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.

The Towel Makes It Home

So I've been a bit of a slacker these past few weeks in terms of blogging. While I've been pretty busy in my real life I haven't had much to show for it in my crafty life. I've been knitting away on a stashbusting log cabin afghan, some mindless knitting that has been keeping me warm as I knit it while watching "The Wire" DVDs.

Remember several months ago I posted about a Super Secret embroidery project I was working on? Sure you do. Well just about a year ago, I was lucky enough to be able to participate in the original Tea Towel Tour for Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching. Well, unfortunately that towel never made its way home to Austin to the Sublime Stitching offices. Since most of y'all reading this are knitters you are probably not familiar with Jenny's work but I have always love her patterns and her work is really amazing. Not to mention to that I was able to go to an event of hers a few years back when her book came out and she is really an inspiring person for women-business owners, craft-y type people or really just anyone.

So after a six month journey across country the new towel was hand-delivered to Jenny.

Jenny Hart with the Secret Tea Towel!
Originally uploaded by burb_mama

There is some really great work on there so be sure to check out the close-ups on craftster . I mean there is a pin-up girl sitting on a wheel of cheese, people!

Think it may be time to pull out the old embroidery hoop. and learn how to balance my time between more than one craft at a time. So lookout, there may be more dancing garlic and flaming martinis coming at you soon!

All in the Family

Recently my cousin, a hooker, uh, I mean crocheter decided to start knitting as well. So I passed along some books, needles and yarn to feed her new found habit. I had already introduced her to my own version of crack, ravelry, and she just got her invite. May the time sucking begin! Hopefully she will enjoy knitting as much as I do and I can't wait to see what she does! Knowing our family it will involve stuffed animals.

Last month I showed off the completed Elephant Sweater and I did say that I would post pictures when I finally gave Michelle her sweater so without further ado....



And because I am the world's biggest goofball I decided that since every little girl who loves elephants needs an elephant sweater then surely every elephant who loves a little girl needs a Michelle sweater. This is Soggy, Michelle's favorite stuffie, the beginning of her love of elephants and a very snazzy dresser. Funny thing is the Soggy sweater which I made in one night was just as big a hit as Michelle's sweater that I worked many, many hours on. Such is life.

Bags and Yarn and Quiche, Oh My!

The Mad Stashbuster strikes again! I don't know why I keep knitting bags since I never use them as much as they deserve but I just can't help myself. And they are more functional than the stuffed animals. This is my version of the Icon Bag . It's got this cool chart that was originally from a 14th century Byzantine piece in etched silver. I haven't done a whole bunch of charted colorwork so this even though it was just stockinette in the round it still required my full attention. The only downside was that since I did this in Lamb's Pride it has the fuzz of the mohair that doesn't make the design pop as much as I would like. So I did give it a bit of a haircut to trim some of the fuzz and to accidentally snort mohair. I swear I was just experimenting and I will never do it again.



Here is my beautiful yarn that the Daft Crafter dyed for me. Apparently my yarn was so happy to be dyed that it took flight check out the photos here. So hence it's name, Flying Happy Jenny Yarn.



And since my last culinary creation received such praise I figured I'd show off my latest yumminess, a mushroom and broccoli quiche.

What the World Needs Now....

Must be something about Valentines Day as I have been very lucky to receive some serious internet knitting lovin’ this week.

First, I won a contest on the daft crafter’s blog. Who knew that having sick revenge fantasies would make me a winner? If I knew that before,I would have played the lottery back in high school when I dreamed of shaving the head of Bonnie N. the night before prom. Anyway, I will be the recipient of some (sure to be gorgeous) sock yarn dyed by the daft crafter herself. I will post pretty pictures when I get it.

Oh, and for the two of my readers who don’t already read her blog you really should. While she doesn’t post often when she does it’s chock full of stuff and completely hilarious.

Which brings me to more mutual admiration on the net. Ariel tagged me with a Make My Day award.

It was very cool of her to do so and be sure to check out her blog as well. If anyone's socks are going to tempt me to start knitting sock's it is hers. Hmmm....I will be getting sock yarn soon, I sense a conspiracy.

Now I am supposed to pass along the make my day award to others so here are bloggers who make my day. Some places say it should be 5, some 10. Yet again, I say screw it and will just put as many as I feel like.

Craft Pirate - I know she has gotten this honor already but her amazing photography of her knitting alone merits getting it twice.

beetlegrass - I first saw some of her work at the South End Open Studios and loved it. A great mix of illustrations, her collections and kick-ass finger puppets.

Daft Crafter - see accolades above

Lemonade Sandwich - Okay, so this is total nepotism and she hasn't posted original work for a while but there are photos of my adorable niece there and if anything makes my day that does.

floresita - things I've made - now only does she do great her own great work, embroidery, drawings etc she also has does another blog , feeling stitchy that showcases projects from the flickr embroidery group, tutorials etc.

One last thing that recently made my day, check out my mad frosting-piping skills on my Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting that I made for Cooking Club this past weekend. And they were fully baked! No goo!



Happy Valentines Day!