Little Legwarmers now available

Just a quick note to let everyone know that you can now buy my Little Legwarmers EXCLUSIVELY at Above the Barre dance studio in Berea, OH.

The legwarmers all feature decorative ribbon bows at the top and double-overcast edges at the bottom (which look a little different from the ones in the photo, but trust me, they're even cuter with the new lettuce hem). Great as legwarmers for young kids, or armwarmers for older kids or adults! Each pair is individually made by me, and comes packaged in a cute cello bag with care instructions on the tag. A steal at only $8 a pair!

Get them while you can - I sold three pairs before the owner had finished reading the consignment agreement I wrote up!

If they sell well at the studio, I may try selling them at additional venues, so let me know if you have any suggestions of places who might be looking to sell kids' clothing.

Sewing for Lazy Kid

Child's Sock Pattern by Lucy H. Lee, found for free via Ravelry. Knit from Soxx Appeal by Knit One, Crochet Too, I think the colorway was Purple Haze. Fun, fast knit, even if they are done on size 2 DPNs. Gah.

Next up: A bean bag chair with a secret.


It's filled with all of Lazy Kid's stuffed animals, which she never uses for anything, anyway, but won't let me throw out. Hah! Now the kid has a place to sit when she watches videos in my studio, and I have extra room to store toys she actually uses. Not bad for coming from a free pattern and using up stash fabric ... even if I did have to use pins to sew on the bottom and top. Pins are evil, have I mentioned that recently?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I just realized that I have a vacation to pack for, and NO SUITABLE KNITTING TO TAKE WITH ME. The horror! The horror! Must buy more yarn!

Attack of the (formerly) UFOs

After a brief family meeting, it was decided that I would take some time this weekend to get started on my holiday etsy shop sewing, since I've got Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas all looming on the horizon. My first goal was to clear out some of the UFOs that have been hanging around, clogging up the cutting table and taking up space in my brain.




So, in roughly the order they were completed, here's the list of the FOs from this weekend:

1. SWAK blanket as a gift for a friend.
2. Two custom mermaid costumes.
3. A school bag for Lazy Kid, who starts "real" preschool tomorrow.
4. Some throw pillow covers for Christmas, made from redwork patterns I got here. Sorry for the embarrassingly bad photo, but I was in a hurry. Notice I've got two pillow covers but only one pillow? Waiting for a sale at Joanns to get another one ...
5. Two eyelet lace SWAK blankets for the shop.
6. A Halloween Hexagon quilt from stash fabric, which is all basted and ready to start quilting.
7. Three madras plaid homespun SWAK blankets for the shop.
8. A swirly wool toddler/child hat that I'm insanely proud I designed myself. See how the stripes swirl and decrease toward the top of the hat? Brilliant!
9. Pieces for the next baby quilt for the shop cut out and ready to start piecing.
10. And, if I stop typing and get my butt in gear, I may be able to finish my first pair of winter socks of the season, which are about 3/4" from the toe decreases right now.

So I'm going off to watch football (yawn) and knit furiously fast. Hope your weekend was equally productive!

New listing - mermaid tail and tiara costume set

You know you want one - and they come in your size! So go buy one already ...

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=14789641

New merchandise

Cute little lined cotton zip bags, with a strap suitable for use around a child's or adult's wrist. I made one for Lazy Kid, who had plenty of purses but none that actually closed, so when she took her change to the mall to ride on the little rides, she'd sling the purse around and quarters would go flying everywhere. The bag turned out so cute that I thought there might be a market for them. Find all four designs in the "bags" section of my etsy shop.

Parenthack - how to keep parents from cheating at kids' card games

Lazy Kid has reached the age of Go Fish, Crazy Eights, and various other card-based games. She understands all of the rules and loves to play, but her hands aren't quite large or nimble enough to hold all the cards, so she spreads them out on the floor in front of her. Personally, I don't mind this, because it makes it easier for me to arrange it so she wins occasionally ... but Lazy Husband was getting frustrated because he was trying not to cheat by seeing her cards.

Enter ... the Lazy Parent 6000 (aka a cardboard box with 3 flaps folded inside*):

We use it with the open side toward Lazy Kid so that she can put her cards inside it or on the flap, and the extra surface on top makes a convenient place to put the communal stack of cards so they don't get mixed in with her jumble. The box is tall enough so that Lazy Husband can't see over it, so he can't cheat. Now, if we could just get her to stop announcing the color and number of every "fish" she draws, he'd be on the straight and narrow.

*fairy costume optional

Photo shoot with a 3-year-old

Guess this isn't the shot I'll be using to publicize the hat pattern.

Teaching a young child to sew

Yeah, okay, maybe I'm a little ambitious here, but Lazy Kid has mad skillz when it comes to small motor play, and she's bored with sticking laces through beads, and the laces on her lacing cards are so long they get tangled or so short she pulls them all the way through each hole. Plus, she just sort of laces the cards in a random order from random directions, so they don't look like anything when she's done. She gets really frustrated when she ends up with this tangled ball of nasty yarn with a cute cow lacing card buried in the middle. So what's a crafty mommy to do? Get all DIY with the problem, that's what.

And so, I proudly present a free tutorial on making your own learn-to-sew card for really young kids. Please note that this is a supervised activity - young children should NEVER be left alone with needles, even blunt plastic ones.

Materials:

• A piece of cardboard (preferably corrugated, but definitely sturdy) about the size of a sheet of notebook paper
• A pair of scissors sturdy enough to cut through the cardboard
• A hole punch sturdy enough to cut through the cardboard (mine's a cheapy from Office Max, and it worked fine)
• A marker/pen/pencil/crayon
• A scrap of yarn about 2 feet long
• A button that's larger than the holes the hole punch makes and that has holes large enough for the yarn needle to go through
• A BLUNT tapestry needle, yarn needle or plastic canvas needle - preferably plastic

Steps:

1. Punch a series of holes along one side of the cardboard, about 2" apart and as far in from the edge as the hole punch will go. Label the holes with numbers, either from left to right or right to left.
2. Cut two smaller pieces of cardboard, each about 3-4" square. Punch two holes in each piece of cardboard, at approximately the same distance you used in step 1. Label these holes with two consecutive numbers, as in the photo below.
3. Thread the yarn scrap through the needle, then even up the ends and tie them so that the needle will not come loose from the yarn. Thread the needle and yarn through one hole on the button, pulling the knot snug against the button. This will keep the child from pulling the thread all the way through the holes.
4. First show the child how to sew on just the larger piece of cardboard, with the needle coming "up at 1" and "down at 2" and "up at 3" and so forth across the piece.
5. Next, show the child how to "unsew" the yarn by backing the needle out through the holes, "down through 3" "up through 2" "down through 1" etc.
6. Finally, show the child how to "sew" the smaller cardboard pieces onto the larger piece by holding them over top while sewing. You may need to make the holes in the smaller pieces a little larger (two hole punches side by side) so the child can easily see to put the needle through both holes at once.

Lazy Kid "sewed" the cards in the photo above with only minimal guidance from me - mostly I just had to remind her that the needle didn't always go in from the same side of the board (which wraps the yarn around the edge of the card instead of making a nice running stitch).

After she completed this she wanted nothing more to do with it that day, and the next day she just wanted to hold the needle and swing the yarn around, which was all fun and games until the button on the other end of the yarn hit her in the face (which is why you NEVER leave a child alone with a needle - did I mention that before?).

So no, my three-year-old won't be entering any embroidery at the state fair this year, but she DID have fun with this the first time, and I think it will be popular in the future once she gets over the button-to-the-face incident. And once she gets good with the cardboard, it's on to more floppy materials like felt (and quilting cotton!).

Let me know how this works for you!

Crafty birthday

LazyToddler is now officially LazyKid, having turned three years old earlier this week. We had the party today, complete with garden-themed birthday cake and food. I'm not usually a theme party kinda girl (last year she got cheap pizza and an ice cream cake, and the year before that we gave her a Kroger cupcake three days late), but I had fun this year. The cake was the best part ...

LazyKid helped make the "seed packets," and she helped mix the cake, but I decorated the whole thing after she went to bed so the final product would be a surprise. Decorating a cake after 10pm leads to flights of fancy that may include (but are not limited to) ...

... giant worms ...

... and bunny turds.

I was a little bit worried that the cake was going to be awful - I monkeyed around with the size of the pan so I'd have plenty of "garden" to decorate, and it took almost twice as long to bake as the original recipe suggested. I even had to wrap the edges of the pan in foil partway through to keep them from getting overcooked. That worked pretty well, actually, and the edge piece that I had was just as moist as the middle.

I was also a little bit concerned because I didn't notice until I was halfway done making the frosting that it never gets cooked or heated after the raw egg is added. But I solved that problem by feeding a healthy dose of extra frosting to LazyHusband last night and watching him carefully for signs of food poisoning. It's excusable to throw your spouse under the bus in an effort to keep kids from dying of salmonella, right?

All in all, it was a fun party, even if I didn't get to do some of the more elaborate things I had planned. I guess if I had gone all Martha Stewart on the decorations and games, my friends would have had to slap some sense into me, and that would have been unfortunate. So we'll just save the "pin the center on the flower" game we made for next year, and thank our lucky stars that the "toss the bunny in the rabbit hole" game never got finished.

And if there's any lingering doubt about my ability to give Martha a run for her money, you need look no further than my attempt at Ladybug Pizzas to see ... I'm not even in her league.

Who knew canned chopped olives looked so disgusting? Oh, well, at least they tasted better than they looked.

In retrospect,

... maybe it was a bad idea to let LazyChild help pull out the stuffing I needed for a project for her birthday party this weekend.

Maybe this will finally push me over the edge and give me an excuse to buy a Dyson. Yeah, right.

More gifts for the kiddo

LazyToddler's third birthday is looming on the horizon, which means I've been sneaking off to Toys R Us instead of crafting, and I've been spending waaaaay too much time browsing on etsy. I have to admit, etsy is a little short on non-clothing gifts for the toddler set - lots for babies, lots for older kids, not so much for those who are short on attention span and long on destruction. So with that in mind, I've been trying to find things I think she'll enjoy, at least until she breaks them into (hopefully) non-lethal pieces within 20 minutes of opening them.

Not really. I have found a few things that I think are age-appropriate and fun. In the order in which the packages made it to our door:

Pixie Dust star-shaped goat's milk soaps from abreathofFrenchair. These arrived super-fast, in great condition and in the cutest packaging I've seen yet. Yes, there really is that much pink packing paper in that adorable black-and-white box! I think LazyToddler is really going to enjoy using these in the bath, and the small size means that we won't be stuck using one yucky bar of soap for weeks and weeks. And she's going to smell yummy, just in time for the stinky sticky summer season. Bonus!

Handpainted ceramic pendant from LisaEverettDesigns. They're available in all of the colors shown above - I ordered the white one, figuring that it's likely to match more outfits that way. Of course, we're dealing with a three-year-old's sense of style, so that was probably unnecessary :) I'm going to pick up some ribbon to use to make the "chain" for it, which I'm hoping will prove more durable (or at least more easily replaced) than the regular link chain on some of her dearly departed jewelry. If this one works out well, I may pick up some of the artist's other paper-covered pendants for the kiddo or myself - but these looked more durable for now.

"Pink PJs" ribbon wand from (who else?) ribbonwand. I think this is soooo cute, with the stripes and the pinkness and all. I'm hoping that the "Brass swivel hardware to ensure ease of movement" will prevent some of the tangling problems we had with a stationary-mount silk streamer we got for Christmas last year. Plus, the stick is shorter, so it's less whackable than her current rain-stained, knotted, pathetic-looking one. I wasn't sure this would make it here in time for LazyToddler's birthday, since it was coming from Canada, and Canada Post is notoriously laconic when it comes to getting stuff to the lower 48. But it showed up today, a little more than a week after the order was placed, so, Go, Canada Post!

That's it, at least so far. I may keep trolling for a while to see if any t-shirts strike me as must-haves, even though LazyHusband will kill me if I bring one more item of clothing into her room. It's okay if she never wears anything more than twice, right? Back me up here, peeps!

Guess what

So guess what's printing, even as I type?

Despite a (temporarily) dead computer, a dead DVD player, and a toddler who's lucky to be alive after what all she pulled today, I finished the pattern for Saturday's trunk show! Four printed, twenty more to go. Come on, ink cartridge, don't fail me now!

New pattern will be available here and on my etsy shop Saturday evening ... gotta give the Birds of a Feather folks first dibs on it.

Well, fine. Be that way.

Dear LazyToddler:

Okay, fine, you're almost three. I get it. You don't want to nap, you want to stay awake and become increasingly cranky as the day wears on, finally dropping from sheer exhaustion around 7:30. That's fine with me, as it gives me time in the evening to spend with your father, time that can be spent completing sentences and not speaking in the third person or telling stories about a fairy named Liza.

But I need time to work on Lazy Mama stuff, and since you aren't taking a nap with any regularity anymore, I thought I'd be smart and get up an hour early to get work done before you wake up. You get up around 7:30 am most days, so I'd get up at 6:30 and get a whole mess of stuff done despite still being in my pajamas. And it worked great ... the first day.

But now you've decided to start waking up earlier and earlier, no matter what time we put you to bed. Yesterday I woke up at 6:40, and you were up at 6:49. That's not even enough time to pee and get the computer turned on and operational, much less make any significant progress on the pattern that I HAVE TO HAVE FINISHED BY FRIDAY NIGHT. And when my alarm went off at 6:30 this morning, you were already stirring and making up stories with your stuffed animals. I just gave up and laid in bed for an extra 15 minutes, reveling in the hard rock station you apparently tuned my radio to sometime yesterday. Nothing like "BBBBBBBBBBad to the Bone" to start your day off right, I always say.

So now you're at preschool, and I have one and a half glorious hours to finish this darn pattern ... only I don't feel like it. I feel like blogging about your annoying sleep patterns, and the deer tracks I found in the backyard, and the yummyness of the pork roast I made for dinner last night. Oh, I'm going to get around to the pattern - I always do - but I'm not happy about it.

So you'd better be ready to take a nap this afternoon, kiddo, so I don't have to pull out the Sesame Street video again (although you're getting ridiculously close to being able to read, thanks to the darn video, so it's not all bad to have a DVD player as a babysitter, right?). Because despite my name, Lazy Mama isn't feeling so lazy today.

Sincerely,

Mama, aka "George Gershwin" (don't ask, Internet, it's not my fault that she's decided I'm a character from a stupid bedtime story involving Rhapsody in Blue and a little fairy named Liza ... at least I'm not Herr Drosselmeyer anymore)

How lazy am I?

Yesterday my daughter and I spent a half an hour making construction paper bunnies and chicks with cottonballs glued on to make them fuzzy. And today we made these:
Four days after Easter, using raw eggs, which ups the Laziness Quotient logarithmically, I think, sort of like the Richter scale. And we may not get around to putting the princess stickers on them until tomorrow. That's how lazy I am.

Not getting much done

I made the executive decision that the best way to get LazyToddler to bed on time after the time change was to grit my teeth and not let her nap for at least the first few days this week, as this usually makes her so tired that she passes out face-first in her dinnerplate. So instead of a nice two-hour stretch of time to work on my projects during the afternoon, yesterday I had five minutes to check my e-mail while she worked some puzzles, and a few minutes to get some quilting done on the double wedding ring table runner while she watched a video on the portable DVD player in my office.

After 10 or 15 minutes, LazyToddler said in the sleepiest, most pitiful voice you can imagine, "Mama, stop sewing. I want you to come watch this video with me. It's really good - please stop sewing." So I did what any self-respecting crafty mom would do - I shut off the infernal machine and snuggled on the floor with my daughter, watching a tap dance video from the library.

(And I sketched a few ideas on a scrap of paper, which I was mean enough to not let her scribble on afterwards ... crafty moms have to be firm once in a while, you know.)

YoMama Baby Quilt Pattern page

YoMama Baby Quilt pattern

Finally, a baby quilt that doesn’t keep you chained to the sewing machine for hours! This project combines some machine sewing with a lot of very portable handsewing, making it great for crafters on the go. This quilt is great for tummy-time!

Approximate finished dimensions: 36" square

A person with average sewing skills should be able to finish the machine sewing in about one naptime (2 hours). This project requires several hours of additional time for handsewing, but this time can be squeezed in whenever you have a few minutes.

Photo from the pattern directions - making the yo-yos.

Attaching the yo-yos.

Pattern includes illustrated directions and suggestions for additional variations on the project. It is packaged in a resealable plastic bag (6"x9"), ready to hang and sell.

Wholesale price: $4.00/pattern

Suggested retail price: $7-$9, or whatever the market will bear in your area

Free shipping on your first order! Shipping charges for subsequent orders will be the actual charges for USPS Priority Mail to your destination.

I am willing to make free samples to display in your shop, if you are willing to provide the materials. Please contact me for more information on this service.

For more information or to place an order, please contact Gretchen Woods at Lazy Mama Designs: lazymamadesigns (at) yahoo (dot) com.

NEW!! You can also place orders through my shop at etsy.com - just convo me with a request, including the number of patterns you'd like to buy, and I can post a custom listing for you at the wholesale price.

Thank you for your interest, and I hope to hear from you soon!

YoMama Infant Quilt prototype finished!

What is it? A quilt you can use to make an infant's tummy-time a little less boring (and keep your carpets a little less urp-covered). Machine pieced from visually stimulating black and white prints, the quilt features brightly colored hand-stitched yo-yos sewn to the quilt by hand to provide the quilting.

This is a prototype; patterns to make your own, as well as some completed quilts, should be available in the shop later this week.

This is the inaugural project in my new line of patterns designed to be completed at least partially by hand. All of the hand crafted parts of these projects are will fit inside a gallon-sized plastic bag (most will fit in a quart-sized one, which is perfect for popping in your purse or diaper bag). This approach allows crafters to take the project with them and do some work during the little pieces of idle time they can find throughout the day. For example, I made all the yo-yos for this project while watching Sesame Street with my daughter, supervising my daughter at an indoor playground, and riding in the car.

Free project - Fabric postcard Valentines

I made these with my not-quite-three-year-old daughter for her preschool classmates. She picked out fabrics and manned the glue stick; I manned the sewing machine and occasionally told her where to stick things down. It probably took me under an hour to make the five I needed for her class.

Supplies:

• Various fabric scraps (I used pieces leftover from the Heart Attack quilt and the sample I made for the Heart Happy Wallhanging pattern)
• A piece of stiff interfacing or Timtex, about 4"x6"
• Coordinating thread
• glue stick or fabric glue

1. Sew fabric scraps together until you have a piece that's at least 4"x6". Repeat to make a second piece.
2. Use the glue stick to apply glue to one side of the interfacing or Timtex, then adhere it to the wrong side of one of the pieces you made in the first step. Repeat for the other side of the interfacing or Timtex.
3. Zigzag stitch or serge around the edge of the interfacing or Timtex, making sure you drop the needle off the edge so that one side of the zigzag is sewing through just the fabric. Trim the excess fabric, being careful not to cut into the stitching.
4. Use the glue stick to apply glue to more fabric scraps, then adhere them to one or both sides of the postcard.
5. Stitch slightly inside the edge of these fabric scraps to raw-edge applique them to the postcard.
6. If you wish, stitch a message onto the postcard (use a darning foot, drop your feed dogs, and spell it out in cursive ... or program your fancy sewing machine to embroider it for you, Ms. Lazypants!)
   

How I'm staying sane

Have I mentioned that my daughter seems to think this month is the perfect time to give up napping? Argh!

The only way to maintain my sanity is to give her something she can do while I work on the computer for an hour sometime during the day. Last week that involved peanut butter toast, dress up clothes, and a Bear in the Big Blue House DVD from the library.

You'd be amazed how much crochet you can do during one episode of Sesame Street ... I can finish most of the body of an Easter bunny before it's even time for Elmo's World. If our DVD player and/or DVR break down, my productivity is going to go down the drain.

Stylin'

Outfit by Beneath the Rowan Tree; styling by LazyToddler.