This cracks me up

I've known about guerilla knitting for awhile now, but I never thought I'd see it in Cape May.

http://www.stylelist.com/2010/03/11/midnight-knitter-covering-new-jersey-town-in-yarn/

Props to my parents for pointing this one out to me.

What happens when you forget about the load of felting in the washer?

This used to be about 10" tall.  It was supposed to felt and get smaller, but I wasn't aiming for something that's too small to hold my cell phone.
This used to be a hat.  A very, very big hat.  Now it's a bowl.  A relatively small, very attractive bowl.

And the fuzzy red slippers that I had previously felted to be slightly too big for my feet, which I was trying to refelt to be a little more snug?  They're about 3/4" too long ... for my four-year-old.  Oops.

Oh, hai! Guess I should post once in a while, huh?

The solution to the yarn issue from my previous post? Find a pattern that only needed the original number of skeins of yarn, and use a completely different color to finish it. Thank goodness for Dahlia!

Now, I just need to find a use for the extra five skeins of yarn in the powder blue lot ...

So very, very disappointing

After scoring a good deal on some Rowan Summer Tweed yarn at the local yarn store, I realized that they didn't have enough of the purpley-blue color for the sweater I wanted to make. I hopped on Ravelry and found a couple people who had the same colorway in their stashes, and I arranged to buy them for even less than I paid the local yarn store. Double score!

The additional skeins are different lot numbers than the original purpose, which usually means you're in for some minor variation in color. So you can imagine my surprise when the first of the additional skeins showed up and looked nothing like the color with which I had already started the sweater:

Yes, they are the same colorway (at least according to the labels). No, the lighting isn't a factor - they look this different no matter what lighting I use. This is just the worst dye lot variation I've ever seen.

I'm hoping that the other four skeins that are coming from Scotland will be somewhere in between these two colors, so that I can fade gradually from the purpley into the powder blue. Or that they're powder blue and I'll have enough to make the top part of the sweater without the three skeins of the purpley yarn I originally bought.

Or that I get up the nerve to just knit with it no matter what color it is, then overdye the whole thing black or really, really dark purple or something.

Crud.

My new favorite listing on etsy

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=19852075

(fwiw, I bought a DIY I Spy bag kit from aebaby, and it was wonderfully done, and just right for my pre-reading daughter. I highly recommend her stuff .... although I'd prefer a lower price on this one!)

Feeling all smug in a MacGyverish sort of way

Lazy Husband was just getting ready for bed and discovered a rather troubling steady drip of water that is coming from the top of our bedroom window frame and splashing loudly on our windowsill every 0.65 seconds. Aside from the hideous mold this leak is probably causing in our walls and attic, the sound is enough to drive you insane while trying to go to sleep.

Putting down a towel on the sill didn't help, it just made it into more of a splat than a plink, and at the rate the water is coming out the towel would be completely soaked before morning, anyway. Lazy Husband was about ready to give up and sleep in the guest room tonight when I had a brain flash.

I grabbed the leftover (organic, unbleached, undyed, ridiculously expensive) cotton yarn from this hat, taped one end to the wall above the leak, ran the length of it so it touched the drippy point on the frame, and stuck the other end in a plastic pitcher. Once I wetted down the yarn along its length, the water ran (silently!) down the yarn and into the pitcher.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, craft gods, for helping me get some sleep tonight. Because I'm going to need it when calling repair people tomorrow ...

Update - look how cute the legwarmers are as fingerless mittens!

All I did was add a large buttonhole to the side as a thumbhole, and voila! Fingerless mittens that look really cute on a 13-yr-old! Gotta go make some of those for me ...

Wifebeater bag

Lazy Husband left a pile of t-shirts sitting in our bedroom, waiting for the next run to Goodwill. I snagged one and turned it into a reusable shopping bag, ala the much superior ones that fellow Clevey zJayne makes.

In order to make the bags, you first have to cut off the sleeves and the neckline of the shirt, then fold in the sides of the shoulders to reinforce the handles. When you do that, you basically turn a poor, unsuspecting t-shirt into a wifebeater, which got me giggling. And when you make the bottom of the bag and gusset it, you end up with this sort of wifebeater-torso bag, which is going to make me snort every time I use it.

Note to self - when making subsequent bags, a unisex XL makes a bag that's really too huge to be practical. I could stuff most of a week's worth of groceries in there, if i didn't mind them squishing each other into a pulp before I got them to the car. Or maybe I'll just go buy one from zJayne ...

Going out of business?

Okay, so if you're at all crafty you have probably heard about this, but it could stand to be repeated here because it WILL impact my business.

The government has recently passed a rather poorly-thought-out law,the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, which goes into effect February 10 2009. On the surface, it sounds good, requiring additional testing of children's toys and equipment to reduce exposure to lead and other harmful substances. Great! I'm all in favor of not poisoning our children.

The problem is, this applies to EVERY toy and children's item, not just those manufactured by large companies or places with histories of problems in the past. And the testing has to be done by an official third-party testing facility, which can charge hundreds of dollars for one test.

So, for example, the tummy time quilts I make to sell on etsy for $18-50 would have to be sent away for testing to make sure the materials and design are safe for kids. Every quilt is made of a unique blend of fabrics and a unique design, so testing one quilt won't apply to all of them. And pretty much every etsy artist who makes things for kids faces the same problem, unless they are large enough that they are mass-producing items (which includes maybe half a dozen etsy folks ... the rest of us make very limited runs of whatever we make). We're stay-at-home moms, crafty parents, owners of small businesses, people who just like to make little stuffed animals. And we're pissed.

Come February, we're going to have to make a choice - quit selling children's items, or be non-compliant and risk major fines and legal entanglements. Personally, I plan to quit selling kids stuff - the most profitable and popular part of my product line - rather than risk getting caught. And I know a lot of etsy folks feel the same way. So next Christmas, good luck finding handmade children's items that don't cost an arm and a leg ...

Unless we can modify the law. If you'd like to learn more about the topic and find a list of ways you can support artists who would be put out of business by CPSIA, pop on over to the round-up on Cool Mom Picks. Write your congressman and senator, contact the folks at the CPSC, sign the online petition, add the button to your blog.

Please take the time to look into the issue and add your voice of support, if you can. Thanks!

May be my next venture

I made these legwarmers for all of the kids in LazyKid's dance class, and they loved them. And at her dance recital tonight I had probably 10 people ask me where I had gotten them ... so I guess I'm going to call the dance studio tomorrow to see if they'd be interested in carrying them with the other dance merchandise they sell in the lobby. Might be a fun little sideline, right?

Before and after

This is the inside of my sewing machine.

This is the inside of my sewing machine after I sew a bunch of quilts, mermaid costumes, pillows, and other stuff without bothering to do any cleaning.

This is the pile of stuff I picked out of the inside of my sewing machine.

The sad thing is that I sort of let it collect on purpose, because it's more rewarding to fish out a huge pile of stuff than it is to pull out tiny bits of fluff. I am a sick, sick woman.

Photo shoot with a 3-year-old

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

Creepiest. Listing. Ever.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12952245

A cautionary tale

Once upon a time (Tuesday) I bought one of those squishy U-shaped neck pillows for my daughter to use with her new carseat, which otherwise seemed to propel her sleeping head forward at a dangerously lolling angle that looked worrisome (and uncomfortable). But when we got the pillow home and tried it out, it was way to overstuffed to work around her little nubbin of a neck.

"Not a problem!" I thought, getting out the seam ripper. "I'll just take out some of the beads and redistribute the rest of them so it's more comfortable for her."

The seam ripper was, of course, in my sewing room, so I sat down and started working on the project. I had a plastic bag all ready to catch the beads, and the three-year-old was safely engaged in some diverting activity far, far away. I had forgotten how much fun it is to work with polystyrene beads ... and these were literally the size of pinheads, they were that small. I should know, since they're now spread all over my studio. See that stuff on my jeans? It's not dandruff. Thank you, ceiling fan.

Thank you, static electricity.

(Hee - that looks like my hand is being swarmed by albino aphids)

Thank you, Lazy Kid, for the photos, especially the action shot of me attempting to milk the little monsters out of the nipple that was obviously their entry point during the original construction process. If anyone needs any help milking nanny goats or heifers, let me know - I had an hour of practice this afternoon.

Eventually I wised up and took the project out onto the front porch, where I ended up spreading beads all over the porch, sidewalk, and flower bed. I'm going to be vacuuming the little buggers out of my house for months. Grrrrr. At least the significantly smaller pillow works - that would have been the kicker if I went through all that and it still didn't work. Now I just have to find a place to store the beads where Certain People can't find them or reach them.

Note to self: All projects involving fake fur and/or polystyrene beads must be completed outside the house, preferably outside the county.

Sign that it's time to go buy more $0.10 stamps:

Yup, that looks professional.

Out of retirement

I retired my large rotary cutting mat a few months ago when I switched to using a piece of antique furniture instead of my wobbly cutting table. Since then, it's been languishing in the attic ... until our friend forgot to bring his terrain maps when he came over to play Dungeons and Dragons minis with LazyHusband.
Yes, they were so desperate for "adult" game time that they made a war map out of a rotary cutting mat and some of LazyKid's blocks. I wish I had a photo of last weekend's Bristle Block cavern of doom, or whatever they were calling it.

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.

The Goddess of Craft - she is a vengeful, spiteful thing

1. You are happy because you sold eight of your SWAK blankets in a week, so you bought a lot more fabric to make new ones for the shop? Okay, now you won't sell anything for three weeks. Bwahahahaha!
2. You have a deadline looming and a sample quilt to make? Okay, your stash no longer has three fabrics that coordinate. Bwahahahaha!
3. And you're out of chocolate! Bwahahahahaha!
4. And your toddler refuses to take naps! Bwahahahahaha!
5. You get up early to get some work done before your toddler awakes? Okay, now she'll get up at 6:40am, but only on days when you wake up early. On days when you sleep in, she'll sleep until 8:30am, thus depriving you of 90 minutes of time that could have been spent in the studio. Bwahahahahahaha!
6. Trying to entertain the kid for an hour while you get some work done? Okay, now the portable DVD player is broken ... but only when you try to use it in your studio. Anywhere else it works fine ... but all of the work you have to finish requires that you be in the studio. Bwahahahahahaha!
7. You have no deadline and a huge pile of scraps you're trying to use up? Okay, your stash is now chock full of fabrics that coordinate with the scrap blocks ... but you don't have enough yardage of any of them. Bwahahahahahaha!
8. Oh, and the cat puked on the pile of fabric you stored on the floor because you were too lazy to file it. Bwahahahaha!

Stay tuned - later this week I plan to slice off the end of my finger with a rotary cutter, then set my studio on fire with a shorted-out iron. And, if things go as planned, the kid will pee on a finished quilt that's ready to ship to a customer. Should be fun!

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)

I got a treasury

Check it out and see if I'm making any sense at all.

My treasury
Sheesh, I'm going to bed.