Camp Mom, week 2

This week we're working with pencils. We've checked out 8 billion books about manga, comics, colored pencil techniques, botanical illustration, etc.

I've taught her how to use the side of a pencil to reveal secret messages indented in a "blank" piece of paper. We've learned about the wonders of colorless blending pencils, and how they can make even badly-colored stuff look much more polished.

We have blank books to make comics and/or flip books. We have kneadable erasers and wood-free graphite sticks and a whole bag of artist-grade colored pencil stubs (courtesy of Lazy Grandma's mad yardsale skills).

What we don't have are any pictures of our projects - I guess I'll have to take some later this week.

Camp Mom, day 2

Rolled paper beads, courtesy of one page of a Penzey's catalog, some glue, and some sparkly but clear nail polish. We'll string them with some "normal" beads in a future project.

Lots of other stuff in the works, which can't be revealed until after Sunday

Camp Mom, day 1

In an effort to keep from going crazy this summer, LazyKid and I have planned out 11 weeks of art projects to try.

This week's focus is on glue - decoupage, paper mâché, etc. So far we've decoupaged some of her artwork onto a notebook, primed 3 projects for future decoupage use, and made rolled paper beads. I'm pretty sure my table is going to be a disaster area all week, if not all summer.

Sounds like fun to me!

I've been a bit busy in the yard

Before:

After:

(not pictured: me collapsed in a heap on the couch afterwards)

Lazy Kid room overhaul

Lazy Kid's birthday is coming up this weekend, and we decided it was time for her to have a bit more "grown up" looking room.  First up: troll Craig's List for weeks to locate a non-ugly loft bed set we could afford.

Next up: Paint the walls and drawer fronts in Lazy-Kid-mandated colors.  Note: the polka-dot things are storage buckets we screwed to the side of the loft so she'd have someplace to put her alarm clock and box of kleenex.  I was pretty excited to find something that matched ALL of the colors the kid had already chosen.  Yay, Target!

We picked out some coordinating fabrics and used it to cover some foam-core to make bulletin boards to display her artwork.

We repainted her shelf, and the ladder rungs to the loft.

We finally cut her curtains off so they don't drag on the floor, bought some of the easy-fill picture frames for kid artwork, and got a desk chair.

We fixed her bookcase so the back doesn't fall off anymore, and I reorganized her books so that she can find them more easily.

We're also testing a super-secret product for Lazy Husband's work, which I can't talk about here, but it's super cool and I can't wait to show you the shots of that.

At any rate, the room is ostensibly "done," with only a few things here and there that need to be fixed (like I really should HEM the curtains, not just whack them off with a pair of shears and say they're good enough). The kid loves it so much that she actually keeps it clean, I love that the part you can see from the hallway looks much nicer than it did before, and Lazy Husband loves that the whole shebang only cost about $500, including the bed, dresser, new desk, chair, etc.  That's a win-win-win situation!

March (cleaning) madness

Before and after shots from this week's kitchen cleanup. Order of photos will be wacky until I can edit this post at home tonight, but you should be able to get the drift.

The back corner is like a black hole - it sucks in everything that doesn't have a home elsewhere.  So I found homes for lots of miscellaneous stuff.

Before:

After:

Under the sink isn't that bad - we can't store cleaning chemicals down there because the cats or kid could get into them, so it's just disposable storage stuff and plastic bag storage.  But it could still use a tidying.

Before:

After:

Another black hole: when the dish towels come out of the dryer, we open the door quickly, shove them in, and hope that the pile doesn't fall on our heads.  Not anymore!

Before:

After:

Ah, the junk drawer.  Not terribly junky, and we can always find what we need in it, but it's not particularly pretty.  Let's fix that, shall we?

Before:

After:

I still want to clean the fridge shelves and the kid plasticware shelves. But that won't take long, right? Right? 

Dollhouse update

We finally had a snowy Saturday when I could devote the day to futzing around with the dollhouse kit I'm building. It's a frustrating project for me because I like to be able to sit down and make PROGRESS, lots of progress, all at one go - and the dollhouse requires lots of waiting for glue to dry and paint layers to finally cover the plywood. Grrrr. And if I have to sand one more minuscule little window frame I will lose my everlovin' mind!

But today things started to finally make visible progress. Walls got wallpapered, window trim got last coats of paint, and the base of the house got a flooring makeover (ballpoint pen lines + stain = fake hardwood). Still LOTS to do before it's even remotely house-like, but at least I can check a few things off the list!

Free Pattern: Mario's Brother's Scarf

It all started when I tried making the Biryani Shawl, designed by MMario (Ravelry link).  I liked how the stacked yarnovers made an interesting design, but doing that in an ever-increasing triangle required too much pattern-reading for it to be an easy project.  After fiddling around with different yarns and gauges, I found a combination I really liked.  Erika at River Colors Studio donated the yarn to make the prototype, I knit like a maniac for a few days, and voila! A scarf!

(before and after blocking)

This is a great pattern to show off a yarn with long color changes - and it's an almost totally mindless project that's easy to memorize and easy to accomplish.  It's a win-win-win situation!  So, without further ado, I give you ...

Mario's Brother's Shawl
a free pattern by Lazy Mama Designs

Supplies:

• 4.5 mm needles (straight or circular)
• about 400 yards laceweight yarn (I used half a ball of Schoppel Wolle Lace Ball, in color Fuchsianbeet)
• stitch marker

Instructions:

LOOSELY cast on 37 stitches - you may want to go up several needle sizes in order to get the cast on loose enough to block properly.

Note: You may find it's easiest to keep track of where you are in the pattern if you place a stitch marker near the beginning of Row 1, so that every time you start a row with the marker you know you're on the row where you do the [K2 together through back loop].

Row 1: Slip 1 as if to purl, K1, (K2, YO, [K2 together through back loop]) across to last three stitches, K3
Row 2: Slip 1 as if to purl, K2, (K1, YO, [K2 together], K1) across to last two stitches, K2

Repeat rows 1 and 2 until scarf is desired length.  I made mine about 60" long (unblocked).

Bind off LOOSELY, treating each YO stitch as follows: [K the YO stitch, bind it off loosely, move the loop from the right needle to the left needle, K1 through the back loop loosely].

Wet block severely to open the stitches.  Depending on whether you stretch it width-wise or length-wise, you can end up with a longer or wider scarf.  I blocked mine mainly for length, and ended up with a scarf that was 65"x10" after blocking.

***

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have another half of that skein left to play with for another pattern I dreamed up ...

Making things unnecessarily complicated

When LazyKid wanted a pair of plain socks out of solid colored worsted weight yarn, I finally had an excuse to try an unnecessarily complex way of making socks - one inside the other, at the same time, on the same needles! If all goes well, when I'm finished I'll be able to magically pull out a completed sock from inside another completed sock. If things go badly I'll end up with 2 completed socks that are linked together because I screwed up which yarn went with which sock. I live for danger like that!

Anyway, here they are in process (in one shot I pulled the second sock down so it looks like some weird sort of proto-sock for people with 2 legs and no feet):

No mermaids here

This year I decided to pull the mermaid costume listings from my etsy shop so that I could concentrate on training my intern on the finer points of ninja-costume-sewing:

She ran the accelerator, I steered.  And nobody ended up bleeding on the costume - bonus!

I've been working at the yarn store ...

... all the live-long day (on Tuesdays and Thursdays while LazyKid is at school)

I've been working at the yarn store

Trying to put some wool away ...

(I had the easy job - Cathy - or is it Kathy? - had to put all of the inventory in the computer and put price stickers on all of it)

Did I mention I'm growing potatoes this year?

Okay, so my "potato condo" is actually a collapsible yard waste bin from Target, and about four bags of potting soil ...

Who cares?  I still grew potatoes!

Today is my daughter's first day of school, so I'm going to wait until she's home to harvest the rest.  I can't wait to see how many we got in that little container!

And speaking of little containers, did you know you can grow awesome carrots in a deep flower pot in your front yard, and nobody will ever know (until you harvest them)?

Trufax.

New class in development: Super-size Scrappy Square Blanket

My most recent attempt to use up scrap sock yarn generated a lot of interest, both in the Muggle public and at sit-and-knit at my local yarn store.  

I'm guessing that there are a lot of people like me who save oddball amounts of leftover yarn with the intention of doing "something" with it someday, but they have a hard time finding a pattern that doesn't end up looking like something the cat barfed up.  With truly random color choices, there's always an unfortunate possibility that your project will turn out to look significantly less than awesome.

I'm thinking of writing up the patterns for both the solid square blanket (above) and a super-sized granny square afghan (which would be along the lines of this one on Ravelry).  Or maybe a rectangular one in stripes?  These projects have all the hallmarks of being a Lazy Mama favorite:

• You design the color progression to avoid unfortunate color neighbors
• Uses yarn you've already got on hand
• Works with any gauge and thickness of yarn
• Pattern lets you keep working until you get bored - makes an infinite number of sizes.
• No seams, and it's easy to work in the ends as you go, so practically no finishing.

I'll need to work up some samples this weekend to get my instructions ironed out, but I think these patterns show a lot of promise.

Upcoming class - crocheting rag rugs

A lot of people love the look of traditional rag rugs, but they're not thrilled with the idea of having to sew together miles and miles of braid with stiff thread and a heavy duty needle.  Luckily, you can get a similar result with the same materials much more easily - with crochet!  

And better yet, it doesn't require any special stitches or equipment - just single crochet and a size Q hook.

On Sunday, September 11, I'll be teaching a class on the rag rug crochet technique at River Colors Studio.  I'll cover fabric selection and preparation, different shapes you can make, how to make an extra-reinforced version that will stand up to heavy wear, and more!  I'll provide a written pattern to make a circular rug, and in class we'll work on a project that can either be the beginning of a rug, or a chair pad or trivet if you don't want to make something quite so large.

Call soon to register - there's been a LOT of interest in this project when I've brought it to the sit-and-knits on Saturday afternoons.

Having my own craft show

We're having a garage sale today, and I figured that since I had a captive audience anyway, I'd try to convince them to Gsee things as a Lazy Mama.  Translation: I set up a table of items from my etsy shops in the middle of my garage sale.

It's not beautiful, but it gets the job done, and I've already sold more SWAK blankets in 2 hours than I have all year on etsy.

So if you've ever had a hankering to check out my stuff in person (and you're near Cleveland, Ohio today), come on by and chat!

If I had a hammer (and a decent staple gun)

My craftiness has been channeled into our new patio room, where I have traded my knitting needles for a hammer and some panel adhesive ...

While I had the paint out for the paneling, I rehabbed a wooden bookshelf I pulled off of a trash pile last summer.  One coat of paint and a yard of fabric later, and voila! Instant happy bookcase!

Simplest fabric project ever.  Fabric, scissors, staple gun.  I didn't even measure it, just cut it to fit as I went.

This won't be the last thing I'm making for the room, so keep your eyes peeled for more projects soon!

Super stash-busting extravaganza

A few weeks ago I taught a beginning crochet class at River Colors, and my student caught onto things so quickly that we had time to get into some of the more advanced topics, like changing colors and making granny squares.  One of the projects I used as an example of how she could use these skills was the standard stash-buster blanket ... which I've never actually made.  It's been on my radar for a couple of years now, and the stash of leftover sock yarn has been growing and growing, but I could never decide on a pattern I liked enough to commit the time and energy to make.

But I was inspired by my student to give it a try, so I hauled out the jar of sock yarn scraps and started organizing them.  I like the look of a scrappy blanket ... as long as it's not too scrappy.  I want the colors to sort of flow into each other, not look like I made the thing in the dark while blindfolded.  Kind of hard when half of my yarn is boring husband/in-law yarn and the other half is whackadoo Lazy Mama/Kid yarn.

So far, so good!

Lever knitting sample, or, how to fix your tension in one fell swoop

My regular style of knitting (yarn in the left hand, otherwise known as "picking") is fast, but my tension is so loose I often have to go down FOUR needle sizes to get the right gauge (or, more frequently, just redo all the math in the pattern to match my gauge).  I wasn't expecting to "fix" this when I took Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's class on knitting for speed and efficiency at Squam ... but amazing things happened when I switched to her lever knitting technique:

 The top and bottom rows of the piece were done in my usual style, and the middle section was done using lever knitting.  Same number of stitches, same needles, vastly different gauge.  Wanna see it closer?

Now Stephanie told us that whatever tension problems we had when initially learning to knit in our original style would be duplicated when learning the lever knitting, and I was an insanely tight knitter when I learned several years ago, so I guess the tighter tension shouldn't come as that much of a surprise.  But it's still really cool to see, and I thought I'd share it with the class :)

Pass it on!

Took a class in block printing from Lizzie House while I was at Squam this year, and as soon as I got home I decided I needed to share my New Favorite Hobby with Lazy Kid.  She took to it like a duck to water:

She's six years old, and yes, that's a sharp linoleum knife she's using, and yes, I did spent like 20 minutes going through all the hideous things that would happen if her hands got anywhere near the sharp end of the blade.  I've got her trained to the point where all I have to do is whisper "hospital" and she stops what she's doing and moves her hands back to where they're supposed to be.

She's really good at removing the background stuff around the main design, but I do the detail work for her.  That keeps her fingers well back, and prevents the "oops, the knife slipped and I ruined my block" meltdown that would inevitably occur otherwise.  But she's got a good eye for design, so she draws 'em, I outline 'em, she carves out the bulky stuff, and we both print 'em.  Great division of labor, I think!

Judy finally found a use for cheap acrylic yarn!