70's fabrics

   I thought I'd share some of the fabrics my mom gave me recently when she found out I'd bought a sewing machine. They're pretty fabulous.
 
   The birds would work well with Girlonthrocks' home decor color palette. I fould a 70's era McCalls pattern for tank tops at the East Bay Depot, and I think I might try it with the yellow seersucker first.
 
   The safari print is my favorite, but I have sooo little of it. I'm going to have to think of something special to do with it.

Finally, my mom also turned up these stuffed animal patterns that are pretty damn cute. There's also a yellow duck. I'm in the process of scanning them to I can make them into iron-ons in the future. hmmmm. Perhaps I should do that with the safari print too.

How big is a baby's foot?

   This is a question that comes up all the time at the Mel-o-dee knitting group. None of us have children and we've learned the hard way the babies have oddly large feet. So with the birth of my new nephew, I thought I'd take the opportunity to document his feet for future reference.
   Here is the first set of photos, he is two weeks old, 10.5 lbs and 23.5 inches long (apparently that's way above the 99th percentile in length). He has put on 2 lbs since birth and grown about 2 inches!
 
   Based on the photos, I would put his foot length at 3.25 inches and the width at 1.5 inches. Man, the poor guy was NOT happy to have these photos taken. He was nice and warm in his PJs and we thrust him out into the cold. I hope he doesn't subconsciously associate me with trauma now!

Auntie M's crocheted cradle

Here are two bad cell phone pics of a doll and cradle that my Aunt knit for my niece. The base is a plastic margarine container and the skirt lifts up to drawstring closed.

Placemats sewn on the new machine

   Here is a picture of the first thing I sewed on my new sewing machine. Placemats! They are double-sided, with two layers of cotton and a layer of flannel on the inside. Using flannel instead of interfacing was a suggestion in the book "Bend-the-rules Sewing". Apparently it makes for a more fabric-like feel when its all done. Which I can attest to, though I've never used interfacing.

   All the pieces were sewn together and then I covered the edge in store-bought binding. They gave me a lot of practice on sewing binding and if you look closely you'll notice that the corners of the binding are different on each placemat. I think I like the last one I did best, which involves wrapping the binding around.

   Now if I ever clean the sewing stuff off my table I might be able to use them.

"in league with the law"

Tonight was the rehearsal dinner for Auntie Sue's wedding and all the out of townies as well as us wedding partiers were there. The most adorable was her former roommate's eight-year-old daughter who told us a joke she made up herself and told us in her 8 yr old english accent.
"What do you call a flea that's in league with the law?"
"A po-lice-man."

Cargo pants bag

At the Maker Faire swap over a year ago, I picked up a pair of boys cargo shorts with the idea of turning the pockets into a bag. Well I finally got around to it! I cut off the leg and ripped the hem to get a little extra material. This gave enough space to do a gusseted bottom. I lined it with red cotton duck, which is pretty stiff and helps keep the shape. The heavy duty zipper and belt/strap are both from the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse (one zipper down, 231 to go). I've never made a bag like this before and I learned a lot about what not to do. For example, I sewed in the zipper before attaching the strap = difficult. I may make a tutorial for the second leg; that is, if that one goes significantly more smoothly.

The problem with multi-colored yarn.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Why do some multi-colored yarns look fantastic after knitting and some look like color barf? Its hard to tell by just looking at the ball. Exhibit A: multi-colored yarn by Malabrigo Yarn that I used to knit a herringbone stitch scarf (aka My So-Called Scarf). This I like. Exhibit B: yarn by Three Sheep Yarn striped with solid purple that looks like barf. Ok maybe its not that bad, but I'm less than happy with it. And its supposed to be a gift, so that make me madder at it. Nonetheless, I was really attracted to the yarn ball in the store.
One indicator might be the length of each color. For example in Exhibit A I got a couple stitches in each color before it changed. With the Afghan yarn, sometimes I get just one stitch and then its another color. Maybe I'm just unhappy with the color palette. How do other people evaluate multi-colored yarns before buying them?