You made that out of what?

So my computer is on the fritz and I'm attempting to blog from my phone. Its slow going but gets the job done.

You know those uber popular things people are crocheting these days out of plastic bags? They are a lot of work. You have to cut them and you're them together and not to mention still crochet your item. Its a pain.

But as I was cleaning out the garage last week with my husband we came across some old vhs tapes. My brain did this little flip and I said "i think I can crochet this". My husband rolled his eyes.

I did it anyway.

I made the whole bag with one tape and there was still some left on the reel. It worked great. But its very shiny and only comes in one color. Lol.

The flower is made out of duct tape. Tutorial to come soon.

Seriously? No great Easter Pictures?

THIS my friends is the only picture I have of our kids on Easter.

I blame 9am church.

But we DID get a little crafty this year. We tie dyed our easter eggs. It was an interesting technique and not sure if we will repeat it again as everything turned a greenish brown. Not the pretty effect I was going for. But what can you do?

You mixed a bit of food coloring in 3 T of vinegar. Then take a wet cloth and wrap your egg. Drip dye in random drips around and remove cloth. That's it. Pretty simple.

Tutorial- Flower Fairies

I came up with the idea for these cute little fairies in September for my daughters birthday party. They were such a hit and so cute! A few readers have emailed me how I made them so I decided to do a tutorial. They are super easy and if you don't put a face on them there really isn't anything to mess up!

For each fairy you will need:

A wooden bead head. I found them in the doll making section at Joanne's. While your there grab:
Darice Doll Hair
2 pipe cleaners
2 large artificial flowers
1 very small artificial flower for the cap
1 flat backed crystal or jewel
Glue gun
Glue for the glue gun
Skin colored acrylic paint
Paint brush
Felt for the shirt and wings
Scissors

To start you need to paint your dolls head. Since I was making a bunch I stuck them all on one pipe cleaner so I didn't have to paint around my fingers. It worked like a charm. Let it dry. It takes all of two minutes.

Next fold one pipe cleaner in half and cut the other one in half. Like so:

Put a spot of glue on the folded half and stick on the head. Have I mentioned this was easy?

To put the arms on you simply wrap it around the body.

For the fairies shirt and wing you simply cut the wings out of felt. I took a piece roughly three inches square folded it in half and cut them out. Sorry. No pattern.

The shirt is a tiny half inch or so rectangle with slits  for arm holes. So technical, I know.

Yes, I realize that the pictures of the closeups of the fairy clothes are in a different color. It's been on of those months. Anyhow it's time to glue the shirt on. Start by glueing the bottom half on first. Like so...

Then cross over the top part in a V on the back. Don't worry how it looks. The wings will cover it up.

Take apart your artificial flowers:

And slide them upside down in whatever configuration you want (small, big, medium or big, medium, small). Play around with it if you want. You want it to look like a skirt.

Now for the fun part. The hair. I cut mine in two inch pieces. Although truthfully you could probably just glue a glob on and cut it to the shape you want. If a piece looks out of place just trim it off or glue on more hair. I love this stuff.

A tip: Work from the outside in. Trust me. Oh and don't glue the wings on yet. It just gets in the way of the hair. Ask me how I know.

Once you've got the hair on like you want you can glue on the wings.

Glue on the small flower so it's facing down towards the head. This makes it more cap like. Glue a jewel on the top. Pause and marvel at the cuteness.

And then take pictures! Because you are done!

I purposely leave the faces off. If you want this as an outside fairy for your fairy garden I would suggest maybe a quick spray of clear over the head before you start putting it together. So go on... what are you waiting for? Get thee to the craft store!

TWO finished knitted articles of clothing. Holy cow!

I love when I have a finished project. It makes my heart pitter patter and I get to feel the sense of true accomplishment. And brag. I really like to brag. Especially when it's something wearable like this...

My favorite part about this wrap is that you can wear it a gazillion ways. And it's so pretty. For my fibery friends you can see more on the rav page for it.

AND not only did I finish one wearable adult sized item this last month but two. FOR ME. I know, the shock almost killed me too.

Oh man, I need a hair makeover. Stat.

THREE WEEKS?

Ok, so I will admit that having a blog is a lot of work. And apparently it was more than I was willing to do in the last month. We are still in the waiting game for Spokane. I've been doing a lot of spinning and knitting. And I made some of these cute things...

Which btw are ridiculously easy and totally cute and addicting. You just buy the flower cabochon and the ring base and glue them together.

If you don't want to do that you can just buy one on my etsy store. :)

I have this friend...

So the last few weeks have been a bit nuts. My oldest son turned 8 and got baptized. My husbands work announced that they are opening a Trader Joes in Spokane. My best friend in Spokane (Misty) sending us links to houses and referrals to agents. Then there is the non stop perusal of Craigslist and Realtor.com.

You see, we are on the short list of possibly getting transferred there. And in the non-stop perusal of Craigslist we realized something. The rental market in Spokane is nuts. You see something nice and it's gone a week later. Or less. Then we realized something else. OWNING a house in Spokane is cheaper than renting. :|

So we may or may not have gotten pre-approved to buy a house. Ok. We totally did. ROFL. So this weekend we are loading up the car and driving to Spokane. Now, granted we are going because it's Misty's baby shower and I have loads of boy clothes to pass down to her. But that's like the icing on the cake. We are going to look at houses.

The smaller the better.

SAY WHAT?!?!

You see, I have this friend and she lives in a 256 square foot cabin with her husband and their daughter. Purposefully. I never really understood it until she posted on her facebook a link to this video.




And while living in less than 100 square feet is just not possible for a family of five (and maybe more) it did start us watching and reading online a lot more about small house living. Ok, so I still want one of Jay's tiny houses... it would make a great guest house. And a very portable cabin for when my husband goes hunting!

We have been married 9 1/2 years and have always rented. You should see our "dream house" list. It's insane. And would probably require 5k square feet just to fit it all in. There's a few problems with that thinking though. 1. My husband doesn't make enough money for a 5k square foot house. 2. I don't want to clean it. 3. Can you imagine the utility bills on that? 4. Do 5-6 people really need all that space? REALLY?

And while yes, having a screening room would be ten shades of awesome (heck that's what basements are for, right? So it stays on the list) we'd rather travel and give our kids experiences instead of stuff to fill that 5k sq. ft. house. Or at least buy them ultra awesome small stuff.

Some reasons why my brain shifted gears so quickly:

1. We want to be debt free. Including our house. It will take a whole lot less time to pay off a 150k mortgage than a 300k mortgage.
2. We have a lot of stuff we just don't use. If we have to live in a small house that stuff's got to go!
3. We want to travel.
4. The utilities alone would kill us. What if someday we want to go off-grid (or at least partially off grid) outfitting a 3k square foot house would be expensive. Outfitting a 1800 square foot house would be do-able.
5. Granite counters, awesome cabinetry, millwork, radiant heating... heck yeah I'm going to do it! I can have all these luxury finishes if my house is smaller. It will cost less!

Do you see where I'm going with this? We currently live in an 1800 square foot rental. We fit amazingly into it with plenty of room to spare. And as my dear friend Shawna pointed out to me yesterday 1800 square feet in most parts of the world is a fantastic luxury.

At least my bedroom is not our living room and I don't have to fold my bed up in the wall every morning. See, it's all about perspective.

Small will be awesome.

A now for something new...

I am a copycat. Truthfully. Very few of the things I do are actually my own idea. When I do come up with something I feel like it's a small miracle. So as I'm perusing the blogosphere and seeing all theses amazing crafts/projects/recipes/ideas something hit me. Let's do what I do best... and copy them! So, I've made a cute little button so that if "I Copy You" you can grab it and link from your project to my copy.

I'm pretty proud of my button. I've just started using my design software (thank you paint.net for the freebie). After finally figuring it all out I think I've got the basics. I might tweak it or change it up but for now it's not too shabby!

Now, I've been planning this for awhile but the whole month of February was one craziness after the other. And March is shaping up to be equally as nuts but you know, I really want to do this so I refuse to put it off any longer.

We were at my parents house at Christmas and my sister handed me her cashmere sweater and asked me if I could fix it.  As you can see there were these in a few places on the sweater. Bummer! And totally not fixable. So I asked if I could cut it up and make it into other stuff. Good thing I asked. But she was nice and said yes. Squee!

So the sweater landed in my project pile. And by chance a week or so later I came across Melissa Esplin's totally cute blog (which by the way when I get pregnant again I'm going to copy every single maternity outfit she wore) and her Cashmere Mitten Pattern for Grown Ups.

Melissa Esplin... come on down because I Copied You!!!

They are just a tad different. I was sleep deprived when I made them and cut them too short. On her blog you can see that she cut them nice and long and wore them scrunchy. And it's an Old Navy sweater and I'm pretty sure they did some sort of chemical treatment on it because no matter how hard I tried that thing would not felt. So these are unfelted. But still totally cute and warm.

 Here are some pics of the process...

I cut them out of the sleeves. I plan on using the main body for a cowl and ear warmers. Projects forthcoming. Promise.

See the problem? By the time I hem them they would have been WAY too short.

So I cut some more of the sleeve to make a ruffle band.

Folded it in half and pinned it right sides together and put some pleats in there.

I sewed it there and called it good. I used some scraps and made rolled flowers and glued them on. Yes, hot glue baby. That's the way I roll.

So totally cute. They look amazing on. I'm so bummed to part with them but maybe now I'll have to hit up the thrift stores for an old cashmere sweater for myself.


Also a huge shout out thank you to Jo-Lynne at Musings of a Housewife for her amazing tutorials on how to make a blog button and how to make codes. And her blog rocks as well.

Chipotle Veggie-Bean Taco's

Chipotle Veggie and Bean Tacos

-modified from a recipe in the Vive le Vegan! cookbook

So, after the advice of my doctor we have started eating less meat and more veggies. I kid you not I would eat meat three meals a day. Bacon or Sausage for Breakfast, meat sandwhiches for lunch and dinner was usually roast chicken, beef or pork. Seriously! EVERY day! Now, this is not unusual for most Americans but even the bible says "Everything in it's Season". Pretty sure it's not hunting season at every meal.

Gradually we have made the transition. I cook only two meals a week with meat products. TWO. And we have our usual family dinner at my in-laws. So three meals per week with meat. That's it. I asked my husband today how he's liking it. He says it's ok. Not bad. And there have definately been some less than awesome meals involved. (I apparently can NOT make lentil soup.) But there have been ones that even my kids will beg for. This is one of those.

You will need:

1 28oz can diced tomatoes, drained (if you want a smokier flavor use the roasted tomatoes)
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup red onion, finely chopped
2 large cloves garlic, minced or pressed*
1/2 teas salt
pepper to taste
1 tsp chipotle peppers very, very, very finely chopped or just the "sauce" from the can*.
1/2 to 3/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 to 2/4 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard or mustard seed
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1 cup green bell pepper, diced
1/3 cup celery, diced
1 cup cooked beans (I use black or kidney)
1/3 cup frozen corn kernels
1/2 teas honey or agave nectar

corn or flour tortillas
favorite taco toppings (Mine are red lettuce, tomatoes and avacado"

Press the drained tomatoes to remove as much excess liquid as possible. In a large skillet over medium heat, heat the oil. Add the onion, garlic, salt, pepper, chipotles and all the dried herbs and spices. Stir and cook for 5-6 minutes, then add the green pepper and celery. Stir and cook for another 3 minuts. Add in the remaining ingredients and cook until heated through.

Heat up your tortilla's how you like them, and enjoy with your favorite taco toppings.

* I no longer mince garlic for any recipe I make. I use my garlic press. It is awesome. I think I use it at least four or five times a week. I also buy my garlic peeled either from Costco or from Trader Joes. Yes, I use a ton of garlic. :)
*(I freeze the leftover chipotles from the can and when I need it take it out of the freezer and cut it while frozen. No thawing needed and you get just the small amount you need for recipes)
* You can make this less spicy by omiting the chipotles or turn it up a notch by upping it to 1 Tbsp. I like it spicy, my kids... eh, not so much.

Madrona- For My Fiber Friends!

As my good friend Gwen eloquently stated on her blog post we have been saying for forever that we need to collaborate and just DO something. So we did! LOL. It was a total spur of the moment thing yesterday at Opening Day of Madrona. We grabbed her camera and did some interviews. I'm trying to find the time to go again before the weekend is through so we can get some more done. There are so many amazing artists there sharing their crafts in classes and workshops and of course in their booths!

I love Madrona. This was my third year going and waiting outside the doors of Hotel Murano was like waiting outside of Target on Black Friday. I kid you not. And usually when the doors open there is a mass filing over to the Blue Moon Fiber  booth. And people still did high-tail it over there. But this year... this year it was a crazy full on run over to the Goth Socks booth (Rainy Days and Wooly Dogs). I've never seen such madness for yarn before! (I was very impressed. Man, don't I wish I had a following like that!)

My Snagless Stitch Markers are once again in Lollipop Cabins booth. The tins are so cute but aren't selling. They sell amazingly online. Weird. I know.

Anyways... here's what Gwen and I did. Yep, we made a video. Enjoy!

Madrona Marketplace on Opening Day from Gwen Gyldenege on Vimeo.

Chirp, chirp...

Still here! Still extremely busy getting ready for Madrona and a birthday party and a baptism!!!

It's not a shameless plug if there's only one, right?

The other day I was cutting vinyl for my knitting friends and made a super cute one that said "Knitting is Magic." I stuck it on a 3 ring binder to show it off. But there was a problem. The binder was just BORING. So off to the scrap store I went.

Now, mind you I have avoided the scrap store pretty well for the last four years. I think I've been in there only a handful of times. Because my scrap stash was seriously huge. And I never scrap anymore. Which is sad.

So, today I remedied both the boring binder problem and the haven't-scrapped-in-a-million-years problem and made this...

LOVE this HP paper. It's a good solid heavy weight double sided bit of awesomeness. And I really love the browns.

For the back I cut out the crests by hand. LOVE them. I want them everywhere. Why did I only buy four pieces of paper? LOL.

The side features the original vinyl. I think it's one of my favorite knit quotes ever.

Here's the whole thing all spread out.

And a close up of the quote on the front.

I also figured out why I haven't scrapped in a bit...

IT.TAKES.FOR.EVER!!!

(And next time I need a plan! LOL.)

Just Stop and Take a Picture.

I'm not going to lie. The next week and a half is going to be ten shades of crazy as I'm gearing up for Madrona. (For all of you non-fiber nerds... it's a knitting thing. LOL.) On top of that it's Valentines and I'm the Party Parent at Gabe's school. And in all this craziness I thought it would be fun to start selling Vault Denim (Seriously... 50% off retail DESIGNER jeans... no knockoffs or seconds. Ok, I'm done shamelessly plugging that for now. Email me for more info. LOL.) A new business enterprise which I'm having an open house for tomorrow, the stitch markers, the general hubub of kids. Sometimes I wonder if I'm ten shades of crazy. (The answer is yes.)

So this morning imagine my surprise at having a second consecutive day of beautiful sunshine. Which is rare in these parts. It's still winter so it's a bit frosty. I opened my blinds and saw that the horses are in the front pasture at my neighbors. I had to try to capture the early morning sun and the beautiful frost.

I grabbed my camera and threw on my scarf and jacket. Notice I didn't say get dressed. Yes, I admit to taking this in my pj's. Don't judge. It's 8:30am. I don't have to get dressed for another half hour. Anyways out into the chill morning air I went. And it is beautiful. Sometimes life gets so harried I forget how beautiful just being is.

So here's a challenge for you. Just stop. Take a picture. Blog it. And post here so I know that you did it!

I'm not dead!

Just working on organizing my house so I can be more productive in my studio and online! That and I'm working on something big and fun (no it's not a baby). Stay tuned!

Crochet Heart Garland

What's that? You say Valentines Day is fast approaching and you need something cute to decorate with?

How about a Crocheted Heart Garland?



Now, I wish I could claim this cool heart pattern as my own... but I can't. Instead I will gladly direct you to the pattern which you can find at Cocoa Cream's blog. It's called the American Folk-Art Style Heart Motif.

I sewed them down to some felt to give them stability and used some really cute scrapbooking brads from Making Memories to the brown ribbon. I love how they turned out! I wish I had more of the yarn I used (Soy Wool Stripes) because these would have made the cutest scarf!

Stitch Marker Insanity!

Last year I made stitch markers to sell at Madrona. My  friend Ialiuxh (Lollipop Cabin) is an indie dyer and has a booth. She graciously lets me set up a little display. This year I am super excited because well... my packaging rocks! I love it. More than love. I'm over the moon about it!

It's very tongue in cheek. It's a little sassy. But best of all the packaging is 100% reusable. Right down to the tags they are on. Have I mentioned how pleased I am with it? I am. You wanna see?

And yes, the red and turqoise blue. I can't get enough of it.

The tag is hand stamped with this cute bird.

It just all makes me smile!

And in case you were wondering... this is what my counter (aka staging area) looks like...

Such pretty things for the knitters! (If you don't knit... I can direct you to several resources!)