Crochet Cowl Addiction

Last year I started crocheting again so that I could make these awesomely soft, fluffy, warm cowls for the winter. Except I kinda got addicted to making them and have made over 10 of them with Lion Brand "Homespun" yarn from Joann. They have a HUGE selection of colors to choose from (it retails for $5.99 but it is often on sale or use a 40% off coupon and get 1 skein for close to $4.00! Such a deal!)

I can whip one up in about 2 hours and they make awesome gifts for friends and family. You can wear them alone or with a cute broach, flower, decorative pin... whatever you have on hand.

Interested in learning how to make one? Perhaps I shall do a tutorial on this little project, too!

These are the best!

Vintage Fabric Finds

my growing vintage fabric collection

 I often scour flea markets for vintage fabrics. They come in many forms: table cloths, sheets, pillow cases, feed sacks, fabric scraps, and sometimes clothing. Some of the tablecloth patterns are too awesome for me to cut into and I keep thinking I'll actually use them for what they were intended for.

Vintage fabrics from flea markets

Vintage fabrics from my Grandparent's house

And then, once again, my Grandfather's house has been a treasure trove for such finds. Come to find out my Grandmother quilted! Well, I'm guessing she did at least (my Grandpa can't really tell me because he's at the point where he thinks he's golfed with Steve Stricker [whom he's never met], has played running back on 3 professional football teams AT THE SAME TIME [never played football], and was there when the pyramids were built [obviously impossible] - HA! Bless his heart... but I digress.). 

I found two hexi quilts - one crib sized and one twin sized. Neither has batting in the middle; just fabric on fabric. But MAN, are they cool fabrics! And putting together all of those little hexi's takes some serious patience and skill.

Hexi baby quilt - needs some TLC and repair

Hexi twin sized quilt - also in need of some TLC and repair

I've also collected a bunch of odd fabric-related things from their house, like curtains, arm chair covers, shorts, shirts, hankies, scarves, sheets, hand towels, etc... all with interesting fabric designs on them... and eventually (hopefully by the end of this year) will make retro aprons out of these fabrics for all the women in my Dad's side of the family. That's 9 aprons. Man! I sure am ambitious! So I'll keep you updated on the progress of those.

Does anyone else have ambitious projects planned for their fabric collections? No? Just me? Oh... well...

Holiday Gifts

Oh, that's right. You heard me. HOLIDAY GIFTS! Help me please! 

I usually don't get into the holiday swing until Thanksgiving is over. But with a baby on the way in February, and about 25 projects that I want to complete before said baby arrives... working on an embroidery project at night, when I have little energy to do anything else, makes sense to me right now.

Quick behind-the-scenes story on these:

When my Grandmother passed away almost 5 years ago, she never finished embroidering this set of Holiday Reindeer flour sack towels. I took all of the supplies home those many years ago but have only just now started working on them. There are 9 designs in the set and 9 women on my Dad's side of the family to give these to. It'll be sad to break the set up, but neat that everyone will have a little holiday-something to remember her by!

So this has been my work-in-progress over the last few weeks (among others). I'm also thinking about doing a tutorial on how to make these. They're Aunt Martha's Hot Iron Transfers on "old fashioned flour sack towels" . . . interested in giving it a go with me?

Free Flowers and the Baby Bump-a-Bump-Bump

The bonus of having a yard with plants is that if you plant the right things, you get *free flowers* out of the deal. I have lilies, roses, cosmos, salvia, echinacea, lilac, spirea, peonies, clematis, hydrangea, and yarrow. At various times from spring until fall, I snag some clippings along with some greens or grasses and make flower arrangements. I miss working for the event decor company in Denver (Design Works) where gorgeous, creative floral arrangements were aplenty!!! Not that my arrangement below is anything to write home about... still, it's a tiny bit of happiness for the kitchen table.

Parker snagged an OK picture of me at 18 weeks pregnant last week, so I thought I'd share that as well. I'm seriously not joking when I tell you that I look 2 months MORE pregnant than I am. I didn't look this big last time until I was about 26 weeks or so. Parker was 9lbs. 4oz... so I'm worried I've got a 10 pounder cookin'! (not that I look insanely HUGE here, but keep in mind I still have over 4 months of growing to go! This is just the beginning, people!)

La Crescent

I think old timey, small American towns are so hard to come by. The ones where you know ALL of your neighbors, you can easily walk to the town market for milk, and everyone knows someone that can help you in a pinch.

Fortunately, my Grandpa... my only living grandparent... still lives in a place like this: La Crescent, MN. It's just across the Mississippi River from La Crosse, WI. The lady next door looks after him, his friends come pick him up for golf, and he can walk to the Legion for dinner every night. He's still hanging in there at almost 90 years old.

He's been in the same house for over 50 years... which also means 50 years of accumulation. So every time I visit his house with my parents, we go through a cabinet here, a closet there... and boy howdie! Has he got STUFF! We're talking every box that entered their home (from a box that holds earrings to shirt boxes to shipping boxes... all piled high in one closet), 10 paper bags full of jars (mayo, pickle, popcorn, peanut butter, jam...), and probably every pair of golf shoes the man has ever owned.

I came across some gems though:

vintage dixie cups (that are probably too toxic to drink from anymore!)

A set of nursery curtains made from vintage fabric

my grandmother's old pillbox hats

antique mason jars (yahtzee!)

an old Kenmore fan that I wish still worked

Vintage stuffed animals saved from my father, uncle & aunt's childhood

...and my Grandpa's old WWII uniform

 I used to work in a thrift store and love going to flea markets, so it was fun to dig through old boxes and find such treasures existing in my family! Has anyone else dug up some super cool finds from family members? And does anyone know how to clean, repair and/or care for vintage stuffed animals?

What I learned in DSLR Camera School

I meant to write all this down for you guys before pregnancy brains took over. But well, they took over and I put my notes aside. But never fear, I found my notes from the DSLR camera class I took at the Chicago Photography Academy at the end of July to learn how to use my new-ish Nikon DSLR that my husband was so, so kind to give me for my birthday. I must share some of the great tips I learned that were helpful for me and I hope they are for you, too!

CLEANLINESS: (just general good stuff to know)

- Keep your camera clean! Do not get any dust/dirt/hair inside your camera body and never use spray can air to clean it. If you need to get a speck out, hold the camera upside down, take the lens off, and use a manual air pumper to puff the speck out - gravity will help it fall away. If it's really bad, have it professionally cleaned.
- Does your camera have a "sensor cleaning"? Mine does when you turn it on and off. Always hold the camera upright when it's doing the sensor cleaning. The inner parts vibrate a little to shake any tiny debris off, which will fall onto a sticky surface inside the lens. It won't stick if it can't fall straight down.
- Attach and remove your camera lens with the body opening pointed toward the ground, again, to prevent dust/dirt from falling into the camera body
- Purchase a $10-15 UV Filter (not a polarized one) to protect your lens from scratches.
- Do not put your lens cap in your pocket! Pocket lint/dirt will get on the cap and then onto your lens. Our instructor uses a ziplock bag (!) - weird but true.


CAMERA SETTINGS:

- The best "default" settings for you to work from on your camera are as follows:

• Set your ISO to 400 as a starting point (you always want the lowest ISO for the situation you're in. General rule of thumb: bright outside, try ISO 200; shooting indoors, try ISO 800)
• "WB" (white balance) set to Auto
• Almost always shoot in "A" (Aperature) mode (I think it's "TV" in Canon's) - which is really important for indoor/no flash situations because it sets the priority in the camera to seek the most light. STOP USING AUTO MODE WITH AUTO FLASH!!!
• Set your metering to "center weight/avg"
• Set your autofocus to the center spot, single focus, and release mode to single shot

If you've never done anything but shoot in Auto mode, then these instructions will sound like Martian language from outer space. Whip out the ol' manual to learn the terms and dink around the settings in your camera to set it up right. Again, these settings are just starting points that were recommended to me and I found them to work well.

DIGITAL FILES:

- Shoot most photos in RAW file format only (not JPG or RAW + JPG), then use your computer to edit down (Picasa online is good/free, iPhoto if you have a Mac, or Photoshop Lightroom). This way you have the maximum information of your image and you can edit your best photos down to a perfect JPG. 

- Do not keep your images on your computer for too long. It fills your memory up and slows down your computer. (I'm a huge offender of this rule - shame on me!)

- The instructor actually recommends burning 2 image CD's: keep 1 in storage off site and 1 for you to access on site. This way if your computer crashes or something happens to your house, you have a copy of all of your pictures stored safely.

- The instructor does NOT recommend external hard drives - they have moving parts and eventually break, causing you to lose all of your digital information.

LENS:

This was huge for me: buy a FIXED FOCAL LENS. I sucked it up and bought a f/1.8 Nikkor Lens ($199 but some go for $120 or less depending on the brand). ME LOVE IT. The f-stop on my 18-55mm stock lens only went down to a 3.5 when fully zoomed out. This is totally fine when there's a lot of natural light - like on my front porch.

But I'm mostly taking close-up shots while indoors of my Etsy products and when I'm zoomed in, it only went to a 5.6. So my problem was this: THE LOWER THE F-STOP, THE MORE LIGHT YOUR LENS LETS IN. My lens couldn't open up enough to allow more natural light in. But with a 1.8... problem solved. It takes beautiful, clear, bright indoor shots; crisply focuses where I want detail to show; and blurs out the less important background that I don't need to be in focus.

I am still learning about the basics of photography and by no means am I an expert, but I felt I learned quite a bit in this class. If you have the chance to take a basic DSLR class, I really encourage you to do so (I found mine through Groupon!)

And if I missed anything, please share any other tidbits you may have learned along the way with your photography efforts. We can help each other improve our photography! Yippee!

Mini Trash Bags: An Odd Tutorial

So Parker is kinda obsessed with Garbage Trucks and has been since he could walk. He will gladly tell you that he has a "front loading kind, a side loading kind, and a back loading kind." He randomly yells "TRASH TRUCK!" while riding in the car, and quickly asks, "What kind it is?"  for we must document what kind of trash trucks have been seen and where.

ANYWHOoooo! His toy garbage trucks come with toy garbage cans, of course, but sadly... no toy garbage bags. I got tired of Parker grilling me about where the trash bags are for his trash cans, so.... here is the "How to Make Mini Trash Bags" Tutorial.

MATERIALS:

1. scrap fabrics,  3" x 8" or larger
2. 1/16" ribbon, or regular ol' cotton string will do, cut 10" long
3. leftover rice, barley, split peas, etc.
4. needle (crewel works well - larger eye)
5. the basics: thread, scissors, sewing machine

STEP 1: Collect Fabrics. 

Scrap Buster Alert! Dig out your scrap fabrics! Cut them down to 3" x 8" pieces. Parker loves green, so I found 3 green fabrics, including 1 scrap from my husband's old boxers (HA!)

USE UP THOSE SCRAPS!

STEP 2: Finish Top Edge

Finish both shorter edges by either folding down 1/4" (wrong sides together) and sewing a straight stitch close to the edge, or if you have a serger, a rolled hem stitch (as shown below).

FINISH TOP EDGE

STEP 3: Stitch Side Edges

Fold the fabric in half, right sides together, and stitch 1/4" up both the long sides (or if you have a serger, serge away!). Turn right side out.

STITCH SIDE EDGES

TURN RIGHT SIDE OUT

STEP 4: Fill the Bag

With about 1-2 Tablespoons of your rice, barley, split peas or whatever dried legume/rice you have on hand... fill away! (well, maybe not with couscous because it might wiggle out through the stitches and get everywhere.) Too much filling will make them hard and too thick to fit in the little trash cans. You want the insides a little loosey-goosey.

RICE FILLING

BARLEY FILLING

STEP 5: Bag Tie

Time for your bag "cincher". Using your needle and 10" of ribbon (or string), starting in the middle of the bag about about 1" down from the top edge, stitch in and out every 1/4" all the way around leaving at least 2" of a ribbon tail (so you don't pull the darn thing all the way through)

10" RIBBON

STITCH RIBBON AROUND BAG FOR THE "CINCHER" TIE

STEP 6: Tie a Knotted Bow - and DONE!

Pull the ribbon/string tight, tie in a double knotted bow, and you're all done!
Warning: If you have a dog - they might eat it, so be careful. The Bafoon is too dense to eat ours though. If you have a cat - they might bat it around or chew on it.

MINI TRASH BAGS? DONE!

This seriously took me 30 minutes, TOPS. So it's a quick, easy-do that'll make your Trash Truck Lover beam with pride!