SNOWFLAKES!

Inspiration and Instructions

I'm making snowflakes. Can you tell? Do you love snowflake ornaments like I do? One year I made dozens, and gave them as gifts, and (of course) kept some too. Now, it's time to do it again.

I have some growing-up young people around, niece, friend's kids, my own kid, and I think about them getting out on their own and how long it took me to amass my favorite Christmas decorations, and how much I've enjoyed making many of them. So, I put two and two together, and thought, what a great gift! Handmade Christmas decorations to get them started when they may not have too much money to spend on them, but still like to be festive. I got a plastic shoebox for each kid, and I'm on my way to adding decorations to each.

One of the easiest - and quickest - are crocheted snowflakes. The last time I made snowflakes, I didn't have this booklet, so I thought it would be a fun place to start. My goal (for this year) is to crochet 6 of each style. I just started the 5th style last night.

Snowflake #5

They are quick to do, and make a great take-along project. Since they are all 6-pointed snowflakes, they will be pretty easy to get starched and stretched, although I will have to set up a starching board, and I haven't yet, so none of these are truly finished.

Snowflake #4

I have a hard time saying which is my favorite snowflake as I think they are all pretty, and I like that there is a wide variety so that I can do a no-two-snowflakes-are-the-same package for each giftee. Cool, right?

Snowflake #3

When I do starch them, I will - as I did before - use a 1-1 sugar water solution to wet them through, then pin them out on a board. I have had no problem with the snowflakes I made before becoming limp, and it has been... 20 years or so since I made them (that long?!?!?). It also has the added benefit of being non-toxic for small children and pets.

Snowflake #2

I found it very helpful last time to make a pattern to pin the snowflakes on. A line for each point helped them be symetric. I also found adding a t-pin, which is a little bigger around, on one of the points a good way to make a hanger point.

Snowflake #1

For the hangers, I used a length of a fairly fine fishing line. If you make a large enough loop to go over a branch, then you don't need a hook as well, and it can pretty much disappear once you hang the snowflakes, Then they really look like they are just falling into the tree. Pretty!

A snowflake in action

Work in Progress Disaster

Before the Christmas break, one of my co-workers and I collaborated on a couple of very cute baby afghans for two of the other coworkers who were expecting babies during the break. When we were done, and the shower over, and the presents given, I still wanted to crochet. The weather was chilly, and there is nothing like building a warm blanket to keep your lap, and then your legs warm on a chilly evening on the couch.

I picked up all sorts of orphan skeins, and parts of skeins, and thought I would make a stripey single stitch afghan, with just kind of randomly ordered strips of four rows. I have a technique where on the first row of the four, I pull the loop through at the various levels of the four rows below, and  it makes a kind of zig-zag design. Ron thought it looked so good that he asked - very sweetly - if he could have it when I was done. And would I make it LONG.

All was going swimmingly, and the afghan was over 5 feet long, when disaster struck in the form of a very sweet dog, rather prone to chewing.

The Damage. 

I was so enjoying having her at my feet, keeping me company. I don't even know what really alerted me to the possibility something could be wrong, but this is what I found. Two different colors chewed through, and one partially pulled out. AAAHHHHHH!!!

The Whole Hole

She did not get beaten, but she did figure out that I was not happy. We both pouted for a while. I think it can be mended, but it won't be the same as it was... and the thought of going that far back to do over is pretty much a stopper. Right now it is sitting in my craft room, trying to avoid further pulling out while I work up my nerve to fix it.

Sigh.

Snowman Christmas Apron

So one of the crafting challenges I've set for my self this year (if not for the next few years) is to do some Christmas Crafting. It isn't just for December you know. Or even Christmas in July! This apron is for my Mother-in-law. It was supposed to be for Christmas 2015, but I got busy at the last moment helping my brother make 9 sock monkeys for his co-workers, and 7 pairs of sleep shorts for my cousin's grandson and grand-niece and -nephews. For a while there, I thought I might have the 12 days of Christmas in sewing projects.

I had picked out some cute fabrics earlier in the fall, and had been looking forward to playing with them, so was excited to finally get the ball rolling right before school started. With a little prep work done last weekend, like putting the pockets and constructing most of the bib, I got to work on Saturday and had everything done but the waistband. Well, and all the things (on an apron, that is pretty much everything) that attaches to the waistband.

I really enjoyed deciding how to piece everything, and I really like how the apron came together. I'm not a great model, though, with great model poses. Maybe I'll have to work on that. HA!

Spoiler alert, Linda!

Christmas apron just in time for 2016

I didn't want to actually tie the ties because I wanted them freshly ironed for gifting, but I'm very pleased with this apron, if not the picture. Hi trailer, how are you? Pay no mind to the trash cans behind me...

New Year, New Goals

 I don't want resolutions this year. I need goals. I want to have some creating goals, and some goals about blogging about the creative process, and products.

One of my goals is to blog more often, and part of what will help me blog more often is to explore what exactly it is that I want from this blog. At one point I played with the idea of becoming a professional blogger, working on getting sponsors, and worrying about how many people read my posts. But I don't really want to be some company's commercial. I don't want to have to use only the "latest and greatest" fabrics and products. I don't want to be a fabric elitist. Sometimes those bloggers do seem like that to me. Name dropping fabric lines, and longing to make that next product with the next series to drop into their favorite store.

Don't get me wrong. Those fabrics are lovely. But so are the ones I can get in the clearance bin at Joann's. Well, at least some of them are. How about that 50% off coupon? And frankly, I am just as happy to find a good use for a piece of fabric from one of my bins of fabric - some of which was inherited, and some of which came from estate sales. I would also like to try my hand at repurposing fabric from garments from thrift store or ??? who knows where. I have ideas, you know. Not all of them may amount to much. Many will fail almost completely, except for the success of trying something. Creating something. Learning.

So, one of the purposes of this blog is to continue recording my creative learning process. This is a good goal, whether one person (me) or more read it. THAT is where I would like to go with this blog. I don't want it to be a "brag" book, but more of an open-to-the-public portfolio. Whether the public is interested in looking isn't going to be my concern, because that isn't the goal. Filling the blog with experiences, learning from those experiences, enjoying those experiences and being able to look back on them and share them with those who ARE interested, THAT sounds like a lovely goal. Having said that, the opportunity to enter a creative community through this blog, would be outstanding.

So, what am I hoping to create in the coming year? I have a laundry basket of projects, just waiting to be sewn up, including a second pair of pants. I've already been doing some alteration projects for my brother, and I have to alter the pair of pants that I made recently. They are still too big at the waist.

alteration one, but they're still too big!

I have an idea to make Christmas decoration starter kits for some of the young people I know so that when they get out on their own, they have some ornaments to help them out. (And I like making Christmas decorations, so fun for me!) I have really enjoyed sewing with my cousin Roxanne, and hope we can manage to get more sewing time together this year as her health improves. It also leads me to another goal, which is to sew/craft more with others. My friend Sara loves making stuff, and we had a great time today making some mug rugs for her parents.

Sara did all the sewing on the one in her left hand!

The basic goals here? Have fun creating/making stuff. Share the fun with others. Keep a record of the fun and the learning and the creating. How can that not be a good direction?