty simple. I made up my pattern because most of the socks patterns I've seen for free are for longer socks. I had to be very careful and frog several parts as this yarn is NOT forgiving. It shows all stitch flaws and errors. Evidently I don't know the formula for making socks as rote as I believed I did. There were some parts that looked wrong that I took out and reknit. I discovered I can only talk and knit or talk and purl. So basically stockinette, garter or reverse stockinette. No talking with the pattern stitches or I really mess up.
And believe it or not my ankle is not ashy. I just have very dry skin. Maybe I need to get a foot mannequin???? Anyway, I love these socks and am looking forward to finishing this pair and then knitting up some of the other colors I picked up and the other cotton blend yarn I have. These socks are going to spoil me. They are relatively quick to complete since they are so short even though they are on 2.5mm needles and fingering weight yarn. I started this sock 2 days ago.
On a side note. I LOVE LOVE LOVE wearing the socks that I make. I'm starting to weed out and get rid of my store bought socks that are worn or not comfortable and replace them with my hand knit ones. Until you try them you have no idea how happy your feet are in handknit socks! I never thought of knitting socks seriously until my sister did. Then I saw them and they looked so cute, but she let me try them on and the rest is history! I fell in love. I plan to knit some other things soon, but these socks have sucked me in! My feet want more and more.