rostitchery

i caved

one year for christmas i saw a cute bunny santa in a christmas magazine that i wanted to give my sister andrea, because she had a real bunny.  i couldn't afford the bunny santa from the store so i made one:

everybody in my family loved him, so the next year i made a kitty santa for my sister juliana:

i've made others--a doggy, and a bear--which i don't have pictures of those.  :(

but my own santa is a man.  and i didn't make him.  i saw him at the nashville flea market one august, and it took me until november to save up enough money to buy him.  he is so beautiful, he is a man carrying presents for a little indian girl:  a sweet doll with long black braids, a bark canoe, a pelt, a mocassin, an old american flag, and ella's favorite: bird's nests and a bird house. 

this is the first year ella has seen my santa--he's been in storage since we moved from the apartment to this house--but this year i pulled him out and put him where i can admire him all day long.  ella LOVES him, she speaks to him like a real man and i heard her whisper her christmas wish to him last night ("santa, i've been a good girl, can i have a rose petal cottage, please?").

so i determined to make ella her very own santa, and of course i choose her spirit guide:  the sock monkey.  :D 

i know, i know--i wasn't supposed to make anything, esp. not at the last minute--but something came over me, or rather her, when she saw my santa and i couldn't resist.

he still fit into my christmas crafting rule of time--he only took an hour to make--actually, he only took 10 minutes to cut and sew--he took the rest of the hour to stuff.  :/

but when i put him on the stand so i could measure him for his suit, i realized that his tail would be in the way--and when i turned the stand to be on his side instead of his back, he leaned like the tower of piza.  so this little monkey will just have to be who he is--something i made for my baby with my own hands, because i love her and wanted to make her happy.  i think he will.

i know many of you reading this blog made gifts too.  i hope your loved ones enjoy each and every gift, and may this christmas bring you the joy it promises.

PEACE!

christmas trees

every wednesday my friend brenda brings her little girl to kindermusik at the school where i work.  this fall, for the first time, we've been able to meet up every week after class and let her child and mine play together.

for the past several weeks, we've each brought christmas crafts for the girls to do--but they'd rather play "rudolph and santa", or "mama and baby", or apparently just about anything else but crafting with their mamas.

which is fine--brenda and i just go about our own crafty business.  this past week she brought sparkly pipe cleaners--how i love sparkly anything!--and we were just sitting around bending them when i came up with this:

all you need is one green pipe cleaner, one red pipe cleaner, and some glitter glue.  bend the green pipe cleaner into a spiral--bend the red one into four loops and twine them in the bottom of the spiral to act as a stand--dot the tree with red glitter glue for ornaments and gold for a star on top. 

this little tree reminds me of the very first christmas tree rudi and i ever had.  our first christmas tree was 3" tall.  at that time rudi and i lived in a one-room apartment in a high rise in downtown nashville.  we didn't have room for a full-size tree, so i got a little tree meant for a christmas village and i perched it on top of our presents--thus rendering the presents de facto "under" the tree.

the tree we have now is 15 years old.  we bought it the year after the tiny tree--we had moved to the top floor and had just enough room to squeeze in a tree in the corner.  metro nashville codes do not allow live trees in apartment buildings, so we bought what we called an organically-challenged tree.  we went to target the day before christmas--we weren't sure before then that we've had the money to buy one--and by then they were on sale so we got a beautiful tree that has lasted us all these years and is still going strong.

every year of my life, i've wanted to leave the christmas tree up all year.  i never got to do it, until now.  we've left this tree up since last christmas, and every week when ella brings home some little something she made at preschool we've hung it on the tree.  it is so so beautiful. 

i'm not sure what will happen with the tree this coming year, but for one magical year of my life, i have had the supreme pleasure of watching my sweet ella turn on the christmas tree lights every morning when she wakes--one dream come true from my list.

what i've been doing instead of posting every day like i said i would

why do i think i can post every day?  i can't even get a shower every day.  oh how i wish i were more consistent, but it is a proven fact that i am, at best, semi-consistent.  :)

remember my christmas craft revolt?  i stuck to it again this year.  but i have been crafting, with ella (which is one reason i haven't been blogging).  on the first day of advent we made a paper chain advent calendar with 24 links, and on each one i wrote a christmas activity for us to do each day.  some of them have been holiday traditions--watching "rudolph the red-nosed reindeer", or writing a letter to santa, and a lot of them have been crafts to do together.

nothing to say about things we've been making, really, except that i treasure each of them because they were all made by or with ella, and thus they are already treasured family heirlooms.

button wreaths, made with fun wire (thank you, daba!), and ella's red/green/pink button collection, one morning when she woke up at the break of before-dawn.  i later added red ribbon bows:

angels made of "tennis shoes" (tissues in ella-speak):  in actual fact we used crepe paper for the angels, construction paper for the wings, and glitter glue for the "hellos" (halos).  the little village under the lamp was a foamies activity kit from michaels, a fantastic afternoon of family fun in a box (hint--get the ones that have sticky backs--the ones that have to be glued together are NOT fun for a 4-year-old crafter on the go):

snowmen made of "march meadows" (marshmallows), faces and buttons drawn on with food coloring markers:

march meadow treats, made with marshmallows on sticks, coated in frosting and rolled in sprinkles:

and one hybrid snowman with sprinkles:

christmas cards, blanks decorated with the leftover stickies from the foamies village, being signed by the princess herself:

major irritation, simple fix

one reason why i always wanted to learn to knit my own socks is that i detest the seam in the toes of commercial socks.  they irritate me, they rub places on my feet, and for years i've just worn my socks inside out so the seam doesn't bother me.  which means for years i've worn nothing but plain, ordinary, non-exciting socks.

and then, it came to me--the seam should be on the outside.  so i ripped out the seam in a pair of socks, turned them right side out, and re-seamed them.  IT WORKED!  these socks feel great, and since the seam is inside my shoe, it doesn't show.

inside sock, before:

inside sock, seam opened:

inside sock, after:

the ripping was tedious, so on the next pair i just cut the whole seam off, and that worked just fine, the seam is so narrow that it didn't make any difference at all in the socks.

i used a serger, but you can do this with a zig-zag on a sewing machine too.  in fact, i might even do it by hand on some of ella's socks--that way i can make a very tiny seam and use very lightweight thread.

yes, it is a little effort but only a little, and to me this is a quality of life issue.  and by the way, sock manufacturers, YOU could do this too--and of course you'd have the motivation to use matching thread.

outside sock, after:

7-day socks

the fall-out from doing a big show like "the magic flute" is that when it is over, i end up not wanting to have anything to do with sewing.  it's not that i end up not liking sewing, it's just that by the time the show closes i'm desperate to spend some quality/quantity time with my family and i can't do that if i'm sequestered in the sewing room. 

so i knit.  i can sit right next to rudi on the couch and watch something funny and spend an evening laughing with my best friend and still make something with my own two hands.  i can sit in bed next to ella and feel my sleeping baby snuggling up next to me and still make something with my own two hands.  and i can sit all by myself in the quiet of the early morning dark, with a cup of tea and some pretty yarn and think and breathe and meditate and pray and still quietly make something with my own two hands.

and so, i knit.  and mostly i knit the one thing i wanted to knit for the 20+ years it took me to get up the nerve to start knitting:  socks.

these socks make me so happy.  i started them on the sunday before thanksgiving and finished them on the saturday after thanksgiving.  the yarn is so soft--adriafil knitcol, my new favorite sock yarn, purchased at my new favorite yarn store, angel hair yarn company.  i've worn them every other day since they came off the needles.

i think even a beginning sock knitter could make these really quickly--the yarn is bigger than "sock" yarn, and there is nothing fancy here--no wraps, no pick ups--just plain stockinette knitting. 

1. turkish cast on and the star toe (i used 4 wraps on two needles, making 8 stitches total).
2. foot:  knit plain until long enough to reach the ankle.
3. heel:  my new and probably forever favorite, the fleegle heel.
4. leg:  knit in ribbing of choice (i used k3p1) until the leg is long enough or you run out of yarn
5. bind off:  elizabeth zimmerman's sewn bind off.

yeah, i could learn some lace or some other fancy knitting thing, i guess, but honestly i only knit socks because i want hand-knit socks, not because i want to show off my stitching.  if i wanted to show off my stitching, i'd make something i could wear closer to eye level.  :D

i offered to make socks for the other members of my family but they all turned me down--yippie!--that means all my sock knitting can be for the one person who wants hand-knit socks:  me. 

hi gayle

so last night, my friend gayle was asking me if i was ever going to post on my blog again, which asking me if i'm ever going to do a thing is a sure fire way to guarantee i will either do it immediately and go completely overboard, or i will never, ever do it again so long as i live.  because i love gayle, i have chosen to post immediately, or as immediately as i could which is right now.

so, for the "immediately" part:  gayle actually gave me some content--thank you, gayle--which amounts to the few pictures the photographer shot of "the magic flute".  honestly, the costumes and the whole opera looked way better than these pictures show--i'm not positive about this, but i'm willing to start the rumor that the photographer was blinded by the astonishing beauty of the costumes and was not able to properly operate his equipment because of that.

the overture, a hill at woodstock:

papageno, in hand-made mocassins, hand-painted jeans, hand-painted and fringed vest, and sadly-distressed, once-gorgeous paisley shirt:

the three ladies, modeled on the supremes, in the most hateful fabric ever invented, liquid sequins:

queen of the night, in airbrushed and handpainted dress inspired by the show poster:

so again, here i am trying to figure out how i'm going to get good pictures of the good costumes and just not even showing you the bad pictures of the bad costumes.  but now that i've posted, i feel refreshed.  thanx, gayle.

now, for the "overboard" part, i'm going to try to post every day between now and christmas.  yeah, i know, but i'm feeling ambitious.  besides, by her own admission my dear friend gayle is stalking me on my blog.  :)  and i really do have some nice projects to share with you, and of course a few tacky ones, too.