I Made Myself A Handy Bag (With A Sideways Print On The Liner, But We Will Ignore That)

Oh, I'm just walking around, carrying lunch in my awesome bag.

In this picture you can see my practical AND awesome liner!  Which I, of course, sewed in sideways.  After 15 minutes of swearing and attempting to pick my stitches back out of the vise-grip of the laminated cotton, I gave up and decided that the sideways fabric was on purpose.  Everyone loves little sideways deers on the inside of their lunch bags!  I’m going to start a trend!

Hey! Look at the inside!

And that folks, is it.  One little market bag, made all by myself, for myself.  Have a Happy Weekend!  (And watch the World Cup)

Lately

So, I try to write one of these little blog entries at least once a week, but due to a little project (more on that later), I have fallen behind.  This makes me very sad, so I will try to abbreviate the last week or so of posts stuck in my head into a short and concise list (ha, when have I ever been “short and concise?)

1)  I did, in fact, make it to the state fair.  While there, I actually saw OPRAH!  She was judging best in show for all the foods, which looked delicious.  We (meaning I) were very interested in checking out all the quilts and randomly got swept into a crowd of people who were standing in a group.  And it turns out they were waiting for Oprah!  I got nervous when she walked through the crowd and could only think fast enough to extend, not my hand, but my index finger out to her.  She shook it.  Oprah shook my index finger!

2)  My grandfather came into town to purchase a house.  He has taken to wearing flip flops with no straps on them, only some sticky substance which allows it to stick to his sole.  This makes it look like he is wearing no shoes and makes strangers talk to him (2 things he apparently likes.)    He also showed up to dinner at a dark restaurant wearing sunglasses.  I, thinking, “well, he’s old, maybe he has cataracts?” didn’t say anything.  Blake, thinking, “well, he wears shoes with no straps” didn’t say anything, and my parents – with no excuse, also didn’t say anything.  After eating for an hour, my grandpa randomly declared, “Hey!  I am still wearing my sunglasses!  No wonder it is so dark in here!”  and removed them.

3)  I have been frantically knitting/crocheting baby hats and dog sweaters for my almost ready etsy store!  For those of you who don’t know what that means, etsy.com is a very awesome website where you can buy all things homemade.  I ordered all my jewelry and the jewelry for my bridesmaids from multiple sellers on the site, and it is very awesome.  I have been planning to open a store for a long long (LONG) time, but couldn’t ever get my plan out of the research stage.  However, recently multiple people have been asking me to make baby hats for them…..so I finally decided to try it out.  It takes a long time to knit a bunch of baby hats, so that is what the majority of my nights have been spent doing (rather than writing reviews of candy and whatever else I do here)… More on that when my store actually opens!

4)  Here are some pictures of my handy work from the last month.  There was one large top secret project, which took a long long long time, but can’t be shown yet, but here are the rest of the items:

My parents moved back from Hawaii, and I put together this basket as a WELCOME BACK MOM AND DAD! basket.

First I made cake balls (my mom giggled when I told her they were called “cake balls” and then said, “you said balls.”  My mom is a 13 year old boy.

I am a cake ball!!! And I am DELICIOUS!

Blake really likes decorating boxes, so here is his box filled with balls of cake -

Look at what a good stamper Blake is!

Then I made some bread, knitted some washcloths, sewed a bread bag, and put together this basket.

YUM!

I liked making these wash cloths so much, that I made more for a friend’s birthday present.  I sewed a simple little drawstring bag, knitted a little washcloth, and bought some soap (can’t make soap….yet!) -

I made another friend some adorable baby booties.  I love them and wish I had tiny baby feet so I could wear them:

Finally, besides all my baby hats and Top Secret Project, I knitted myself a slouchy hat, and I love it!  I wore it on a not really cold day, because it is never really cold enough to wear hats in Texas and I decided that I was wearing it anyways.  Then I daydreamed about living somewhere with a real winter.  Here are some pictures Blake took when we took our hilarious dogs to the dog park:

And here’s one from the front (I took this one…you can tell because it is significantly less cool.)

And I leave you with this picture of a terrified Chopper, courtesy of the dog park.  You can see the fear of other dogs in his eyes.  It was quite hilarious.

HELP! OTHER DOGS WHO AREN'T PORKY!!!!

The Month of August

August was a busy day for my little fingers.  I finished a bunch of projects, most of which I was happy about.  There were no gigantor pillows overtaking my entire body, and I can’t really think of anything (besides a one armed dog jacket) that I decided was a complete fail.  Without further ado, here you go:

I love my blanket! I am not using it in this picture, but I like to turn into a cave and hide under it and pretend I'm a mole. Yeah, that's right. A mole. - Chopper

The above picture is of the pillow I showed you a month ago.  Well, luckily for Chopper, I think he’s pretty adorable, so I made him a matching blanket.  It was pretty easy.  I simply cut out about 1.5 yards x 1.5 yards of grey fleece., and attached a bias strip to the outside.  Now, I talk like I know what I am doing (bias strip?  I definitely had to look that one up), but I spent WAY TOO LONG trying to attach that stupid little piece of fabric to the edge of my fleece.  I forgot to take a picture, but I made Brittany and David’s dog, Suki, the same pillow/blanket combination.

This next picture is of a bunch of onesies I made for Hal and Laura’s little baby.  I was planning on just sewing on some little pieces of fabric to onesies, but the genius old ladies at Joanne’s (I endlessly amuse them with my lack of knowledge of all things sewing.  I don’t care, I love it!  They are all grandparenty to me!) told me how to attach a really soft interfacing to the back and THEN sew.  Anyways, enough technicalness.  Here are the pictures:

We are so cute and in a line! - Onesies

And another view:

We are cute and in a row! - Onesies

Now, this next creation might just be the cutest thing I have ever made in the existance of making things….It is a tiny baby hat made for my coworker, Bree.  She sent me some pictures of hats that she liked, and asked me if I could make one for her.  I of course agreed due to the fact that her baby is pretty much the cutest baby that ever walked the planet, and set off trying to find the most perfect cotton yarn in shades of green and pink (her request).  I ended up with Araucania Nature Cotton in a dusty pink color and a really pretty olive green Classic Elite Verde Collection Sprout.  I made up the pattern as I went, but it wasn’t too difficult to figure out.  If anyone out there reading my blog actually crochets, sent me an email and I will tell you the method I used to make this hat (or attempt to tell you). 

Aren't I so adorable? Don't you just want to have a baby in order to put me on top of it? - Baby Hat

The adorable factor of this hat increases exponentially with an extremely cute baby underneath it.

After I finished this hat, I immediately had a celebratory beer and started thinking of other places I could put crocheted flowers (I have decided that is the key of the adorableness).  I came up with this pillow, which I started and finished over labor day at the lake (this is what I was doing while I was “fishing.”  By fishing, I mean “sitting near a fishing pole lying on the dock.”) 

I also spent the majority of a Sunday trying to figure out how to make a stupid dog jacket (yes, still annoyed about this), and ended up with the following dog cape.  Still cool. 

Yes, she is the cutest dog in all the land.

I decided that I didn’t need a pattern, and suffered for that decision.  I am mediumly happy with the finished product, but like the hat, I thin the overall cuteness of the project is increased by the smushableness of the dog underneath it.  (By smushable, I mean adorable.  Please don’t smush my dog.)

This next picture is of a bag I made for Natalie as a thank you for her entertaining Blake and I on a way fun trip to Austin a few weeks ago.  It was hard to give it away, and she almost received a big fat empty box (and I almost gained a new project bag!!)  But alas, being nice won out.

The pink lining is my favorite part.  The bag is reversible, which makes me impressed with myself.  I found the pattern in Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson.  The book has soon seriously cute paterns and ideas and are good for new little sewers like myself.

Last but not least – I BAKED BREAD!  I don’t know what exactly makes me so proud of this fact, but its probably because baking bread has always seemed like some mysterious phenomenon.  This was not helped by a recent conversation I had regarding starter (WHAT IS STARTER??)  The idea of “feeding” some bubbling concoction for a few days in order to put into bread seemed weird and also - unsanitary.  However, the internet is my best friend, and I found this recipe for normal wheat bread.  After some confusion regarding kneading (thanks YouTube for the informative answer to “How do you knead bread?”!!) and about 1 million peaks under the dishtowel to see if the dough had risen, I ended up with some seriously delicious bread!  I had to freeze two of the three loaves, but it is way better to have fresh bread for sandwiches rather than bland store bread.  I am converted!!  At least for a month or two, I can’t promise this newest obsession will stick.  Here are my little loaves, fresh out of the oven:

yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum yum (times fifty)

And that’s it, people!  There are a few things missing, but overall, you get the idea.  I guess I am pretty much an old lady stuck in a 25 year old body.  I’m ok with that.

Finished Projects

Ladies and Gentlemen!  I had a banner weekend in terms of finishing projects that I have been working on for approximately 6 months or longer!  This is very exciting for me, because I LOVE to start projects and not so much with the finishing part.  Especially if finishing them involves a lot of detailed (ps, while writing this, Blake just SAT right on top of Chopper, and Chopper just made the cutest squeak toy noise in the world.  I have never heard anything like it.  However, I am pretty sure it hurt, and that is probably the reason why Chopper just loves to pee on Blake), time consuming work.  BUT THIS WEEKEND!  Instead of being a normal 25 year old, I spent a lot of time finishing blankets/sewing pillows/hanging picture frames.  And now I am going to show them to you…

First up, is my finished Babette Blanket!!  Here is a picture so you can admire it:

Hi! I took Kristi a really long time, so you should tell her how awesome I am! Ok, thanks! - Blanket

Hi! This is me from another angle. - Blanket

This blanket is the exact same one that I made for David for his wedding.  However, mine was made with Cascade Wool, while David’s Most Sensitive Skin on The Face of The Planet’s was READ MORE