Bahhhh.....

Clearly I have sheep on the sheep on the brain due to Gore Place Sheep Sheering Festival. To get myself prepared for sheepy goodness I made some silly sheep. I may have finally mastered that tricky french knot.





So then I was off to Gore Place with some of my knitter friends to eat fair food, check out cute livestock and pet some yarn. Success achieved on all counts.



The Alpacas one pre-sheering, one post, I always think sheered alpacas look like fuzzy lollipops.


Cute lambies.




4H Bunny, not Nugget who I formed an immediate bond with and wanted to take home in my bag, but another cute bun. I forgot how much I love holding bunnies!


No matter what the other goats did this guy would not come out of his hiding place.


And finally my splurge of the day, this gorgeous cashmere yarn made from reclaimed sweaters. Me, buying yarn with no specific project in mind, a step forward in my stash acquisition.

My Blue Heaven

There's been a lot of home decorating talk going on in Sarahland recently. Between friends moving; looking for new apartments in far off lands :( , visiting the apartments of new friends for the first time and seeing the kick-ass way my sister's house has come together over the past few months, I have decorating on the brain. And when something is on my brain it also ends up on my blog reader.

I think my current favorite design blog is design*sponge. I especially like that they do DIY examples every Wednesday and Before and After's every Thursday. This taps into my crafty and thrifty sides with one of my favorite mantras "I can do that".

I recently stumbled across some "before" and "after" pictures I took of my kitchens chairs that I redid several years ago. Pre-digital camera, film pictures that I had planned to do something with to showcase my handiwork , but clearly never did. So I scanned those puppies and sent them off to design sponge and who knows maybe they'll be on the site some Thursday or maybe not. But it did remind me how proud of myself I was when I finished them and hopefully will inspire me to work on those other projects ruminating in my head or sitting half-done in my entryway. Whoops!

So here's the back story on the chairs. I was watching some tv sitcom and I saw blue kitchen chairs and decided that was what I wanted. But this was before everyone had embraced color in a big, bold way and I was clearly ahead of the curve. The only ones I saw were at the Crate & Barrel outlet up north and there were only 3 of them. Having only having 3 kitchen chairs was just wrong, uneven, unbalanced and just wouldn't do. So my quest continued.

Fortunately I am the child of antique dealers/pack rats/very weird people and my folks had these wooden chairs in the garage in Maine. So I picked up some paint at the local hardware store, some fabric at Fabric Place and voila - blue chairs! And to be even cuter a matching valance for the window. It wasn't really as easy it sounds as I recall a minor painting snafu (spray paint vs. brushes, brushes won - a graffiti artist I will never be) and there definite assistance from my mom since she is the one with the staple gun and the sewing machine (this was back in my pre-sewing machine owning days). Only thing that nags at me a little is that I wish I had bought more fabric to make a cafe curtain to go with the valence but we went back for more yardage but the fabric was gone. I keep an eye out for it every time I go with no luck.

Before & After

The Whole Set and the Valence

Cute as a Button

I'm having one of those bad days at work. One of those days where I put on my MP3 player and listen to the Dixie Chicks "Not Ready to Make Nice", over and over and over. So to offset the annoyance and frustration I am feeling I will post my little sillies I've been working on.

Next month my sister and I are headed back to Art & Soul a.ka.a "Craft Camp" for the second year. One of the things that people do at A&S is bring trades to well, duh, trade with people. They can be anything from ATC's (Artist Trading Cards), charms, necklaces, beads whatever. Last year I made shrinky dinks charms and magnets which some people enjoyed, others looked down on (well just one woman who refused to trade with me - bitch.) And my leftover trades made their way to the very appreciative hands of my SnB'ers. My sister made totally cute paper dolls made of recycled boxes.

At one point I thought of knitting teeny sweaters but to be honest that was just going to take more time than I have so I went with the cute but easy project of fabric covered button magnets. I came across the tutorial and handy, dandy online supply store jcaroline creative. I swear she makes me want to go trolling thrift stores just looking for chairs to re-cover.

If these magnets get scoffed at some of y'all may be getting little treats at SnB meetings in mid-May.