Craft Meeting

This past weekend, your three favorite crafters took over the back room at a local coffee shop in Mount Pleasant, MI to get our craft sale season off to a good start. There was coffee, planning, knitting, and so much talking that Sam forgot what she was doing and started making a mitten with no thumb:

We drank a lot of coffee, and got a lot of plans in the works. We also may have eaten our weight in eggs and pancakes at IHOP, found out all about Mother Sauces because of curiosity about what Hollandaise actually is, and danced around singing the Rocky theme in the parking lot, but I can neither confirm or deny that.

What I can confirm is that we have some big plans for ourselves this year. There will be a weekend dedicated to display construction and we're all busily doing research on which sales we'll be attending. If you have any suggestions for what you'd like us to sell or where you might like us to sell it, please let us know! Stay tuned for more information!

Word on the Street--January 22

New year, new life.  That’s right - Liz got a plant.  Historically, Liz doesn’t know much about caring for plants and often doesn’t have the right light/water schedule worked out, so when she learned about the easy-to-care-for Jade plant, she decided to give it a go.

Jade is a succulent and needs watering only once every week or two.  It likes sun, but not too much.  Due to the plant-interested kitty Lola, who has eaten several of Liz’s plants to death, Liz had to get creative about getting the plant exposed to enough sunlight but away from the cat.  That’s when she remembered a tutorial she saw and had posted to Pinterest about making your own plant hanger with yarn - an alternative form of the macrame plant hangers made popular in the 1970s.  Here is the tutorial that Liz used, and here are pictures of how her plant hanger turned out:




Liz had to be a little careful about not damaging the leaves with the way that the pot nestles into the hanger.  Overall, she is thrilled with how it turned out, and Lola can’t get anywhere near the plant.  This project was quite simple and only took about 20 minutes to complete.  Apparently, Jade plants can get pretty big so look out in the future for a post on the repotting and creation of a larger plant hanger, so long as Liz keeps this plant alive.

Sam has been toiling away on two time consuming projects. The first is a hat for her neice Evelyn.




We should start playing a game called “How many cans of Lacroix are in Sam’s knitting pictures.”

The hat has a cable and is pink and purple. Evelyn will have a baby brother in March so be looking for some new baby gifts as well as some big sister gifts. Sam will take pretty much any excuse to knit for the kids in her life because before too long they’ll be too cool for Auntie Sam’s knits. In fact, Sam better finish this hat up before Evie’s head grows too much!

Sam has been traveling a lot in recent weeks and makes it a personal practice to never travel without knitting. However, Evelyn’s hat is a little too complicated to take on the road. So Sam started a project designed to be fun, easy, bust her stash, and fulfill her love of stripes.



It looks like a ruffle right now, but it will actually be a blanket. Sam is intending to keep it for herself, although her cousin Jess tried to lay claim to it saying it would perfectly match her living room. We’ll see about that. Sam hates weaving in ends, so she’s been carrying the yarn up the side between small stripes and is planning on adding some kind of border to cover up the carried yarn. This is one of those great WIP’s: no deadline, easy pattern, just for fun. It did, however start out with a small mishap: Sam was knitting away on her circular needles when the yarn started catching at the join of the needle which can happen when there’s a small piece of needle that snags the yarn as it goes over. As Erica was reaching for a nail file to try to smooth the join, Sam realized it was not a snag as much as her needle BREAKING away from the cable. Erica was kind enough to lend Sam some needles to continue on with, but in the words of Craft Night friend Heather: “Thanks for a new nightmare!” To all of you who will tonight have restless sleep with visions of breaking needles and large projects falling off into oblivion, we say, “You’re welcome, and we’re sorry.”

Erica has not crafted much this week. Unfortunately, she still hasn’t finished Kevin’s mittens (which in this cold weather would really come in handy!) She did go visit friends this weekend, and they headed to the North American International Auto Show, where Erica picked out her Christmas present for this year. Start saving your pennies, everyone! She took some awesome pictures, but her phone decided that Erica can’t actually do anything with them. Which is frustrating. She’s getting a new phone in 10 days, so that’s the good news! The bad news is, you don’t get to see Erica and friends living the dream in cars they will never own.

And that's what's keeping us busy! What crafty endeavors have you been up to in the new year?

Word on the street January 7th

Happy 2013 crafty readers and ready crafters! Welcome to the first post of the new year! We have so much good stuff in store for you this year; hold on to your yarn because here we go!

Liz has been working for the past several weeks (months?) on flowers for her wedding.  This process includes, but is not limited to, the following: cutting felt pieces, hand-stitching or hot-gluing pieces together, adding buttons, and attaching flowers to sticks (ahem, stems) with wire.  It’s slow going, but Liz already has quite a few flowers made at the moment, in various styles:

White with blue flowers -  based on a design that Liz saw on Pinterest from Martha Stewart website

And a variety of blue flowers with white buttons in the middle 

Close-up of one of the designs

And here is a gratuitous picture of the holiday tree that Liz put up and decorated this year, because even though she doesn’t celebrate any religious holidays, Liz has an affinity for tradition and twinkly lights:

Liz found the top-heavy tree topper at a local antiques store for 4 bucks! 

Sam has been doing a lot of crafting at her cousin Jess’ house. Jess bought a house last spring and there’s a beautiful craft room with this table Sam’s uncle made which is perfect for quilting and knitting. The mitten with the string that’s sitting on the table is a gift for Sam’s niece Evelyn. The mittens will be connected by an I-cord so that Evelyn can’t rip a mitten off and lose it. While Sam and her cousins were quilting and knitting peacefully on top of the table, this is what was going on intermittently under it:

These are Jess and Nat’s dogs Khay and Chauncy who love nothing more than to fight loudly right under the craft table. Their second and third favorite things to do are breathe in your face while you knit and get stuck in yarn. Crafting with animals: always an adventure. Sam did manage to get these sweet little bunnies knitted in time for her friend Heidi’s baby shower: 

Erica has been working hard and knitting her fingers to the bone to finish the huge house cover. And it’s finally done! It covers a queen-sized bed, and is comfy and warm. Erica fell asleep a few times knitting it because it was so nice and cozy! Presley decided to model the finished product, which makes him look like he’s swimming in a sea of knit afghan. 

Other projects Erica worked on over the holidays included travelling all over the state, trying to keep her apartment clean, and rolled paper roses.

 

She hasn’t decided what she’s going to do with them just yet, but they turned out really cute, thanks to the tutorial here. Erica decided 2013 is the year of finishing knitting projects, and has started a knitting project for her husband that she bought the yarn for three years ago when they started dating. The flip top glove/mittens, are turning out well, and knitting up very quickly! (Sorry for the blurry pictures, K and Erica were in a car)

The second mitten is about half-done, so Kevin will be able to wear them before the cold weather goes away--which here in Michigan, that could be next week or in three months!

And that’s what’s keeping us busy! What are you working on for the new year?