Knitting: Not just for grandma anymore!

Being a housewife that does not work, I have a lot of free time on my hands. And while I know quite a few women that would kill for just a little bit of free time to themselves, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Don't get me wrong, I've been on the other side as well. At our last duty station, I did work outside the home and felt like I never had enough time to do anything else. But for now, I am fortunate enough to spend my time at home.

With that being said, it got to a point recently that it was just too much time. I had nothing to do. When we first moved here, I had gone on a decorating, recycling, painting etc spree. I have all the walls covered with my creations, with no room for anything else. (I already feel like it's a little cluttered as is. I didn't need to add to it)

So in my fits of boredom, I brainstormed ideas that could get me into something new. A friend of mine had started learning how to knit a few months before, and I got to thinking about it. I hadn't ever tried to learn or had anyone to teach me. But it didn't stop me from looking up videos on YouTube. You can just about anything and everything on there, I swear!  Without boring you with all the details, long story short is that I got hooked. My first project was a simple garter stitch scarf on straight needles. I just didn't know what it was called at the time. All I knew was that I was knitting row after row after row.

But enough of the talky talk...I'll get to pictures. To limit the sheer amount, I'll add them in collage and then describe below. You know...cause I can't seem to stop talking....ever!

1. My very first knitted project.
2. a set of cabled wristlets to try doing cable stitches. It was so much easier than I had ever imagined. As
    long as you have the right supplies
3. a hat for my daughter, first one made with circular needles. The only problem was that it got too small to
   finish on the circular needles, so for the first time I transferred the work to double pointed needles (dpns),
   and some where in the process I messed up and knitted the opposite of what I needed. That's the reason
   for the large pom pom to help hide the mistake ;) Lesson learned
4.my first of many newborn hats. This one was sent to our friends in NC that are expecting their first little
   one!
5. more newborn experience, this time for friends expecting baby #3...along with a custom designed onesie
   with their nickname for the baby while still in the "oven"
6. a girly colorful number made for a friend's toddler...fit for a little one that already loves to accessorize.
    LOVE it!
7. living with my husband, I knew that I needed to attempt to make a New York Yankees hat. Thankfully
    after some advice from the owner of www.verypink.com I got the results you see. (this was attempt #3)
8. After making #6, I knew I couldn't leave out her older brother. And he loves loves loves Yo Gabba
    Gabba.
9. Yet another newborn hat. This one was shipped out to Virginia to some friends that unexpectedly had to
    move. They had been stationed here, and she had become my thrift shopping buddy. I was sad to see
    them go. But they are also expecting their first baby girl. And she's the first in line of my 4 friends to 
    deliver. I can NOT wait to see pics of this little one!

There you have it. The abridged version of my last 2-3 months. I am by no means anywhere close to an expert knitter. And I guess that's why I felt like I didn't have much business blogging about my creations.

Ok, I must go. I'm off to start on the last of the newborn hats. Love it!!

update and ----- Happy Thanksgiving

Not that I've been a very well scheduled blogger, but it's been some time since I last blogged. And unfortunately I can't really say that I've been so super busy. As a matter of fact, it's been the opposite. With the husband at work, and the child at school....it's left Mom at home alone with not a whole lot to do. And who really wants to blog about being bored? Really?

Soon I won't be able to claim boredom. In a couple days, we are embarking on a 19 hour road trip to visit my dad and step-mom in beautiful southern Indiana. I fear that I'll be too late for the fall foliage I have been missing, but seeing family will more than make up for that.

As a matter of fact, my step-sister is due to have her first baby girl some time soon!! I'm so excited at the thought of possibly getting to see her. We're going to do everything possible to put her into labor while we're there...lol. Even more family to see..and of course photograph.

Oh and as if Thanksgiving and the possibility of a birth, my niece turns 12 on Thanksgiving day as well. oh wait there's more....they are also expecting a couple litters of newborn miniature schnauzers around that time as well!! Woah..that's a lot of birth and birthdays all wrapped up in one little span of time. (In case you are a new follower...my dad and step-mom breed miniature schnauzers.)

While I say that I've been bored for most of the time, I did have a few moments of enjoyment making a few gifts to take with us, for the new baby, the bday girl, and her sister.

Here are my latest projects:

for the baby...a couple custom onesies

"my aunt think I'm cute as a (sewn on button)"

L is for Lanise

and a close up of the design just cause I like it so much ;)


a hand painted princess jewelry chest


And here are a couple other projects that don't really
fit in the Thanksgiving/road trip grouping..but I'm just too
lazy to add them to their own post. Hey....just being honest...lol

a hooded sweatshirt for my daughter's school


a keychain made using a beer bottle cap and Mod Podge Dimensional Magic
(it's was a gift for my neighbor to give to her new husband for his bday.
the pic is one I took at their wedding)





Who knows, I may come back and share more details on a couple of the above projects. I'm just not makin' any promises. Capeesh? ;)


PS. I forgot to mention that the background in the baby gifts pictures is actually a blanket I made for the baby as well. It's the cutest brown and pink damask fleece. Backed with chocolate brown fleece, I made her her very own tied fleece blanket. I warned my sister that I didn't really want to part with any of the baby stuff, but have no real reason to keep it hostage.

Make your own custom tshirt

So my husband likes to hang on to clothes. For a LONG time! I can't really put my finger on how long because he has several items that he's had before even meeting me in 2001. Yep! And a lot of those items would include t-shirts. College team t-shirts, old athletics event tshirts...etc etc.

I can't at this moment in time remember where we were, or what we were doing, when I saw him wearing one of his favorites, a Duke Basketball shirt. I had never paid much attention to it before, but this time would be the last! The only thing I DO remember was that we were out in public with no option for a quick change. Drats!!

As lovingly as a wife could be in this situation, I turned to him and said something along the lines of......

"OMG! That shirt is so old! Look it has a big hole at the neckline and it's ratty! You have to get rid of that thing!"

And he replies.... WHY???? I love this shirt. I've had it forever. *pouty face*

"EXACTLY!!"

I don't think he saw what was coming next.  "What if I got you a NEW  Duke shirt? Would you finally throw this one away?" And he said yes! He doesn't seem to remember it too well, but he said yes.

So the wheels get to turning. And that's when I ran across this tutorial over at Crap I've Made. Pure Genius I tell ya! So I had what I was going to do. Now to find the shirt. you would THINK that finding a plain royal blue tshirt in his size would be semi-easy. I checked 3 thrift stores, Wal*Mart, and Big Lots before heading to Michael's. I didn't expect to find this

The ONLY one! And it happened to be in his size! The long drawn out search had ended.

So to the design. I googled the Duke logo. There were a couple options. But I knew being me, that I would need to take on the most complicated version.

Yep. That's the one. The one with a million and one cut outs. Hmm...was I making the right decision? All for love, right?

I'll walk you through my process. I feel like I need to add a disclaimer here first.
DISCLAIMER: read this entire post before starting. You'll see why!

Supplies:

-Plain tshirt in choice color
-freezer paper
-cutting mat (mine is a small one from Creative Memories)
-cutting tool (mine happens to be a scalpel, but could have easily used my exacto knife)
-ink pen
-cardboard (to put in the middle of the shirt to prevent bleach going through to the back)
-iron (with no steam)
-bleach in a spray bottle

Ummmm....I believe that's all. A lot of what I used should be typical household items.

So I started out with tracing the design. For this I just used my laptop screen!! Oh I almost forgot, when cutting the freezer paper from the roll, make it large enough that you have some leftover around the design. That will help prevent any outside bleed or accidental spots :)





Trace the design onto the non-waxy side of the freezer paper. I would recommend tracing lightly if you use my method. I used light pressure as to not damage my screen! If you don't have a laptop that you could use in this manner, I'm sure you could print out your design and trace that.  

Once I had the design fully traced, I compared it to the original to make sure that I had gotten all pieces. And got started on cutting it out. Make sure to keep all of the loose pieces. It will help when positioning your design onto the tshirt. Or may provide useful later on. (As I soon found out)

It was at this point that I wondered what the crap I was thinking trying to use such an intricate design.

I even contemplated leaving the design like this:

I tried to rationalize it to myself. I could see what it was supposed to be. Who cares if it didn't have the detail. But being the perfectionist that I am strive to be, I googled to see if there were any manufactured shirts that looked like my half done cut out. Nope..of course not! Dang it. Ok I'll keep cutting *pout

When you have it all cut out, place the freezer paper waxy side down onto your shirt. Iron the paper onto the shirt. When the waxy side is heated, it adheres lightly to the shirt just enough to provide a great stencil. Make sure not to move the iron from side to side..it could get caught on the smaller pieces and possibly rip or tear them.

Then using a spray bottle of pure bleach (do not dilute. It won't work as well), lightly spray over the cut out areas until fully covered. The problem for me was that I didn't do it too lightly. I wanted to make sure that I was thorough. I used a little but too much and it ended up soaking through the inside of my stencil. Darn it!

So what I had was a big bleached out D without any inner design. NO!!!!!! All that work?? For nothing??

But wait....what about painting it? Remember me saying to keep all the pieces you cut out?? Yep, those came in handy! I positioned the leftover pieces back onto the shirt and ironed them on. This time I used some craft acrylic paint and used the leftover pieces as a stencil. A lot of people recommend using a textile medium added to your paint. But I didn't have any and have used this technique in the past and didn't need it. Do what you think will work for you.

Being my own worst critic, I wasn't sure if it liked it or not. So to make the bleached out spot look more like it was on purpose I randomly sprayed outside of the design.

What do you think?

I was nervous for my husband to get home. I wanted it to turn out perfectly, and what happens if I can't get him to trade in his old ratty shirt???? I was not prepared for that..lol.

Well I lucked out. He loves it! He said that it looks like a professionally made shirt. Either he really does like it, he's just trying to be nice, or I have him trained really well. Either way....he agreed to finally let go of  his old one.

Can you spot the differences?

The idea for this post was inspired by a trip to the movie theater. As I was taking a shower to freshen up, I was trying to plan out what to wear in my head. I've been in a pretty schlumpy mood lately, with no where to really go. So I felt like dressing a little nicer than jeans and a tshirt. Just at that moment the outfit popped in my head. Oh I'll wear that outfit I wore when....blah blah....yea! That's it. Oh and I'll  make Stephen take a picture of me in it. No reason to waste a dressed up moment. Right? Oh...but wait. I had him take one the last time I wore it. Hmmm...what to do? Wait a sec! I had my hair cut since then...and I'll change it up a little. I'll post both pictures to show how important a hair cut can be to the overall look of an outfit....and how easy it would be to change one or two pieces to change the feel. Yea....that's what I'll do. :)

So without further ado....

So on the left it was pre-hair cut. (Thanks Cap'n Obvious!) My husband and I were headed out for a date night to a local comedy club. It was the first time I had put the outfit together. I'm usually an earrings and necklace type of gal. Without them, I feel naked. But this time, I couldn't come up with a suitable necklace. Insert black and white striped scarf tied similar to a man's tie. LOVE! And it wouldn't be complete if it showed at the bottom as well. So I only kept one button buttoned.
I felt fashion forward. For the moment at least..lol. Some may or may not agree with me, but for the moment I was happy. So today I was wanting the same feeling. I'm usually the one out in public that wishes I looked like that woman over there. You know the one...the one that always looks so put together and polished. The one that makes you feel like a schlumpy mess.

So while I may have not uncovered a big fashion find...I feel good about it. And it's a little eery that I posed in just about the same exact pose the second time around.

Everyone Loves an Indiana girl

Today's internet adventure started with an e-mail from Flickr telling me that one of my contacts had uploaded new pictures. I usually don't browse around on flickr, but I make an exception when a certain contact of mine shares her pictures. You see...she lives in my home state of Indiana. And not only just in the same state, but very close to where I grew up. She takes pictures all around the countryside and shares them with the rest of the world via flickr. I can't quite recall how I came across her photostream, but I do know that I won't ever want to leave.

Stopping over to her photostream, I came across a photo that I fell instantly in love with!

She titled the picture, "Which way do I go?" As you can imagine, when the corn fields get to this height you can't see anything past the fields. I can not even start to say just how perfect this picture captures southern Indiana. I even asked her if I had per permission to save it as my computer's desktop. I added a little text and love looking at it every time I see my desktop.

Indiana's official state motto is: The Crossroads of America

After having to google the state motto, it gave me the idea to look for those funny slogan shirt that include the states. You know the ones. But the only thing was, was that I didn't ever remember seeing one made for Indiana. But after some searching I found one that I thought was cute, and that I would actually wear. (Some of them can be vulgar.)

Yep, that would be me. Only thing that I didn't agree with was the asking price. This particular one was $25, and saw a few others on another site that were even more. And that didn't include tax and shipping. I didn't need the shirt that I bad! It was then that I remembered that I still had some t-shirt transfer paper left. Now I just needed a shirt. Looking through my closet and dresser, I found one white shirt. Sadly it was not what I was wanting. It was the white shirt that I used for an undershirt. The kind that is a little bit too see through for my tastes. So off to WalMart. I found a v neck on sale for only $3! Hey that's so much better than $25!

After searching through my plethora of fonts, I was able to find the exact fonts they used for the design. And went to this site for an outline of the state. Although I did find the fonts that matched these perfectly, I chose to change the one for Indiana. Mine reminded me of Indiana University. Just seemed a little more "Indiana-like" to me.

So what do ya think?

I love it! And I didn't have to spend more that $3 and wait for it to be shipped to me. Cute and cheap! my kind of project!

Oh....if you were wondering..the fonts used were : Brody and Athletic...both were free fonts that can be found at Urban Fonts.

Oh yea..AND if you ever find yourself wondering what the countryside of southern Indiana looks like, feeling homesick, or just plain want to see some awesome pictures....head on over to Cindy's photostream. You won't be disappointed. And tell her Amber sent ya! ;)