Craftivating

One day I was sitting at work and my friend Laura brought in a very lonely mitten. She asked if I could make her a new pair like her beloved mitten and told me how much she loved it and how sad she was that she lost its match. Of course I couldn't say no... and so the project began. I started looking up patterns on Raverly and found a great one called Urban Necessity. (Ravelry link)

I followed the pattern exactly up to making the mitten cap. For the cap I changed how I worked the decreases. Since I didn't want to do the cabled design, I knitted a flat pattern in stockinette and moved the decreases to the edges of the cap. Once the cap reached 2.5 inches I started decreasing. To decrease I k2tog at the beginning and end of each side. I also found it was easier for me to do by having each side on a single dpn (2 dpn total) this also helped to not leave a gap in my stitches between needles. The tops of the caps turned out more angled, but once there are on they round out nicely. More pictures on Flickr.

Its really a great pattern. The first pair is a little time consuming, but now that I have the under my belt I plan on making a few more pairs. Once for me and maybe a few for Christmas gifts. Enjoy.

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Flickr Photos

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A dozen roses that never wither, what could be better. I finally developed a pattern that I am fairly happy with. I still think it could be improved a little, but for now, its good. I am waiting for that a-ha! moment when it pops in my head and knocks me over, that moment when I know exactly what I need to do to make them absolutely perfect. You all have to know what moment I'm talking about here. I'm sure you do. Anyways, this is the full-sized version of my baby roses, as seen in previous posts a few months back. So I suppose this would be Take 2. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. I love walking in the door after work and always having a dozen roses sitting on my dining room table.
More pictures on Flickr.
Ravelry

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So I've really been slacking.. on a lot of things. Sleep deprivation does not suit me very well. I have a few more projects that I've been working on lately, not as much as usual, but there are a few ones that I am pretty happy with myself about. They will be posted shortly. Enjoy!

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Well after many grueling hours of sanding, destickering, and taping off my bike is primed and painted! It is looking as good, if not better, as new. WooHoo! This was a beast of a project, but Im really glad I did it. I wont be embarrassed to ride it now :) This bike was a gift to me from my parents when I was 13. At the time, teal with pink/purple paint splatters was totally in. Not so much in 2009; it needed some updating.


Pre-Makeover


Taped off and primed


Post-Makeover and Biketastic

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Project Moose: Complete

This is an original design by yours truly. I found the pattern for the deer (see previous post) and decided that I had to make a moose. Well, to be honest it was Jeff's idea.. so that's what we did. I came up with the pattern and we got to work. His moose is sitting half finished in my dining room, where it has been for about a month now.. but mine was promptly completed and now hangs on the white living room wall with pride!

He is pretty handsome, dont you think?

More pics on Flickr.

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I've been loving the look of vinyl wall decals since forever, but have been holding off on buying any due to the price tag. I just cant bring myself to drop the cash on it. If anyone else shares the same feelings as me you are about to love me, so prepare yourself. While my busy busy day of surfing the web I came across this little tutorial. It is on an awesome site called Instructables.. and its free to sign-up. Do so, will you will glad that you did. I dont know why I didnt think of this myself, its so simple - yet brilliant. So needless to say this is going to be one of my weekend projects. I want to create a little tree with maybe a bird or two. I think its adorable. I also very much like the idea of Hello on the door. Anything goes here.. if you can think it up you can do it. Have fun! I will be posting pics once I get mine rolling.

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These are the rubber stamps that I created for Angela & Jeremy's wedding invitations. The plan is to stamp them on the back of the envelopes for the invites and also the envelopes for the rsvp cards. In addition to stamping the envelopes I also created an illustration to match the feather design that will be used on the rsvp cards themselves. Angela decided to use the first stamp on the left. The rest will be put to good use, not to worry. More pictures available on Flickr.

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I don’t know what I love more art deco or peacocks. I love the elegant, glamorous and modern style that is art deco and as for the peacocks.. glamour, elegance and beauty pretty much sum it up. I am currently working with a very sweet lady on her “art deco meets peacock” wedding invitations. I am really excited about this project, if you can’t already tell. These peacocks are custom made just for her and are going to be used through out the save the dates, invitations and thank you cards. Lovely.

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Awesome! I love this deer head a lot! It is an ironic little project for me, being the vegetarian that I am, but I don't care. I love it and its hanging on my living room wall with pride. This was my first one and I consider it a test run. I had some extra cardboard laying around so I used that instead of foam core. Next time I will use foam core as I think it will not show the edges so drastically. I also am planning on modifying the template to make a moose head.. as that will be equally, if not more, awesome.
Pictures available on Flickr.
Pattern found here.

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Now you can dress your little dog up like Martha! I dont know about you, but I adore Francesca. Love love love that dog. Sharkey is a cutie too, don't get me wrong. But for some reason I love little Francesca more than some of my close family members :) Martha Stewart had Lion Brand on her show recently and has released two patterns for dog sweaters.. one for Sharkey and one for Francesca. The patterns are available on the Lion Brand Yarn site.

I am making Francesca's sweater for Linus.. and if that goes well he will probably get Sharkey's too.

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Yarnage.. get it??? I thought it was clever. Anyways..I found a handy dandy little chart from the Lion Brand site that tells you how much yarn you need in knit vs. crochet for specific projects. I think it is very interesting to know that crochet takes much more yarn than knitting. What's even more interesting to me is that its way faster to complete FO's with crochet than with knitting. View the site here and you can download your own chart to have on hand.

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So I am an HGTV fanatic. LOVE IT! Anyways.. there is a show on there called Color Splash with David Bromstad. It shows him siting in what I think is his living room on one episode and hanging behind him on the wall there are several assorted cardboard (or wooden) moose heads. They are very modern and they are very stinkin' cool. I've searched high and low and I can't seem to get my fingertips on a resource. But today is my lucky day. I found a diy tutorial on how to make a deer head. What's better than buying it??? Making it! Plus it is pretty close to the moose and of course the template can be altered. AWESOME! I know what I'm doing next weekend! (soooo excited about this)

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Andrea & Mike's wedding invitations, rsvp cards, maps and thank you cards are all done. Hand delivered them myself last night. I love love love them! They turned out beautifully! As if they actually wouldnt... More pictures are available on Flickr.

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Found this video today. I think its genius. I dont want to say I hate binding off, because that ultimately means my project is complete.. but it is a pain. I really love this idea and I will be using it on my next project. Brilliant!

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Victory again! For the most part. This was another great learning exercise for me. I learned to knit in the round on circular needles and on straight double pointed needles (dpns) and I learned a few new stitches like skk and k2tog. Originally this was supposed to be for my boyfriend, but I used a smaller yarn and smaller needles.. soo it was too small for him. I had a feeling that would happen and labeled it my "test" hat when I started working on it. I was right.. so this weekend I will start a new "boyfriend" hat in hope it will actually fit him this time. I am using the pattern by Jared Flood found on Ravelry called Turn a Square. However, I took out the striping so there is no square. I also increased the height of the ribbing, and incresed the width of the ribs. Added some buttons too for the cute factor. So it is definitely a modifed pattern. This was risky since I am a knitting newbie, but I felt confident that I understood what I was doing enough to make the changes successfuly. Worked out lovely all around I think. I told the boyfriend that I worked all of the kinks out, so his hat will be better. :)
I am enrolled in my own knitting school. I have a cute cami lined up that I want to try in the near future.. along with a slew of different hats, scarves, cardigans, etc.

As always, more pics on Flickr.

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Victory! I found this adorable pattern in my Martha mag and decided that it was necessary for me to learn to make it. This is my first EVER knitting project and I am super excited about it. It was a great pattern for learning the garter stitch, increasing, decreasing, and dividing. Love it. More pics on flickr.

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These are the original mock-ups for Andrea & Mike's wedding. They decided on the first one (top left). That one was both of our favorites. Yay! Designs for map, rsvp and thank you cards to follow.
Flickr.

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I found a fantastic image on flickr today. The idea is made to look like the iTunes adds. Cleverly this one is for knitting. Its not just for nerds anymore. These have turned up elsewhere also. The pink button to the left is a bumper sticker from facebook. Check it out.. iKnit

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Test your crafting IQ now!
I got 7 out of 10. Some of them I just did not know and were not everyday knowledge. Tricky tricky. Take the quiz and see if you are crafting genius :)

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Upon my daily flickr image browsing I came upon this lovely idea. Tissue paper rolled and secured to floral wire then dipped in melted wax. Genius! These images are from a very nice fellow flickrer Made by BeaG.

Once day when I get some free time I'd really love to try this. Maybe on my upcoming holiday vacation. I think they are just fabulous.

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This is the latest and greatest :) I am totally in love with this project. I was looking for a pattern for weeks and this is the only one I could find that was even close to what I wanted.
My grandma used to be a master crocheter and back in her day she made tons and tons of trees like this.. but they were bigger. This one is about 12" tall and her's were more like 24". She also would put lights in them and they really just looked fantastic. I am going to try to find a mini string of lights to put on this tree. I am thinking red would look pretty.
So my next project, if you haven't guessed it already is to modify this pattern to make it taller. Shouldn't be too difficult. Of course, that is what I say now. This is the first crochet project that I've ever worked on that gave me a blister. Maybe it will be a little more work than I think. We'll see.

Can you see my pup's head sticking out from behind the tree? LOL
More pics on Flickr.

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This is one of my latest little projects that I have been working on. It all started with my friend asking me to design her wedding invites for her and telling me that she wanted a Calla Lilly on them. Well I happen to love Calla Lillies, they are my favorite. So I thought.. "hey, I could make that." Which is basically what I think everytime I see anything I like. "Hey, I could make that." My boyfriend thinks I'm ridiculous. Its true though.. I CAN make it. I see it, break it down to the simplest forms, figure out the details.. then make it. What? All you need is some inspiration.

Anyways.. I made a Calla Lilly. Aaaaaand.. I love it. This is my first attempt and it needs some perfecting, but so far so good. Its about 12-14" high. Check out more pics on Flickr.

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This is the second version of my roses. I am trying to make them realistic - that's the goal. I think this is getting closer for sure. Instead of doing one continuous stand that I rolled and stitched, this time I made separate petals in ascending sizes and stitched them together. Though more difficult and time consuming, the end result is quite nice. I am still working on a pattern and ironing out some kinks. :) Give me your feedback!
More pics on Flickr.

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Have you guys checked it out yet? I honestly love this site. It is all about crochet and knitting. Its a great source for inspiration, blogging about related topics, asking questions, managing your projects, finding new projects, posting what you are working on, sharing patterns... etc. etc. etc.

I signed up a while back and just really took a hard look at it last week. I think I've been on there 10 times a day since. :) There is a waiting list as it is still in beta. So sign-up now. It shouldn't take to long to get you in, I think. There is a place on their site where you can check your invitation status too so you know where you are at in line.

Sign up!

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My sis' birthday was a few weeks ago and she just so happens to LOVE penguins.





So what else was I to do besides crochet her one :) How adorable.

The only thing that I don't love about this pattern is that it is a straight black and white line all the way around. So from the back side of this wintry bird it looks sort of wrong.. but nonetheless, it is still super cute!

Get the pattern here.

More pics available on flickr.

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A little project in spirit of the holiday. If I would have known how the day was going to turn out.. I might just have made a cocktail instead of a Turkey.

Hope everyone had a delicious day.
If you are looking for this pattern you can get it here.

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The crochet puppy.. how adorable!
I found this pattern on the Lion Brand Yarn site and thought it would be perfect to make for my little sister's 10th birthday. She loved it.. though she thought it was a bunny. Whatever floats her boat. I told her it could be whatever she wanted it to be. She decided a puppy would be just fine.

This is the pattern. The Lion Brand site has a ton of really cute FREE patterns. If you are into crochet you should check them out! I discovered it a week or two ago and love it :) They also have a ton of free knitting patterns.

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I have been a busy little crafter lately. My focus has been on putting together a pattern for a realistic yarn rose. I started out with baby roses (red) then made a large scale version for a full grown rose (yellow). These are the early versions of my roses below. I am still working on getting it just right and finding the perfect yarn, but I am very close. I have two more versions that have evolved since making these ones. I will post them later for you to compare. Hopefully you fall in love with them like I did. I think they are adorable. More pics available on flickr, as usual.

Tell me what you think.

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Why by handmade?

• Buying Handmade makes for better gift-giving.
• Buying handmade is better for people.
• Buying handmade is better for the environment.

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This is it folks. Its finished! The broken pieces have been repaired and it has been cleaned, so its shiny and new-like.

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Busy. Busy. Busy. Busy.  This is another one of the many projects that I currently am working on. It is a leaded glass door panel repair for a family member's church, First United Methodist. This panel is believed to be original to the church that was built in 1920. It is roughly 5 feet tall and 2 feet wide. There are 5 pieces of broken glass that I have been asked to repair that are scattered through out the panel. This photo was taken in my workshop before I removed the broken pieces and cleaned it up. To see more, check out my Flickr. More photos to come as the work progresses. I am going to get the the supply store this weekend to find a match for the glass. 

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Alright, well here is what they look like, mini versions of them at least. The program and menu are going to be printed on creme cardsock as well, along with the table numbers (not shown here).

1. The production of the invitations (with coffee of course)

2. The invite and reception/rsvp packet

3. The packet disassembled

4. The program

5. The dinner menu

To see everything check out my Flickr.

There is still more to come as I just realized that I need to do the place cards, seating chart, bar menu, etc.

(click on 'em to see a bigger version)

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