Late Night Boy Toy

No, not THAT kind of boy toy.. perverts. I made this little monster toy for a shower a while back, and it all happened so fast I forgot to post it. The basketball in the monster's hand is NOT some sort of applique gimmick that places like Carter's and Circo insist on employing. Both parents are legitimately awesome basketball players, and the dad just graduated from UNC. You like how I slipped Duke Blue in there? heh. heh.

This is unfortunately the only picture I took of the Little Monster. Like I said, it happened pretty quickly and I finished it in the wee hours of the morning. Not exactly prime photo-op time. So I'm sad you can't see it, but my favorite part of this little guy is that snaggletooth. I did a satin stitch into a long triangle, but I don't have a fancy machine, so while I was holding the fabric with one hand, I had to perfectly move my stitch width selector with the other. I was sweating legitimate bullets as the rest of the face had already been embroidered and satin-stitched. But it came out perfect. Yay for me. Oh yeah, and yay for little C. He must have been a tiny little runt, because in that picture, Mom is 38 weeks pregnant. Some people!

"Just something I whipped up"

Yeah right. This dress took me 2 1/2 tries. I love the outcome, however. I had to make the sleeve ruffles a little wider since my daughter's arms are, well, a little wider and I wasn't adding the long sleeves that go right underneath.

Thanks to The Train to Crazy for making the pattern free, thanks to Annee for hosting sewing soirees at her house so that when I screw up (and I've done it every time) there are people to sympathize and encourage me to fix it instead of scrapping it and throwing up my arms in angst, and thanks to Tessa for making it cute.

I have so much to learn, but thankfully, my kid's not picky (yet). Though more often than not these days, I'll be getting ready to put clothes on her and she'll say, "Dress?" I'll respond, "You want to wear a dress?" and in a voice that sounds consigned to a mediocre fate, she'll answer, "okaaay...." It just occurred to me that she's probably saying "dress" the verb and not "dress" the noun. Duh!

Creation: Bellbottom Pants

We've been getting groovy over here. Remember that story I told long ago about choosing pajama pants as my first ever sewing project, having them turn out completely unwearable, throwing them out, then being intimidated by sewing machines for years?

Well, I'm back.

I have conquered my nemesis, thanks to Dana's tutorial. I'll have to tweak a couple things here and there next time, but overall, I love the outcome. I'll let you judge for yourselves.

I'm most proud of the perfect lining up of the fabric pattern. It's 100% polyester, baby. Dreamy to work with, and screaming to be made into granny style bellbottoms. She looks adorable in them.

Yeah, baby, YEAH!!

Valentine's Day 2011

Ted was very sentimental in his annual Valentine's card to me. He was sweet in his words and his gift-giving, watching me unwrap things I absolutely wanted (a candy mold! Barefoot Contessa's newest cookbook! An etsy crochet pattern!), and I gave him fabulous food in his belly (can't argue with Chicken & Dumplings and a Bittersweet Chocolate Torte), a gorgeous new orchid plant, and these:

Can I be any more direct?

I know my mother-in-law reads this blog, but I'm okay with it. Becky, if you don't know me by now...

Creation: Stitched 'Scream

A friend of mine recently had an adorable baby girl. She requested no gifts at her restaurant baby shower because this was her third baby and second girl, but come on - even third children need a few new things, right? As a 6th child, I understand how annoying hand-me-downs can get (esp when they're from one's brothers), so along with a little outfit (bought, not made - I'm not that good yet) I crocheted a toy ice cream cone. It's got little jingle bells in there for extra fun.

I used the pattern from this book but added the picot stitch around the bottom of the ice cream so it looked more like a scoop.

Welcome to the world, Lucy! You've got a rad family who will take you for real 'scream when you're old enough!

Creation: Hair clips

In preparation for a friend's craft fair, I made these to sell. Y'know, in my spare time. I'm pretty awesome like that.

"But Allison, if you're so awesome, how come you haven't blogged in forever?"

Because, dear friends, I like to spread my awesomeness around. Blogging awesomeness will be forthcoming.

If you're wondering if the goldfish are puffy, the answer is yes. I wanted them as close to the cracker as possible, so I stuffed them. I made the prototype for Tess a while back and let's just say she's tried to eat it on more than one occasion. That's not saying much, but I'm taking it as a win.

And now my awesome boobs have to tend to my awesome baby.

Creation: Dress for Tess

About a month ago, my friend Melanie and I were discussing all our shortcomings in the sewing department. We each have a sewing machine, lots of desire, very little time, and several half-begun projects. It was a few days before she left NC for good (her husband recently graduated from Duke Law) and we were making our attempts to prolong the inevitable goodbyes.

So on that Friday night, I promised to her that I would finish this dress I'd started back in January. I had been scared of it because I was working with a stretchy fabric, a non-stretchy lining (and I've NEVER done lining before, of any kind), and the fluffy ball trim that kept getting caught in places where I didn't want it (isn't that always the case?). But Sunday would be the last day I'd see her. And it was Friday night. So I hunched over my sewing machine a good part of Friday night and Saturday night after Tessa was in bed and just did it. "Hunching over" has a whole new meaning when there's a nine-month pregnant belly to contend with.

Here's the result:

I'm not showing any pictures any closer because there are details I'm not proud of (like the fabric puckering along one side of the zipper in the back). When you're working against a deadline, things have to be sacrificed. Of course, now I see that zipper and just cringe, but I keep telling myself I'm chalking up this dress to a learning experience.

She's my little chocolate covered raspberry in it.

Creation: Crocheted Snowflakes

I went to a fabulous Christmas party hosted by my friend and fellow nutjob, Suzy, a couple of years ago. I thought I was the bee's knees bringing an Apple Raspberry Cream Cheese Torte, but then I noticed her tree. It was a green tree decorated in all white lights and the only ornaments were crocheted snowflakes, made by her grandmother and passed down. It was one of the most gorgeous trees I've ever seen. From then on I was a little obsessed with having a tree just like it. The only problem was that I didn't know how to crochet.

I went onto websites and checked out books from the library and spent lots of time and money in the yarn sections of various crafty stores. I've done other little crochet projects, but I was particularly proud of these:

They're blocked with a lot of pins and a mixture of glue and water. Details are in the pattern I got from a blog whose owner is quite the snowflake-maker. This is the same pattern, but two different sizes using different hooks. I sent the smaller one to my dad for Father's Day (it fit in the card better) because he's just as meticulous and detailed as a snowflake... get it?

So I now have one snowflake for my future tree. At this rate, that tree should be fully covered by the time I'm a grandmother and can pass them on to someone who just has to be related to me to get them. Gotta love heirlooms.

Have your cake and eat it, two

Have you ever had an idea pop in your head that was so perfect and got you so excited that you nearly wet your pantaloons and somewhere amidst the swooning at your own cleverness you neglected to care about things that normally would alarm you, like a leaking poopie diaper or the fact that you're in your underwear while the apartment complex gardening company is outside your sliding glass door mowing your lawn whilst you stand there in raptured glee among poo fumes?

That happened to me.

The grand idea popped into my head after much deliberation and pondering upon the subject, so the moral of the story is to always ponder and you will be considered wonderful by any and all.

The subject? Upcoming baby shower for a friend.

The deliberation? I volunteered to help with the shower, so what cake to make? What flavor? Frosting or ganache? Which frosting? What decoration? Why is her favorite color blue when she's having a girl?

Further deliberation? What do I do for a gift? I've always been the practical type who gives diapers and wipes and boobie pads because EVERY MOM NEEDS THOSE and we all hate paying for them, but they're necessities of life, like Diet Coke and Peanut M&Ms. And bacon.

The pondering? I have recently become....obsessed? no. Addicted? no...Curiously engaged in pursuing acts of craftiness as long as 1) it can be perfect the first time I make it, 2) it's not something someone would throw away after looking at it and moving it around your dining room table for a week, hoping it will find its own niche in your home (sorry, papercrafters), and 3) it doesn't cost me more money to make than it would take to just buy a completed and better version of it.

Further pondering. I went through a gamut of ideas to hopefully fulfill the "what can I make to add to the diapers and boobie pads?" conundrum. Dyed and appliqued onesies? Never done them before. Freezer paper onesies? Still haven't purchased my own fabric paint and I remember the good designs being tedious. Sew a skirt? Maybe I could swing it, but there are a lot of women who could do it way better and might try, thereby making my skirt look like something a hobo would wear. Bead a few bracelets? Done that - have the materials, but want to try something different.

And that's when the almost-pantaloons-wetting and poo-fume-ignoring and Mexican-gardeners-getting-a-free-PG-13-rated-peep-show-cluelessness kicked in.

The cake would be chocolate chunk raspberry because she's had it before and couldn't stop foogasming over it (which is the basis of our friendship). That was the only given in this scenario. Everything else came together in a flurry of converging neural synapses that almost exploded my brain. The convergence went something like this:

Cream cheese frosting won't hold up as well as a buttercream so I'll do the buttercream even though I haven't made it as often OOH! and since the cake has a hint of raspberry the buttercream should too and I suppose I could decorate it with raspberries but I had such a bad experience relying on that last time because when we bought them the day of the party all the good raspberries were gone so we had to pay a dollar more per box for the last two organic boxes where half of them were already beginning to mold or mush under the weight of the others God bless pesticides screw the raspberries strawberries are looking gorgeous right now and huge so I'll use those does that mean I should try to find a strawberry extract? maybe I can if not I can soften the raspberry extract with some vanilla after all I only want a hint and I don't care if her favorite color is blue she's having a girl so she's just gonna have to get used to pink dammit we all do so the frosting will be pink which will be perfect since it's going to be raspberry buttercream anyway besides who wants a blue frosting that tastes like raspberries it's not like I'm running an Icee machine out of a 7-11 so pink it is with strawberries and OOH! there's a pattern for a crocheted slice of cake in that book Ted gave me and it's easy enough to change the frosting color from white to pink yarn but that pattern only has it as a two-layer cake and this one will most definitely be four layers with berry bits between because that's just what I do so I can't settle for a two-layer slice of cake but the rest of it looks pretty cute so maybe I can adapt it to three layers instead because if I try to do four layers it will be monstrous and this is supposed to be a little crawling baby's toy and OOH! I can put jingle bells in it so it's like a little rattle but would that be too much like a cat's toy I don't want this thing to look like it came straight out of PetSmart so OOH! I'll crochet a few strawberries to go with it since that's what's going to be on the real cake and then it'll look even more like food and I'll add bells to those too so when she opens it and shakes it around I'll say it's CAKE AND JINGLEBERRIES!

Here was the cake:

Here's the inside, which we'd already cut into before the present-opening (all part of the master plan):

And after pulling out the diapers and boobie pads, she saw this:

And she promptly freaked out. So much that I forgot to say "CAKE AND JINGLEBERRIES!" And here's the side-by-side:

PS - thank you to Ted for buying me the book that prompted the fun in enough time to have it ready for the shower and for coming up with the "two" pun in the post title. You didn't really think I was that much of a grammar idiot, did you?

Creation: Crocheted Spring Purse

Spring is here! Time to celebrate and wear it proud. I saw this pattern in a book, and though I think it's adorable, there's no way I can fit my wallet, camera (though it's small), keys, phone, diapers, sippy cup, wipes, toys, a couple of pens, a spoon, applesauce, and pretzels in there. So I made it for someone else. TWO someone elses. I photographed the first one, but had a Moron Day and deleted the pictures before I could download them.

The first edition was for my sweet sister who had a birthday at the end of March. Her life has been topsy-turvy as of late, though I can't say I really pity her. She was a nanny in ITALY, of all places, from August to January, and when she got back after Christmas, someone somewhere told her that the work visa she currently held wasn't gonna cut it, so she had to come back to the U.S. to try to work it out with the consulate. They gave her the run-around, in way more detail and paragraphs than I'm going to get into, but in the meantime, my brother's family in Heber, UT, had quite a scare with their newborn boy. He contracted RSV, had to be lifeflighted (is that a verb?) to Salt Lake, and the parents were quickly in tow. However, they had 4 other boys left at home. So my sister dropped everything with consulates and visas and flew to Utah to stay in their home while little Jake recuperated in the hospital. She took care of four CRAZY boys so our brother could still go to work and Sara could stay with her son in the hospital. What a dear. What an unselfish thing to do. It's so like her to do that, too, so I made this for her.

Edition #2 was for our neighbor and friend, Ashley, who is constantly tending and tickling our little (huge) munchkin while I go do various errands. She's got her own day job and an additional side job, she's putting her husband through his last year of law school and planning grad parties and baby showers, but she always has time to take Tess under her wing. I told her I would have made her a scarf from a cool pattern in the same book, but it was probably too warm for that. She happened to be over one day when I was crocheting this purse, and she decided she wanted one, too. Same color, same handles, same size. (phew) I was only too happy to oblige.

So thank you, thank you to daily heroes who make the world go round. I love you immensely and think you're pretty stupendous.

It's not much, but it's from the heart.

Creation: Flower Headband

There are now two very cute Mias in my life - one in CA (who is actually living in our old house) and one in a nice neighborhood in our new ward. I've babysat the one here a couple times, and I thought she might like to do a craft today. Really, I wanted to do the craft, and I made her join me. I've been gathering materials slowly after reading this tutorial from a friend's blog, then I put it off because Tessa not only doesn't keep things on her head very long - she drools all over them and bites parts off (still searching for a missing button, but I stop at rifling through poop).

So when Mia came over for an afternoon, I decided to make the best of it. I did most of the work, but she picked out the beads and ate the rest of the Jelly Belly centerpiece. I appreciated the 4 calories per bean that won't be packed onto my own jelly belly.

Perfect little headband to go looking for bugs with.

Creation: "Converse" high-top booties

Last week I went to a baby shower for a new friend who's having her first baby in a few weeks - a boy. Her husband was nicknamed "Playa" (as in player, not the Spanish word for beach) by Ted because, well, he looks like a playa. But he's in medical school, so I guess he's a smart playa. Anyway, I thought these would be perfect for their offspring.





I am certainly not clever enough to come up with the pattern myself. I got it here, and they took me a LONG time since it was only the 6th thing I've crocheted since teaching myself from this fabulous book. Thanks again for it, Ted!

My Mount Everest (well, one of 'em)

Like many of you, I grew up as the daughter of a very talented mother. She could sing, dance, cook, bake, play multiple instruments, sew clothes for her family, earn money from home, chauffeur, direct a choir, teach little kids, and my siblings and I were particularly proud that she could eat breakfast AND nurse a baby while driving the kids to early morning seminary... in a stickshift.

As the 6th of 10 kids, I didn't get to benefit from any of my mom's signature hand-made clothing (showers and laundry were more of a priority), so I really didn't have any idea about how good she is with a sewing machine. I spent many a Saturday over at my friend Shannon's house, whose mother is an interior designer and decorator and therefore had a workroom with a half dozen different sewing machines that rivaled the local downtown LA sweatshop. Shannon, being the fearless talent that she is, learned to sew on them from a young age and intimidated me with her mad scrunchy-making skillz. I remember being crazy jealous at the time, but didn't act positively to my jealousy until I was about 14. I told my mom I wanted to make a pair of pajama pants - a project I decided on because I figured if they didn't turn out well, I was only wearing them to bed anyway. So we bought a pattern and thread and she helped me begin. In my naivete, however, I didn't realize how difficult it would be to begin sewing on a knit, and to begin with a pair of pants, even if they did have an elastic waist. The result before I even got to the waistband was a pair of "pants" that MAYBE a human-sized penguin could wear, but would probably be very embarrassed. I didn't know what happened! But in my frustration and embarrassment, I threw the whole thing away and didn't look at another sewing machine until I was much older.

Fast forward to a post-mission love affair and suddenly I wanted to make a sassy patchwork quilt for a boy. Love makes you do crazy things. Like revisit a black spot from your past. Well, by golly, the quilt turned out just like I wanted it, so I started to teach myself how to make pillows to match it - with my own piping! I had no idea at the time that I was making progress because I sure did break a lot of needles.

Rather than jumping off from that point, the boy and I broke up before I had a chance to give him the goods, so I kept them for myself and to this day, they adorn our guest bed in what Ted likes to call my "boudoir". With the boy gone, and me back at college and without access to Mom's machine (and never thinking to ever ask or save for one), sewing went by the wayside, and after several years, I began to be in awe of others' talents and claim I didn't have any sewing know-how to speak of. Yes, I am the epitome of burying one's talents.

Then our move to NC with a 6 month-old meant I became a stay-at-home mom, and I spent her naptimes (and much of what should have been my own sleep time) FINALLY reading one of the several thousand crafty blogs out in cyberworld. This particular one belonged to a girl I knew in my old ward but was afraid to get to know better because I was so intimidated by her many talents and personality traits. At the time, I remember wanting to be just like her (a common feeling for me regarding many people who excel in areas I don't...yet) but didn't know where to start. It took me a few weeks, but I read that blog from beginning to end, and with such a concentration of creativity and goodness, I was inspired to get over my sewing fears, stop telling myself I didn't know how, and deal with any discouragement or disappointment along the way.

It all began when we were having a meeting with all the leaders of our church's girls' group. We were planning a Halloween activity that required some "gunny sacks" to be sewn out of thick fabric, and none of the four leaders piped up. I sheepishly volunteered, but said I didn't have a machine (thinking that would get me off the hook). No dice. Another leader had a machine, but didn't know how to use it. Turns out the other three had less experience with a sewing machine than I did, and that ain't sayin' much.

I made six gunny sacks, showed up with them all cute and what-not to the activity, then during the first race, two of them popped open at the bottom, allowing huge feet to sprout forth. I was SO disappointed. I wouldn't allow them to go into storage at the end of the activity until I fixed them, so I took them home and reinforced the bottoms of ALL the sacks. We'll see if they work next year.

After that debacle and the fixing of it (I hope), I decided to revisit this sewing business for good. Basically, I told myself "there's absolutely NO reason why I can't do this. It's a learnable skill, I am a learned person, and I even taught others how to learn, so I can teach myself this." I borrowed books from the library on the subject, visited a fabric store or two, found a pattern I loved for Tessa and made sure it had the word "Easy!" plastered somewhere on it, and proceeded. I laugh at myself when I think I brought the pattern and pieces of the dress to various church activities over the next few weeks to try and corner anyone I knew who could interpret the hieroglyphics that is a sewing pattern. Pockets, bias tape, zippers - what the F? But I did it. I didn't give up - I conquered my mountain. And here is the fruit of my labors.

Tessa opened it up on Christmas morning in front of my family, and the people who were most proud were my mom and my used-to-make-a-living-as-a-seamstress sister-in-law. I'm going to pretend it's Tessa's favorite thing to wear.

Creation: Cupcake Stands

It's been a month since I've blogged. Though I don't have friends or family who make me feel guilty for slacking off, I apologize to anyone who has been crying bitter tears upon their satin pillows at night.

Prepare for a blog post onslaught.

To start things off, I was inspired by a friend's blog to finally get myself over to a local thrift store to put a couple of these together. One was for a friend's birthday and the other was as a thank-you for taking time out of her busy GRE-studying time to watch Tessa a couple times when I was in a pinch. The cupcakes are chocolate chunk, one with cream cheese frosting, the other with Barefoot Contessa's Peanut Butter Frosting which rocks my cake-loving world.

Creation: Polka Dot Band

Tessa's little outfit was screaming for a new hair hoo-be-doo, so Mama came through so she could look adorable for our trip to the grocery store.