I forgot to mention in my last post that today is the very last day to sign up for my little giveaway. Come on - give me some comment love. You have no idea how much I like comments and I promise not to use your email address for evil. The most I’ll do with it is reply to your comment. Just leave a comment of any nature on my 100th post to enter the giveaway. It won’t hurt, I promise.
What has surprised me the most about blogging is the community. I’m sure this doesn’t surprise most of you, but I’m still a newbie. My original goal had more to do with motivating myself to complete more projects than anything to do with friends. It was rather selfish. Prior to starting my blog in January I had been a reader (aka lurker) seldom commenting but always being inspired. I want to start seeing more completed projects of my own as well as with my children. I thought committing to post about them would help. And it has. What I didn’t count on were the friends. Who would have thought this little venture would strengthen a current friendship, rekindle an old one and create a new one in so short a time span. Actually, many new friends. Too many to mention here. But the fact that I’ve now met one of those new friends blows me away. Kristin and I spent a lovely morning on Friday at an art museum. It was a strange mix of I’ve known you forever but am just meeting you, and I was very pleased with the outing. I did feel a little out of my league as she dresses better than me, has a better behaved 3 yr old and is more thoughtful. (Why didn’t I think to bring a gift?) Just as pleasant as getting to know her was watching our boys get to know each other. I’m not sure whether it was cuter, watching them hold hands while they walked through the museum or when they were sharing an umbrella on the walk to the car. You should know that the mamas were getting drenched while these two were cozily inching their way up the street. This picture was taken at the beginning of the walk. Before my hair was dripping and every other sentence out my mouth was “hurry up guys”.
I hope to meet many more of you that I have come to consider my friends. As I know I will never be able to travel the globe and meet all of you, please know that I still treasure our friendships. I look forward to many more exchanges, be it through postings, comments or craftiness. Thank you for being my friend.
What do you do with potpourri after the smell has faded? We make collages. Here’s the low down:
Materials
Let the artiest “draw” with the glue. The younger they are the better luck you’ll have with smaller, full bottles so that hand dexterity isn’t an issue. Let said artist choose and arrange pieces of the potpourri to his or her satisfaction.
The 1st time Seth worked on this project he was more enamored with squeezing the glue out. Now that we’ve done this a few times and the glue novelty is wearing off he’s getting a bit more into the placement of the objects. However, there is still plenty more glue than necessary.
I love how this project can be whipped out at a moments notices with no prep and minimal clean up. Here’s the result of doing just that during a recent play date:
The blue background was made by a friend of Seth’s. I love how she lined up the cinnamon sticks. She did leave it behind for the glue to dry so I took the opportunity to frame it in some cheap Ikea frames. Using Command picture hanging strips I was able to hang Seth’s and have a gift ready in a matter of minutes.
OK, I admit it. I can get completely carried away with techno geeky stuff. It’s all Martha’s fault that I just spent at least the last hour creating the amusing little things. Check out her lovely creation that got me going in the first place. But really, come on, how fun are these things?
See a couple more of my creations or try some of your own.
I’ve been having fun with i-cords lately. I-cords are basically knitted tubes and have many uses such as handles on bags or ties on headbands. I found a felted project with i-cords that I wanted to try and started working on it last week. I thought a felted project might be an excellent first i-cord as it will hide mistakes and loose stitches. Therefore giving me practice without wasting yarn. I didn’t really think about the fact that I would need to knit twice as much as normal to give room for the shrinkage that comes along with fulling the yarn into felt. Oh well, more practice, right?
Further more, the instructions in the book (which will remain nameless) neglected to mention that I should use double pointed needles. It also forgot to tell me what size needles to use, but that’s beside the “point”. So there I am, trying to figure out how to make an i-cord with regular needles. If you’ve ever made an i-cord before your probably already laughing. For the rest of you, the reason it’s so funny is that after knitting a row you are to slide it to the other side and knit off that end. Well, if you have a knob on that end it’s pretty darn hard to knit off of it. Luckily I remembered the good old internet and found a lovely tutorial to help me out.
In the end I’m going along strongly with my i-cords. I still think felting them will be great. I also now think that i-cords would be a wonderful introduction to double pointed needles. Usually double pointed needles are used in sets of 4 or 5 and enable one to knit in the round. In the case of i-cords it’s still only 2 needles but it’s a baby step toward using the whole kit ‘n caboodle . I wish I had tried i-cords prior to jumping in with both feet to the awkward knitting in the round that a whole set of double pointed needles provides. Instead I made this plush for Eleanor (it’s also very lightly felted). I love it and enjoyed the challenge but would have appreciated breaking my teeth on something a little easier.
Assuming I pull this first i-cord project off I may try a Knitting Nancy next time to see how it compares. I found the idea through a thread of posts starting with the Crafty Crow’s mention of Zen Crafting’s Knitting Ned kid version. Has anyone out there used a Knitting Nancy and have any comments on them? Also, what do you do with i-cords? Better yet, what can you imagine doing with i-cords?
Note to Functional Felt Swapers - You should be receiving your swap partner within 24 hours. Please email Jen and I at functionalfeltswap {at} gmail {dot} com if you don’t get an email by end of day Wednesday.
Got 2 1/2 inches of very wet snow last night so obviously I haven’t been gardening. I desparately want to go play in it but by the time I get off work all that remains will be puddles as the high will be about 40 degrees. It’s a grey day but I was still able to shoot some lovely pics on my way to work that I won’t be able to upload until tonight. Darn, this day job gets in the way sometimes!
