Santa's present

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas. We sure did. It was our first one as a family at home. Well I guess Gregg and I spent Christmas alone when I was pregnant with Lills on bedrest, but as you can imagine it was less than exciting. This year was so much fun! I had wanted to make tamales on Christmas Eve but I couldn't find any of the essentials at the grocery stores so we ended up with a mexican feast featuring tacos. It was really good and I am guessing a lot less work. Then for Christmas my dad sent us a turkey from the honey baked ham company. It was amazing and again a lot less work because it was already precooked, we just had to heat it up and make some sides. Lilly and I made gingerbread cookies for Santa, this gingerbread recipe is amazing.

Santa brought Lilly a garden!



When I started asking Lilly what she wanted to ask Santa for for Christmas. She had no idea really what or who Santa was so I started making suggestions of things she might like from him. She seemed most excited when I mentioned expanding her play kitchen with a garden.


Santa was utterly and jaw dropperly inspired by Homemade by Jill's felt playhouse. That playhouse is something else, all the details she used, I can see why Santa was so inspired by her. Fortunately for me, Santa knew that our dining room table also serves as my sewing table so making a whole playhouse would mean I would have to share and he knew that was not going to happen. So he decided on a single panel garden to place next to her kitchen.


When Lilly and I were working on her letter to Santa, we were drawing what the garden might contain some things I suggested and others she suggested, a pumpkin, green beans, and a yellow "baby" (spaghetti squash) were a must in her book.

(the veggies and flowers are in pockets)

(the fruit, birds, and butterfly are all attached with velcro)

One day when Lilly and I were in the real kitchen we both had our aprons on she noticed that I had a hook to hang my apron on and she did not. She asked me if Santa might bring her a hanger for her apron too. um, an organized play area? yes, Santa please bring one! That darn guy also thought having two bags to hold all her plates, cups and play food would be a good idea too.


Santa had the BEST time making her garden. Each part was so much fun to work on. And even though he barely finished it before heading out on Christmas Eve it was just not a stressful project.


So far Lilly seems to really enjoy it. She is very into telling stories so Gregg and I have used the garden and the new play food in our stories. She likes to cook for us and now will go to the garden to pick us food!

friendly knits

I had two friends ask me recently to knit them each an item. They were both looking to buy something and then thought of asking me instead. Isn't that nice? I was really touched that they would think of and trust me. I had a great time knitting their requests, especially because I got to try out some new fun yarn!

Request #1:

Kristina asked me knit her son a hat. She saw the ones I was obsessed with recently and asked for one like that. I ended up not using that hat pattern because I had such a hard time making the hat big enough in the first place and Kristina said her son's head was a BIG one. So I went with the large adult size hat in Last Minute Knitted gifts, Kim's hats (rav link). I made it with just as many stitches cast on but just knit it an inch or two short of the adult length because well he has a big head and my yarn was worsted instead of aran or bulky. It fits him!


yarn: berroco comfort


Request #2:
Kristin asked me to knit her a cowl/neck warmer (btw, she makes gorgeous baby stuff and well just about everything really, she just expanded her line, go see!). She wanted something that she could keep on all day and not get in her way. Kristin and I have very similar tastes when it comes to colors so the yarn was pretty easy to pick out and oh man this stuff is so soft and luscious. I loved knitting with it (and taking the pictures). I modified this pattern to account for my bulky yarn choice (see rav for mods). All this needs is a button. Kristin is going to go button shopping(!) and decide where she wants to place it.



Pattern: Dear
Yarn: alpaca with a twist big baby

Knitting this for Kristin made me realize I need to make myself a cowl that is super warm. My scarf just isn't cutting it most days. That wind chill can find its way right down to my neck. I have some left over malabrigo chunky yarn from my stocking and I do love that green.

Thanks for the requests ladies!

Don't worry I did both of these projects in the past few weeks so currently I am working away in Santa's workshop. The big man is pleased with my progress!

mountain baby blanket round 2!

a boy version. I won that pack of I-spy quilt blocks from Lyanna, after sorting them into boy, girl and neutral, I was able to use just over 50 of them in this quilt for a boy.



I think almost every quilt I work on I think to myself during construction, oh man this is not going well, those seams are crooked, those colors are silly, why can't you cut a straight line, the self talk goes on and on. And then when it is all said and done, I am always pleased with the final quilt. All that stress about design and unevenness just don't bother me after the quilt has a nice trip in the wash. This quilt was no exception, I was so hating it but after quilting and binding I was in love.





I think I had such a hard time liking this one from the beginning because this is my first quilt using I-spy fabrics, the randomness of the colors was really hard for me to deal with. It just looked so messy but like I said I really like the finished product. I used a brown sheet for the backing and gray thread to quilt wide random vertical lines. So this and the girly quilt are off to warm some babies in the mountain baby project! yay!

finished size: 49" x 49"

so now I can focus on a little project for Lills. Santa sent word from the workshop that I am way behind schedule! yikes!

a robe and the mountain baby blanket project

One present checked off Lill's list! And it was something she has been asking for for months. a blue robe. I wear a robe all the time, they are just so cozy and warm, Lilly decided she wanted to be cozy and warm too and she is really into matching outfits.



pattern: see and sew 4635
material: plain old blue fleece

It is a little big on her, I ended up having to try it on her, but I think it should be okay after I took in the top around the front band and shortened the sleeves. I will probably let her open this a few days early. I am a bit worried that she is going to be overwhelmed with all the presents she is going to get and I want her to really enjoy each one as she opens so we are thinking of giving her our gifts spread out in the few days before Christmas. But maybe that is part of the fun for kids on Christmas being completely overwhelmed with presents!



Another thing completed, a blanket for the mountain baby blanket project! Nicole and I worked on this one together. We choose to do a rag time quilt so we could each complete squares and sew them into strips long distance then I sewed all of our strips into a real live blanket and cut up the seam allowances for the raginess. I think it is quite pretty. The colors really pop and it is such a nice cuddly blanket. Nicole choose the color palette and she used all the really fun prints. Who cares if our seams don't match so that the last row had to be cut off to make it all match, as Nicole said "I am proud of us!"





back:


Pattern: this tutorial, we cut our fabric squares 8", batting 6", 80 blocks
Size: 60" x 48"

I have been slooooowly working on another mountain baby blanket. I really want both of these quilts to be sent in time for the babies to be warm at Christmas so hopefully I can bust a move on it this weekend.

joy

We put up our Christmas decorations this weekend. such fun thinking of the memories of each treasured ornament. In decorating, I came across this wall hanging:




I completely forgot I had made this. I think I forgot because I wanted to improve on the next one I did but clearly now I am not going to make another one. I was inspired by this wall hanging, frankly I am inspired by everything she makes. I used heat and bond to seal the squares of the wreath to the backing fabric and then stitched two circles around the squares to give it a wreath feel. I also stitched "joy" with my machine. I think next time I will use thicker thread, like quilting cotton or maybe go over it a couple times, just so the letters stand out more. I really like the idea of these little decorative quilt pieces or even just a fun block pattern to try out but not make a whole quilt.


I finished a present for Lilly this weekend, hopefully the weather will perk up to get a photo to share!

granny stars and an anniversary

granny stars!





(tutorial here and used her "edit") aren't they awesome?!?! I have big plans for these, BIG. But first these will go on our tree. I did spray starch them so my points would be proper star points. I just can't get enough of granny crochet lately. I have all these wants but I need to hold off until after Christmas. I will say I figured out how to spice up our silhouettes and I am excited to get to it!



So two good friends of mine met in graduate school. They fell in LOVE. big time love and got married last September! The Mrs. is extremely crafty and she did SO MUCH of the details for the wedding herself. A total DIY wedding. Sadly, we couldn't attend the wedding but she posted on her blog most of the projects she did for the wedding. It was almost like we were there. If you are planning a wedding, I HIGHLY recommend you go to Nicole's blog and look at her wedding crafts (her wedding was also featured on style me pretty), like I said she did a lot and she has a great style. One of the projects she wanted to do was a wedding quilt as a form of a guest book. She had all the guests sign a piece of muslin and then one of her good friends and bridesmaids sewed them into a gorgeous quilt top. Well I will just let you read about the project here but that good friend of the new Mrs. asked ME to help! I was so excited that she asked me. Like I said I am still sad we couldn't attend the wedding or really help in anyway with all the DIYness, so I was extremely happy I could help with this wedding project. Thus an anniversary quilt was born...





Jess made a gorgeous quilt top and then I quilted it up. I was very nervous to quilt it, I really thought and thought how to go about it and how not to mess it up! Go read on Nicole's blog about the quilt and see more pictures. Happy Anniversary Nicole and Grant!!

if you are getting married you should do a wedding quilt too!

p.s. I think there were 5 couples that are married now but when each of us started grad school in the University of Oregon's physiology department we were single. We all found a fellow graduate student or even an undergrad that sparked that little something in us. (in my case it was a very hunky undergrad) If you are into physiology and are single, I highly recommend University of Oregon's grad program!

Happy Advent Day!!

I am so excited to start the advent calendar today! Last fall my big project was this advent calendar. I am still really happy with how it turned out and Lills is going to be even more into it as compared to last year. She might even get that we only do one ornament a day, last year I remember she wanted to keep putting one up after the other. If I have time I would like to put up a border around the whole thing and redo one or two ornaments but I have so much other things I want to do I will probably never do those things (such as life with a craft addiction).


I feel a little bad that I ripped on my ornament wreath the other day. I got so many nice compliments on it. I felt I should expand on why I don't love it. Basically, the tutorial called for 80 ornaments, I only had 40. So I needed to make my wire hanger circle smaller which was super hard to do. I couldn't get the wire hanger to close tight enough, in comes Gregg with muscles. He got it closed but also broke two ornaments off. I didn't want either of us to try to get it to close tighter, in case of more broken ornaments, so there is a silly looking gap at the top. Also because the circle is smaller, the hanger is off to one side (looks like a decoration from whoville). If I could make a good, big, proper bow the gap wouldn't be a big deal but my bow making skills are so sad. I can just do a regular bow so I did that and wrapped ribbon to hide the hanger. And since the hanger is off to the side I hung it up just under the bow. I do love the actual wreath just not what I did to the top. Anywho, this is a great project and for those of you who loved it, you should really make one. It is super simple aside from my problems. And like I said Lilly loved helping me with it, so it is kid friendly too.

(those two blue ornaments are killing me, Lilly wanted it like that...kid, ever heard of symmetry?)



Happy Advent Day!