February 27, 2009

notions notions everywhere

Some of you may remember the knitting bag I made a while back. It's almost always in my bag so I can whip it out and knit a little wherever I am. One problem I was having with it is I didn't put a little zipper pocket in the inside. This would've been useful for my stitch markers, scissors, stitch holders, pen, tape measure, etc. These little notions tend to get tangled in my yarn or I et nervous they'll snag whatever project I have in there.


Last night I decided to actually pull out my sewing machine (I haven't used it in almost a month!!) and make a little zipper pouch. Nothing fancy. It ended up being a smidge smaller than I wanted, so my ruler doesn't fit very well, but I have my tape measure so it's whatever.


Everything fits great and it even matches my knitting bag! I love little sewing projects, they're so instantly gratifying :)


I also made another set of wine glass markers the other day but hadn't uploaded the pictures for my post yesterday. I think these are my favorites so far. I picked four colors and used any kind of bead I had in that color. It made for a delightfully random mix of colors and sizes in the beads. I might even make some earrings to match!

February 26, 2009

And...

They're wine glass markers! I'm too worn out to really write today so you can just look at some pics :)

February 24, 2009

coming soon..


Look what I made last night! Can you guess what they are? I made 4 sets last night, one as a gift and the others to hopefuly go in my etsy shop soon! I'll be making more tonight and hopefully get some good pics to show yall :)

ps. if you can guess what they are (and weren't here when I made them last night...whitney) I'll make you a set for free in whatever colors you like!

edit: emily guessed it! Yall can keep guessing for fun if you want :)

February 23, 2009

more buttons...

I spent this afternoon going through my new button collection, sorting by color, taking them off their old cards and removing those silly metal loops they put them on the cards with (i hate those so much!) My mom got me some 1/2 pint milk bottles to put some of my double point needles in this weekend, and MeMaw found two more around her house that she gave me. When I was sorting my buttons I put them in the bottles and loved how they looked too much to take them out. So I'm still on the hunt for something to hold my double points, ha.

Now I'm racking my brain for projects to show off these buttons. I already have some earring plans in the making!

These are the lovely flowers David got me for valentine's day last week. Can you believe how pretty they still look? I brought them to my apartment from Austin and split them into 3 vases. I think the purple ones are my fave. After I arranged them I realized they formed a heart :)

February 22, 2009

button button who's got the button?


I do!

More than one actually. We went to see MeMaw yesterday to celebrate her 75th birthday with bbq and some shopping in town. When she was here last time she had mentioned letting me go through her vast button collection and picking out all the ones I wanted. I reminded her and out came 6 tins full of buttons. Some were still on their original cards but most were loose. MeMaw, my mom and I spent at least an hour going through them all, picking out all kinds of fun, interesting and colorful buttons.


I can't wait to get home and organize them all by color and style. I'm a nerd about buttons, it's silly :)


Why does my MeMaw have over a thousand buttons? She used to be a professional seamstress. She made all my mom's, aunt's and uncle's clothing. She also sewed for people in town. My mom grew up making all her doll's clothes and began making her own clothes soon after. As I was growing up many of my dresses were made by MeMaw or my mom. My mom went on to make all my prom dresses.


I learned to sew from watching them and eventually trying my hand at it. I started making thing by hand and then moved on to using my mom's machine. I made my first purse about 4 years ago and haven't looked back since. I hope to someday teach my daughter about the love of sewing and the enjoyment that comes from holding something you made from scratch.


There are still many more buttons for me to go back and explore through. I think I mostly took all the brightly colored ones. MeMaw told me her children learned their colors by playing with all these buttons. I love it!

February 17, 2009

this really is a full month

So to continue from my last post, early February really was packed for my family.

My uncle that I posted about earlier died on my sister's birthday. It was sad but I know he's in a better place now praising God and no longer in pain. It was great to see a lot of family on my mom's side that I hadn't seen in almost 18 years. I love my family.

February 5 is a big day in my life also. First of all it's David's birthday. He just turned 22, woo! It's also our anniversary! We just celebrated our 3 years together :) It's been a great 3 years of trials, rejoicing, love, learning who God is, and learning who I am through David's love. I'm excited about our future years to come.

I made him some fun stuff for his birthday and anniversary. I don't have any good of them yet and I'm only halfway done with his birthday present, ha.

While I'm talking about love I'll show you what I knit for fun over the Valentine's weekend. I've always loved this holiday even if it was created by the greeting card people. My family has had a candlelit pancake dinner on Valentine's since I was in the 3rd grade I think. My dad was doing TDY in Italy (he's retired Air Force) so my mom, sister, and I had pancakes by candlelight. It's been a tradition ever since. This year David and my sister's boy joined us. The holiday reminds me of family more than commercial love.

Anyways, wow I got off track, I knit some cute little hearts up. I thought it'd be cute to give them to people but they're hanging in my room. I knit a purple one too and gave it to my roommate. I was inspired by some patterns I saw on ravelry. I started some but didn't like how they were turning out. I ended up writing my own pattern. I have it mostly written out but I want to make up one more size before I post it on here. My first pattern! Stay tuned for that :)
One last thing for tonight. My mom gave me this mug for Valentine's day and I love it. I had mentioned wanting some fun mugs over Christmas break and she thought I'd like this one from Target. I'm starting to really like red lately, so it's perfect. I drank some yummy hot coco from it earlier tonight.

Ok that's all for tonight. Hopefully more pics and patterns to come soon!

my february

So the beginning of my february was quite eventful. It's taken me a while to post about because I didn't know how at first and then I just got lazy, heh.

First off my sister turned 20. I still look at her like she's around 12 but no...20. Her entering her twenties makes me feel old. Ah well, age means I've survived and my story is that much longer.


She was born on groundhog day 2/2. I don't usually take this into account when trying to figure out what to give her as a gift but this year I found the perfect groundhog thing to make her. I was browsing random blogs looking for a pattern for arm warmers (what i originally was going to make her) and I ran across an adorable groundhog pattern at mochimochi.


I fell in love with it instantly. I had some brown yarn leftover from previous projects and thought I had enough so I cast on for the dirt mound. Sadly, I did not have enough. I had to rip out a lot of work and go find some yarn. I found the perfect browns at michaels and luckily I had some scrap black and green for the rest. I cast on the Saturday before her birthday, knit after church, knit during the super bowl at our college party, and finished it up at home that night. It was a lot of knitting but very fun.


I found this cute little garden pail at michaels and decided to put it the groundhog in there instead of a gift bag. It ended up fitting great and looked way cute. I even painted her nickname (squirt) on the pail with green fabric paint.


I gave it to her when we went out to eat with the fam. She loved it! Luckily I have family and friends who appreciate knit toys as gifts, ha.

(please ignore the fact that I look retarded, ha)


The "second" part of this post will come later :)

February 13, 2009

some cuteness


I needed something easy to knit up tonight. I've been looking at knit flowers the past few days, thinking they might make a fun bouquet some day. I started one flower pattern but it looked...well it looked dumb. I googled flower patterns and found this one. Some scrap yarn, two cute buttons and one Bravo reality show later and voila! Now I have a fun hair pin.

I'm still planning on that big update. just wait!

February 10, 2009

soon i promise


February has been a little crazy for me which explains my lack of posting. I have a few finished projects, works in progress and ideas for future projects that I want to write about. projects projects projects. I will post soon with lots of pictures and such.

I have to write a paper for school now, blegh.