Month: December 2013

Grandma’s Fabric Stash

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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.  We grew up with handmade dolls, sweaters, afghans, ceramic ornaments… basically everything you can think of that can be made by hand.  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

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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

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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 — Vail (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 …