See Jenn Craft

Things are moving forward again on the Great Beaded Necklace Project of 2008.  Jaynie was less than  thrilled about “doing all the same stuff that we already did AGAIN” (ie - making another batch of beads), so Joe stepped in and fixed the old ones.  With a drill.  No, seriously.

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He cleared the counter in front of him before he’d let me take a picture, and then I take it from the side so you can see the empty corn flakes box behind him.  Nice.

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 He honest-to-God got out a drill and drilled holes in our salt dough beads.  Only a man would think up this solution.

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“I scratched myself a couple of times, but not as many as I thought I might.”

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Disaster averted, it was finally time to paint.  Step one, distract Trouble so the big girls can do some serious painting.

We like to nurture those artistic instincts early in this house. 

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 Then I went searching for supplies. I found these kid-friendly paints in Jayne’s art supply stash, and rejoiced that I would not have to burn my overpriced “I bought this here in Italy” acrylic paint for a kid project.  So, take these paints -

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Out of this color selection, Jayne used two - pink and purple.  Such a girl.

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and this cute (and incredibly serious) artist -

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Painting her 32nd purple bead.

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 and you end up with these little beauties -

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Not bad if I do say so myself.

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Tonight I’m going to give them a quick spray of clear paint to seal them, then tomorrow we (finally, actually, miraculously) make the necklaces.  At first Jayne said we could make necklaces for her, for me, for friends, for Aunty Suz… then while we were painting she said they would all be for her, then when we were done painting she said all the beads SHE had painted that were EXTRA PRETTY would be for her, but the UGLY beads that I had painted could be for other people.

Geesh.  Everyone’s a critic.

… or “Who wants another toy from China, anyway?”

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We’ve been invited to a birthday party today for Ollie (we’re not going because everyone’s sick, but I didn’t know that last night when I stayed up making his present.)  I didn’t feel like buying another plastic wonder from the store, so tried to think what I could make for a two-year-old.  Knitting was pretty much out due to the fact that I waited till yesterday to brainstorm, that left sewing.  Hmmm.  Library bag it is!

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Here’s a tip from me to you - when sewing a tote bag, always make sure you know where your straps are.  That way you don’t have an unfortunate time-sucking incident after you sew your VERY FIRST FRICK FRACKIN SEAM.

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(Also you may want to make sure you know where your seam ripper is in advance, just in case such an unfortunate incident does occur. You don’t want to spend 40 minutes looking for it, then an hour carefully removing rogue stitches with manicure scissors, only to find it  20 minutes later when looking for something else.  Not that I would know anything about situations like this, as I am a shining example of organization.  Everything is always exactly where it belongs, so I know where it is when I need it.  Stop laughing, Mom.)

I’d planned all along to either appliqué or paint his name or initials on it.  Unfortunately the left side of my brain that figures out the order of things wasn’t paying attention while the right side was debating between paint or felt and I failed to do either *before* the bag was assembled.  Genius.   That ruled painting out (there was no way to keep the paint from bleeding through to another, visible layer.  Once it was assembled, I couldn’t put cardboard under the painted layer while I was working.)  I decided on one big, red O on the front. I had just seen a sheet of red felt in my stash, and it even had a sticky back so it wouldn’t move around while I was zig-zagging it on (which would be great, considering I would be working with a bag, not a flat piece of fabric. Again - genius.)

Trip to the stash revealed not a full sheet of red felt, but a 2 inch strip.  Argh.

In the end I decided the bag must be personalized. It needed something.  Anything.  I thought long and hard.  Do I have any other skills?  Any at all?  (It occurs to me, now, as I’m typing this, that I have some iron-on transfer printer paper, and that would have been the easy way to go.  Ah, well.)

In the end, I embroidered.  Who knows how I knew how to do this.  Girl scouts?  Look - I even tried it out first on a swatch before destroying my beautiful bag -

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In the end, after all the trial and error (and error, and error…) I think it came out really great.  I am incredibly proud of this bag. (As you may have been able to determine based on the number of pictures you are waiting to load.)

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I love this thing.  There were a few weak moments there when I thought to myself “Self?  If you don’t put this kid’s name on here, you could TOTALLY just KEEP IT.”  But I was strong.  And now?  That we’re not even going to the party and I could, in good conscience, keep it?  It has Ollie’s name on it.  So I’ll be delivering it to his house later this evening.  Life can be so cruel, can it not?

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Happy Birthday, Ollie.  May you have many happy years of going to the library and bringing books home in this bag.  Or it could hold a blankie for naptime at school.  Or a change of clothes and toothbrush for sleepovers.

Just don’t wash it, because that’s wool yarn I used there for the name.  Heh.

Well, two disasters, actually. The first being that I’ve ALREADY WRITTEN THIS POST. I hit “publish” and everything. Then I log on this morning to discover that its missing from the blog. Stupid thing isn’t even saved as a draft? The hell, WordPress? You think I have an unlimited amount of free time with which to make these scintillating posts? Jeez.

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Original disaster -

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These babies were air-drying just fine, but I caved to Little Miss “I wanna paint TONIGHT!” and popped them in the oven for an hour. The poofed. Not a lot, in fact it rounded them out nicely. Instead of looking like Mutant Cheerios they looked like actual beads. Oh, except for one all-important bead characteristic.

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The holes closed. All of them. The heart still has it’s hole, but all the others are now little dough balls instead of little dough beads.

The original plan (and what I POSTED LAST NIGHT) was for me to stay up redoing them all, so Madam would never know it happened. Yeah. That didn’t happen. Which I’ve now decided is a good thing. The kid has to learn that projects don’t always go according to plan, right? Its not *just* about me not wanting to make a billion beads all by myself. Its about teaching an important lesson on disappointment and dealing with setbacks. Right?

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Good thing we made extra dough.

But this time with pictures!

Jaynie rolled the dough into little balls, and I made the center holes with my trusty dpn. I never, ever knit with those things - but man do they come in handy for everyfreakingthing else. Honestly - its practically to the point where I never leave home without one.

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She rolled, I holed, Jonas made a mess. When we were done I let them air dry for a few hours, then popped them all onto a cookie sheet and threw them in the oven. (Why didn’t I think to just lay them straight on a cookie sheet after making the holes, therefore eliminating the hours where I waited for them to get firm enough to transfer? These are the questions that could keep me up at night if I was a little more OCD.)

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They look like mutant Cheerios, and smell like homemade french bread in my oven. Tomorrow we paint! Jayne wants to paint all of hers “Pink and yellow! Because those are my faaaaavorite colors!” I’m planning green. Maybe red. Maybe yellow with blue polka-dots. Sky’s the limit!

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Knitting update -

Kimono is *almost* off the needles and ready for seaming. I just need one more evening of TV watching as opposed to internet surfing. Time to break out the ER DVD’s (Oh, Dr. Kovach!)

Tomorrow we paint! And hey! While I have the paints out, maybe I get to work on a JONAS sign for his room? Its only been like a year since I finished Jayne’s…..

Nah.

We crafted. I have no pictures of this because I was elbow deep in flour and salt and didn’t want to shmutz up my camera. Yes, that’s the technical term.

Today we did the first step to making jewelry - make the dough. We used a basic salt/flour/water recipe that Jayne carefully measured and poured and stirred and kneaded and managed to get all. over. the. kitchen.

Tomorrow she’ll make beads out of it (if you’re wondering why we didn’t get to this today… a little thing called The Little Brother got in the way.) We’ll bake ‘em, paint ‘em, and string ‘em into a necklace. I’ll attempt to get pictures of all of that.

In other news, I’m actually knitting something. And I’m practicing knitting monogamy in an attempt to get a tiny sweater to a new baby before it warms up (too late, baby’s in Florida. Grrr.)

I have no pictures of this, either, but Google images (or Immangini, for those of us in Bella Italia) has not failed me this time - you can see 406 examples of what I’m knitting here. Its the Heartbreakingly Cute Baby Kimono from Mason Dixon Knitting and its a pretty quick little project. I’m using Cotton Ease in Bubble Gum Pink (hat on right, duh) and I’m loving it. Considering this baby lives in a warm climate I figured wool was right out, and this is some seriously soft, nice cotton yarn.

Right now it doesn’t look anything like a sweater, but I have faith that after I preform knitwear origami on it it’ll come together. Wish me luck on the seaming - it’ll be a new experience for me.

Tomorrow I’ll post something with pictures. Maybe.

I don’t like curtains. They get dirty. The kids pull on them. They block the light. They never fit in the next house we move to. Hanging those rods is a pain in my butt.

I also don’t like neighbors being able to watch me wander around the house in my pj’s at 3pm, either. Solution?

Gallery Glass paint by Plaid. I love this stuff. The first time I used it it was to paint a huge bizzaro “family portrait” (at the time this meant me, Joe, and our cats. Yeah.) on a window in Lakenheath. I’m sure the neighbors thought I was nuts (although - they couldn’t stand on the sidewalk outside and see up into my bed anymore! Score!)

This time I was inspired by windows I kept seeing on our trip to Germany.  (Google - you are letting me down here.  Surely you have an image of this?  I’m just not a good enough Googler to find it?)  They looked like they were made from the cut-off bottoms of colored glass bottles.  Awesome.  Simple.  Colorful.  Beautiful.  People - we had a winner.

(Photo artfully cropped so my unfinished edges don’t show.)

I think I love this window.  It gives us privacy, it makes colored circles on the wall when the sun is right, the kids love to look through the different circles (”Mommy!  Everything outside looks purple!  Wait! Now everything looks green!”), plenty of light still comes in, and it looks great.  At night it looks great from the outside.

(This is where I would put a picture taken from the outside, if I could have been

bothered at any point in the last 5 days to go out after dark and take one.)

One front window down, two to go….  (should be done by the time we move in 2009.)

Yeah - I know its Thursday. Thanks. This isn’t an instant process, you know. I have to do the craft. I have to take the pictures. I have to upload and resize the pictures. I have to come up with all this witty banter. Its exhausting and time intensive.

Plus - I wanted to watch Heroes last night instead of blog. Sue me.

On to the pics!

I’m not one for schedules. We are very fly by the seat of our pants around here. That said, there were things we were always *meaning* to do, *wanting* to do, *totally going to get around to that any day now and DO IT* going to do…. but never actually doing. Example - they offer a Tae Kwon Do class for 3-year-olds here on base. Jaynie wanted to do it. It cost $90 plus whatever for the uniform. Joe, while thrilled that she was interested, said “Forget that! (Okay, he didn’t say “forget”, but this is a family friendly blog after all.) I can teach her Tae Kwon Do at home for free!” We ask Jayne if she would rather learn Tae Kwon Do at the gym from a stranger with lots of other kids in the class, or at home from Daddy - to be special “Jaynie and Daddy” time. She picked Daddy (its all about the sales pitch.) They did it once. It was cute. They’ve never had another lesson.

I own 37 billion craft books. I save egg cartons and cardboard paper towel rolls and seashells. I very rarely actually craft with my kids. One of the new classes starting up is an art class. Jayne wanted to do it. It cost $70 and we’d miss at least two of them when we went home for my sister’s wedding. Again - “I can teach her that!” (For the record, when its *not* something we can teach her, and when its something she’s reaaaaaaaaally interested in, we shell out the cash. She’s currently taking ballet, and in the summer she’ll take soccer and maybe gymnastics. But $70 for eight, one-hour craft sessions? When I have a house full of paint and glitter and cardboard and clay and glue and shells and…. Come on!)

So we decided to get organized. Make up a little weekly schedule of events. Nothing crazy - I’m not scheduling our park outings or when we brush our teeth, but putting down on paper that Tae Kwon Do “class” happens on Sunday morning. “Art Class with Mommy” happens on Wednesday, etc. Our first project was to make our weekly calendar.

I cut out all the paper shapes (because I’m overprotective and paranoid and still don’t really let her use scissors) and she glued them all together. I wrote the activities on the appropriate day, and she and her brother decorated with stickers and glitter.

(Brother not shown because he got tired of being bossed around and wandered off to stick stickers on my TV)

(Take that, Steve!)

It was fun, and now we’re a little more organized. I started with Tae Kwon Do, Art, Ballet, and StoryTime at the library, but then tried to think of at least one fun/enriching/practical thing for each day. This is my favorite - I couldn’t think of anything for Saturday, and then it hit me like a bolt from above (Ok, so not so much with the fun and enriching, but practical? Hoo-ah!) ….

(Ridiculously enough, its her favorite one, too. I could have put “Ice cream party!” under “Vaccinations at the clinic!” and it still would have been the favorite.)

We’ll end with Jonas demonstrating what a moron I was to put 3 hours worth of work right above her bed where he can reach it -

(Yeah - he’s totally pulling the stickers off. Probably thought th e TV could use a few more.)

Tomorrow I show you my amazing, beautiful, colorful, awe-inspiring, jealousy-inducing living room window. Stay tuned!

We cloth diaper around here, (yes, I’m just that crazy) which means we need soakers. Short ones, long ones, knit ones, fleece ones. Soakers made from recycled sweaters. Soakers hand knit by friends. Soakers from patterns, soakers made up as I go…. soakers.

This was the first time I used the CurlyPurly pleated waistband (directions are in the soaker pattern - last one on the page), and I can’t recommend it highly enough. People - if you are going to knit a soaker, USE THIS WAISTBAND. Such a difference. So stretchy! Super-fantastic.

Jenn’s tip for sucessful soaker making (whether sewing or knitting) - figure out how high you want the waist to go…. then double it. Seriously. Every pair of wet jammies I’ve ever changed has been wet from touching the top of the dipe where it peeks out above the soaker. Make the thing go up to their armpits if you have to (not really - would be hot in the summer.) Just don’t make it too low. You will think “This is tooooo high” and then you put it on and its just right. Never underestimate how much a bulky-stuffed-with-extra-pads-nighttime diaper is. You need a loooong soaker for that thing.

I did the waistband, I increased for the hips, I short-rowed the butt… then when I thought it was long enough I just divided into two legs and knit down. I think my original plan was longies until I realized that I am way, way too lazy for that.

It came out perfect. He’s wearing it tonight and I’m happy in the knowledge that he’ll be comfy and dry in the morning. (The fact that he peed on Jaynie’s bed, my living room rug, and the couch right before being diapered helps with that security. Hard to soak through both the dipe and wool pants when you’re running on empty.)

PS - Having your first real knitting project be something to collect PEE really helps you get over that “every handknit is precious” problem a lot of new knitters have. No carefully folding and hiding in drawers for us. We *use* the handknits in this house.

PPS - Forgot the details. Knit on size 6 addi’s (Because that’s the only size I have and they’re my favorite needles. Approx 95% of my stuff is knit on size 6’s. ) Main color is recycled yarn, (Bought a giant ugly scarf for1Euro that was 100% wool and gave me 4 big balls of yarn. Nice.) waist and cuffs are Malabrigo that Jayne and I dyed with Easter egg dye. She decided that Jonas should have a red, white, and blue soaker. I don’t know why. I guess he was looking very patriotic that day or something.

This is ironic, because one of the older FO’s I’d planned to show you is this -

The beautiful phone cozy (or as Madam calls it - “Mommy’s Phone Necklace”) I made myself after I lost my second phone.

You read that right. I’m on phone number three since moving here in Sept.06. Or I was, till I lost it.

Phone number three in happier times.

Joe says I absolutely cannot have another phone. I think he may be right. I’m obviously jinxed. Phone number one got left in the library (”What do you mean where’s my phone? I thought you grabbed it!”) Phone number two got didn’t make it out of the cart and into the car after grocery shopping. (”You did get my phone when you got Jonas, right? It was right next to him. What? What do you mean no?”) This one must have just slipped out of my bag when I was out somewhere… which TOTALLY SUCKS! Because if this was the first, well - accidents happen. Even the second. Maybe. But the third? Arrrrrggghhh. I’ll never have a cool phone again.

There it is in action. Too bad I wasn’t using it yesterday. Its really, really hard to lose a phone that’s tied around your neck. Not so hard, apparently, to lose one that’s floating loose inside a huge tote bag.

Well - I’m off to bang my head against the wall 6000 times.

ETA - This just in! My phone was found in a box at the thrift store! Translation - I donated my damn phone. Good news: I get it back. Bad news: Joe thinks I’m a moron. Ah, well. Now we’re even.

First - an alarming thing has happened.  I started this blog because I finished like 4 projects in 4 days and that was incredible and thrilling and I was feeling like AmazingCraftGoddess and needed to tell everyone about it.

Since starting this blog?  I haven’t so much as picked up a skein of yarn.  Pretty soon I’m going to run out of old pictures to show you and I’ll actually have to do something creative.  I’m thinking hat for me out of this gorgeous handspun (its good to be friends with a fiber goddess .)   Any pattern suggestions?  (I know - crazy talk.  A pattern?  What can I say - I’m in the mood to walk on the wild side.)  (Now that I’m looking at it, I’m thinking maybe one of those little short scarf/neck warmer/thingamahoozers instead?  Hmmmm.)

Anyway - on to the post.  (That wasn’t post, that was just warm up.)

Sometimes, crafting is born from a creative urge.  Sometimes, out of necessity. Sometimes?  Because you’re too damn cheap to throw anything away.  Which is how this dress for a two-year-old -

Became this skirt for a three-year-old -

This is so easy and obvious it doesn’t deserve a tutorial.  Cut off top part of dress.  Add elastic to waist. Voila!  New skirt for free.  I did this with several dresses last year.

(Although inexplicably only have pictures of these two.)  I’ve also discovered that boys rompers can be shirts the next year if you just cut off the bottoms.  Perfectionists would then hem the cut edge, slacker moms like me just dress him in it and think the rolled bottom adds “visual interest.”  Or, you could just let him run around in the unfinished shirt, your shoes, and no pants.  Then nobody would even notice the roll…

So, my pretties. I challenge you to go forth and look in those closets.  Kids don’t necessarily neeeeed an entirely new store-bought wardrobe every year.  Be creative.  Recycle.  It does your wallet good.