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I always wear pantyhose with short shorts and sandals!

Hey! We're carting our old coke bottles over to tumblr! It's the easy, breezy way to post! See ya there!

Frogs' Eggs Shawl

Tadpoles!

Pollywogs!

Slimy green things!

I haven't blogged here for ages! I've been too busy buying 3000 pounds (= 1.5 tons) of weathered fieldstone for our new patio. Rocks are cheap! The price comes from the haulage. In any case, I think this new shawl (in Elvincraft, of course) will be good for patio sitting, and for hugging to my sore back muscles once I'm done setting stones. Pictures galore to follow...

Beauty, Brains, and Glamour

After my thrilling score last week, I had to go back into the Goodwill today, and so found this! Superbingo.

Make-It-Yourself Boutique

I hadn't been in a thrift store for months. But today I broke my junk diet and gave into temptation. I needed some broccoli sprouts from Shop 'n' Save, and Goodwill is right next door to Shop 'n' Save. How could I help myself! Lucky thing I went in, I don't know how I ever lived without this book. The author doesn't believe in patterns, and thinks that every mistake is a new design! My kind of gal! The inside tells you how to make Mexican Pants out of a man's old shirt, and then there's the Flower Petal Hat. Got to get back to reading it...

How To Clean The Craft Room

No dust!

A purty box to hold double-pointed knitting needles.

More tools of the craft.

Buttons and Lucky Charms, in clean jars!

The Happy Chair is where I dream up ways to make a mess.

I pulled this unused chair out of another room; it's the comfiest.

Shelves with actual Space!

I can't claim to have ADD, because anyone who knits lace shawls is by definition able to stick to the task at hand for a long slow time. But everyone has her distraction threshold, and mine is reached whenever I come across a pile of vintage needlecraft magazines. Since my craft room (which is small but all mine —Lucky Me! — and full of natural light) was overflowing with these, I found it very hard to buckle down and get organized. But I'd finally had enough of not being able to find anything! And it's Spring, so I really wanted to get rid of the five years worth of furballs which had accumulated under the shelves, and any lingering Bad Winter vibes. So yesterday I tied my hair off my face, took a deep breath and copious slugs of coffee, then went to town! I pulled every single item out of the room, then scrubbed the floor and washed the walls. The dust gave me a massive headache, so I took 2 Aleve and went back to work. Six bags of trash, four boxes of books, and three sheep's worth of undesirable yarn later, I started moving things back in. What made it back through the door had to be A) Purty, B) Useful, and C) Actually Wanted. Now this space feels much more energetic. Hooray for Spring Cleaning!

Smart Sewing, Stupid Sorting

I've come to the conclusion that if I'm ever going to organize the craft room annex to the Junk Dungeon, it's going to have to be done blindfolded. How can I possibly sort and discard if I keep running across cool old magazines like this one???? Because then of course I have to sit down for a while and admire great graphics and helpful hints. "A while" meaning about an hour. And then something within the pages, in this case the lined cardigan (what a great way to use my Liberty of London for Target kiddie sundress prints!), will make me jump up and start rummaging through my supplies and "create" an even bigger chaotic mess. Since I have a lot of similar reference material hidden in (highly disorganized) nooks, you can see where the day goes...

Chihuahua Hankie

Since she's providing the lamb chops and asparagus on Sunday, the person I embroidered this for gets an extra special hostess gift. Her three favorite things are the color pink, hankies, and my chihuahua Bridget. I think this covers that. I bought the linen fabric, then hemmed it, then added a simple crochet edging, then embroidered it. Whew! The image is from Sublime Stitching, which offers great embroidery patterns that always look clean, neat, and fun. (Instead of the messy do-it-myself designs I usually go with.) I love being crafty, but I have a secret residual shame about it, since I'm just a tad too old to be on the vanguard of this current Neo Craft Revolution generation. For me, crafts will always be associated with polyester lace, "silk" flowers, and mice in aprons. All too well I remember the horror I felt whenever a favorite Antique Mall became a Crap, oops-I-mean, Craft Mall. But now craftiness is chic and there's so much real intriguing talent out there! However, I do apologize for the recent turn of this blog to any old-fashioned junk hounds who abhor the sight of the hand-made. I am going to start showcasing my Lucky Finds again soon!

More Fun Things To Do With Catfood Cardboard

See how versatile Catfood Cardboard can be? I bet you never knew! I'd have to charge thousands of dollars for this Tool Kit on etsy to make a penny of my time back, but it was fun to make. The darling cotton dandelion print served as inspiration for the embroidery. I just can't resist darling fabric. I even bought some Liberty of London for Target kiddie clothes just to get my hands on those gorgeous floral cotton prints — the next move will be to rip them up and sew a kimono out of the pieces. I now have three big addictions: knitting, sewing, and listening to M. C. Beaton's Hamish Macbeth mysteries on the iPod shuffle while doing either of the other.

Faery Orchid Bedjacket

I talk about my Elvincraft yarn a lot in this blog. That's because it's magical! Kate Duncan has fairy helpers in her dyepots on the Isle of Skye, and they help me, too, by inspiring new designs. This is a bedjacket that was knit in one piece from the top down in custom dyed Orchid colors. Top-down is the most fun way to knit. No !@#$%^& seaming! I love to sew, but not when I'm knitting. Weird but true.

Cigarette Card Embroidery

Images to Embroider

Catfood Cardboard

At night now I'm dreaming about embroidery and textiles instead of knitting lace. A sure sign I'm in for a long craze. Now when I see some cool old vintage whatever I think, "I wonder what that would look like embroidered?" Wouldn't the old German Cigarette Cards shown on top be the bomb in stitches? I'm going to try someday, after I finish my current Secret Embroidery Project (hint: paperback covers are involved), which is turning out great. Embroidery goes a lot more quickly than knitting, so I have plenty of time for other crafty pursuits too, such as the Catfood Cardboard Craft Organizers of the last post. Here's how to make one: get yourself some 24 cans boxes of Fancy Feast, any flavor. (My cats prefer Grilled Seafood Feast Variety). Three 7.5 inch x 5 inch pieces of cardboard per box, and you'll need 4 for a 2 folio organizer. For each folio, cut a 13 inch (width) x 17 inch (height) piece of fabric, and for the pocket, a 13 x 10 inch piece. Fold the smaller piece in half so it measures 13 x 5 inches, press and stay stitch it 1/4 inch from edge along sides and bottom of right side of larger fabric piece, then fold this larger piece in half (height-wise), right sides together. Now sew a 5/8 inch seam along bottom. Turn right side out and press: dimensions now 13 x 7.75 inches. Insert two catfood cardboards, then press side edges under and sew together. Then sew your second similar folio to first down center. Add felt and other embellishments before you sew that first seam, and don't stitch into the cardboard, duh. Easy!

Catfood Cardboard, Part III

Front Cover, with Ugly Belt

Graphed Moleskine, Stork Scissors, Stylus and Pin Felt

Silk Ribbon and Carbon Transfer Paper

More Needle Felt and Transfer Patterns

Here's my latest Catfood Cardboard Craft Organizer. I found the elastic ribbon belt that holds it together at the Salvation Army, cut it to size and sewed the suede and clasp back on by hand. That seemed like a good idea while I was doing it, but it's actually Très Uglé, and I must find another closure. A vintage belt buckle? Aside from the belt, this is both useful and cute, although while making it I gouged the function key of my Mac laptop when the Exacto knife rolled off the table onto it. Craftiness has a price! (Tutorial of sorts here.)

Sew Darn Ugly

This has snaps, but that doesn't make it cute!

This has pockets, but they're not cute either.

Even tie-dyed felt can't make this cute, darn it!

It always amazes me how different an actual creation can be from a conception. This needle book was inspired by one I saw in the book Sew Darn Cute, but since I am congentially incapable of following directions, I had to come up with my own version. And it's not pretty. I suppose I could spend more time and make it cuter, add embroidery and such, but I think I'll just write it off as Prototypical Monster and go back to the (pink) cutting board. I'm not scared, because when I first started knitting I made one fugly thing after another. All that practice and horror eventually allowed me to make lace, which is by definition beautiful. So even though I've been sewing since childhood, I evidently need to put in the time to get really good at it again! Because I will upcycle my Catfood Cardboard into something uniquely amazing, or bust.

Spring Flowers

3 pink scissors, 2 pink workbaskets, and 1 pink cutting mat!

Daisies and blue skies will be here soon.

Crazy spattered wool felt ties these 3 fabrics together.

The yellow fabric is new, but the others are vintage.

Pink roses, with stains.

My new venture into embroidery has brought my passion for sewing in general back with a smash. Time to oil up the machine and get going! I have at least one full ton of old fabric, even after destash, but today I went to the fabric store and bought some more. Because a few half yards worth, just for fun, is a fast and cheap way to make myself deeply happy. And I will use it. I'm planning to make lots of booklets like the needle booklet in the last post, only with wool felt and two pages of pockets. Stay tuned for a tutorial: this will be a great way to use up all the Fancy Feast cat food cardboard I've been saving for something!

The Pink Workbasket

Every girl needs a Pink Workbasket!

I felt like a dork winding all these bobbins, but now all my floss fits on cup hooks!

The interior is lined with pockets for every purpose. Yeah, staple guns!

These pink scissors from Sublime Stitching were my unconscious color motivation.

Needle book made of cat food cardboard and scrap fabric.

Inside the book. Because you can never be too cute or too vintage.

When I was making this workbasket, I didn't realize my inspiration was the cutest pair of scissors I've ever seen (4th photo, click to enlarge), from Sublime Stitching. Credit where due. Pink is just a natural for embroidery! I considered decoupaging the inside lid of this basket with vintage ephemera, but that would cover up some of the color, so nix, nix. I love this with Pink Passion! What fun to turn Junk into Funktion!

Pink Picnic Basket!

After I lost my mind over all the color choices offered by DMC embroidery floss at the craft store, I picked up a can of spray paint there in ballet slipper pink. I need bushels of storage space for my new mania, and my mind flashed to an ugly dented old picnic basket holding bits of broken Junk in the Dungeon. It would look mighty cute painted pink, I thought, and it does! Pink is an instant mood lifter! I found the scrap of quilted fabric to go with the quilted basket top, and am going to line the interior in brown ticking with the pink roses quilt as pockets. First I have to plough through mounds of errands, but then I'm going to start creating the cutest pink picnic/sewing basket anybody's ever seen!