Stripes stripes stripes

It's been awhile. I know. But I'm done another knitting project! For now, this is all I can show y'all. 

The stripes didn't exactly turn out how I thought they would when I bought the yarn, but that's okay. It still made a super cute sweater. Or at least I think so.

traditions

Does two years a tradition make? Is twice of something, enough? Because if so, then stephchows and I definitely have a few traditions. 1) We go on a camping and hiking weekend in the summer. 2) I make her a I've seen and loved from craftgawker for our birthday. 

Last year I made her this bag from and old shirt. This year I made her a skirt!

Okay. Yes. This is also a skirt made from a shirt. Coincidence? Not really...

I saw a bunch on posts via craftgawker and really wanted to try making my own. It was dead simple. Well, unless you take into account that I had to a) sew and b) iron. Two things I don't love doing and am not great at.

The changes that I made:
1) I sewed down the button edge so that the skirt can't be unbuttoned. (No need for an embarrassing situation!)
2) I sewed a band along the top in which to put the elastic. (It's being strategically covered by a cute belt)

And that's it. It was really that simple. Some cutting. A little sewing. And now hopefully Steph will have a lot of fun wearing it.

Cupcakes, anyone?

It wasn't so long ago that I was making other cupcakes for a wedding. 

Well, I'm at it again. This time the favours of choice are chocolate raspberry and ginger. 9 dozen cupcakes down, 4 dozen to go. Phew.
Then I just have to decorate them... Easy? ... Right?

Peach Afghan

If you've been around the blog before, you should be well aware of the fact that I love the Olympics and I love my grandma. I can (and have) watched the Olympics all day. If it's an Olympic sport, I can and will get pretty excited about it. Rowing? Hells yeah! Swimming? Of course. Diving. Did you see that inward three and a half tuck? And don't even get me started on Gymnastics!

So what better thing to do than pick up an Olympic knitting project. A while back my lovely 97 year old grandma was telling me how she was sad she'd never finish the afghan she was working on. Well, hello! Perfect project for me! So this time when she came to town to visit I told her to bring the half done afghan. So here it is:

 I have three afghans in this exact pattern. I love them. I got one when I was born. All my siblings and cousins did. You can't really tell from these pictures, but the yarn is peach. Not my favourite colour... but for grandma I will work on it.

So, here's to many (too many?) more hours of Olympic excitement and afghan knitting.

Hope y'all are enjoying the Games as much as I am!

Cross my heart

Summer is for weddings. Or at least that's the way it often seems around here. And this year there are two weddings at the end of the summer that I'm really looking forward to. One, for my younger brother. The other is for a friend who I've known since I was 8. We went through middle school and university together. (yup. different high schools.) We aren't best-ies or anything, but we've stayed in touch and I truly respect him as a person and am really excited that he's getting married!!

The other exciting thing about his wedding? It's going to be almost completely homemade. The bride's mom is making her dress. The bride's father is weaving material for the groom's shirt. The wedding is going to take place at the family cottage and everyone is going to pitch in for making food and decorations and everything. It makes my crafty heart sing.

So, I couldn't just go out and buy them a card. That would be against the point. A slap in the face. So, I made them a cross stitch card.

 I won't lie. I didn't come up with the idea on my own. I saw this only a few days ago, and just change the idea from embroidering shoes, to cross stitching paper.

It's so easy! What you'll need:
- Paper
- embroidery floss & needle
- ruler & pencil
- cross stitch chart.

So, I just googled "heart cross stitch" and in 0.0 seconds had images of what I was going to put on the front of the card. I randomly decided that I was going to make my grid 5mm x 5mm to make the math easy, and then figured out where the center of the card was and went from there.

If you look at the first picture you'll see that I made a grid of pencil dots that could get erased later. Then, you are off to the races! Cross Stitch and go!

 Some tips. 
- Make your holes in the paper before you are doing the actually cross stitching. Much easier that way.
- I thought that 5mm grid was a little big and would make it smaller next time if I did it again. But it was very easy on the math
- tough paper is probably better. (I've had this stuff sitting around since high school. Waste not, want not!)

I'm kinda looking forward to trying this again!

Lunch bag

I'm one of those people who takes my lunch to work everyday. I like leftovers. I love getting to pack fruit and fruit and vegetables and more fruit to eat throughout the day. For the past few years, I've been throwing my daily snacks into this reusable lulu.lemon bag I got when I bought a pair of pants a few years ago. It was the perfect size. Not too big. Not too small. So it was horribly depressing when it started to die. And sure. I could have just bought another bag... but did I mention that this bag was the *perfect* size?

So, while I don't sew, I really wanted pretty much the exact same bag. So sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do. Right? So, using the old one as to get the basic pattern, I made a new one. 

One thing's for sure: with this bright pink and orange material (that was quite inexpensive) I don't think any of the guys at work will be stealing my lunch.

pinkie

It's summer! And... perhaps as you can tell, I haven't been crafting much. It happens. But the garden is being picked. Much soccer is being played (and watched). Weekend trips are being done. And let me tell you, I'm loving it.

But I have been working on a few crafts here and there. A shawl, a teeny sweater, and (the only completed craft) a crocheted necklace.

The necklace didn't quite work out the way I'd hoped it would, so I might just frog it and make something new. But the idea was to crochet around a wire necklace with a magnetic clasp. It worked. ... just the way I did it was a little boring. So I'm thinking about doing scallops rather than just plain sc.
Thoughts?