Knitting project bag No. 2

I love this print!

I made another project bag! See a few posts back for the link to the tutorial by Very Shannon. They are so quick and this one was a lot of fun. The lining is from an old dress shirt. The outer fabric I bought at Fabric Depot. I folded over grossgrain ribbon and sewed it. Fray check for the ends!

This week.

Just wanted to share what I have been working on. Making more curtains and I even made curtain ties for the little bedrooms.  I had just enough fabric. 

I need to hem our bedroom curtains, and hem sheers I got at Ikea for our sliding glass door. They had tabs and so I removed them and will use that end to fold up for the bottom hem. 

Started some socks. A very basic pattern. The yarn is Moonshadow colorway by Black Trillium Fibers. I was not sure if I had enough yardage, so yesterday I bought some basic black yarn to do heels & toes. I also bought the Fish Lips Kiss heel pattern on Ravelry for $1 because I have heard so much about that pattern and would like to try it. I currently have 1 cuff all the way done and am almost done with the 2nd cuff. I am taking turns working on both so hopefully i will not run out of yarn. Or at least will run out at the same spot.

Here is some other yarn. I do have a project in mind but more about that later.

Today I may sew another knitting project bag.  Also I am cutting out some quilt triangles. I would love to start on a sock heel if i have time!

Knitting Project Bag

I made a knitting bag today! I really only have one sewn project bag that my mom made for me. It is pretty small. Good for socks etc. i have been working on my vortex cowl which means 2 balls of yarn. I have been keeping it in a paper bag which keeps ripping as you might imagine. So i made this free pattern by very shannon. www.veryshannon.com/blog/2013/04/free-tutorial-reversible-sock-knitting.html

Here is the lining. I like that you can use scraps. I also added a pocket which may not be super functional, but oh well.

I'm so happy it turned out so well! The outer fabric is a batik I got at fabric depot. I cant wait to make more and already have some fabric cut for the next one but I do not have any interfacing and im not sure how floppy it would be.  I bought yarn today for two upcoming sock projects. I will need lots of project bags! 

Hopefully tomorrow I will get some curtains finished for our house. 

Curtains!!

Howdy, I have not posted about christmas gifts I made... Maybe someday I will get to that. 

I have a new-to-me phone! So better picture taking is in my future! Hopefully this will help my blog look better and i may even post a little more frequently. We'll see!

This is just a quick post about curtains I am making for our new house. 

Check out these ducks. We plan to put these in the master bathroom. Found this at JoAnns.

A sweet pattern to go in our teal & cream room. (Two of the bedrooms have molding halfway up the wall). From Fabric Depot.

This is a small print to go in the Lincoln Lattice Green room (green on the bottom, a light gray is on the upper wall of that room.) From Fabric Depot.

I am ironing and hopefully starting to sew today. This morning we went shopping for bedroom curtain fabric but only brought home a few samples: 

Our bedroom walls are a light green.

A note about curtain rods- a lot are ugly or spendy. I got these small ones on sale at Jo Ann fabrics and we got some basic white ones from Ikea. We hope to do double rod -sheers & regular curtains on our two larger windows. 

Okay. Time to get sewing!

PS: Living room curtains??? Hard decisions to make!

Christmas Print 2015!

Every year for the last several (8?) years I have made a Christmas print. They often contain cats or snowy scenes. Generally they have the year as part of the print, and red, black, light blue are common colors I use.  Hopefully when we unpack I can find copies of the previous prints, and next year find a good way to display them at Christmas time, with room to add on.

They are generally block prints, but some years have been screen printed. Here is last years which was a screen print. (I hand painted the stencil).

2007 & 2008 block prints...

This year with my screen printing stuff packed up, I decided to go with block printing. I sketched many rough designs, trying to come up with a good idea. Three Little Kittens? A Loon? Owl? Elephant? A print with multiple ornaments? I had originally thought of a simple fireplace print. Then when we had more house drama and I thought we may never close on the house I gave up on the idea and then started trying to come up with others. Now that we officially got the house, I decided to stick with the fireplace. To add the usual Upsidedown Cat charm, I added a bear in a winter sweater and some Christmas decor on the mantle (Stay tuned for a later post.,,!)

Anyway. In the midst of deep cleaning the house, I knew I had to get this print done because we give it to family and friends as our Christmas card. So.. I started carving, and today with a free afternoon, I printed the red. This block was a little bigger than some cards I have made. It was a little bendy and my brayer is smaller than the block so I had to be more careful about inking the block to make it even.

Color two, the black layer, was hard to line up... I was feeling really frustrated with the first several prints (Hint: use your more messed up first layer prints as practice prints with the 2nd layer!). I traced around my block on a piece of white paper, cut out the rectangle and carefully used the paper frame as a pretty close guide of where to place my block, trying to match two corners as best I could before letting the block touch the paper. It worked well and I'm pleased that most of the prints turned out well. In printmaking you generally lose some prints with each new color/layer you have, and plan accordingly so hopefully you will end up with the amount you want. I did not count them yet, but I think I printed about 50.

Here is the final result:

Perhaps some day if I have free time (haha, so many quilts on my list), I may get inspired to make some cards to sell. Could be a cool Upsidedown Cat merch item and something I could maybe sell online. We'll see... It would be good if I did something related to printmaking, since I took a lot of classes, and it can be used in so many ways.

Decorating

Well. An update. Still no new house. Maybe by December 4th. It is hard to keep waiting but i am glad we got out of town this weekend to visit family and relax. 

Today we help my mother in law decorate for Christmas. This involves removing the thanksgiving/fall decorations. This year they have a new kitten and I will not be surprised if she tries to climb the tree. She is so active and playful. Anyway, I have been looking forward to helping with the decorations. It is always fun to arrange items and try to remember where things go. We are talking about like 6 or so giant tubs of stuff and other items too. 

They also are sending us home with some things for our new house. (Feels like early Christmas). I got a ton of vintage crocheted doilies and some pillows and picture frames and mirrors and some curtains and fabric. A main hobby of theirs is garage saleing. We also got a few rugs. So grateful to get stuff for our new house! It makes it seem more real. 

About the vintage doilies. I plan on using some around the house, and maybe some for an art project. I have seen curtains and and adding them to lampshades etc. There are lots of cool ideas online. 

I brought some knitting on this trip. A cowl for me. I barely had any bandwidth yesterday because of my cold. Feeling a little better today and hoping to get more done. I do have more Christmas presents to make but could not bring them because then family here might get an idea of what they are getting. 

Here is the cowl. It is called Vortex Cowl. The original pattern is for 4 colors but I am only doing two. I think I like how it is working out. I already have so much blue in my wardrobe but I hope it will go with lots of things. The colors are a little off. Navy stripe and variegated blue & purples. 

Stitch by stitch

So. The secret Christmas Present making continues. I got a lot of knitting done on a project when we went to see a movie and only had a few mistakes to fix the next morning. Since the pattern was simple it was easy to drop down 10 rows and fix the stitches. I love not wasting time and often knit in the car too, if I am not the driver.

I have finished 3 projects (sewing, sewing & knitting), and am in the middle of 4. (They involve knitting, knitting, embroidery, and painting/glitter). Trying to keep a list so I keep everything straight.

One of the projects I finished used up some stash fabric and was pretty quick to make once I had all the pieces cut to the same shape. It felt great to be able to use stash as I have not been sewing much this summer, and a lot of my stash is smaller pieces. I am looking forward to my new craft room so much!

I love vintage sewing rooms: Here is a 60s/70s one. Main things I need: Lots of light, Storage ( I already have one big piece of storage furniture.) Ironing board (My husband is hoping to build one that comes down from the wall. I will need to locate a good chair I guess too.
I do hope someday to fix a few of my machines. I guess I have 4. Only one that works well. There is one I do not have cords for, one I'm not sure if I have cords for. One my dad got me at a yard sale that probably just needs a tune up. Hopefully someday I can take them in to a repair shop and see what we can do. I may not need 4 machines, but two might be good in case I need to lend one, or have a friend over sewing. I would love to get a surger someday too, I really don't know a whole lot about other machines.

Here is a West African beans and rice recipe we like. I made curry lentil soup last night because it is cold outside.

Next time I blog we may have our new house and be painting furiously!

Daylight or lack there of.

Started this post on 11/3/15 and realized tonight that I had not published it yet...

 My Pumpkin this year...


Daylight savings time was halloween night. Ever since then I seem to be tired at 9pm and wake up at 6:30? And once I am awake I start thinking about our move and the new house. We looked at carpet and paint colors last night. Everything seems so relative, color wise, and of course hard to tell in small rectangles. The carpet that is there does need to be replaced, since the previous owner smoked and it is 1970s carpet (that textured brown stuff so many houses had). We think we are going with a speckled style of carpet which we hope will wear well over the years. It is a neutral with flecks of red brown an gray green. We are planning on painting all the walls too. Trying to keep the house feeling light but also add some interest.

Anyway lots to think about. 

I am knitting a lot this week for Christmas. It is annoying because one of my thumbs is cracked and dry so I try to not do too much, but I really want to be knitting as much as I can. I bought some new yarn for two projects and already started one of them (it will be perfect lunchtime/keep in my purse knitting). I also started a different project that requires a little more attention to the pattern so I am making progress when I have light to see my work. It is a completely different style of project than I have done before and so it is fun to try something new. Today I am hoping to finish up a sewing project I was working on last week, and maybe finish up mike's big present which involves painting and stuff drying so I can hide it again. 

I need to be taking photos as I go to get everything documented for Ravelry etc. I generally handmake things for Christmas. Often it is just ornaments. This year I tried to start early and I am also doing some sewing projects which can be a little faster. So hopefully I will be able to finish things, since I know once we get the house we will be painting!!!! 

It is so so crazy to be getting our first house. I am really excited yet nervous and it will mean a lot of hard work. The good thing is besides painting and flooring the house doesn't need much else. We do need to reinvent the two garages to be a recording studio though! And budget it all, of course... 

More later. I will try to share photos of what I can so it doesn't become too boring. 

Almost November

Well. I am knitting and sewing as much as I can but don't want to get into too much detail because it is the Xmas season, and I am trying to work on presents. I guess I will just try to get good photos to put on Ravelry/the blog later. I can tell you I finished a cowl. I had previously knit a few lengths of scarf-like knitting, hoping to sew them together as a rug, etc. I then looked at them one day and decided to turn a few into cowls. Here is a not-great photo. I have been wearing it on my walks to work and on my days off. It has finally turned to Fall, after a long dry summer.

I also can tell you I finished a hat. A baby/kid hat for no one in particular yet. One of those single skein purchases because the yarn was so pretty. The pattern is from purl soho. I love their simple palate and get inspired when I look at their site. The yarn is Noro silk garden which was rough on my hands. I may think about sewing a lining in case it would feel rough to a kid. Of course, now i have left over yarn and no idea what to do with it.

Let's see what else can I mention. I am embroidering something secret. It is a fun Aunt Martha's  pattern and hopefully I can do another one. Just look at all of them online. Hard not to want to buy many more.
I am also sewing something which means currently I am hand sewing binding on. I always seem to end up hand sewing bindings, but it allows me to have more control. The binding is so thin to use pins that I have been using my extra Bobbie pins and it is working quite well. I hope to get a good deal of the binding done today if I can. 

I know when we close on this house I will not have much time for presents (besides the hour long lunch break I have at work) so I am trying to get what I can done now. 

There are some people I have no idea what to make for.. And some people that I have an idea for but wish I had started a long time ago. Like socks or something.

Anyway, we are getting excited about the house. We will be painting and replacing carpet and moving in. I kind of wish it was not going to be winter with all the cleaning/painting but I guess sooner is better than later. And maybe we can decorate for Christmas a little! 

Speaking of which, I need to find out what my pumpkin will be because it is this weekend. As far as costumes I think we may just do a low key year as our costumes are packed up, and we haven't been invited anywhere. I guess we are getting old, haha.

Oh! Just remembered the yearly Xmas print I do. Sigh. To get it done this year I guess I will have to pick a simple design/process. I generally screen print or block print. Maybe I can carve stamps? It is always the lining up that takes the longest. 

I may mention it every few posts - I am hoping one day to have a more streamlined blogging system. To get photos and links in correctly and in a timely way, I feel that the laptop is the best. (I have also tried my phone and ipad). I may just have to get in the habit of taking photos with my digital camera and transferring them at least once a week. It's amazing how much of a chore it seems, but I think it will be easy once I get it worked out. 

La la la

Trying to finish something. Anything. Starting to try to work on some Christmas presents but not feeling like I am making a ton of progress. Here are some cup cozies. Super quick, though not really sure how many I will realistically make. There is a pattern on Ravelry of course. I will have to link to it. Also trying to graft 2x2 ribbing on a hat. It is slow going and not looking as seamless as I was hoping. Working on another hat which I may rip out. Not sure what I really want to do with that yarn still.

Hoping to sew a few Christmas projects that I will keep secret. And making a secret present that includes painting and lots of glitter. Waiting for it to dry more before I hide it again. Anyway, not feeling like I am making much progress but my hands have been dry and cracking so I have been not doing quite as much knitting as I'd like. 

I was working on ornaments but made one and not sure I like it. I will invent some other kind of ornament with the pieces I cut if I have to. 

House news: Looks like we are going for it! And I am so excited to someday set up the craft room! I also hope to make some curtains and pillow covers. 

Excuse the iPad photo. Once we move I hope to have a better location to take photos/upload.