I went to another Knitting Night last night at a friend's house. There usually isn't a lot of actual knitting that gets done, but in between gabbing and stuffing my face, I managed to make this ice cream cone. I think I'm eventually going to make them for my shop as part of a "sweets" set, but this one is for E since, thanks to a recent visit by my mother-in-law, she is currently obsessed with ice cream. It actually cracks me up because she has a little plastic ice cream cone that she carries around all the time, repeating "ice-skee" over and over again. Never mind the fact that she's had ice cream exactly twice in her life, and both times were soft serve, not scoops on a cone, but I guess it doesn't matter.
I've been trying to work out a pattern for some hats for my Etsy shop. Here's my first try. I think it turned out pretty cute. T actually commented that he liked the texture. I was shocked that he'd even notice such a thing. I'm still experimenting with other textures, but I like the general shape of this one.
Well, after all the flurry of work getting my Etsy store up (even though there are only the three items), I kind of felt burned out. And between that and T working late all last week, I decided to take a short break from all crafting. But this weekend, I realized that E's school starts in a few weeks and I really needed to get on the ball about making her nap mat.
As I mentioned before, her nap mat was going to be way more basic than the one I made for a friend. I managed to knock most of it out tonight, and I almost feel bad about how plain it is compared to the other one.
Basically, I took the super lazy way out and bought a Kindermat from Target. It's basically a vinyl-covered folding mat - kinda like a little gym mat, but a little cushier. Then I made what is essentially a giant pillowcase for it and put velcro at the very bottom to close the opening. I used a single layer of fleece for the attached blanket, and made a little pillow which I just stuffed inside the cover.
I think I may go back and make a separate segment for the pillow and attach it with button tabs. I also definitely need to add some sort of strap to hold it all together.
Anyways, here it is in all it's lame glory.
And a shot of it folded (which doesn't work very well with the pillow shoved in there):
It's homemade! Ah, I know, I'm cheesy. Ever since I started making my own pizza dough though, we've gotten to be a bit spoiled about pizza. It's hard to reconcile paying $15 for a one or two-topping pizza when T & I can each make our own with whatever we want for less than half that. And it usually tastes about a hundred times better.
Anyways, I just had to share some pics of the yumminess from last night's dinner. I made a chicken pesto pizza with baby bella mushrooms, red peppers, and goat cheese on a whole wheat crust, pictured above. It was so good, and yes, I made a total pig of myself and ate the whole thing!
T's was a more traditional sausage and peppers (red and green) with red sauce and mozzarella. I only have a picture from before it went into the oven (he tore into it too fast after it came out). He ate all of his too. Since we only used half the dough, I think we're going to do a repeat for dinner tonight. Yeah, we're gluttons like that.
I'm not normally into the hippie look (those of you that know me well have probably heard me curse 'those damn dirty hippies' more than once). But after seeing the tie-dye outfits that a friend of mine recently did, I couldn't resist. It's amazing how the things I find to be abhorrent on an adult are adorable on a child. Anyways, this is probably one of the very few crafty things that I've never really tried. So when the same aforementioned friend invited me over to tie-dye (and kindly and generously let me use all of her dyes and stuff), of course I said yes!First off, let me just say that I had no idea how involved this whole process was going to be. We spent a lot of time just getting the clothes prepped and ready to dye, and then the dyeing process itself was pretty messy. Definitely not ideal for little kids. While doing this, I managed to dye my leg with a few big blue patches, and E ended up with rainbow feet.The other thing tie-dyeing requires? Patience. Not something I'm very good at. Once you get all the dyes on the clothes, you have to let them sit for at least several hours, preferably overnight. I managed to wait until about 9pm, and frankly, it's a good thing I didn't wait any longer. It took me quite some time to get everything rinsed out till the water ran pretty clear and then I threw them in batches into the washing machine. There's no way I could've done this with a toddler clinging to my leg.But here are the end results. First up, E's stuff, which turned out fabulous! I think the heart one is my favorite.
Then a random newborn onesie that I thought might make a good gift for someone. It was supposed to be more of a swirl pattern, but well, it kinda went all wonky.
Here's one I made for myself:
And lastly, there are these two sad ones that I made for T. They really needed a LOT more dye, but you can at least sort of see the patterns I was going for. I told him that if he only wears them to mow the lawn, I won't be offended.
