Coping with Crochet

I stayed busy in December.  I was a Crafty Mama, in fact.  I was not a Bloggin' Mama.  The next few posts will probably feature little crafty thingies whipped up between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Hmmm...maybe next year I can just re-post those posts if I get overly December-busy and unable to put words or pictures to blog...

First up, Coping with Crochet! 

I use crochet to cope with waiting time when reading would take too much concentration - like at Gymnastics practice!  

I love making a Super Star Baby Afghan.   Mikey showed me how:  Super Star Baby Afghan.  I wish I'd found his videos back when I first started reteaching myself to crochet.  He shows so clearly what he is doing.  Of course, some of my confusion may have stemmed from misunderstood terminology.  Did you know that USA crochet and UK crochet have different definitions for "single crochet" and "double crochet"? Live and learn...

The first one I made is hot pink, blue, and green,  all Caron Simply Soft yarn.   

 

 

The second, one made for a new great-nephew, is white, blue and green, also Caron Simply Soft yarn.  You can make these any size - just keep going round and round and round until you think it's big enough or you run out of yarn.  I made both these car-seat baby-lap-blanket size.   

They were so much fun!  As I worked on them at Gymnastics, piano lessons, Science club, they always attract attention - they are just so cute!  Seeing these pictures makes me want to get another one started - maybe I'll use this week's Hobby Lobby coupon for another skein of yarn.

Returning Soon

I disappeared for a month, more or less, but I will return soon!

Recycled T-shirts party

This post was 2 months in the making - she has been 11 for a while!

Being a child of the 70's and a sewist (there's a reason we don't call ourselves "sewers"), I have always loved recycling denim.  But these days the hottest recycled clothing trend has got to be recycling and up-cycling T-shirts. 

This year for Earthgirl's 11th birthday party, we jumped into the fun with a T-shirt recycling party.  She grabbed the idea from the September/October 2011 issue of American Girls magazine.  You can find recycled T-shirt ideas from all over the internet.  Take a look here and here,  for example.  I found bunches and bunches of ideas for the future - for example, I'd love to make one (or 15!) of these recycled T necklace/scarves.

Now if one is inviting 14 girls over, and 2 of your projects take a T-shirt apiece, you gotta have lots of Ts!  Our big crafts, requiring a T-shirt apiece per girl, were the fringed scarf and the big T-shirt bag. We invited the girls to bring Ts with them, but knew we wanted to provide plenty.

For several weeks ahead, Earthgirl and I hit a couple of local thrift stores, one which exists to support a local church's international missions; the other to support Hospice.  We like spending our $$ where they do some good works, too!   We snapped up Ts at an average price of about 40 cents.  We looked for colors we liked, designs we thought would look good on a bag, and the right sizes to make bags and scarves (bags can be any size, but a XXL makes a humongous bag, whereas a sturdy size small or child-size makes a nice bag, and our scarves worked best with child-sized, soft, lightweight Ts).

Recycled T-shirt Scarves:
For our scarves, the girls cut off the hem and cut across under the sleeves, leaving a wide tube of fabric.  They fringe-cut both sides, then pulled on the fringes to make them curl up. 

The best-looking scarves had really skinny fringe - but the trick is to cut it skinny enough, but not so skinny that it tears when you stretch it.  This red scarf had the prettiest fringing of all the scarves.

 

The result is a fringy cowl-type scarf.  If you use a T as big or bigger than your own size, the cowl can be doubled.  If you use a little preschooler-size T, you get a once-around-your-neck scarf.

And then, of course, you cannot resist playing with the leftovers.  Lots of braided headbands, bracelets, anklets appeared!

 

The scarves also double as hula skirts.

Recycled T-shirt Bags:
Our big T-bags were made simply - cut out the sleeves and along the neckline, leaving something that looks like a tank top.  Check to see that it fits over your shoulder.  Good.  Now, if you want a plain-bottom bag, turn the T inside out, and sew up the bottom.  The cutest bags were sewn with a curve.  If you want a fringe-bottom bag, cut off the T's hem, and sew up the bottom, leaving a 2-3" seam.  Trim the seam in to a fringe. Pull the fringes to make them curl, and you're done! 

In all the excitement, I did not snap 1 picture of any girl with a bag.  This one is taken weeks later.

 

Clean Read

I read a lot. A LOT.  I like mysteries and histories and mysteries set in history; sometimes I like some just regular fiction, seldom just regular romance.  Some Christian fiction I like; some is just a little too sweet for my taste.

When you read a lot of fiction, you wade through a lot of language (the kind I don't use) and activities (the kind I don't do).  -- And that's just the good guys!

Sometimes it is refreshing to just read something I can trust to not assault my brain with garbage surrounding a perfectly good story.  One of our local libraries (the one a county away where my husband works) puts these little "Clean Read" markers on books that do not include yucky stuff.  I have not checked what their criteria is. ( I just read a murder mystery that contained no bad language - is it a 'clean read"?  After all, there is violence and murder. ..) But I appreciate their taking the time to identify what is not in this book. 

Magic Mason Jar

{edited to add:  now I have tried this and it works great!  I just run the blender on low speed, because somehow those whirring blades and the glass make me kind of nervous.}

I don't have a Magic Bullet or other single-serving-type blender.  But I do have a ca. 1984 Hamilton Beach blender and a selection of Mason jars. actually, I think mine are mostly Ball canning jars.  According to Real Simple I can use my jars on the actual blender! 

This would maybe save a step of clean-up, so I think I will try it soon.  Of course, I will have to think through the entry/exit - I turn the blender upside down?  That save-a-step clean-up may turn into a well-the-whole-kitchen-needed-cleaning-up-anyway scenario!  Whatdya think?

The old blender layered up with ingredients for Russian Tea

What homeschooling looks like today

Remember those school days when you just wished you could sit in a really comfy chair with your kitty beside you?  Well, that's what homeschool looks like here today:

...and just in case it seems lonely, here's a look at what homeschool looked like yesterday:

More of 17 - Big Summer Project

My BIG project for this summer was to paint most of our pulled-together-from-here-there-and-hand-me-down bedroom furniture the same color - a warm, distressed black was my plan.  I never listed this project on a published blog post, but it is one of the 17 projects - OK, it was one of maybe 35 projects swirling around in my head. 

After
Once I started painting, I realized I did not get before pics of everything, so I'll just have to describe the "befores" for the most part.


I don't have "befores" for the 2 little chests, but the one on the left was an unfinished piece originally planned for Earthgirl's room.  She now has a bigger chest of drawers (one my parents started housekeeping with over 50 years ago!), because she is a T-shirt clothes horse.  The chest on the right used to be in Nanny's sewing room.  It originated in the 70s, maybe even the 60s, and sported a home finish of reddish-brown stain, maybe oak?


The "before" headboard was a pickled-look finish veneer headboard.  My Mama picked it up at a second-hand store for her guest house, and I traded my brass headboard for it.  (The very plain very 1980s brass headboard, purchased when a store was closing,  was always supposed to be for just a little while, but we slept against it for about 17 years.) 

See what I mean about the furniture being second-hand-and-hand-me-down?

Headboard before:

The shelf is part of a 3-piece entertainment center, a Sauder piece, in a similar pickled look to the headboard.  The entertainment center was our family Christmas gift around 1995.  We put it together ourselves. 

The headboard, the 2 chests of drawers, the cedar chest, and the bookshelf are painted with Annie Sloan chalk paint, in Graphite, then distressed and waxed with both dark and clear wax. The inside color of the shelves is Chateau.  All the new drawer and door knobs came from Hobby Lobby, and are a purposely eclectic mix.

This chest started as an old, plain, not valuable cedar chest from Nanny's closet.  Daddy says he thinks the FFA boys made it in shop and sold it as a fundraiser, maybe back in the 60s?

Cedar chest before:

The doodad on front of the cedar chest also came from Hobby Lobby.

It add a little something, doesn't it?

Ahhh...Honey, we're home!