Tutorial: Make Cloth Napkins from Fat Quarters

I've been working on reducing our budget lately and thought that reusable napkins would be a way to help me do this, not to mention that it is eco-friendly as well. I needed something that would be kid friendly, hide stains well and would be suitable for everyday use.

I found a tutorial online, but the only thing that I took away from it was the word reversible and the measurement 13" x 16". Here are some of the completed napkins. The widest part of each seen below is the front and the small sliver that can be seen next to it is the coordinating back of the napkin:

click to enlarge

I have a ton of fat quarters hidden away under all of our beds that are left over from my quilting days. Many of these are really cute and child friendly, so that's what I decided to use. The problem, is that these are only about 8 or 9 inches wide. Here's my solution/tutorial:

To Make Cloth Napkins from Fat Quarters:
1. Choose two coordinating/contrasting fat quarter fabrics.
2. Cut each of them into two equal pieces.

Cutting!

3. With right sides facing, sew the two pieces together on one side only. Do this again for the coordinating fabric.
( I used a quarter of an inch seam allowance for everything except step number 9.)

It's a quarter inch from the right edge of my presser foot to the needle in the center.

Once done, it should look like this:

Opened and pressed with an iron

4. Cut the fabric into a 13" x 16" piece. Do this for both fabrics. If it's not perfectly square, don't sweat it. It's napkins, not clothing. Close is okay. If it really bugs you, you can use a see through quilter's square and a rotary cutter to get it perfectly squared up.

13" x 16"

Once this is done, iron the seam to one side:

Seam ironed and laying to one side.

5. With right sides facing, sew your two 13" x 16" fabrics together, leaving about two inches on one side open.

Left open to turn the fabric rightside out again.

6. Cut the corners off of the napkin so that when you turn the piece inside out, you don't have a lot of unnecessary bulk in each of the corners.

Clip your corners!

7. Turn the napkin inside out. Make sure to push the corners as far out as you can get them for a nice, crisp corner.

8. Iron your napkin. At the two inch opening, turn both sides in and iron this closed as well.

Ironed and ready for top stitching

9. Top stitch around all four sides of the napkin, including the two inches that were originally left open. I top stitched approximately an eighth of an inch from each edge.

10. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done!

Front and Back of the Cloth Napkin

TIP!

To make turning corners easier, Using the wheel on the right side of your machine (if yours has this), make sure your needle is inserted into the cloth and leave it there for a moment.

Needle Inserted

Then, raise the foot: I picked it up even more to show you that the needle is still inserted into the cloth (please excuse the thumbnail - It's paint, not dirt, I promise!)

Foot lifted

Once this is done, rotate your fabric into the direction that you want to go. Lower your presser foot and you are ready to continue sewing.

Fabric Rotated

Enjoy your new napkins!

Sewing Skirts!

For the past two days I've been bitten by the sewing bug. I don't know why it bit me, but it bit me hard.

It started with the 20 minute skirt tutorial. I loved the fabrics she used. Normally I shy away from elastic waist skirts, but these were too cute to pass up. I took off to the store and found both of these skirts' fabric at Hobby Lobby. They had so much cute fabric, it was difficult to choose just two. When I made my skirts I deviated from the pattern by machine sewing some hems into the skirts. That was the only change that I made to the pattern.

This is the easiest skirt I've ever made. The tutorial is simple, quick and very easy to follow. For the record though, it took me longer than 20 minutes to make the skirts. The first took two hours due to a comedy of errors that are too numerous to mention, but they range from sewing machine problems to stupidity on my part. The second took me about 40 minutes. I figure that if I made another one I'd probably be right on the money at 20 minutes.

Here's how the skirts turned out. I've paired them with a black sleeveless top to show you how it will look on and so that you can't see the ugly elastic waists:





I'll show you the other sewing project tomorrow!

Fishing

We had a milestone in our family over the past weekend: The Youngest caught his first fish!

Granted, it's tiny and you need a magnifying glass to see it in the pic, but it was still a fish. With his PawPaw pretty much controlling the pole, the Youngest got a total of 8 fish on his first outing. The Eldest wracked up a stunning 14 in the same outing. The fishies were mighty hungry for worms that day.


It still thrills me to see the boys out fishing with their PawPaw. What a memory they'll have of him later in life!

The Pain in Frogging

I am still working on the log cabin blanket. As a matter of fact, I might have gone cross-eyed from looking at this damn thing. It's not really the blanket's fault, it's not the miles and miles and miles of boring garter stitch either. I'm putting all the blame on the yarn.

The Debbie Mumm Traditions yarn is a deliciously soft and gloriously colored corespun yarn. It's 70% acrylic and 30% wool. There. Now I've told you the good stuff, now for the bad. It's a corespun yarn. It's 70% acrylic and 30% wool. There, that was also the bad stuff.

It's splitty as hell and bunches up viciously. That's not so bad while you're knitting it up if you hold it loosely. The problem comes when, not if, you need to frog it. The soft yarn grips to itself like there's no tomorrow.

Remember these? These were a tank that for some God forsaken reason I thought this yarn would be good for:


I am in the process of frogging them. The bottom one took me four hours to frog. Yes, that's right, four friggin' hours of fighting with grabby yarn mixed with short rows. It wasn't fun. Needful, but not fun.

So after the frogging I have a bazillion small balls of yarn. Look how many ends have to be woven when you use a lot of these small balls of yarn in just a couple of squares:


Yeah. More not fun.

But, look how beautiful these are from the front:


I don't know how much more yarn I'll need and have no clue how much I'll get from frogging the other piece. I may need to try and order more since my JoAnn's didn't have any of this color left. They had two other colorways that could be fun to mix with this one, but I'm not sure if I'll do that or not.

All I know is that I just have to make triple sure any of the squares don't need frogging again, cause if it comes to that, I'll be putting the whole kit and caboodle in the trash.

Panic at the Escalator

Obviously the summer months are not the optimum time for me to be blogging. I do apologize for going incommunicado for a whole week, but I am back now. There were many things that happened last week, such as a lake trip, trying not to kill my children now that they are not in school and are at each other's throats, etc.

But there was one especially amusing incident last week that I want to share with you. It started out innocently enough as a trip to Dick's Sporting Goods. My father and husband have birthdays a week apart, so the kids and I hopped into the Mom van and went shopping for campy kind of stuff.

We grabbed a firestarter for my Dad and then found a cool tent thing that we could use on our family beach vacation trip in two weeks. It's not a camping tent, more like a tailgating tent that pops up in one fell swoop. Perfect, but it weighed a ton. But that was cool too since it has rollers on it and could easily be drug wherever you need it.

Great. Now, I got everybody sorted out: Eldest in front with the little items, me in the middle dragging the tent that ways a ton and the Youngest was bringing up the rear. We headed down the escalator (can you see where this is going yet?) in the same order: Eldest first with small items, me dragging tent that weighs a ton, and the Youn- oh wait a minute - guess what? He panicked at the last minute (the child that is afraid of nothing) and pulled away from me and stayed at the top of the damn escalator!

I threw the tent that weighs a ton to the eighty pound weakling and said, "Here, you're on your own" and turned around. My brain took one hundredth of a second to gauge how fast the escalator was moving and tried to figure out how fast my legs were going to have to move so that I would not be jogging in place. I was now about 8 or 9 steps down and I took off, blazing fast, looking hopelessly hokey as I started hoofing it up the moving steps. Meanwhile, the Youngest was at the top screaming "Mommy! Mommy!" and at this time four really cute college age guys show up behind him, grinning from ear to ear. Jeez, wouldn't you just know it?

I got to the top step, grabbed a little arm and dragged him to the stairs and proceeded to rendezvous with the Eldest at the bottom who had somehow managed to grab the one ton tent and drag it to safety. Phew! What a workout. I wasn't even huffing and puffing at the end either, with much thanks to Ye Olde Adrenaline.

What a hoot. I laughed so hard I could hardly breathe. Oh, and yeah, the cute college guys did too. I'm sure they were laughing with me and not at me. Yeah, right.

I was out and about today and came across the latest issue of Simply Knitting. I absolutely adore this magazine. It's a Brit magazine, so it's not cheap here since it's an import, but worth it just for the Alan Dart Toy patterns alone. This month they have Medieval Mice! I seriously want to make a medieval mouse now.


They also included a purse pattern that can be done four different ways and the handles to make one. This is on my to do list for sure.

The squares are coming along. I thought I would get completely finished with the fourth square last night, but it wasn't meant to be. It didn't get done today either since my Mom and I went thrift store hopping - got a load of books too, but they were mostly children's books.


I did go looking for more yarn and tried to scout out a good black yarn to have running in between the squares and for the border, but I'm going to have to take a square in with me to find a black yarn that matches the texture of the Debbie Mumm yarn. The yarn that I'm working with is a wool/acrylic blend and it would be nice to find that kind of blend, but if not I'll probably go with acrylic. Of course they were out of the colorway that I'm using here.

Anyway, I'm heading off to choir in a bit and need to find something to feed the hungry menfolk now - see ya tomorrow!

Is It Wrong...

Perhaps it would be wrong to laugh at a kid while he's throwing a tantrum to watch a movie. But when the movie is Peter Pan and he's screaming "I Wanna Watch Pizza Pan!" ?

Lemme tell ya, It's hard to keep a straight face when that happens.

I'll have some knitting stuff for ya tomorrow, I hope.

Beware the Fog...

I've been reduced to moving thru life in a cold medication induced fog.

I had no idea that Musinex could affect me the way it did. I knew I had a sinus infection and was very aware that I was miserable, so before leaving to take the kid to his gym class, I took one of the pills. By the time that we left the class, my brain was fogged. I even ran a red light - by turning left on a red! I've never done anything like that in my life. Scared the Bejeezus out of me. My brain unfogged for a few seconds toward the end of the left turn and I totally freaked out. My best friend was behind me in her car - I freaked her out too. For the record, I am now boycotting the Musinex during day time.

Nuthin' to see here folks, way too foggy, move along!

Knitting and Books

I'm not dead yet, but the cold has turned into a sinus infection. That hasn't stopped the knitting though!

I'm still working on my log cabin squares. Those little things are quite addictive. I didn't think that I would enjoy working on them quite as much as I have. Here's how they look as of a few minutes ago:

I love how the yarn is working up on these squares. They're actually a little brighter in real life. I'm not sure why the camera is dulling the colors so much. They won't all have red in them unfortunately (I like lots of red), but that might not be a bad thing. Hints of red will actually stand out more in the finished product.

Also, I've been stalking my mailman again. This is some of the goodies that he brought me:

Not real impressed with the Speed Knitting book, but it would be good for beginners. I'll but that back on my list to swap out. I can't recommend the Knitter's Book of finishing Techniques enough though. It is a fantastic book that I'm excited about adding to my library. It's got tons of tips/techniques in it that makes your knitting look less "homemade" and more "handmade".

I'm still waiting on a pair of shoes, but I don't know whether to stalk the mailman or the UPS man for those. Right now stalking around my front door is all I'm good for. I just don't have the energy to do much else.

I hab a code

I've been sidelined by a cold. I feel like my head is going to explode. The worst part about it is that it's messing with my equilibrium. It's gotten into my inner ear and I'm so dizzy because of it.

This past weekend was so relaxing. Two of the three guys in the house went camping. One at a time is so much easier to cope with, even if it is the most difficult of the three. He was a dream to be around though and my blood pressure was kept to a minimum. I managed to finish one square and got two thirds of the way finished with another for my log cabin blanket. I also got a little spinning in as well.

Everything was fine until this cold sank in. Now everything has come to a screeching halt. There's been little crafty stuff going on today. It's all I can do to just break up the fights between the kids as they happen.

People aren't supposed to get colds in the summer are they? It's just not fair that you should feel miserable on nice warm days. Someone should declare it illegal for cold germs to be out and about during the sunny months. I'd do it, but I think I'm going to go lay back down now.

Some Old, Some New

My computer is working against me today. I've tried posting to the blog three different times and something has gone wrong every damn time. So, fourth time's a charm, right?

Okay, before I get to the new, let's talk old stuff:

1. I did a massive dyeing project a couple of weeks/months ago and realized that I never showed you my color wheel that I made from the project. So, without further ado, here ya go:

I also found two colors that I missed while dyeing the roving. The purple and the green are not true and broke easily, so the colors that they gave are really odd sometimes. But that's okay and that is why this testing was conducted, so that I would have a better grasp on what the dyes would do straight out of the box. The center three are not primaries, they are secondary colors. Please don't think that I haven't a clue as to how it is supposed to look. I just got lazy about putting the three in the center when I already have them placed in the circle.

I am now very thankful to have all of the big pile of roving off of my table in my dining room/office/craft room. I'm sure it won't be long until some other crap moves in to take it's place on the table.

2. I'm still working on my first log cabin square. This would have been finished by now except that I noticed that I had picked up stitches on the wrong side of two different parts. :sigh: By the way, the Debbie Mumm Traditions yarn does not like to be ripped out. It's not fun.

On to something new:

I got the urge to dye some roving again. As a matter of fact, I wanted to play with 4 ounces of Falkland and I wanted to do some natural dyeing with tea. I have dyed fabrics with tea and yarn, but I wanted to try for a deeper color this time.

So I soaked the Falkland in water with some Alum and Cream of Tartar for a couple of hours while I took the Eldest to a gym class.


While that was going on, I got out my huge enamel pot and filled it with water and about a bajillion tea bags that I had lying around from an old tea party that I gave a few years ago. Yes, I said years. While I drink tea, I don't usually drink it caffeinated and at this point it would be too stale to drink anyway. I also added some ammonia to the mix (smells godawful now) in order to try and get a deeper richer color out of the tea.


The wool is now soaking and I'll probably let it soak overnight. I can't wait to see what color brown that I get out of it.

If it works out, it'll be one of the first few items that I will list in my new Etsy store. I'll throw out a link to it when it goes up. See ya tomorrow!

New Project on the Needles

In an effort not to kill my children yesterday (Dear God, Please let school start again soon!), I picked up a new knitting project. It had to be one where there was minimal counting, thus minimal thought. As I began knitting it, I had to force my fingers not to clutch the project. I think they were dreaming of wringing two little necks.

The problem is that I have one kid who is a tattler (The Eldest who always follows the rules) and one (The Youngest who never follows rules) that likes to just irritate the other. Well, yesterday it all irritated me. When I was done with them, they thought the Hammer of God had fallen on them. I was so incredibly steamed. They tried to start again this morning and then thought better of it when I lit into them again. There was no way I was going to go grocery shopping and listen to that the entire time.

So. A new project came into being. I chose The Log Cabin Afghan. Super easy project that is good for beginners and for using up scraps. Except I don't have scraps, but I do have some yarn that I bought initially for a top and hated it. It's not a great yarn, but it is pretty and soft and will be good for an afghan. It's Debbie Mumm Traditions that I purchased from JoAnn's. It's an acrylic/wool blend that is corespun and difficult to work with because of it. The stuff on the outside likes to slide up the core of the yarn and bunch up. You have to hold it very loosely to keep it from bunching.

This is what the square looks like so far:


I have no idea how big I want this to be or what who it is going to be for. I just knew that it had to be simple and you don't get anymore simple than garter stitch. I have made one change in the pattern so far. I did squares one and two together continuously since I am working from only one skein at a time. I'm not changing colors, the yarn does that just fine on it's own. The color changes in this yarn remind me a great deal of Noro Kureyon. This square is about two thirds finished. It looks like I might get 2 to 3 squares (approx. 9" square) per skein.

This will be a long term project. It'll be great for the beach vacation we have planned in July, something to do in the cottage when it gets too hot to be outside.

Rampant Stupidity

Flax Gel Report - Wonderful stuff! Love how it makes my curls look. Next time I will make a larger batch since I need to use quite a bit of it for my hair. But since it only takes 10 minutes, it won't be a problem. The only problem I have with the whole thing is it needing to be kept in the fridge. I know some people add vitamin E oil to help as a preservative, but I'm wondering if a pinch of citric acid would work as well. Just a thought.

Obviously last night was "Mad Scientist" night in my kitchen. I made a face spritz (I called it a spritz because of the container it's in. It could also be called a toner.) too that I like. I boiled some water (measured by how large the container was that I was going to be putting it in) and added one aspirin, some yarrow from my garden and some lavender from there as well. We'll see how well it works in the long run. Anything to help with adult acne will be very welcome.

But there were issues in making this. Evidently stupidity was running rampant on the part of the person cooking up all this stuff. I won't say who it was, you'll just have to use your imagination for that, but she poured some really hot water into a plastic bottle that imploded on the counter. Made a big mess, but it smelled nice. So I had to do the whole face spritz making thing twice! I might add a few drops of essential oil in there just for fun next time.

But I'm tellin' ya: Rampant stupidity was plaguing the kitchen last night.

Flax

I've been experimenting with flax seeds lately. Flax is filled with omega-3 fatty acids and is very high in fiber. Basically, it's good for you so go eat it, right? Yes (and I'll have a yummy recipe for you in a sec), but did you also know that you can make a hair gel with it that is fantastic for curly hair?

I didn't either. So today I decided to experiment, cuz I'm crazy that way and have mega naturally curly hair.

The basic recipe for the gel is as follows:

1 cup boiling water
2 Tbsp. flax seeds

Boil together for 10 minutes or until gel forms and then strain out seeds (difficult). Store in fridge and use as needed.

What I did:

1/2 cup water
1 Tbsp ground flax seeds
1 small tea bag - purchased online years ago, can't remember where exactly. You can get them at health food stores to make your own teas. Very handy to have.

Put the ground flax in the tea bag and ironed closed. Boiled it in the water for 10 minutes and allowed to cool in fridge. May need to boil a little longer in order to get it to gel.

I haven't tried it in my hair yet. Tomorrow when I wash my hair and get the current product out of it, I'll give you a report. If it works the way I've been told, it will be way cheaper than buying hair gel.



Now for the really good stuff:

Let me preface this recipe by saying that I hate healthy cookie recipes. I can't stand them. Yuck, Yuckitty, Yuck. But...

I found one that I absolutely adore. Guess what? Has flax in it. Even better? I call these my skinny cookies. I can eat one or two of these and make my sweet tooth happy and it fills me up so that I don't eat about forty in one sitting. Yay!

The recipe comes from the book "Beauty Secrets of the Bible". If you are into making your own natural beauty products, this book has some neat stuff in it as well as this recipe.

(Adapted by me)BSB Chocolate Chip Flaxseed Cookies:

1/2 cup butter or margarine (original recipe called for butter substitute. I used what I had which was margarine)
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
3/4 brown sugar - I used dark since that is what I had on hand
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 12oz pkg dark chocolate chips (Semi-sweet works too, just not quite as healthy)

Cream butter, sugar and flaxseeds together. Add egg and vanilla. I then slowly added the salt, soda and flour. Then add the chocolate chips. Drop Tbsp size portions onto cookie sheet. These do not spread while baking so you can put a lot onto one sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 minutes.

These are fantastic. I can't say enough about how wonderful this recipe is. I think I need to go make more, right now.

FYI

Just a quick FYI - I'm off at the lake for the week. See ya on Monday!

You know it's a good day...

When...

1. You get to sleep a little late because not only is school out, but the hubby has the day off because it's a holiday and can keep the kids away long enough for you to get some much needed beauty rest.

2. You finally finish a knitting project:

Clever Little Shawl
Yarn: my handspun
Needles: 10.5 US
Began: 4/25/09
Completed: 5/25/98
Super easy and exceedingly clever construction. Doesn't need a shawl pin to stay on and leaves your hands free. Love it!

3. And best of all, I found a swim suit that I like. Hides what needs hiding and adds what needs adding to. Goes for $77 online. I paid $19.99 at Ross.

Little Nuthin Links

Another day of little "nuthins" since I have nuthin of real value to show you or report.

I was messing around on Digg this morning (I adore this site) and found a few amusing links for ya:

1. And you just thought those nursery rhymes were safe to tell your children. History is a wonderful thing.

2. I've been to a couple of these (Edinburgh Castle - been there twice, and the Tower of London) and I cheated that I didn't see any ghosts.

3. Just for the sweet tooth. From smitten kitchen, a fantastic food blog.

4. You know you feel like this when that one certain child pushes your very last button.

Speaking of that child, we attended an honors day ceremony for his older brother and while I was sitting around wasting time I pointed the camera at the Youngest trying to get a cute pic of him. First I got this:

and then he immediately made this face:

Misc. Nuthins

For those who care to know:

I am not a "grill", I am a Mommy. Apparently, Mommies are not allowed to be girls.


We also keep food in the "re-frissa-bator"

and the favorite color of the minute around here is "Orangen".

The News

Knitting News: I've only got like three repeats to go on my Clever Little Shawl to go. Woohoo!

Carding/Spinning News: I'm still carding that damn brown stuff together. It's taking forever. I have about 4 more batts to go before the next step of carding. The first step was to mix the different fibers together. The next step consists of splitting the batts and carding them together randomly in order to get the most homogeneous mix that I can get without overcarding. I could probably skip that step, but I don't want to.

I'm going to have around 20 batts that are approximately 2 ounces a piece. If you think that I'm complaining now, you just wait until the spinning all starts. I'm planning a 3 ply dk weight yarn and will be mixing and matching bobbins then like I'm mixing and matching batts now. This could take all year to complete at this rate.

Kitchen renovation news: Haven't done a thing since the last report. Oh wait, I did order new knobs and pulls and they came in today. This was super inexpensive which is the only way I was going to get new ones. I had a total of 31 knobs to replace. There are a crap load of cabinets and drawers in my kitchen, it's a fairly big kitchen. I went to ebuilderdirect.com and ordered these beautiful birdcage style oil rubbed bronze knobs and pulls and got them for about $1.50 a piece. Click on the link to look at the ones I picked. Love 'em! They look fantastic with the chandelier we already have in the kitchen.

I'm hoping to get back into the primering/painting stuff sometime tomorrow or Friday. Now that the knobs are here I have more incentive to get this stuff done!

That's all the news I've got today. Well, other than the kids and I just had a serious discussion about poor attitudes, not minding, and how I'm not their maid. Won't be the last time that discussion hits the fan. Gee, I can't wait 'til the teenage years. (go back and read that sentence again, and just imagine it dripping heavily with sarcasm.)

I'd go have an alcoholic beverage thanks to my children, but I don't think that would go over well when I have to go to church choir practice tonight, do you?

Spelling Bee

I had grand intentions of getting so much done today, I really did. But it just wasn't meant to be. I bet that I had six different things on the menu today. Oh well.

What I did do was to attend the Second Grade Spelling Bee at the Eldest's school. Guess who came in 2nd place in the entire second grade?

The bad thing is, his final word was juvenile. Well, that wasn't so bad really. I know adults that can't spell that word. What was bad was that he spelled his word correctly and the judges didn't hear it. To top it off, the word that the winner got: mountain. I'm sorry, but these two words are not even in the same league, in my opinion. However, the Eldest doesn't know it yet, but this is a blessing in disguise.

I figure this is an excellent lesson for him on how the world isn't fair and how not to get all caught up in it, so that's what we discussed on the way home. Funny thing is, I remember having a very similar incident happen to me in elementary school and we discussed that as well.

I love it when life delivers these lessons into my hands so that I can teach them more effectively. This is something that every child needs to learn early: that not everyone gets to win all the time and the quicker they learn this, the better. I hate the way people try and make things "fair" for the young kids where "everybody is a winner". The philosophy may look good on paper, but in reality I think today's society is setting up it's children to to hate themselves later in life when they do fail to achieve something. Sooner or later it will happen as an adult and they won't have those early experiences at losing to fall back on.

It's so tough to see that lesson driven home though. A bunch of these kids left the stage in tears. The tension was so thick up there and it was really hard to watch. It really wasn't a big deal, they won't be competing with anyone else. It's just preparation for the next couple of years of spelling bees. But, oh boy, were they nervous.

Yes, I want my children to succeed, but I want them to lose occasionally too, just to prepare them for life's little surprises later on in their adult lives. There's a reason the phrase "tough love" was coined. If more people indulged in a little tough love with their kids and let them lose sometimes, maybe some of those overachiever kids that make the news when they failed at something might have been able to adjust better.

EDITED: To correct my own spelling. How ironic is that? I misspelled overachiever. Wouldn't you just know it?

Ongoing Projects

I apologize for flaking and missing three days of blogging. I was hip deep into either the kitchen restoration or recovering from the kitchen restoration. It's not done, far from it. There's still lots to do, but I'm only working on it now a couple of times a week. It'll take a while.

I did get some carding done - still working on my brown sweater yarn project. I've begun carding all the separate fibers together and came up with the percentages. There's 2.5 pounds of fiber, 39% is brown and black alpaca, 59% blend of Corriedale and domestic wools and 2% nylon. It's so incredibly soft. I'd show you pics of it, but it doesn't look much different from the last one I took of the fiber. There's only so many ways you can photograph brown batts of fiber.

My two other ongoing projects had some "big" stuff happen though:

1. The Eldest ended up being the third highest reader of the entire school for the year and got to go to the Scholastic Book warehouse where he was congratulated, fed and given $10 bucks to shop. You'd think he would get books, but oh no, not him. He came home with computer games. Yep, I'm officially raising a computer geek.

2. The Youngest got his first gymnastics medal! Here he is with his best friend on the podium:

Ta-Da!

Dear So and So

Dear People Who Owned My House Before Me,

I can understand your bold usage of sea foam green on the walls in the dining room, the chartreuse green on the bathroom walls and the magenta on the cabinets. I mean, after all, even though I painted over those horrible colors, to each his own, right? There's a bit of gypsy blood in all of us lovers of color, or why else would I have painted my downstairs half bath a gorgeous, yet subdued, brick red?

What I can't understand, not even a little bit, was your approach to so many other things in this house. Why, oh why, did you decide that half-assed solutions to decorating and building were good ideas? That back deck? Not up to code I'm afraid. The hack job that you did when you put up a ceiling fan? You know, the one that fell out of the ceiling? That was also not up to code by the way.

And let's not forget your shoddy job with wallpaper in the bathrooms and kitchen. I suffered through your hideous taste in the paper that you picked. I also suffered through peeling off three layers of the foul stuff in the bathroom and two in the kitchen. I'm afraid the third layer had to remain on the walls in the kitchen as you never used primer on the walls before you laid the paper down. I learned that lesson from the bathroom.
I've repainted your kitchen walls and they look much nicer now. I'm still working on the wainscoting area, but things are going well now. I've gone from the disastrous wall paper above to this:

And finally, to this:

The white is just a primer (like you should have used), another color will soon be added that will go well with the wall color. It will be arriving asap.

But I'm afraid what makes me furious is the fact that you painted over the kitchen cabinets without priming them as well. I began working with them in an effort to repaint them and guess what? Your paint is now peeling off way too easily and is messing up my efforts. I will probably have to use paint stripper on all of the cabinets and their accompanying doors.

I have kids. Kids and paint stripper don't mix well. What the hell were you thinking? Could you not have done all these jobs correctly from the beginning and thereby paving the way for the next family to decorate their home in the colors and manner of their own choosing? Would that really have been such a stretch?

Are you now doing this to your current abode? I shudder to think what the next family will have to do to repair your imaginative use of color and your handywork, I really do.

And furthermore, do you know how much time you have sucked away from my knitting, spinning and dyework? I sadly think not. May you forevermore rot in the hell of your own wallpaper, paint and shoddy repairs of your own devising.

Sincerely,

Shea

A unique fiber artist's work

I love it when a fiber artist takes their work just a little bit farther than the rest of us and creates something really unique. This piece of work has no real purpose, but it is almost mesmerizing to watch:

Fluid Sculpture from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo.

Carding Central

I've set myself a long term spinning/knitting project. It started a while back with my quest for a dark brown next to the skin soft fiber. I finally achieved it by carding together some Corriedale (which I thought would never get used since it was over processed), some black/brown domestic wool and some black and brown alpaca.

All these fibers were given to me in vastly different shapes and styles. The Corriedale was a raw fleece, the alpaca was in a very thin roving form and the domestic wool, from the sheep shed studio, was in a compacted top form.

I new that I wanted these fibers to be equally distributed throughout the batts that I was going to make, so I ran each of them separately through my carder. This is the stage that I'm at now:


There is approximately 2.4 pounds of fiber here, should be plenty for a sweater for me. Basically what I'm planning on doing is taking sections off of each of the different kinds of batts and blending them together to form new batts. This is the only way that I could come up with that was clean and uniform. I'll figure out the percentages of the mix of fibers later.

I'm going to be going for a DK weight yarn with this. I'd like this to be a three ply yarn and I know that I will need approximately 1400 yards for the sweater that I'm planning to make with this. We'll see what happens.

In other news, I have finnished approximately 8.5 repeats of the Clever Little Shawl. Only 5.5 repeats to go!


I'm off to clean the house so that I can mess it up again with kitchen renovation this weekend! Have a great weekend!

Chalk One Up For Me

It's difficult with a strong willed child to find the right threat to use in public that will be effective in controlling the child's behavior and that won't get you turned over to the police for child abuse. I think that I might have lucked onto one. It works too, at least for now.

A friend has always threatened to call the police on her kids. All she has to do is pick up the phone and pretend to dial and they straighten right up. I haven't been quite as lucky with child number 2 in this respect. Nothing much phases him. Until now, that is.

We took a trip to the local Sherwin Williams store today and even though he was told "The Rules" before we got out of the car, upon walking through the front door he immediately began acting like a wild heathen. There's a reason I don't take him out in public very often.

Now I can threaten to spank his little behind, but I don't want to use it as a threat on every occasion. Sometimes it's nice to have a backup threat. So here he was being the heathen and I simply leaned down to him and said, "If you don't behave I'm taking you to the zoo to live with the monkeys." The results were very satisfactory, I must say. His eyes got big, he stood very still and said, "But I don't want to live with the monkeys" to which I responded, "then you better behave, huh?". Not only did he quit being wild, but no one called the cops on me either. Chalk one up for the Mommy.

By the way, does anyone else's cat use their spinning wheel treadle for a pillow?

Rootbeer

Today, just for fun, the kids and I decided to make some root beer. Now, firmenting drinks is not my forte. As a matter of fact, there was that one time in college that I tried it, but I don't think I'll share the full results of what happened with you. Just suffice it to say that there were lots of dark stains on my walls.

So. We used this recipe and some Zatarin's Rootbeer extract and a gallon jug. I have since moved it to the ugliest room in the house. That way if it explodes, I won't care. It'll just be another excuse to redo that room. BTW, I was careful to make sure that I had the liters to gallons ratios correct before mixing it all up.

The Youngest has been bawling since then. He was under the impression that, like Kool-aid, as soon as you mix it, you can drink it. He was so disappointed! Now for the next four days or so, I get to try and explain to him why he can't drink it yet. Oh boy.


In the knitting world, I completed two more repeats of the shawl. I now have half of it completed. This is taking a while for me to finish. I have several things going on at once. Spinning - I had to finish making the yarn. Kitchen Renovation - Forever Ongoing since I'm mostly doing this myself. Knitting - when I can. Family - Trying to squeeze them in after all of the above (A knitter's gotta have her priorities after all.) :)

Whirlwind of Inactivity

This weekend was a whirlwind of inactivity.

I did spin up another 250 yds of yarn for my Clever Little Shawl project though. I now have 640 yds of yarn which should be plenty to finish the shawl. Here's how the shawl looks at this point:


I could have done more on it, but I just got lazy this weekend. I just didn't want to do much of anything. My house is now showing it too.

The kids and I also finished emptying out the Easter dye boxes - all fifty of them. I now have 75 boxes worth of dye tablets to use. Yeah! We put all of the other stuff in the boxes into ziploc bags and I'm offering them up on Craigslist to any preschool teacher that can use them. There are the metal dipping sticks, cardboard memorty game, stickers, etc. Too much to just throw away. Some clever teacher can use up every bit of this stuff with their kids next year.

Here's some of my help:



Also wanted to show you something else. My Azeleas, they asploded:

They were more than half as tall as the peach tree next to them before the storms this weekend. Now they look pitiful and sickly. They were just beaten to a pulp by the hard rains that we had. But boy were they beautiful on this day!

What's wrong with me?

I think Madness has overtaken me. This morning started off like any other day, get up, eat, get kids ready, take kid to school, etc. Normal, boring Mommy crap. Then something happened.

It started when I was looking on Ravelry at the natural dye plants that can be planted in a garden. I knew that I wouldn't do that, but then I remembered reading somewhere about plants that mosquitoes avoid.

Now my whole extended family may keel over on reading this, but guess what I did during naptime today? Planted a tiny flower garden. Not sure what came over me, I must be possessed or something. I am NOT the outdoorsy, garden-y type. That would be my In-Laws who not only possess green thumbs, but every other appendage on their bodies are green as well. They have fantastic gardens. Me? Nope. I hate being outside. So I'm really not sure why I was bitten by the gardening bug on this lovely.

Except for maybe experimentation. I really want to know if some of these plants will help chase away mosquitoes. We'll see, if I don't kill them with neglect from this point on.

The bad thing? They're guaranteed to attract a few bees and bugs and the Youngest is terrified of those. Oh well.

We have very nasty red, thick Georgia clay here. It just about killed me to dig it up and mix it with potting soil and then spread it back out. While doing that, I had to tear out all the nasty wild violets, wild strawberries and chickweed that had taken over the area. I wish I had taken a before pic of it to show you, but it was really nasty.

The only things worth saving were some Spiderwort and some other little herb-y thing my Mother in law gave us years ago. I tried seperating some of that out and replanting it, but I'm not sure if that will live. I'm an optomistic type though, so I'm going to will it to live. Think that'll work?

I planted lavendar, marigolds and some creeping verbain. I have no idea what creeping verbain is, but it said that butterflies like it, so I threw it into the garden as well. Told ya I don't have a clue what I'm doing.

When the Youngest and I went shopping this morning for all the stuffs, you should have heard the fit he pitched about the marigolds. He wanted only the Orangen (his word for orange) ones! He got really mad that I picked out several different types and colors. Usually he's up for variety, but not this time.

So here's the pics of the tiny little beds:

There was very little rhyme or reasoning involved on where I planted things. I just put them where I wanted to and we'll hope for the best.


The huge plant at the corner of the deck area is a Seloeum (sp?). I have no clue how to spell that one right. It's like a big elephant ear. It can't take the winters here, so we have to cart it and it's brother into the garage during that time. It absolutely loves it during the other three seasons though. You can see from the crack that it's busting out of it's pot and needs a new one.

And so now my little garden is planted and watered and I'm very tired, but I'm priding myself on finding yet another way to avoid cleaning the inside of my house. I'm going to go sit and knit now. I'm pooped.

Pineapple Cream Cheese Pie

I'm going to share a tasty recipe with you today. I could tell you that I'm doing this out of the goodness of my own heart and because it's all about giving back and blogging about wonderful things, but it wouldn't be the complete truth. No, blogging about this is more of a way for me to excuse away the gluttony that is caused by a summer pie. So, go make this and I won't feel as guilty about scarfing this pie 'cause all you folks will be scarfing it too. Misery Gluttony loves company.

My sweet fang (way too big to be a tooth) kicked it into high gear today and I had to do something about it. A few weeks ago we had a millionaire/million dollar pie. It was wonderfully sinful. This time I wanted something similar, but without huge chunks of fruit in it. It had to be sweet and tart as well, perfect for spring/summer weather.


Here it is:

Shea's Pineapple Cream Cheese Pie

Ingredients: (makes two pies)

2 graham cracker pie crusts
1 8oz. pkg Philly 1/3 less fat cream cheese
1 small carton cool whip
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 twenty oz. can crushed pineapple
Sprig of mint for garnish (optional)

Cream together the cream cheese and sugar, then add in the lemon juice. Once well blended, add the pineapple. Fold in the cool whip and then pour the contents of the bowl evenly into the two graham cracker pie crusts.

Chill for a couple of hours before serving to allow it to set.

Variations:
1. You can use fat free or regular cream cheese, I just used what I had on hand.
2. Leave out the sugar and use a can of condensed sweet milk instead. I would have done this, but ran out of it. It's truly decadent when you use the condensed sweet milk.

So, now that I have my pie, I need to make the guys in the house a cake. From a cake mix of course, because that's what I have and I'm lazy. This will hopefully divert everyone's attention from the yummy pie that is in the fridge.

By the way and before you point it out, Yes, I know I said I need to lose weight, but I also know that I have zero willpower. So there.

Dye Day

Today was dye day at the House of Shea. Remember the 75 boxes of egg dye that I and my Mom purchased recently? I decided it was high time that we test these for color accuracy and saturation. This literally took half of my day and all of my kitchen to do.

I got out a bag of scrap fiber and the postal scale and measured out bumps that weighed .2 ounces each.


I got out all the glass jars I could find and mixed up my dyes with the vinegar. The directions suggest 1/2 cup water and three tablespoons vinegar per dye tablet. I did some playing around and found that for each .2 oz bump, I would need 1/4 cup of product to get the deep color that I was looking for. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

I set up my table with post it notes on two sides. Top down was yellow, orange, green, red, blue and purple. Left to right was blue, green, yellow, orange, red, purple. Once these were dyed in the microwave (2 min. on and 2 min. resting until dye exhausts) I put them on plates and on the table in their graph position so that I could keep up with what colors were mixed together.



These really don't make sense lined up as they are in this picture. Once they dry I'll be able to set up a color wheel to show you how they turned out.

The colors were not what I expected at all. Purple and Green dye tablets are not at all true. The purple likes to break and is more blue than true purple. The Green is a Teal green and has way too much blue in it. Red, Orange, Yellow and Blue were as expected.

I was looking for more muted colors in some areas and didn't get them at all. I will have to go back and add more complimentary colors into what I already have on the table.

It will be interesting to go back and overdye some of these with browns and grays. I'll either do this with Wilton's or I will break down and get some more Jacquard dyes to do this with.


EDITED TO ADD: There is both Red #40 and Red #3 dyes in these tablets. The box does not say which colors contain which reds. However, the purple kept breaking like crazy, so I guess it's safe to assume it has the red #3 in it. Red #3 can be persnickety at the best of times. It has a problem with acidity. It's not soluble below 6 ph so when the acid, in this case vinegar, is added, it separates and will eventually wash out. Next time I try this, I will add the acid very, very slowly and probably on the stove top over a long period of time and check the results then.