Happy Easter

I hope you're all having a nice Easter weekend. I had a good weekend in spite of a cold that I thought for sure I had avoided. It was really bad Friday but by Saturday it was just a cough and I was fine for Easter dinner with my brother, his wife & kids and his wife's family. I love those guys (all, the in-law & all) so it was a really nice day for me.

I made the little bunnies above for my nephews & niece. I found the pattern here (The printable pdf is for a pre-printed piece that you can iron onto fabric. I just used it for the pattern outline.) I used some fuzzy fleece from store-bought fleece blankets for the ones at the top.



I first had made two bunnies for my friend's daughters out of quilting cotton. I was going to do this for my nephews & niece but I didn't have any *ehem*manly*ehem* cotton to use for the boys' bunnies, hence the fuzzy fleece.

The bunnies (and the chocolate and other goodies) were a huge hit, and, best of all, were super simple to make. Just a small amount of fabric, some stuffing and about 20 minutes (trace, cut, sew, stuff, stitch up, done).

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Thanks for all the comments & great serger advice. I plan to start looking/testing this week and will definitely let you all know what I get and when.

Birthday Play Mats

Crafting for boys is always a bit tricky (as those of you who are parents of boys would know) so I was super excited to come across these play mats (and here) on Serving Pink Lemonade. My twin nephews turned 5 in August and I thought these would be perfect for them.

Now, if you've been around here a while you may know that I have a tendency to over think things and frequently end up doing things the hard way. This was one of those times.

I decided to make 3 mats for each of the boys: one town for driving cars, one landscape for playing with dinosaurs and one street scene for playing with Spider Man (one nephew is slightly obsessed with Spider Man).

I sketched my plans and quickly decided I wanted to make them 11" x 17" and foldable. I started out with felt but after many attempts I gave up. I kept envisioning painted fabric for the backgrounds. I had some heavy weight cotton canvas from an old couch cover that was perfect for this project.

After painting I added details to each with felt cutouts sewn to the painted canvas. I backed each one with some lightweight denim (forgot to take a picture of it). I made binding strips and sewed it on by machine (which took 5 or 6 false starts before I was happy with it)(oy).







I'm really happy with how they turned out. I found tubes of tiny dinosaurs, Hot Wheels cars & Spider Man figures that are all the perfect sizes (and they were all on sale for really cheap! score!) to go with the mats.

And, to further demonstrate how I can't ever just let enough be enough, I made a tote bag for each boy to carry the mats folded and all the cars, dinos & Spider Man(s).



They're made out of a lightweight denim (the same as the back of the mats) with webbing straps. I cut the boys' initials out of felt and just sewed it on to the bags before sewing.

The package is on the way to them now, but my nephews don't read my blog (that I know of) so it should be okay to post this. :)

I haven't been very good at keeping up around here lately. Thank you all for the kind comments and for reading even when I'm not very good at posting regularly! I have pictures from summer projects and will try to get caught up over the next week or so.

As for today, we're finally supposed to have some nice weather so I'm going to try to get out there. While the rest of the continent seemed to be going through the hottest summer in a long time, Alberta had a cool, rainy summer. I heard that we had less than 15 days above 25C all summer long (last year during the same time period we had 46 days above 25C). The coming week's forecast for 20C weather is making me happy, even with the trees turning colors already. I have fall knitting projects in the works which I'll try to get in progress shots of soon.

Rabbit Go to Sleep

My coworker Wen-shu took this video of her daughter putting the bunny, er, pardon me RABBIT (she's particular about the name) to sleep.

(embedded with permission)

Finished Objects!

I seem to have finally broken my not-finishing-anything cycle I was stuck in. Yay. But, um, before we get all excited about the Christmas present progress, let's take a look at the stats, shall we?

Finished Objects in the past 7 days: 7 (ee!)
Finished Objects started and completed today: 3 (EEE!)
Finished Objects that make the slightest dent whatsoever in my Christmas Present Project list: 0 (er. um. well.)
Christmas presents started that were not on the UFO list I posted last time: 1
Christmas present projects yet to be completed: Um... HEY LOOK! What's that? Something shiny!

In my defense, the projects this week were all baby/toddler projects for my (upcoming) niece and my twin nephews.

Here are Finished Objects numbers 2-7 (I counted the pairs of mittens as 1 item):

Pattern: The toques were a mix of a couple of different patterns. I took the short row earflaps from the Brioche Helmets in a past IWK. The shaping for the tops came from Last Minute Knitted Gifts.
The scarves were made up as I went, knit lengthwise with a buttonhole type opening for the end to pass through.
The mittens were adapted from a free pattern on the Lion Brand site. (I would post a link but I can't be bothered to go through their stupid infuriating sign in process)
Yarn: stash acrylic. (acrylic stash reduction!!!!)

I'm going to see my brother, his wife and their twins tomorrow. On Wednesday I remembered this and that I had wanted to make the boys toques. So, I did one (with a couple of false starts while I figured out the short row earflaps) Wednesday evening and one Thursday (through ER and My Name Is Earl if we are looking for precise time measurements)(haha). Then, I started a Christmas Present Project that was not on my UFO list (flip top mittens for one of my brothers). Then Friday evening, I remembered that my sister-in-law was talking about scarves for the boys at one point and I had planned to make them some. So I made scarf #1 last night (during the Flames game if we are looking for exact times). Scarf #2 was made this morning. I had planned to go to visit them today but plans changed so I decided that a person can not possibly give toques and scarves without mittens to go with them, so 2 sets of teeny tiny mittens were knit today.

Ahhhhh... Finished Objects.

Also, how cute are toddler mittens? Seriously!!

(my mitten for perspective)

So, now that all these nephew/niece projects are out of my system, I can buckle down and get going on my list... Unless I get distracted by somethi.... NO! Focus Lori! Must focus on list!

Good Job!! High Five!!

Saturday evening I went to my friend Cobi's house for supper with her and her kids. She has 3 year old twins who crack me up. My nieces and nephews live far away from me, so I have sort of adopted her kids as surrogate niece and nephew. They call me "Looie" or "Lolly" or sometimes, strangely, "Lori". They make me laugh. At one point while we were eating on Saturday, Noah saw something on the lawn through the open back door. He made a break for it to go get it. Kyra watched to see what he was doing, narrating his progress to us the whole time, speculating on what it was. When he got the toy and started back the the house, Kyra cheered him on "You got it Noah! Good Job!! High Five!!"

I wish I had someone to cheer me on for the most mundane of tasks!

I told this story to a coworker today and for the rest of the day we were shouting "Good Job!! High Five!" to anyone who came by. Have I mentioned that I'm a bit of a loser? hmm..

So, on to the knitting.

Past projects again today, with the theme being: Stuff I made for Kyra and Noah.
**not all projects are knit**

I made this teddy bear and bunny for the kids for Christmas (or a birthday?) last year (ie 2003/04 ish). The bear was knit with some sort of boucle from Bernat and the bunny, the dress and the bear's sweater were knit in cheap-o acrylic. The patterns are from the Fall 1999 Family Circle Easy Knitting.

He's a little squashed, which made me happy. He looks like he's been loved a bit.


Bunny also looks a little squished. She has a ribbon sash, which isn't so visible here. Her dress is actually crocheted, now that I think about it. The pattern was for knit short-alls, but I decided to make her a dress instead.


Then, last spring, after my job ended (contract position with the boss from hell. seriously. I think i saw horns on his head), I knit these animal sweaters. Both are in acrylic worsted. This was my first attempt at intarsia, and it was actually easier than I thought it would be. The sweater patterns are in the 2004 "Knit It!" magazine.

At the time, Noah was crazy about giraffes. I tried to get a picture of Noah in his sweater on Saturday. He had it on, but suddenly was, er, upset that he was wearing it and that we couldn't see his pajamas (at least I think that's what the problem was). So, the pic of Noah's sweater is from a year ago, and it's a picture of a photograph. sorry.


Kyra's sweater has a duck on it. I LOVED the expression on the duck's face and it was what made me want to make these sweaters. This winter, Cobi mentioned to me that Mr. Bunny, who has been with Kyra for 3 years, needed some clothing. Apparently 3 years as a nudist were enough and he was ready to be dressed. So, I found a pattern somewhere on-line for some miniature sweaters (sorry, can't remember where) and I made him this sweater out of the leftover blue from the ducky sweater. Then, in what will surely be described as a fit of compulsion should I ever be in a situation where someone is trying to commit me to an institution, I decided to double stitch the same duck on the front. Kyra liked it a lot, but was concerned that I hadn't made a giraffe sweater for Noah's blue bear.


**Intermission -- not for you. For me. It has taken me 3 (yes 3) days to do this post. My computer at home (Mac PowerBook G3 series, circa 1996 - a veritable antique) plays these fun pranks on me where it suddenly decides to randomly quit programs with NO warning at all! Isn't that fun? Then, sometimes it decides that it is TIRED! People, it has been working HARD! So it goes to sleep and WILL NOT WAKE UP!! (I might be a tad bit frustrated with the computer.) So, on my lunch break at work, on to the 3rd day of this post... ***

Our final exhibit in this past project post are these monsters. I was trying to think of something to make the kids for their birthday this spring. I had sort of set a precedent with the crafted gifts, and I like doing it, but I had NO ideas. I sort of had planned to get them a veggie tales DVD and was trying to think of something else. I thought maybe I could make them big floor cushions, but couldn't think of a pattern. Animals came to mind but time was running short and I didn't know if I could put enough detail in to do it justice. Then one day I was cruising through craftster (ehem, I may have been at work at the time) and I came across the thread on the felt monsters. I suddenly had the entire thing planned out in my head. Don't you love that? Going from nothing to fully formed idea in seconds. I was still at work ehem so I had to just wait and wait and wait all day.

I stopped at Walmart on the way home from work, searching for some fleece and stuffing. Turns out that buying a fleece blanket is way WAY cheaper than fleece in the fabric department. So, 2 fleece blankets, some fiber filling stuff and some fleece remnants for the face and I was on my way.

Before the gifts were opened, Noah was explaining to me how ALL green monsters are really scary. Um. I frantically tried to figure out something to distract him or convince him that just wasn't true. Suddenly I remembered that Mike from Monsters Inc was green and wasn't scary. Whew.

Anyway, they were a hit (yay 3 year olds!)

Here they are:


And one with Noah for an idea of how big they are:


Whew. Now I can go back to work.