Happy 2015!  Do you feel like now we’re officially in the future?  I do.  2015.  Damn.  Anyway, I have some things to share with you and tell you about!  I’ll start with the older news…  In late December, the 4 days after Christmas, I released a free pattern via social media.  (Here it is on ravelry.)

The bulky weight Insta-hat pattern was posted in 4 mystery parts, on instagram and tumblr (and linked from twitter and my ravelry group).  It was like a quick mini-mystery-knit-a-long for after holiday knitting stress times, and I think everyone had a lot of fun!  Yay!

There’s the finished hat – I made 4 samples because they were SO quick to make!  And I topped one with a pom-pom; the extra-long sized version works well both long and slouchy, and with the brim folded under for extra ear warmth.  This one was made with this recycled hand-dyed yarn I made many years ago.

If you want to make it now, just click the links given on my leethalknits webpage, or on the ravelry page.  All pattern posts still exist for you to use for free!

And I have another free thing for you!  The 2015 leethal knits calendar is available for free download on leethal.net!  My new year gift to you :)

Last year’s post about my first calendar talks in more detail about the calendar in general.  This year’s is all photos of knitting on the needles.  And there’s a blank one that you can download to use with your own square-format photos.

Moving along… Do you know about Year of Making?  I had sort of been aware of it, just from seeing instagram posts tagged #yearofmaking throughout 2014, but I didn’t know where it came from until I heard Kim Werker’s podcast interview with Miriam Felton, the creator of the concept.

Kim also released an ebook about Year of Making, which I bought and it’s great (like everything Kim makes!), so I recommend that for some making inspiration.  Check out the table of contents page down below to get an idea of what’s in the ebook…

So, I decided to get on board for 2015, but loosely… I won’t be posting a photo of what I make every day on instagram, but I will try to put photos of each day’s making up in this flickr set.  I’ll instagram the good stuff, and I’ll probably put up some tumblr posts of bigger projects here and there.  I’ll just see where the year takes me!

Something I love about Kim’s experience with her first year of making is how she ended up getting really into making things she had never done before, like making soap, and painting.  I don’t have plans to learn any big new kinds of making, but I do want to get more into sewing this year, and maybe more drawing, and more spinning, and I’ll just see if anything else calls out to me!  (Above and below are pages from Kim’s ebook.)

As for my “rules” for myself, for what I’ll count as a #yearofmaking thing… like I said, I plan to be very loose, not strict at all, so missing days is fine – when I’ve done year-long project things like this in the past, I tend to get stressed out about it as the year goes on, and I don’t want this to cause any kind of extra stress in my life.  I usually do some kind of making every day for my job, knitting on a design project, etc, so I mostly won’t count work-related making in this, although sometimes I might, depending on the specifics.

An allowance I’m going to give myself is that house projects can count as the making for the day; if I spend a chunk of time working on cleaning up my studio (which relates to being able to use the space for future making), or if I do some kind of house organizational/decor thing, which might not necessarily be “making” exactly, that counts for me.  I had a sort-of-resolution last year to get my studio in order, and it had ups and downs throughout the first half of the year, and then it just got out of control and ended 2014 worse than how it started.  So, studio sorting will be a not-so-fun year of making project for the beginning of this year, so that I’ll have the space I need to do sewing projects and fun stuff like that!

Another of my first projects, which I plan to start today, is to make a 2015 planner – I want to be more organized about my work this year, release more patterns, give myself deadlines, stay on track, so I’m going to experiment with an analog paper calendar book.  I bought a plain spiral-bound notebook, and Pete’s uncle gave me this great set of nice colored pencils for Christmas (thanks, Terry!), so I’m going to get to work drawing out monthly and weekly calendar pages.  Then I’ll plan my year of design, and it’ll be there on paper, much harder to move around than iCal fake-deadlines, which I always end up bumping as designs take longer than they should!

One other random, making-related thing I want to show you… I made some photo books and I’m really happy with how they turned out, so I plan to make more!  I wanted some kind of print versions of all the digital photos we’ve taken over the years, on trips and stuff, and I thought it would be fun to make these books instead of just making old fashioned albums :-p

I put the best of Pete’s and my instagram photos into yearly insta photo books; I’m going to start the 2014 edition soon.  The insta books include captions for the photos, so in the future we can look back at what we did each year.  And then the other 2 are photo books of trips we took, no captions or anything, just a physical book we can have on the shelf.  Now that I’ve made a few and I have templates, I can make more pretty easily, of older trips, and future ones!   (I used iWork Pages, same as how I make my knitting patterns, to make the PDFs, and then I had them printed by MagCloud, which does very affordable paperback book printing, as long as the page count isn’t too high, since the price is per-page.)

Okay that’s some making, and plans for 2015 making.  The first week of the year has been a little off, but I’m hoping it’s going to be a good one!  Let’s go!

If you follow me on instagram, you may remember my excitement when I hit upon this idea many months ago:

(caption: Made a broken record into a yarn bowl! It’s not perfect, but I think this concept could be awesome with some practice!)

A photo posted by Lee Meredith (@leethalknits) on Apr 4, 2014 at 12:02pm PDT

I had a broken record, so I made it into a bowl, but with a hole chipped out of it, and then I realized… I could thread yarn through the hole and use it as a yarn bowl!

So then I played around with the concept, made a bunch to bring to an event where I was selling things, but in the end decided it’s not something I’m going to make to sell as a regular thing.  Shipping would be annoying, and I wouldn’t be able to sell them for much since they do break pretty easily if you drop them, so they’re not like a long-lasting high-quality item (I sold them for $6 at the event, just a fun cheap impulse buy kind of thing).  They totally function as yarn bowls, but not to the same extent as nice ceramic bowls, since they are very lightweight and bounce around if the yarn ball pulls.

What they are is a fun thing to make in 5 minutes for yourself and for knitting friends!  They are SO quick to make, and cheap if you have access to vinyl records no one wants to listen to (thrift stores, record store 50 cent or $1 bins, or sometimes records stores have free boxes in the front to give away crap nobody wants) – I imagine this being an easy project you can make a bunch of one afternoon, and bring them to your knit night to pass out for everyone as a fun holiday gift, or just for the heck of it!

So, here’s what you need:

• A vinyl record (one that’s too scratched up to listen to, or that no one would want – don’t melt anything good, it would make me cry!)
• Scissors (big ones that are okay to use for this kind of thing, not nice ones obviously)
• An oven
• An oven-safe bowl
• Gloves (things will only heat up to around 225 degrees, so knit wool gloves should be enough to protect your hands, while letting you use them) or oven mitts
• Optionally, another bowl or two for shaping your yarn bowls into different shapes and sizes

Before I make a bowl, I usually wash the record, with dish soap like a dish – it’s much easier to wash a flat record than to clean the bowl after it’s been made!

Heat up the oven to around 225 degrees (anywhere from 200-250 should be fine). Turn your oven-safe bowl upside down, and place the record on top, then put that in the oven:

While it’s in there, put on your gloves and get your scissors ready…

Leave it in for about 2 minutes, or until you see it melt down over the bowl.  Don’t leave it in extra long, as it may get too melty and fume-y.  If you take it out as soon as it’s soft, the fumes shouldn’t be bad, but of course keeping the room ventilated is a good idea!

So, take it out, and immediately make your cut, to form your hole for the yarn to go through.

There are lots of different ways you can do this – the simplest is as you see below, just a straight line diagonally into the edge:

Once the cut has been made, it will already be starting to harden back up again (by the time I took that above photo, it was already hardened), so put it back on the upside-down bowl and back into the oven for another couple minutes.

When it’s re-softened, take it out and put it inside a right-side-up bowl (either the same one you’ve been using in the oven, or a different one), and form your bowl shape, and your yarn hole.

For the bowl shape, remember your yarn needs to fit in there, so it can’t be crazy wavy in and out (which is how the record will naturally want to bend).  For the yarn hole, if you made a cut like the one pictured, then spiral the strip into a tube.

For other kinds of yarn holes, just remember you’ll want to be able to get the yarn in and out, so make a hole with a slit or opening of some kind.  After the tutorial are lots of photos of different bowls I made while experimenting, so you can get ideas for different kinds of holes.

Once things are formed, just hold it all in place how you want it for about a minute, and then it should be hardened up and finished!  If you mess it up somehow when forming the shape, just stick it back in the oven for a minute to re-soften.

Here’s that finished bowl in action!

You can also form bowl shapes around the outside of an existing bowl, if you want a different kind of yarn hole – I think this one was made that way, so it’s wider / more open:

So that’s it, so easy and quick!  Now here are a bunch that I’ve made!

If you make some bowls, I would love to see them!  If you post a photo on instagram, @leethalknits to show me, or tweet @leethal, or add photos to my old leethal flickr group :)  Have fun!

New bulky, QUICK patterns, just in time for last-minute holiday knitting!  This is technically one new pattern, plus one pattern re-release, but they are available together as a new matching set.

Twist on a Classic (ravelry link) is a new pattern for fingerless mitts – they are fun and speedy to make, they are cozy in bulky yarn (but can also be made in lighter weights), they are custom fit to your hands, and they have a classic look that would be pleasing to any giftee ;)  But also, I recommend making a pile for yourself, as I have done since designing them – I’m wearing the red/orange pair right now as I type and I love them!!

What a Twist (ravelry link) is a re-release of my Pink Squish Hat pattern from Knitscene in summer 2013.  The pattern rights went back to me, so I made a leethal-style pdf, renamed it, and now you can buy the pattern directly from me.  It’s not a typical leethal pattern – it’s designed in a single weight/gauge (bulky weight, 13 stitches to 4 inches), and there are no modifications or variations offered – but, it is constructed in a cool modular way that makes knitting it really fun!  And it’s reeeally cozy to wear!

When I made plans to self-publish the hat, one thing that bothered me was that I wasn’t able to squeeze a hat out of one skein of the recommended yarn, I had to dip into a second skein, leaving almost a full skein left over.  So, I thought, how about I design a pattern that’s perfect for using up that almost-skein, for an item that pairs well with the hat?  So that’s what I did!  2 skeins of Quince & co. Puffin (or other similar bulky yarns) are the perfect amount to make a hat and a matching pair of mitts!

They are fun to make together, since they use a lot of similar techniques, and they are definitely great to wear together, both being covered in bulky cables and garter stitch squishiness!

So, you can get the patterns individually (from my site, hat/mitts, or on ravelry, hat/mitts) for $5.50 each, or you can get them together at a discounted set price – $8 for both.

I don’t need to say much about the hat; it’s pretty straightforward, and I posted about it back when the magazine was released.  Several projects have been posted on ravelry, so you can see what other knitters had to say over there.  I made this new sample above with the contrasting crown cable, but I’m actually not into how that looks, so I recommend just using one color throughout ;)

But I will tell you more about the mitts!  They are made sideways, so they’re custom fit around your hand, and the cable is knit modularly with no picked up stitches, just simple short rows (no wrapping), with increases and decreases connecting it as you knit to the adjacent sideways sections.  The mitts are joined together with 3-needle bind-offs, and the thumbs are knit in the round.

They can optionally be made with a contrasting color cable, which is a fun way to show off a small amount of a special yarn, like I did with my handspun sample…

…which are solid color handspun for the main yarn:

They were originally designed for bulky weight, but since they are custom sized around your hand, they can easily be made in any weight.  The pattern as written works well down to around aran weight (or anywhere from heavy worsted through all levels of bulky/chunky weights).  Here is my aran weight sample:

(That’s a recycled hand-dyed yarn, which slowly changes colors from orange to red.)

There are modification notes included for going down to lighter weights, and/or making longer mitts, and also for changing the placement/width of the cables, for if you’re using a lighter weight and want to expand the cable… I started a new pair today using a wider cable modification, again with a special handspun yarn as the cable panel:

An awesome tester knit up a mitt with the wider cable mod, and the longer length mod, which you can see on ravelry.  The way the pattern works, if you are a somewhat experienced knitter, once you make one pair normally so that you understand how the parts all fit together, you can pretty much make them any weight, any size, custom cables if you want, etc.  But of course, you can just follow the pattern exactly as written and not have to think about mods!  Lots of options!

They are worked continuously from beginning to end – if you make the single color version, you never break your yarn, including for the 3-needle bind-offs and other finishing steps, so you only have 2 ends to weave in.  If you make a contrasting cable, then you’ll just have the 4 extra ends to weave in from the cable.

The pattern is written for 2 lengths, and then there are the mod notes included to go longer.  The shorter length (only for bulky weight) knits up SO quickly – they take me about an hour per mitt, and I am not a fast knitter!  The longer size is for nice long mitts in the bulky weight, or shorter length mitts for the aran weight range, like my red sample.  They are still a very quick knit, even in the lighter weight.

The pattern includes full instructions for all techniques used (cast-ons, bind-offs, sideways edge techniques, cables), and process photos to help you along.

I love every pattern I design, but something about these makes me a little extra excited, how they are SO quick and fun to knit, and have such a simple look that can be really plain and classy, or totally wild and wacky, depending on yarn choices.  I love them!!

I hope some of you are able to take advantage of the release date and whip up a few pairs for last-minute gifts!  If you do, please snap a photo and throw your projects up on ravelry – seeing your versions is my favorite part!!

Happy holidays!

Have you seen the new Knitty yet?  That’s me on the cover!  Whoa!!  Very exciting!

My pattern is pretty bonkers, but only because of the yarn, which I feel like shouldn’t even be called “yarn”… it needs some other name… It’s The BagSmith Big Stitch Merino, and it knits up on size US 36 (20mm) needles at a gauge of 3 stitches per 4 inches!

My pattern, Superduper (on ravelry / leethalknits), is a giant cowl that can be worn many different ways.  Above, you see it as a double-layer cowl, with a smaller neck-warming inside, and a larger shoulder-warming outer tube.  If that’s turned around, you get this…

…and then the inside layer can be pulled up as a hood, for ultimate head/neck warmth:

(I tested out the level of warmth in some windy freezing snow, and it is COZY!)

So then if you flip it completely inside out, the tubes arrange so they’re together, as one giant double-thick tube (instead of the bigger outside and smaller inside), making a ridiculously humongous cowl:

This style is a bit silly and impractical, yes, but fun, I think.

And then you can flip the outer tube out to un-twist the whole thing, and it turns into a kind of figure-8 scarf+handwarmer piece:

And if you pull that the other way, so that the two sides are the same size, it can be worn as a shoulder shrug kind of thing:

Personally, I like it as a cowl hood that’s all-consuming and makes one look like a super-cozy performance artist or something:

How about a little backstory?  I was given the chance to design in this awesome yarn (and I use the term awesome in this case more with the dictionary definition in mind: extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear), which I could never afford to use normally, to be honest, not my normal yarn scene ;)  So it was a really cool opportunity to have, and I thought it would be a fun design challenge to come up with a great pattern for it.  My big bump sat around my house for awhile, as I waited for the inspiration to come to me…

…and eventually an inspired idea struck, I spent a few days sketching and swatching in a regular super bulky yarn to get the pattern figured out, and then I realized it was way too complicated and wasn’t going to work in this yarn.  After days of work, it kind of hit me like a slap in the face, what was I thinking with this many-sectioned, modular, complex design?!  That wasn’t going to work at all, I needed to simplify!

So, I started from scratch and spent several days developing a flat, simple-shaped design, which I thought would be perfect for the yarn.  I knit up a sample using bulky yarn held triple-stranded, thinking that would be a similar weight to this yarn.  It was fabulous, I loved it!!  So then I knit up the real sample in this yarn all the way to the end, ignoring how much it WAS NOT working, until it was finished and I stepped back, and I realized how much of a complete failure it was.  Turns out, this yarn is MUCH much heavier than triple-stranded bulky.

The good news about that design: it turned into Lemmy (below).  The white Lemmy sample was the original sample, then when it failed for this project, I reworked the pattern and made the other samples in the other weights, and I’m really happy with that pattern, so it’s all for the best.  (Side note: the first failed design is on hold for now, but I plan to also turn that into its own pattern in the future.)

I VERY carefully frogged that whole failed piece, started from scratch once again, having learned from all my mistakes, keeping it SIMPLE, and came up with Superduper.  The final pattern uses the yarn in the best way, keeping to basic stitch patterns and simple shapes.  I’m really happy (super duper happy) with how it turned out!

Of course, if you want to make a Superduper but the yarn is outside your budget, substitutions are totally possible.  It might not be as easy as with most patterns, but if you think outside the box a little it shouldn’t be too hard.  One idea:  bulky yarn triple stranded twice, to make it 9-strands-thick, by chaining the whole skein using this technique, then chaining it again as you knit.  Or 6-strands thick by holding two balls together and chaining them as you go.  You’d need to play around with your bulky yarn to see how many strands are needed to get the approximate gauge – of course, you can mess with the gauge too, to make a slightly smaller piece.  Another idea:  knit with roving!  Okay I’ll leave other ideas up to you, but I just wanted to say that I know this yarn is a very specialty item that most knitters can’t really justify buying (myself included) so if you like the item, you can making something work!

Let’s see, other fun things about the pattern… The cover shoot, in the snow, was done last weekend at Timberline Lodge (aka the Overlook Hotel from The Shining!) in some seriously cold, windy conditions.  You can see above how I couldn’t control my hair at times, and I don’t know what I was doing in that outtake shot, but I think I got a bit silly from the cold!  The cowl got put to the test in these conditions, and while my hands and feet were numb, my neck and shoulder region was toasty warm!  The initial photoshoot, on the other hand, was done back in August (thankfully not during a 100 degree heat wave, just a normal August day in Portland), and I recommend NOT wearing this item in the summertime ;)

I think that’s that, everything you might want to know about Superduper!  I hope some of you try making it, and then post photo in your ravelry projects so I can see!  I don’t expect this to be one of my most popular designs, but it really is fun, and it knits up QUICK, like a few hours total, so if you have yarn that will work, give it a try!  Fun knitting times!

Tutorial time!  I got a gig teaching a recycled t-shirt project at the library a few months ago, with a request for a recycled tee bag – the only bags I’d made from tees in the past had required sturdy sewing, and I didn’t want hand-sewing to be the only thing holding the bottom closed in a class version of the bags, so I started brainstorming about some kind of hand-sewing-friendly or no-sew bag idea…. and here’s what I came up with!

The simplest version of these bags is great for smaller tees, or the more light-weight kind of girl-tees – just turn the bottom of the shirt into a drawstring and tie it closed!  As you can see, even with a not huge tee, this will still leave a significant hole in the bottom of your bag, but for purposes like grocery shopping, this size hole shouldn’t really matter…

But to make smaller holes, just make more than one of them!  Here’s a bag bottom with 2 holes:

And now for the actual tutorial – for this one, with the step-by-step, I will be making the bottom with 3 holes.  So, start with a t-shirt that you don’t wear anymore, or a fun one you found at a thrift store.  Besides a tee, you’ll also need scissors and a safety pin.  That’s it!

Cut the sleeves off, but try to make a somewhat straight line, and go in a bit from the seam – these lines will be the sides of your straps:

Cut some strips from those sleeve pieces – about half an inch wide, the length of one time around a sleeve is good, and as many strips as the number of holes you’ll be making in your bag bottom. (I’ve made bags with 1, 2, and 3 holes, but I haven’t tried more than that.)  Pull the ends of the strips to stretch them out and make them curl in:

Cut the neck out to become your bag’s opening – the way you cut this can depend on your tee’s picture (if there is a picture), and also the shape you want your bag.  Just make sure you cut a big enough opening to fit things through, for a functional bag:

You could make it rounded, V-shaped, or squared like this one:

Now the top/straps part is done, time for the bottom.  Snip slits in the hem part of the tee bottom – as many slits as you want holes.  3 slits, below, is for 3 holes, for a single hole, like the yellow one at the top, just cut one slit, and for 2 holes, snip 2 slits.  The slits should be equally spaced from each other, but the spacing doesn’t need to be exact – I just eyeballed my slit placement, no measuring:

Now stick a safety pin through the end of one of those strips you made, and start running it through the hem, through one of the slits:

Run it through to the next slit (or all the way around and back to the beginning, if you’re making a single hole) and pull the cord so it’s centered-ish:

Tie the hole closed as tightly as you can, and tie a tight knot:

Now repeat those steps for the remaining sections, one slit to the next, tie tightly.  This is after the second hole is closed:

For an ultra sturdy bag bottom, tie one cord strand from one hole together with one strand from the hole next to it, tightly, and repeat for each strand (as many of these knots as the number of holes you have; ignore this step if you’re making a single hole), so that the holes are all tied to each other.

Now, you can choose whether you want the t-shirt cord ties hanging down at the bottom, or hidden on the inside.  To hide them inside, bring them through the center, then tie bows on the inside so they don’t fall back through.  Or, tie bows on the outside if you prefer (or you could just cut the cords short and skip the bows):

My finished Sonic bag!

The 1-hole version of this project takes more like 5 minutes, but the more holes you have, the longer it takes (by a few minutes) – it’s my favorite kind of project: 100% recycled materials (in this case, just the tee and nothing else!), minimal tools, quick+easy, and a super useful finished product!

I made these for everyone in my family as extra bonus xmas gifts – my mom just told me she’s been using hers all the time and they are stronger than she would have expected.  I even used my family’s bags to wrap their gifts in, to save on paper wrapping waste and because it looked fun!

I failed to show you this idea before the holidays, but you can always save it away in your memory (or bookmarks) for your next gift-giving occasion.  I hope you love this project as much as I do!  Now go and make lots of them so you’ll never be without a reusable shopping bag again!

Look what I made yesterday!  I had this brainstorm about making dry erase magnets back when I was making magnet projects for the May club, but I was just going to try it with white paper, for a plain white background… then I saw this tutorial via Craft: and thought of using images for the backgrounds!  Now I have a great looking note-taking station on my fridge!

First you’ll need a basic flat magnet – freebie promo magnets work fabulously.  If you can find an image that’s light and low-contrast enough that you’ll be able to see notes written over it, then you just need glue (glue stick works well) and packing tape – higher quality, thick tape is ideal, as opposed to the really cheap, thin type.

Cut the image (could be: magazine/book picture, photograph, printed out image, etc) into a rectangle a bit bigger than the magnet.  Glue it onto the magnet, then trim the paper neatly around the edges.  (Now it’s probably good to let the glue dry, but I didn’t because I was anxious to finish and see how it worked!)

Smooth a piece of packing tape over the front – as you can see below, my packing tape was just a wee bit more narrow than my magnet… Since my magnets are thin and easy to cut with scissors, I decided to trim the magnet to tape size, but you can also deal with this problem by layering another piece of tape to cover the whole surface:

Trim the tape around the edges and your functional dry erase magnet is complete!

If you want to use an image that’s too dark/bright/high-contrast for the writing to be clear on top, then you can add an extra step to make it work…  You’ll just need tracing paper or tissue paper (or some other kind of paper that’s translucent enough for the image to show through, but will dull it enough so the writing will be clear), plus basic white glue (or Mod Podge will work) and a brush for the glue:

Complete the first couple of steps from above – cut out the image and glue it onto the magnet – then spread out white glue over the top of the image (photo is before spreading it out with the brush):

Now smooth the tracing paper or tissue paper over the top… I used tissue paper because it’s all I had, but I’d expect tracing paper to work much better, since it wouldn’t tear nearly as easily.  On my first try, I attempted to smooth out the tissue with my fingers, ended up tearing the paper badly, and had to peel it off and start over.  So, just smooth it out the best you can without ripping it:

Then trim the edges, add the tape over the top (after the glue is dry would be best), just like the first version above, and there you go!  By the way, both of my images came from an old yarn company catalog – great source for background images!

To complete your refrigerator’s dry erase station, you’ll need a clip magnet big and strong enough to hold a dry erase marker, and if there’s a spot where you can stick a piece of paper towel to use as an eraser, excellent!  Or, you can make one of these awesome fridge tin pen holders by Not Martha!

And then my other note-taking magnet idea – this one needs no tutorial because it’s so simple – chalkboard magnet!  Buy some chalkboard paint at your local craft supply store (I used this kind), follow the instructions on the container to paint over your basic flat magnet, and tah dah!  Love it!

And then going back to my club magnet projects to finish things off… I mentioned these over here, but not in any detail.  I used a simple foam stamp (from the dollar section at Joann, impulse buy!) to stamp designs onto old book pages, then cut out the shapes and layered them on the magnets:

You could use the same concept with drawings over the book pages, or you could layer pictures from magazines or photographs over the text background… this one is a rectangle of book page with a stamp on it, then another cut-out stamp design layered over that.  I like the look of the text going in different directions on the 2 layers:

Then the final magnet idea, also from the club, was record album artwork magnets – no instructions needed, just cut out a piece of old album cover and glue it onto the magnet:

If you make over some reclaimed magnets using any of these ideas, I’d love to see them!  Happy crafting!

Exactly 5 years ago today, I met up with an old college radio acquaintance at a coffee shop in Costa Mesa for a non-date that ended up lasting 6 hours.  And the rest is history!

These are some oooold old old shots of us, mostly from our first few months together in 2005.  February is a fun month for me, with our anniversary on the 9th, my birthday on the 11th, and then silly Valentine’s Day, which we mostly ignore, but it’s fun to have 3 days right there in a row.  This year is extra fun because Pete took a 2 week vacation from his day job, to work in his studio and hang out with me, so I’m taking some vacationy time also.  Yay!

So I just wanted to show you this cute little mini anniversary card I made with some reclaimed pretty patterned cardstock from Scrap…

This print company gave a bunch of great looking cards and things to Scrap when they closed down their shop, so I picked up stacks of these tags for a dollar an inch, sweet!  They are about the size of standard bookmarks, with a score in the middle to fold into tags:

So I took one of each color/pattern, freehand cut two into hearts, used one as the card base, and turned them into a little card, which would be perfect as a Valentine, if you happen to have some pretty patterned paper/cardstock around in your stash!

Oh and I did a roundup of heart projects on Threadbanger last week, so if you’re looking to do some V-day crafting, you might want to check that out!

I love you, Pete!

Last minute gift idea!  I made this grocery bag for a gift for my brother last year – quick, fun, and recycled! Yay!

How-to:  Find a tote bag to reuse (I thrifted this one at Value Village), and an old t-shirt with a fun/funny image.  Cut the tee image out a few inches smaller than the bag front.  Use an iron-on fabric adhesive interfacing thing (like steam-a-seam) to iron the tee piece onto the bag (using the instructions on the interfacing).  Then hand-sew around the edges.

You could stitch around with yarn or embroidery floss instead of thread, or you could add extra embellishments or personalized decoration…

Hope this helps some of you with last-minute gift crafting!

Oh yeah, by the way, the holiday card winners were Jen, Heather, and Miranda! Yay!

this is a gift i gave my parents a couple years ago, pre- do stuff!, and when i saw it here at the house i thought it would be a good project to share. i’m sure i saw the idea somewhere else, but i don’t know where. you could either make it in a photo editing software program like i did, or you could build it with 2 photos by cutting them into strips and gluing them onto a sheet of cardstock.

i used two photos of my brothers – the first when they were about 2, 4, and 6, and the second one current (i would have used photos of all four of us, but i’m the only one in my family who takes photos, so there were no current ones with me in them). i split each of them into about half inch sections, and pasted them together in the photo editing program with the strips switching between the two photos.

then i just printed it out on photo paper and carefully folded in accordion-style on the lines between the strips. i glued (or 2-sided taped) the ends onto the blue paper and put the whole thing in a frame with no glass that i got free from my old job. (if you have any connections with someone who works in a place that sells frames, you might be able to score a free no-glass frame, maybe.)

so that’s it, pretty simple, but super cool effect in real life (hard to capture in photos with bad lighting). and i’m thinking if you’re in portland and were saving some of your shopping till the last minute, you might be in need of some diy gift ideas that you can make with things you already have in the house!

if you want to see another photo gift project idea, check out my latest craftstylish post!

my mom collects elephant things, and her birthday was friday, and my gift to her was not elephant related, so i wanted to make a card that was.  i had just read jenny’s how-to for using an iron-on applique method on 3-ring binders, so i tried the concept out on the card and it totally worked!  yeah!

(photo from craftzine blog)  i used “steam-a-seam2” instead of heatnbond, and it worked out fine, super easy!  don’t know if it’ll stay stuck forever, but it seemed to be secure.  fun little quick craft, great for fabric scraps, try it!