Fun with felting

Here's a photo of my first knitted and felted bag. Previously I have made a number of bags from felted wool sweaters and blankets (sadly I didn't take any pictures of those ones). My thinking was always, why bother knitting and then felting when you can just buy wool sweaters and skip right to the fun part (i.e. shrinking wool on purpose)?


However...this yarn was calling to me. This sweet little bag is made of 3 skeins of Noro Kureyon (I forget the colour # and I don't have the ball band anymore - whoops). It took about 3 trips through the washing machine with hot water to get it nicely felted. Feeling ambitious, I decided at the last minute that I wanted a lining, so I made one and added loops for the wooden handles. Incidentally, I think you can buy cute handles online and sometimes in craft shops, but I have a drawer full of handles I have cut off bags I find at thrift stores. I like repurposing them on new (cuter) bags. Also, they cost about $3 instead of $10 for new ones.

Collections

Collecting stuff is fun. Half the fun is finding stuff, and the other half is when you get home and the new item takes it place among its "siblings" in the collection. When I find a new piece, I like to take out the whole collection and look at it. Rearrange the pieces. Think about what pieces I want to add, and whether I should weed out any (not often). Collections make me happy. I'm sure this is something I come by honestly. My mom's father was a packrat and he amassed huge collections...a shed full of antique metal milk cans...dozens of crates of old vinyl records...old tools...furniture...you name it, Papa had one (and likely two, or ten, or more).

Finding collectibles is SO FUN. Whenever I'm in a thrift store or antique shop, I keep an eye open for certain things. Some of my favourite vintage finds are: books (particularly children's books), pyrex (especially red, pink, or aqua pieces, and if they are lidded refrigerator dishes, even better), certain tableware, old fabric and sewing notions, and aprons. (I'm not sure why I love vintage aprons, and I have not for the life of me figured out how to display them, but I just can't help myself when I see them.) Sometimes the things I like are too expensive. I tend not to buy those things, as much as I would like to. I just don't see the point; it's not much fun to have a collection that consists of only two or three pricey items. And even worse, I wouldn't want to use them on a daily basis for fear of breaking or ruining them. I much prefer being able to scoop up new pieces whenever I want.

Milk glass is an excellent collectible. It's inexpensive, it's relatively easy to find, and it's pretty. It's also practical - I use it all the time. I like the curvaceous shapes and creamy colour. The hobnail pieces are like polka dots, but in a subtle, white-on-white way. Now that I think about it, they're kind of feminine.

The compote really looks girly with its slender stem and ruffled edge.

This weekend I found the squat little pitcher and the tall vase with the long neck and round bottom. I think I'll stick some flowers in them. See? Happiness, for only $4.50.

Starry Night

Check it out: another FO (finished object) by Mom! This one is a queen-sized quilt made for her younger brother and his wife. This quilt traveled across Canada - from St. Catharines, ON to Airdrie, AB - to reach its new home. (Howdy, Ken and Shirleyan!)

This pattern is called "Starry Night" and it's a pattern with a few variations. The ones I have seen share the same basic characteristics: they are typically done in shades of blue, ranging from deep midnight to pale sky; they are pieced together as simple square blocks; the colour gradation changes from dark to light in a diagonal pattern across the quilt; and of course, the white stars are scattered across the top. In this quilt, my mom appliqued the stars on the quilt top after she pieced it all together. In the close-up detail (folded back here, to show the back of the quilt) you can see the quilted design is also a pattern of stars. This was done by machine at a local quilt and fabric shop.

I have a Starry Night quilt myself, and it is different from this one. Mine is also done in similar shades of blue, but the blocks are larger. The white stars are not appliqued, but are blocks pieced into the quilt top in a random pattern. And instead of the starry machine quilting, mine was handstitched in a swirly pattern. It reminds me a lot of the Van Gogh painting. Now I'm wondering if there are other quilt patterns named after famous artwork. Something to check on Google...

mama's little helper

I remember having a little baking set when I was a kid - probably still have it somewhere, along with a bunch of Barbies with their hair "re-styled" (i.e. chopped off). The set included a kid-sized rolling pin, tiny cookie cutters, and a little tin cookie baking sheet, about the size of a recipe card. It was awesome.

Ronan shows a similar interest in baking. Not cooking - only baking. When he notices the big yellow baking bowl and metal measuring cups on the counter, he often pulls up his stepstool and asks to help me. So cute. The first few times, all was going well; we were mixing and measuring and making a lovely mess; until I said it was time to bake our creation (a cake, I think). He kind of freaked out when I put the pans in the oven. He didn't think much of having to wait for things to bake so we could eat them. Poor kid. Longest 30 minutes of his life.

He gets it now, though. We have even progressed to rolling out dough and cutting out shapes. Fun! Tonight we made biscuits. They are a huge favourite around here. No bowl of chili or homemade soup is consumed without them. They are easy as pie. No - they're easier than pie.


For some reason, he thought the bowl of flour was "tasty" and kept dipping his fingers in. Ugh.


Dry flour can't compare to hot, flaky buttered biscuits dipped in Daddy's homemade beef stew, though.


Oh, yeah.


Totally worth the wait.

The garden: Before and after

We haven't been blogging much lately - too busy in the garden. The picture above is my mom's potting shed. My dad built if out of reclaimed barnboard and old wooden windows. It sits at the back edge of their property, surrounded by lush, bountiful flowerbeds as well as a large vegetable and herb garden. Pretty, eh?

Now, have a look at this:



This is the pitiful "flowerbed" that we inherited when we moved into our new house. I hesitate to call it flowerbed - more of a graveyard for plants. Look closely and you will see a few brownish lumps that appeared to be hostas in a former life. Those green clumps are ornamental grasses. They were the only things that didn't perish. Also, note the lamppost covered in rust sticking out like a sore thumb in the middle of the yard. Lovely. This is what you see from the sidewalk in front of the house.



Here's the view from the front walk. As you can see, it's even worse than it looked from the street. Nothing but dead plants and concrete slabs.

But have a look at what we did:









John did the heavy lifting and my mom and I did the planting. We started by moving the walkway away from the house, out in front of the front step. That gave us room to build a flowerbed under the bay window. These photos don't show it, but we have planted more shrubs in that bed under the windows now, which should fill in the space in time. Then we re-shaped the flowerbed to make it bigger, which involved removing quite a bit of sod and mixing in new soil and compost (heavy work, done by John). A large flowerbed now curves around the (freshly sanded and re-painted) lamppost and is planted with mostly perennials (hydrangea, lilies, echinacea, and astilbe) and some boxwood and juniper shrubs, as well as hardy low-growing groundcovers (ivy, lamium and creeping jenny). We discovered peonies and hostas growing along the far side of the house (not visible here) and we relocated them to the front flowerbed, too. My parents were a huge help in getting this done. My dad brought loads of compost and soil in his trailer, and hauled away all the sod and dead plant material we dug up. And my mom brought over a fabulous assortment of perennials from her own garden, including a large spirea and burning bush. (Thanks Mom and Dad - Couldn't have done it without you!) My mother-in-law gave me several lovely plants as well, including half a dozen stargazer lilies - I am hoping some of them will be established and blooming in a few months. We're really happy with the the way it looks so far. Now I have to be patient and wait for it all to grow!

Bounty of bags

My mom recently went on a sewing spree and made a whole bunch of bags for people - my grandma, aunts, cousins, and sister-in-law were all recipients of new bags. I hope everybody likes their bags. I doubt we will see much of my mom's sewing for a while, because, hello, it's gardening season, people. She is up to her eyebrows in mulch and bedding plants and seeds. She disappears into the garden sometime around dawn, and doesn't come back in the house until it's dark, and only then because the mosquitoes chase her in. She has the greenest thumb I have ever seen, with the possible exception of my grandfather (her dad). Her yard is quite large, with many flowerbeds and a very large vegetable garden and even a little potting shed.

Anyway, back to the bags. Want to see them??



















More bags to come...including one for me, yay!

We're back

Okaaaaayy...so that was a really long hiatus from crafting. I've been preoccupied with unpacking and painting at our new house (woo hoo!) and I could barely find a needle and thread to fix a missing button, never mind start a whole crafty project. But that's okay. I have a bigger space for setting up my craft corner now, and I have a pile of ideas and plans to make things - including lots of things for the house. Very excited about that.

In the meantime, my mom has been sewing all kinds of cool stuff: bags, vintage-style aprons, and even a few quilts. For example, how cute is this?



This vintage-inspired apron is made with McCall's pattern #3979, "American Hostess." Love it!

And this is just beautiful:



This quilt was made for my mother-in-law, Lynne. She had asked my mom about making a handmade quilt several months ago. She let my mom choose the pattern and colours. This turned out so pretty. The pattern is called Starry Night. The sun-and-sky colours are perfect for spring. Now we all want blue and yellow quilts, ha ha. Here's a detail of the pattern:



This quilt is completely hand-cut and pieced, and machine stitched. My mom had the final quilting done at a local quilt shop, where they put the quilt on a fancy machine that quilts a pattern. If you look closely at the detail, you can see that it's quilted in a star pattern. Isn't that beautiful?