Dear blog or pinterest...

I'm very much a pinterest junky.  I've been on it for about a year, several months before the craze hit.  I'm a bit annoyed today, however, because I'm finding that I can not pin my own pictures from my own blog. :/

I don't know if this is blogger or pinterest -- I have to figure it's blogger.  At any rate I do wish they would fix whatever is preventing me from pinning my own pictures...

UPDATE:  Evidently it was Google Chrome's fault.  I opened it up in Safari and I could pin from it.  Yay!

Baby Blanket

It's spring break!  yay!  And happy Easter to all.

This year on my spring break I've determined that I need to do some projects, for my own sanity and pleasure.  I've been working on my new school bag as detailed below, cutting the strips of various fabrics for the patch work portions of the bag.  It's going to be gorgeous and I can't wait to see it finished and to use it.  I also plan to do some wall projects, using both drawing and fabric, for my house and for my friend Emilie's new office.

I promised photos of the baby blanket I completed for my own future child, so here they are:

Notice that I did not use "classic" baby colors.  I despise pastels.  Even though I used a gradient that includes blue, I feel that this blanket is unisex because these colors are pretty to anyone.  You can also see that I decided to work the boundary between the colors with a row of both colors together.  I like the shaggy, kind of fringed, effect this gave.

I ringed the blanket (worked in stockinette stitch because I love the smoothness of stockinette) with a checkerboard or basket weave pattern.

Here you can see a close up of the edging and you can also see what the back looks like.  I like the back of stockinette almost as much as the front because I like the uniformity of it.  The color of this photo is off -- a little bit greener than the yarns look in real life.

     Up close here you can see the "wrapped" look of the left side of my stitches (on the right side).  This is because I knit in the less common method that my mother calls "backwards."  ha ha ha...  I like knitting this way, not only because it's the way I taught myself to start with, but because I've always had very uniform stitches.  In later reading I found that this uniformity is why those who consciously choose to knit in this way do so.  I had no idea that there was anything unusual about the method when I first learned.  I taught myself to knit from an issue of Martha Stewart Living, and I couldn't tell you if it described this method or if I merely misunderstood and it worked out -- but either way, I like the way I knit.  My only problem is that I have trouble knitting in the round.  I don't know if that has anything to do with my method or not.  I can do it (I knitted most of one sock once), but I have trouble in the beginning with understanding which side is the right side and which is the wrong side.  I think I tended to work my rows inside out.

   When I have photos to show of this week's projects I'll post those.

Hi blog!

Hello -- It's been a nutty 3+ weeks, truly.  Never got past cutting out the pieces for the baby shoes, but did get the pretty embroidered butterfly burp cloth all finished up in time.

Lately I've been working on a knitting project, as those allow me to literally relax in bed while I do them in the late evenings before going to sleep.  I'm getting close to finished and when I do finish I'll post a picture.

A week ago our second FD came back in to our lives and our house -- and we are very happy to have her back.  School's been busy but life's been busier.

Today is the annual library sale where my sister and I go buy books for ridiculously cheap.  I'm pretty excited!  and that also means that I should sign off and dress appropriately for public consumption...

Clearly didn't get to it...

Well, clearly I didn't get to working on my projects yesterday.  The leadership team meeting only lasted until five, but then I ran in to a parent who wanted to talk a bit -- by the time I was home and finished eating dinner it was 7:00pm.  By then I was too tired.

This afternoon I'm still at school waiting for FD to get out of track practice.  I have piles of grading to do by Monday 8:00am, and will be out of town from directly after school Friday until Sunday afternoon, plus I have to finish the baby gift projects before I can leave and need to get some pink fondant roses made to decorate the cake for the shower Saturday.  Whew!  It's a lot on my plate, no doubt.  But, it's pretty much the norm for me...

This picture is my inspiration for the cake I'm decorating for the shower:

Hello and current projects

Not that I have any time, ha ha... but I'm going to try a craft and sewing blog to share my projects.

Right now I'm working on a few projects -- a pair each of these adorable baby shoes:

But I think I'll do buttons instead of bows, kind of like these:

(except the fabric I'm using is COVERED in little flowers)

And just the ballerina flats in this pic: 

(the fabric I'm using is yellow with strawberries and hearts and flowers)

I'm also finishing putting together a burp cloth on which I've embroidered a large butterfly (picture to come soon).


And finally, a new school bag for me -- a messenger bag in purple corduroy with patchwork inside and patchwork accents and cool buttons.  Here is a glimpse in to my design process -- my sketch:

I've chosen the fabrics for the patchwork and pockets.  I'll post pictures of those this evening.

I won't get home from work until probably 6:30 this evening because I have a leadership team meeting and those usually last a couple of hours.  I really enjoy being on the team that thinks about how to make the school better every single day, but it is definitely a time commitment.  FD (my foster daughter) has a track meet this evening and won't be getting back to the school until 10 pm.  Since we live an hour away, and I can not bring myself to stay that late, she will be spending the night with her BF (bio-family, NOT boyfriend -- I'm not crazy or stupid, and she claims to not have a boyfriend anyway).  What that means for my evening is that I'll be able to work on my projects some!  I do have hours worth of paper grading that I need to finish, but a person can only do so much of that in one day, reasonably.  I will have done about 2 hours of it today and I think that's enough to be considered reasonable (considering that's on top of 5 hours of actual class time, plus around an hour preparation for actual class time, and probably 2 hours of meeting time -- I think 10 hours of work is enough for one day -- agree?).

So, later this evening, I will post the embroidered butterfly, my progress on the shoes and the fabrics for the messenger bag.  Fun! :)

peace out --
me, the chick who's a teacher, wife, therapeutic foster mom, reader, and modern sewist -- I should probably come up with a clever nom de plume.