Socks!

I finished knitting my first pair of socks!

A little over two years ago, I went on a retreat with a bunch of other high school and college aged kids from my church.  We stayed in a tiny little house on Cape Cod that belonged to the parents of one of the girls in the group.  We spent all day Saturday in the local town -- the morning on the beach and the afternoon in the quaint shopping area.  Well, I got horrific sun poisoning all over my back and couldn't sleep or wear clothing for several days without bleeding, but I also found a nice little yarn shop tucked away in the corner!

And it was there that I got the yarn that I have been unable to decide what to do with for just over two years.

Until now!

I love the way that the yarn striped itself.  They're just a basic pair of stockinette socks, but I love them!

Also: my camera is currently broken, so all of my pictures are from my phone and therefore are super shoddy.

Ravelry Project | Ravelry Project (the yarn information is wrong)

Patchwork Skirt

A few years ago, I bought a strapless dress at a handmade craft shop on the beach in Maine.  Since then, I've grown four inches and washed it enough times that not only does my rear hang out the back when I bend over, but even the ribbons I sewed on after the elastic shot are themselves shot.  Besides, I like skirts better.

So I planned to make it into a skirt.  The only problem was that I didn't have any elastic.  Instead, I took the (shot) elastic from the top of the dress, sewed it to the (shot) elastic at the meeting betweent the patchwork and the bustline, and pinned and sewed it all the way around.  It's a little loose, and soon I'll probably cut that off and sew normal waistband elastic on, but in the mean time, it looks like this!

Dye Lot

One of the projects that has been on my to-do list for a long time (but that I've never gotten around to) is a dye batch.

Well, long story short, I tried it.  It was a nice warm day, I set up the clothesline, and lo and behold...one of five things worked.  Two skirts came out a nice baby-puke, a hat shrunk about three sizes, and the gloves stayed exactly the same color.  But the scarf worked!

I dyes the whole thing, but for some reason, the lace didn't dye.  So, when I went back and forth between a dark green and a tan, this is what I got!  It's the one in the center with the white edgesand the nice forest-y green color.

I'll probably try the other dyes some time soon, but until then, I'll just check one off my list!

Photo Card

Meant To Be Wedding Save the Date

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I'm getting married!  :)  The proposal happened over Thanksgiving and you can read all about it at randallandlily.ourwedding.com!  Just over a year!

Wardrobe Walls!

I live in a renovated horse stall.  Yep, that's right, a horse stall.  A married couple bought the barn behind their house and turned it into a place for poor college students and married couples.  The bottom consists of six horse stalls and a kitchen, bathroom, etc, and each stall is occupied by a different collegiate.  The loft has become an apartment for the newly married and newly impoverished.

But since it's a horse stall, it doesn't have a closet, and upon moving in I inherited a nice wardrobe from the lady who lived here before me.  The only problem?  The left door won't shut.  I tried hooking it to the other door, but then they both hung open a few inches.  I also tacked my mirror to the inside of one of the doors, but when I opened the doors to look in it, they blocked all the light.  Besides, when they were open, they pulled the Wardrobe dangerously close to toppling forward and they interfered with opening the door to my room!

That lasted me for about six months, and then I decided to do something about those darn doors.  So, new project one is my wardrobe doors!  I decided to just take them off!

First, I took a good look at the bindings that were holding the doors to the wardrobe.  It was easy: three small brackets on each door.  I decided to only unscrew the side that was attached to the wardrobe and keep the brackets on the doors in storage in case I ever needed to use them again.  I also chose to unscrew the top bracket last so that it didn't fall over backwards while I was unscrewing the bottom one and risk breaking something (or itself).  So, in order to keep the bottom steady while I worked, I plugged a thick binder under each door before starting.

It was pretty easy, in the long run.  I took my mirror off the inside door, my whiteboard off the outside, and then detached the doors.  Afterwards, I re-hung both accessories and put the doors into our vast storage room.

I LOVE my room now that it's done!  I can open the room door much more and the room feels so much bigger now that the giant wood planks aren't boxing it in; it's easier to keep my room clean when it's easier to put things away.  I'm so glad I did it.  Besides, I now have a bunch of wood to practice my wood-burning on!

Maybe I'll make some curtains for the wardrobe at some point, but not just yet.

And on to project set two!

Fancy Pants

Back in March, I started looking at Thrift Stores for brown Business pants.  I have a personal pledge not to buy anything at a regular store if I don't need to.  Usually, I can get what I want for a fraction of the price at almost the exact same quality at a Thrift Store or a Garage Sale.  However, these brown pants were hard to find.  I looked all over every month or so, and they never had the style and size that I needed in brown.


Finally, in October, I found some.  I found three pairs, actually.  One of them was a few dollars less than the others and I liked the shade and fit much better, so it seemed like a no-brainer, except for one things: the zipper was shot.  I bought them anyway.

I tried in November to fix the zipper several different ways, but it didn't work.  Finally, in December, I bought a new zipper to replace the old one.


So Project Three is actually getting around to replacing the zipper!

By now, I've lost a little weight, so I also wanted to take them in a bit, and I figured, why not do that while I fix the zipper?

So, the first thing I did was pin down the line of where I wanted the pants to come together when I finished.  I also pinned where I wanted the zipper to fall.  If you look, the right side of the zipper is right inside the flap, so that was my inner pin-line.

Next, I seam-ripped all of it -- the zipper, the flaps, everything I had to.  I kept the waist-band and the zipper-flap intact and just cut the ends of the zipper-halves out.







I cut the excess fabric on the left half (based on my pinning) away from the waistband so that I could fold it over.  I also trimmed some of the edge-hems off so I didn't have bulky hems inside my pants when I was done.

I folded the fabric to line up with the inner pin-line and pinned the zipper just inside this line as well.  Then, I sewed down the edge in triple-duty stitches.

After that, I unzipped the zipper and hand-stitched the other side onto the pants.  The plan was to machine-sew it, but then the stitching would have shown through on the other side of the zipper-flap, so I hand stitched in between the layers instead.

When I was done, it zipped fine, but I had to move the button clasp part over to the left.  After much exasperation, I finally just cut it off and sewed it back on.

In the process of all of this, I cut off the inside flap the kept the zipper from the skin.  The new zipper was also about two inches longer than the old zipper, so even though I inserted it farther into the inseam than the old one, it still has about an inch just chilling in the crotch of the pants.  I decided just to leave it.

 At the end of the day, they worked great.  The pants now fit super well and you can barely tell that they were altered.  The only place where it shows is in the inseam, because the right zipper is slightly higher than the left zipper (oops!).  I probably could have prevented that by hand-sewing the right half while it was still zipped to the left half, but I didn't think about it.  No-one's gonna be looking, anyway!

Baby Mitts!

A friend of mine at college is having twins!  We hosted a baby shower for her on the campus and I decided to make her some baby mitts!

Originally, the idea was to make a matching mitt, hat, and bootie set for each little baby, but since the shower was right at the edge of finals, I didn't even have time to finish the mitts!

However, they were finished a few days ago, and have become project two to be completed!

Here's the pattern I used: http://sunnyknits.livejournal.com/6797.html
The blog is in Russian, but there's an English version of the pattern in a link to the right of the picture.

I definitely enjoyed these mitts.  They're so adorable and fluffy!  If I were to do it again, I would make the k-cords thinner, though, because they keep bunching up in the mitts.

I also ended up having to use two different types of yarn to get colors that were neutral (she doesn't know the genders yet), so the cords were of course slightly different than their corresponding mitts, which may have contributed to the problem.

And there's project two!

Ravelry Pattern | Ravelry Project

Simplicity Apron

I made a new-years resolution: I have to finish three projects I've already started/purchased before I can start anything new.  Here's project one!

I bought the pattern and fabric for this apron back in June when it was on sale at Walmart, so it was one of the first to be finished.  The pattern is Simplicity SewSimple 2011, as seen below.

(http://www.simplicity.com/p-6444-sew-simple-misses-apron.aspx)

It was pretty simple, when I actually got down to it, but it was my first sewing project (which had a pattern) in about five years, so I had forgotten what all of the symbols meant!

It was a quick project, about 4-5 hours total, and came out pretty well.  Honestly I'm just glad to have it done and off my mind!  It .

However, when I bought the fabrics, I had intended them to be switched.  On the pattern, it says to buy 1 1/8 yard of fabric for the "apron" and 5/8 yard for the "contrast."  When I saw the picture on the cover, I thought that the apron was made of the zebra fabric and that the pockets were inserted after, so my assumption was that the stripes were the "contrast" and I bought accordingly.  I was wrong.  The apron is made of two pieces of fabric -- in mine, the polka-dots make the bulk of the apron and the spirals are simply an over-lay -- so that the pockets are really just one big pouch.

It still came out okay, but now the waistband has a bigger design than the rest of it, so the illusion of slimness is gone.  Oh well. :)

I would suggest this to someone who knows how patterns work or who knows how to figure things out.  If you're the type of person who can do that "assembly required" furniture with no problem at all, then I'm not worried about you teaching yourself this pattern.

It's simple enough to be a beginner pattern, but a clueless person who has trouble with "assembly required furniture" should probably have an interpreter!

Craft Retainer

Hello There.

I've always been crafty.  I like creating.  I like putting things together for something new.

I'm also very bad at follow-through.

So this blog is here to MAKE me do it.

I will be posting my crafts on here.  We'll see if it works!