Here's a few more things I either made in secret (ornaments) or at the last minute (wreath):
Did you do any Christmas making?
My Apron Collection
A few weeks ago, Casey of Elegant Musings asked for fellow bloggers to join her in a blog tour of Cherished Collections and having previously mentioned my "wicked apron collection," and made no secret of my love of aprons, I jumped at the chance to share my, wait for it....... aprons as part of the tour.
I'd like to say my love affair with aprons began in my middle school home economics class, when our final sewing project was a simple bib apron. In true 90's style, my featured sunflowers and was sadly lost in my first post-graduation move after college. But in truth, my apron obsession probably came because I lost that apron and needed a replacement.
I picked up another bib apron from ebay, in blue gingham, which I still use, but it was then I discovered the adorable half apron, of which I have now amassed eleven. I used to have an even dozen, but I passed one featuring a chicken off to a friend.
My first, and still on of my favorites, also came from ebay and features adorable pockets in fishy fabric, which I later recreated the shape of for a Christmas gift, when I lived in Chicago.
Surprisingly enough, only one of my collection is one I made (yellow gingham), with most of my apron sewing skills having been put to gift-making.
A good chunk of my aprons have come from antique stores, where I grabbed them for around $5-6 dollars (black & white and embroidered pink). At least one has come from a garage sale (grey gingham with chicken scratch). A few I can't recall where they came from.
But my most precious one are the ones that have been given as gifts, including the Christmas bells from a roommate, the green hostess apron from a knitting friend, and the rose hostess apron from a co-worker- perhaps my most precious one, because it was her grandmothers. As was the plain white one I embroidered with Raggedy Ann.
And I use each and every one of them, because as they become dusted with flour and sugar, they become all the more cherished to me.
Share and Share Alike
Yesterday I joined my knitting friends over at Maggie's for an afternoon of knowledge sharing and enabling each other's crafting addictions. Maggie taught Bristol & I crochet:
and I taught them embroidery:
Lynn taught Karen punchneedle technique:
Maria (who's trying to finish 12 knitting stash projects before Rhinebeck!) provided the locally made gelato:
And Chase, Jackson, Hobbes* and Cocoa Bean* provided fur and company (*not pictured):
String and Strawberries
String I:
I finished this dish towel at the beginning of the month, but for one reason or another it's sat in my photos for about three weeks. It's not as though I have a backlog of a bazillion projects to post, but as cute as this piece of embroidery is (it's an ironing scotty dog!), I didn't think it warranted a whole post to itself, so I'm lumping it together with a few other bits and pieces.
The Scotty Dog Pattern is from the Hoop Love Vintage Transfers Group on Flickr, which has a treasure trove of patterns you can print out an stitch. They have an especially large collection of mostly complete days of the week patterns like the Scotty above. I'm alos planning on doing Wednesday (mending) and Friday (baking).
I worked on this mainly while my bum wrist kept me from knitting and in the after period when I struggled to get my knitting mojo back (which happily it has, thanks to Kate Davie's Manu and some Malabrigo Silky Merino). I haven't yet done the pattern transfer for the second towel, but if our current levels of humidity hang around for much longer I will, since they're only so much wool I can handle in humidity :)
Strawberries:
On Saturday, Mr. Cleaver and I picked four pints of strawberries at Maxwell's, two of which went to his mother and the other two which ended up on my cereal and this strawberry shortcake I made last night.
The recipe is from Posie Gets Cozy and the only changed I made/would recommend is to make 6 or 8 dough "blobs" instead of the listed 4. mine were doughy in the middle until I cut them in half and baked them some more, and the smaller biscuits (it's a very biscuity shortbread) were about all I could handle to eat at once.
String II:
I have plans for a fantastic Fourth of July dress from Vogue 8184. It's a fairly simple dress (especially since I'm skipping the boning- since my version has straps), so I 'm taking the time to do my first go at tissue fitting, especially since I fell in between two of the multi-size envelopes. I'm somewhat obsessed with fit these days - what with the pattern drafting I've been dabbling in and all (and I'm close with another sundress I drafted). Since the Fourth is only ten days away, we'll hopefully have results soon!
The 24-Hour Pillow
When I was little, my dad had a book called How to Be Your Daughter's Daddy, and the only parts of it that I remember was a section that had a bunch of little "date" type activities for dads and daughters to do together - things like roast mini-marshmellows on toothpicks over candle flames and the stipulation that every girl needs at least three pillows on her bed.
Well, if you don't count Mr. Cleaver's pillows, I have been languishing with only two pillows for years now. Well no more, says I! I had a pillow form sitting around for about a year and this weekend I gathered all the materials together and made this throw pillow.
I drafted out a quick envelope back pillowcase and spent the majority of yesterday morning watching MR. Cleaver play his first tennis game of the season and doing the embroidery, which I had bookmarked for this pillow since it showed up on Sew, Mama, Sew! I definitely got to practice my french knots. I love the way the pillow turned out and it really ties the bedding together. And really, it makes me feel as if I've fulfilled my girly quota on pillows.
Stitching in the New Year
I'm very particular about my calendars, just ask Mr. Cleaver. Every year around this time comes the search for the perfect wall calendar, which usually requires visiting a minimum of three-five places that sell calendars. I figure I have to look at it for a whole year, so it better be good. (For the record, last year's was a Jaime Wyeth one).
This is not my home calendar, but for my wall at work, where I knew I wanted a year-at-a glance format because the majority of my work scheduling revolves around things like 2nd Thursday of every month.
The calendar panel came from SeptemberHouse on Etsy. The inspiration image is a print by Charles Gesmar I found during a search for circus images on All Posters.
This was my first attempt at doing fill stitches and there were definitely times I thought the elephant was turning into a giant grey blog, but I'm really happy with the way it all turned out and now I get to enjoy it for a whole year (after which I'll probably turn it into a pillow and enjoy it even longer!)
Finished Object Round Up
If you're one of my friends on Ravelry, you might have noticed that for the past several months the top half of my project page seemed pretty empty. I had no photos of anything I made in the past 4-5 months - oops!
I blame this on two things - one: I didn't feel like putting on woolly things in the middle of the summer to take pictures of them and two: something I affectionately call That D@#n Sweater.
That D@#n Sweater is the achingly lovely Joy pattern from Rowan's vintage knits - my second and not last project from that book. It's a perfect lightweight cardigan that goes with anything and I wear it probably three times a week these days.
So why the name? Three reasons, it's black, textured and involves the following US needle sizes: 1, 2, 3. All of this is to say, I started it January 28 and finished around July 5th. A nearly six month labor of love. That said, I'm a huge fan of the finished product, my only caveat is that I wish I had used better quality yarn, it's made from Knit Pick's Palette, which doesn't feel as nice as I'd like and it's already doing some serious pilling, but in any case I'm sure I will wear this cardigan to the bone.
To make myself feel better, this is a project I completed from start to finish in about three days, one which involved a marathon session of watching The West Wing.
The project was inspired by a similar pillow pictured in SouleMama's book Handmade Home, which I picked up at a local book signing a few weeks back. The "bluework" pattern is free on a site called Pattern Bee (which as of 9/10/09 appears to be down for maintenance - the link should be re-activated around 9/16). The fabric is from a fat quarter pack I picked up at Z Fabrics a while back. The whole thing looks very nice on my sofa.
This one you've seen a lot of, but here's me actually wearing that scarf I wove earlier this summer (June). The ladies in my knitting group like to mock me for my consistency in color selection. Looking at the items in this post and my current (unpictured) knitting project, I'd be the last one to deny it. What can I say? I like the colors of the ocean!
Another scarf photo, in a long tradition of what I like to call the"Book Jacket Photo."
This is Ysolda's Ishbel shawl from Whimsical Little Knits, which I picked up back here and knit in some hand-dyed lace weight from Pine Star Studio that I got at the Maine Fiber Frolic. I knit it in about 10 days and took about 2 months before I got around to blocking it, which really does make all the difference in the world.
This is my new favorite picture of myself. All of the knitting/weaving photos were graciously taken by Mr. Cleaver while we took a walk around Mackworth Island this Labor Day. Mr. Cleaver joined me in creating the final FO ofthe post, of contribution to Mackworth's village of Fairy Houses.
Crazy Week
Usually I try to post on Tuesday, but I'm a tad late this week and I'm not even going to cover a project I finished last week yet. It's been a crazy week:
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Monday: We turned in our non-renewal of lease to our landlords, so there's no turning back on the move now (not that I'd want to).
Tuesday: I started cutting out a dress that I needed to finish by today (Sunday) to enter in a competition.
Wednesday: My 25th birthday was filled with beautiful flowers, food, cards, facebook messages and phone calls. Not to mention the cake Mr. Cleaver lovingly made from scratch.
Thursday: Stretched by birthday into a two-day affair with cake for breakfast, donuts with my co-workers and lunch with a friend. Picked up a copy of Alice in Wonderland at the Newberry Library book sale, and Vol II. of a beautifully bound book called Wide Wide World. Did a happy dance at the results of So You Think You Can Dance.
Friday: Spent the afternoon at the American Cheese Society's award ceremony, but sadly, had no cheese. Did some sewing. Watched Road to Perdition (it's really good - and it has Paul Newman, not to mention wonderful cinematography). Ate cake.
Saturday: Had some cake. Sewed a lot. Knitted a tad. Went to two different moving-away parties. Loathed the CTA with the fire of a thousand suns.
Sunday: Sewed some more. Embroidered the dress. Took some pictures. Uploaded them to Burdastyle and hoped I get some votes. Wore my new dress for a walk around Andersonville. Ate the last of the cake.
Did I mention I like cake?