Awesome and (fairly) easy crocheted flower potholders

Sorry for the radio silence around here, but you know how it gets around the holidays, right? Traveling and involuntary internet breaks was the norm for me in December and January.

Plus, holiday crafting. Ugh. Don't even get me started on how awful it is.  It's nice to think that you'll make some people their gifts this year, but then you forget about it until December.  And then everything goes to hell in a hand basket.  That's why all the hardcore crafters do "Christmas in July" isn't it??

Enter the Crochet Flower Hot Pad on Ravelry.  Super interesting to look at, yet a piece of cake to crochet (and it's free!).  What's not to love? I was able to whip up several of these in a short amount of time, however there's a huge caveat here.  I could have left them as-is after crocheting, but I wanted these to be more or less functional as potholders too.  I couldn't have all those holes in them, so I decided I wanted to sew up all the holes. This took twice as long as the actual crocheting, probably due to the striping, since I wanted to make the seams as unobtrusive as possible.

I made a bunch of these for my aunts while I was visiting over the holidays, it was like kitsch-on-demand! Everyone wanted one as soon as they saw me making one (I was initially only making the 2 for N's parents as a thank-you-for-hosting-me gift). 

I did them all up in Lily Sugar'n Cream cotton yarn, and I really do love them even if I didn't get to keep a single one and they drove me crazy. Plus, they use hardly any yarn at all.  I probably squeezed 5 of them out of a single ball of the Ecru.



Made these two pretty colorways for N's parents.



See the picture above for all the seams I had to close up, and I did it all in the secondary color (orange here). I used one long tail to sew them all closed so I had to be very careful to stay within the correct stripe as I went from seam to seam. It was aggravating, and if I never crochet another one of these for at least a few months, I'll be happy.

'Til next year easy-but-aggravating pattern!

Pets on Parade

If you are in need of the best pick-me-up this (cold) winter, then save the date for the annual Gaslamp Pet Parade.  This Sunday, December 8, parade starts at 2:30 pm! More information at their website.  Free to watch! You know you want to :)

If you really need more convincing, I took a couple pictures at last year's parade.  It's mostly doggies, but there's a few kitties and horses thrown in for good measure.  It's just fun to see all the little costumes.



I think this fluffy little guy ended up being best in show. His human was controlling the car with his iPad, isn't that an incredible setup?



Lots of sweet dogs dressed up, mostly in Christmas gear, but a few standouts like these in "other" genres.  I love the lion haircut, so funny!



I guess this is officially a thing now, cute dogs in toy vehicles?

A Dinosaur for Atlas

I made this sweet, sweet t-rex for my coworker who was pregnant. Yep, was pregnant, as in, I made this for her baby shower gift, and then baby Atlas decided to come a month early!  We cancelled the baby shower, and just had her come pick up her gifts with baby in tow.  So, on the plus side, little baby at work :)  But on the minus side, no baby shower cake :( I know, priorities, right?

Here's the Ravelry page for Timothy the T-rex from Bluephone studios.  Oh my gosh, I am like drooling over all the patterns from Bluephone.  Everything is freaking adorable.  I just loved this pattern, it's a great design, and easy enough to make again and again without getting tired of it.

I know I made the colorway from the pattern photo, but I thought this was the cutest for a baby boy without being ubiquitous blue.  Plus, red was the color family of yarn that I actually had a good matching stripe color.

When making this up, I tried to avoid weaving in ends in the body stripes by carrying the color through the rest of the stitches until I reached the next stripe.  I really wanted all my loose ends to be secure since this is probably destined for a rough toddler.  I am usually really lazy about knotting my loose ends inside the piece since most of my things are bought by college age students.

I'm kind of mad about the eyes since I tried to put them in straight, but they somehow ended up a little crooked, so they're not perfectly straight with the indentation in the head.  I try not to look at it too hard.



Don't his little useless arms just kill you?

Scribbled - My First Dress!

You guys, I made my very first dress! Like I cut out a paper pattern and everything!


(Boo, I forgot to bring my camera home to take pictures, so I had to make do with a little powershot point and shoot.  Sorry for the low quality.)

I bought a handful of patterns from an estate sale for 10 cents a piece, so I figured it was pretty low stakes to start cutting into one of them.  I still haven't cut into some of the basic Butterick patterns that I bought from JoAnn's for a $1 each because I'm still too scared to mess them up.



This is McCall's 2604, View E, cut in a size 8, except that I hacked off the paneled skirt at the natural waist.  So it's basically a princess seamed bodice with a gathered skirt.  Also, I'm also going to call this a "softly pleated" skirt instead of gathered because I gathered the skirt by hand and didn't exactly distribute evenly around the waist.

I made this out of 1.5 yards of a Lisette fabric from JoAnn's, some kind of cotton twill, I think, so it's pretty stiff.  It was really tough to squeeze the dress out of so little fabric, which is why I ended up cutting off the pattern skirt since the pieces wouldn't fit on the fabric.  The only fabric left from cutting this out is the little U left from the neckline!  I actually cut the facings out of muslin because I couldn't squeeze it onto the main fabric.



I actually made this to wear to someone's wedding, and I really wish I had gotten pictures of it while I was there because the venue was gorgeous! It was at the Redwood Gardens in Sebastopol, CA.  Seriously fairy tale-like grounds.  Looking back though, it's a tad bright and over-the-top for a wedding.  Probably should have stuck with something monotone, but this was the fabric that I had in my stash.



Woohoo for laziness! This is an extremely ugly zipper color that doesn't match anything since I got it at an estate sale, but it was the only one in my stash that was long enough, and as a bonus, it already had the hook part of the eye tacked onto the top of the zipper tape! And because I don't know what happened to the eye that should have gone with this hook, I just sewed on a jewelry split ring :)

And would you look at those catch-stiched facings? I actually did that after I wore the dress for the first time because I couldn't stop fiddling with those damn things.  It looks so much nicer now, even though it still looks pretty horrific on the inside.



My beautiful hand-picked zipper! And almost-matched pattern! This tutorial from Sewaholic literally held my hand as I did this for the first time, and it looks great!

Can I let you in on a little secret? Most of the reason I did a hand-picked zipper was not actually because I wanted it to be invisible.  Even though I admit it looks really nice now that I've done it. It's because (A) I don't actually know how to sew in a zipper and (B) I'm not sure I even own a damned zipper foot.



More beautiful catch-stitching.  And another wonderfully instructive tutorial from Sewaholic on how to catch-stitch.

Scottie Dog Pajama Shorts

I love this cute little print!  This is actually the first (big) sewing project I've tackled since 8th grade, I think.

My college had this fun club that was just starting out, called Sew Awesome, and this was one of the projects they planned, so it was completely free to me!  I immediately zoomed over to this whimsical flannel print when I saw it.  They provided a basic shorts pattern (here's a similar free one).  Fit is not too essential since it is an elasticated waist, and they are supposed to be a little loose and comfy for lounging.

I actually added in-seam pockets (using this Burdastyle tutorial), but I didn't make my pockets big enough because I used a scrap of contrasting flannel.  Big enough for a lens cap, I guess?

I also unfortunately made my shorts too tight, so they're not actually all that great for sitting around in. A little tight in the crotch and the leg openings. 

And, finally, I added a little pink bow to the front since the front and back looked basically the same to me! I guess I could have stitched a fake fly front, but I was done fiddling with these by that point.

(Also, remember my fun hair tie from here? Proof that I actually wear what I DIY.)

Shaped Dumplings

These were the product of a happy accident.

I didn't add quite enough water to my dumpling dough (even though I've made it many times before), so it ended up being a little drier than usual and pretty tough to roll into neat balls that would stick together.

I made like 3 balls before I gave up and started to make little cubes instead.  N joined in and made pyramids since he decided cubes and spheres were too hard to make.  Plus, I added a little heart out of the last of the dough for a little fun :)



All of the shapes cooked up fine, I usually let them float around on the surface for a minute or two before fishing them out of the water.

Give shaped dumplings a try, they make your soup cute!

Calf Pants

[I'm back! I wasn't really gone, though. I'm going to let the cat out of the bag here and say that I had planned to move to North Carolina (!) for a job but ended up backing out.  That's why I was planning to give myself a month or two to pack up and settle my affairs here in San Diego.  Instead, I'm looking for a job locally instead.  Any San Diego biochemists in the house? Shoot me an email!]

Calf pants ... get it? A whale calf made out of pants? Heh, just me? Ok.

Isn't he a cutie? Even with all his crooked stitching and lumpiness.

The talented lady who thought of this idea kindly translated her instructions into English here!  I think this is the best use of old jeans that I've ever seen :)  I kind of want to take some old gray jeans and turn them into a shark!

I had a pair of jeans that I wore to pieces (specifically, I had an embarrassing hole in the crotch area), but I hated to get rid of them, and I was pretty sure they were even beyond what Goodwill would accept.

I love that this idea very cleverly uses the right and wrong sides of the denim to create color contrast.

Isn't he cute? Now, who do I give him to?