Archive for the 'Crafts' Category

And while we’re on the subject of crappy things-

Published by Helen on February 9, 2009 in Crafts. 1 Comment

We had a really crappy screen door:

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We got it about 5 years ago and it was okay for about a year. Last year I decided to re-screen it because the cats had destroyed it by climbing it. Instead of buying new screening I thought I’d be tricky and screen each section separately with small pieces of screen that I already had. That worked for about a week - the cats didn’t climb it because the screening was so unstable - but a 2 year-old fell through it and popped out the lower left section. Yesterday I decided to give it one last chance - the weather was great and I just wanted to be able to get some fresh air in the kitchen if I had to be inside at all.  I took the whole thing apart again and glued and stapled a sheer curtain in where the screening would have been.  I reinforced the bottom half with some chicken wire but so far the cats are not wanting to climb it. I had the door open all day today again  - but even if the door is closed it looks really cool from the inside.

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What we’ve been up to-

Published by Helen on July 1, 2008 in Crafts and Non-Fiction. 4 Comments

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Hazel got some clay for her birthday before we went to MI and she and the boys have spent most of the last week playing with it. This picture shows the first creation, the colors are all mixed up and muddy now but they are still really into it.

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I got this amazing stash from someone on freecycle - she said she used to work at a fabric store and spent most of her paycheck there. Now she has more fabric than she’ll ever use and is cutting back. It might not look like that much in the picture , but there are 300+ 1/4 yard pieces of fabric there! Today she posted again and Scott went over and picked up a box of ribbon that should last me the rest of my life.

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The 25th was our 14 year wedding anniversary so we went to goodwill where we found this great couch and then to Lowe’s to buy chicken wire. (I think that those are the traditional 14th anniversary gifts right? Used furniture and poultry supplies? LOL!) Anyway, this couch is so comfortable and well proportioned and it didn’t smell. . . but seriously, it is my ideal couch other than the colors. So at some point I’m going to attempt to re-upholster it. I’ve dissected a couch before, so I feel like I have some idea of what is involved, but I don’t think this particular couch is a first-timer’s project. So for practice I’m re-covering the old couch, which was really a loveseat , which is now on the boys’ room. I’m about 1/2 done with that, pictures will be posted when I’m all done, so far it is going well.

The boys were so excited about having the old couch in their room. Ray said, “Now if we just had hatchets and a TV in our room we’d have everything we ever wanted!” (Scott read them Hatchet by Gary Paulsen recently and they’ve been obsessed with having one ever since. Yes, they will be getting hatchets at some point, but no they won’t be getting a TV in their room.)

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This is what the chicken wire was for. Every summer I read a book that convinces me that our chickens need to be in movable coops and not in their big hoophouse - the hoophouse is fine, but ideally they’d be scratching on grass and digging up bugs.( Two years ago the book was The Omnivore’s Dilemna, last year it was Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, this year it was You Can Farm.) Every summer I come up with a plan for a movable coop and it is usually better than the year before, but then a couple chickens get killed and we move them back into the hoophouse. Ideal is one thing, alive is another. We have persistent and smart predators around here, along with very uneven ground, so a movable coop has to be flexible enough to be secured to the ground.

This one is made of two layers of wire - concrete reinforcing wire for structure and chicken wire for security. A third type of wire was used on the sides but next time I’m going to stick with the first two. 7 of our 22 chickens are testing this model for us, I really think they’ll be safe because I spent 4 days wrestling with wires to make it impenetrable.

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And I spent some time reviewing Scott’s life insurance policy. Just kidding - there were a bunch of branches from this 100 year old pecan tree that were touching our roof so Scott did some pruning.

Porch Floor pics

Published by Helen on April 11, 2008 in Chatter and Crafts. 8 Comments

I painted the floor of the porch outside the kitchen - it has been primed for a while and I finally had time and weather to paint. My original plan was to make a checkerboard pattern, but yesterday I decided to just do some stencils instead. The leaf is meant to look like a pecan leaf.

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Recycled T-shirts

Published by Helen on April 3, 2008 in Books, Crafts and Non-Fiction. 3 Comments

About 6 months ago Goodwill had a table of brand new Pokemon T-shirts for sale for 50 cents each. There were two different styles, red and white but the only size they had was adult XL. I bought several of them anyway, thinking that I’d find something to do with them.

I cut out and sewed the pictures from 4 of the white ones to bags that I made from denim. One was a messenger style bag, two were library bags for D and R when they got their library cards, and I made this one recently for a friend of ours who just turned 4 - so it is sized for a 4 year-old. (The painted egg is him as a space man - inspired by the rocket man over on the long thread.)

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I used a couple of the pictures from the red shirts for the backs of some of the bags. There was a whole bunch of material left over from all of the shirts, so I kept it thinking I’d find something to do with it.

Then last week I saw something somewhere about calamari knitting (can’t find a good link but it is cutting t-shirts into loops, joining the loops with slipknots and knitting with the “yarn” that results.) I happened to have the Mason Dixon Knitting book from the library so I was able to read their suggestions. I got out the T- shirt remains and a couple other scrap bag shirts and cut them into rings. My biggest knitting needles were way too small so I cut the rings open and just used a single strand of t-shirt fabric to knit strips that I stitched together to make a little rug. I think it is going to go on the porch outside the kitchen door, but Hazel may have other plans.

I had the hemmed strips from the bottoms of the shirts left over so I sewed then to the bottom of a dishtowel.

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Now I just have to find something to do with this bag of leftover sleeves!

Penguin

Published by Helen on January 4, 2008 in Crafts. 0 Comments

I finished the “antidote” blanket two days ago and needed an antidote to that. I decided the antidote to something time- consuming, mindless, and with no defined end was a stuffed penguin - the idea has been popping into my head a lot lately so

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I popped this guy out yesterday.

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Here he is a little closer - he was not cooperating with the close-ups.

Hazel’s customized Hello Kitty sewing machine-

Published by Helen on December 27, 2007 in Crafts. 3 Comments

Whenever we asked Hazel what she wanted for xmas she’d say, “I want a little sewing machine so I can sit by mommy and make things.” (Awwwww, how cute!) At first she wanted a yellow one, but after she saw these Hello Kitty sewing machines she changed her mind. I wasn’t about to get her one, they cost more than mine (an old but solid kenmore from ebay) and I knew it would just be frustrating and probably dangerous for her.

At Target I found this sewing machine on sale for $10 and bought two $1 packages of Hello Kitty stickers to customize it - I had enough stickers to make the sewing machine picture on the box and the owners manual follow the theme also.

Tonight she decided she wanted to use it - she didn’t have a project in mind, she just wanted to use the sewing machine so I set her up with some fabric and helped her make two little bags - she is thrilled with herself and I think my fabric stash may be in danger!

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Hazel’s first bag
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The second bag in progress.

(This is in the dining room - the stove behind her is not connected to any power source, just decoration.)

The antidote-

Published by Helen on December 26, 2007 in Crafts. 0 Comments

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That’s what I’m calling this blanket. I started it last week after I was done with all of my running around, finishing things up, sending things off, buying one last thing. . .

I’m using all the solid color (as opposed to variegated) blues and colors derived from blue from my stash. Leftovers from other projects, hand-me -downs, and yarns that came sealed in bags with other stuff from Goodwill. I saw the pattern here a while ago and really liked the looks of it. It is basically the same pattern as the ripple and the babette blankets I made - lots of double crochet - but this one is even simpler since it is *only* double crochet and it is worked in the space of the previous row, not in the top of the stitch.

Basically this blanket requires no thought, no purchases, and I’m on no deadline to finish it. It will probably end up in the boys’ room, but for now it is by the couch - it’s too big to be a carry-along project. I’ve cleared out a bunch of yarn ends that were too small for much else and I’m using colors that I would never otherwise choose. I relax just looking at it!

Leftovers-

Published by Helen on December 18, 2007 in Crafts and Holidays. 2 Comments

Yesterday I helped the kids and the neighbors make stained glass cookies - sugar cookies that have holes cut in them and you put crushed jolly rancher candy in the spaces and it melts and looks like glass.

The kids stuck around for the first round of cutting and filling, and Hazel helped me out for a couple more rounds, but before too long I was left with a pile of dough, 5 bowls of crushed candy, and not a lot of motivation. (I personally think these cookies are kind of gross, but I let each of the kids choose a cookie to make this year and this was what D wanted to make.)

I realized that I should try to make something that used up as much dough and candy as possible and came up with this:

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I balanced it on a window ledge this morning and now I really like it.

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled crafty postings. . .

Published by Helen on December 15, 2007 in Crafts and Shopping. 2 Comments

To bring you this Goodwill score-

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12 embroidered linen napkins - no stains and they are all hand hemmed and it looks like hand- stitched too. And I have a project in mind for them!

I actually saw these yesterday but they were kinda on the pricey side for Goodwill (about .75 each!) so I walked around with them in my cart for a while and put them back. Last night I got an idea of what I could do with them so today we went back and they were still there. This proves that I was meant to have them if you are a follower of Goodwill karmic energy theory. (Scott and I are devotees.)

Cinnamon Ornaments

Published by Helen on December 14, 2007 in Crafts and Holidays. 2 Comments

I searched for a link to the article online but couldn’t find it, so I ‘ll just say that I got the recipe for these from an old issue of Martha Stewart - Dec. 2003 - in which they made bird ornaments and coated them with glitter. Really nice, but I don’t have bird cookie cutters, cutting out templates takes too long, and I’d need about 15 colors of glitter and I only have 3. . .

Anyway, here is my version:

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As you can see I used oak leaf and acorn cookie cutters and made them into ornaments and gift tags - and a few other things I’ll share in the next couple days. The recipe is 1 cup cinnamon, 1/2 cup white glue, 1/4 cup applesauce, all mixed together, bagged or wrapped up and left to sit for at least an hour. It sounds like a good recipe for kids, and I started out doing these as a kid project, but this dough is really hard to mix up and the frustration (their issue) and mess (my issue) factors had me sending the kids away while I did most of the mixing. (I’ve actually made these twice now, and the second time I had a better idea of how things worked and what the kids could help with so they were more involved.)

The dough was easy to roll out later, but I had to add a little water to it to get a good consistency. I rolled it out on parchment paper and cut the shapes out and used a skewer to poke a hole for threading. I left them on the parchment paper to dry out. The first batch was made during Thanksgiving week and I’d just slide the trays into the oven after something else was done cooking, between that and the heat being on they dried out in a couple days. The second batch I put in the oven at 200 degrees for several hours - small ones dried out in a couple hours (flip ‘em every hour or so) and the big ones took more like 4 hours.

Here’s a picture of the second batch, cut out and about to go in the oven:

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We painted most of the second batch - and used gingerbread men, stars, and tree cookie cutters - or cookie punches as Hazel called them.

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A word of waring if you attempt these - it makes a huge amount. For second batch I made a double recipe and I was pretty sick of cutting them out and flipping them over by the time I was done. And the dough looks like it would be yummy, but I was told that D and H licked some of the first batch but they weren’t good (LOL!) and Hazel actually put a small piece of the second batch in her mouth and promptly spit it out.

These made our house smell great while we were making and baking them, and whenever the heat comes on and blows over them.