Year: 2013

Grandma’s Fabric Stash

My grandma passed away a little over a year ago. She was the most amazing lady in every way; plus she was a super crafter. From knitting to sewing to doll-making, beading, cooking, and baking… she did it all! She also ran a ceramic shop for many years. Ā We grew up with handmade dolls, sweaters, afghans, ceramic ornaments… basically everything you can think of that can be made by hand. Ā Looking back to 2003… I had gone off to college. Among other things, a couple of my friends and I decided to join a crochet club. It was called STITCH (which stood for “Students Taking Initiative To Crochet Hats”). Awesome, I know. They taught me to crochet. Then I went home that Christmas and had my grandma teach me how to knit. She gave me my first pair of knitting needles and they are still my favorite! I cannot even say in words how glad I am for that time that I was able to spend with her and the fact that I gained a …

Christmas Crafting

No better time than the holidays to get your crafting on. Here are a few things I’ve worked on recently: #1. Fabric Ruffle Garland This started out because I was trying to make a backdrop for our Christmas card photo. I cut strips of the leftover fabric I had from Grumpy’s costume, left the edges raw, and put my sewing machine to work. No need for a ruffle foot (maybe one day I will actually look up what that is)… just set it to a long straight stitch and bump the tension up to 9 (as I learned here). The ruffles worked out great (SP15)… but the backdrop was a work in progress and looked something like this: Not exactly what I was going for… so I used the fabric strips as garland instead: #2. Merry Christmas Banner (see above)… with this as my inspiration, I cut the letters from leftover shiny paper I had from making the Evil Queen’s mirror for our Snow White Halloween display at the pharmacy and put it together with …

Let Snowboard Season Begin

So Danny seems to think that I should be a snowboarder. I’m not sure yet if it’s really going to work out. But, if it means we get to go on lots of mini-vacations to beautiful snowy mountains and resorts… I say count me in! Our first adventure — VailĀ (last weekend)! I wanted to go to Breckenridge first… after reading it was more beginner friendly (and I really didn’t want to look ridiculous learning how to snowboard at one of the nicest resorts in the world)… but hey! oh well… that’s just how it worked out. I took a full day class and Danny went off adventuring the mountain on his own. I’m definitely not a natural, and nowhere near confident, but practice makes perfect, right? And I didn’t kill myself plummeting down a mountain, so I’d say that’s a pretty successful first day. Here was the view from our room at Vail Cascade (thank you, Groupon!): And my snowboard class: I’m really liking this EpicMix thing… it tells you your daily stats – what …