Month: July 2012

I had the most incredible weekend last weekend: six of my friends from college spent three days with me at our camp. I went to the University of North Carolina, and the six who visited all live there or in Tennessee, so I was shocked that they all accepted my reunion invitation, rathern than suggesting that I travel south instead! I had not seen two of them in 17 years, but it was amazing how we all just settled in like we were back in the dorm where we all met. We had perfect weather, including the most amazing sunsets.

As a little gift, I made them each a small sachet, filled with pine needles from the camp. I used leftover charm-square fabric pieces, so I didn’t even have to cut the fabric. I used my Silhouette machine to add the “Wild Goose” logo, using iron-on vinyl. The logo is actually from a Boy Scout camp that’s across the pond. The previous owners of our cabin used to have t-shirts with the logo, and they sent it to me.

I think I’m getting the hang of this knitting thing! Here are my latest projects…

For Mother’s Day, my husband got me several knitting books, including Rebecca Danger’s “Big Book of Knitted Monsters.” I can’t say that it ever occured to me to knit monsters, but several of them are awfully cute. My first attempt is this guy, who I almost think looks more robot-ish than monster-ish.

This was my first project using the “magic loop” technique, knitting stripes, turning a heel and doing a 3-needle bind off. The magic loop was easier than I thought it would be. Switching colors for the stripes on the arms and legs was annoying, and the heels look very, very, messy (I ended up just sort of sewing over them with yarn after it was stuffed just to make sure everything was secure). And one foot is quite a bit longer than the other. But I’m going to give it to a friend who’s expecting a baby soon, and I hope she will overlook those imperfections!

I also made this little monster for my niece who is turning 7 next week. The yarn I bought ended up being much lighter-weight than advertised, so I probably should’ve used a smaller needle to get a tighter fabric. I wasn’t happy with how much the stuffing shows through. Again, this one required a bit of post-stuffing surgery, and those TOES were tricky. But the feet are my favorite part. The pattern didn’t call for stripes, but even though I dislike knitting them, I love how they look so I did stripes on the arms and legs.

Parker has requested one of the largest monsters in the books, but it doesn’t look as tricky to knit (no thumbs or toes!), so that will be next.

I also made another lace scarflet, like my first project, but this one is red wool.

And I made this pink cowl, which turned out bigger than I expected. And brighter.

My niece and nephew’s birthdays are just a few weeks apart, and for the past several years, I’ve given them some small gifts as well as a family membership to our local planetarium. This year, I decided to change things a bit and give them gift certificates to some fun summer activities, including an amusement park, a water park and a place that has miniature golf/go-carts/climbing walls etc.

To make opening the gift a bit more festive (no one likes to open gift cards), I made a few little scratch tickets, sort of like the Valentine’s Day cards I made earlier this year. I was in a rush, so I didn’t take the time to cut the shapes out of contact paper using my Silhouette… I just painted a sheet of contact paper with the paint-and-dishsoap mixture and cut out the “stickers” free-hand with scissors. When I made the previous versions, the only metallic craft paint I had was a type made for painting on glass. I don’t know if that made the difference, but those cards ended up being really hard to scratch off. For these, I only used gray acrylic craft paint and dish soap, and only did two coats. It was MUCH easier to scratch off.

For the amusement park card, I printed a map of the park from the park’s web site. The other two web sites didn’t have any graphics that were big enough to be good print quality, so for the water park, I used a picture of Parker and his cousins at the park, and for the mini-golf place, I used a Flickr photo taken by Jenni From the Block, making sure to use a photo that was OK to download. I used Photoshop to add text with the location names, which were then hidden under the scratch-off stickers.

I gave my sister the actual gift certificates, but the kids definitely enjoyed their scratch ticket gifts!