Practical Makes

Practical projects and crafts

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First (Official!) Summer Weekend

So…now that I have long term plans figured out (at least a little bit) there’s the chance to think about what I want to do this weekend.

First I want to bake bread.  We’re on the last loaf of Costco bread and I like mine better so it’s time to bake more.  Maybe I’ll also fulfill my months long goal of making cookies.  It’s always possible. 🙂  And while we’re on the subject of wishlist baking, I’d also like to make waffles because it’s been awhile and they’re great.

For cooking I’d like to do something in the slow cooker.  I think there’s a pork shoulder lurking in the freezer and pulled pork sounds like a good lunch option…  And there’s another project too, pre-chopping veggies and meat and things for easier dinner preparation…  That’ll happen when there’s time and we next go to the Costco probably.

The garden also needs some attention this weekend.  There’s weeding to do and the peppers need stakes to stay upright.  There will also be beans to pick (and soon peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes with any luck!).

And I want to finish my dress, it just needs buttons and button holes so I’m almost done.  If I can finish that it would also be nice to do one of the small fabric panel projects like maybe the soft book for the tiny Patrick.  Of course it depends on time. 🙂

In terms of general projects, hopefully I’ll finally get the brakes fixed on my bike (either by following the guidance of the Internet or bribing the grown up Patrick, we’ll see…).  I’d also like to sort the kitchen, but that depends on general motivation and how energetic/tired everyone is.

And I’d like to go to the big park with the Patricks, it’s got a carousel and a train and a butterfly garden and is huge.  I think that would be relaxing and fun (it’s really close so it’d be easy to get to).  And maybe I could go to the farmer’s market, that could be fun.  If I got my bike brakes fixed or if the Patricks want to go too… Or maybe go to the thrift stores?  Those are fun.

So, there’s plenty to do, and it should be fun. 🙂

 

Goals, Thoughts and Plans

So… now that projects are at least a bit more reasonable… time to plan projects!

I’ve got my usual favorite categories: sewing, knitting, gardening and food preservation.  And I guess I can add “house projects” to that.

So first up sewing.

Green 4th of July Dress

This one’s easy since it’s almost done!  (Just needs buttons…)  It’s a sleeveless Hawthorn with the green cotton+steel fabric I got last year and some neat off white buttons from the thrift store (doing 12 instead of 13 button holes for that reason).  I worked really hard to do the facings nicely so hopefully they’ll lay flat for once.  I also did a very narrow rolled hem at the arm holes instead of bias tape so we’ll see how that goes. (bias tape is annoying and bulky)

Blue Tropical Dress

This is also fabric from last year, that I think will make a fun summer dress.  It’ll be another sleeveless Hawthorn because I like them, they fit and shirt dress are nice at the moment.

Patrick Shirts

These will be shirts for all three Patrick’s.  I have some nice summer weight cotton and also some (hopefully) nice knit fabric for t-shirts.  For the grown up Patricks this will be the usual Butterick pattern.  For the tiny Patrick I think one of the Ottobre patterns.

Ocean Soft Book

I have a fabric panel that can be used to make a soft book that matches the baby Patrick’s curtains.  I thought it would be something he could enjoy that would be a nice keepsake from his room.  I have the pages and batting cut out so I just need to sew them together.  I think this one will be after I finish the dress since it should be a fun quick project.

Advent Calendar

This is another fun project.  I’ve always wanted to try some of the fabric panel kits and I’ve always wanted to make an advent calendar so this seemed like a good project.  Another major plus is that since it’s a quilted advent calendar I can just roll it up to store it, and it’s not breakable!  Which seems like a very useful feature.  I also want to make Christmas stockings to match.  I think I’ll have enough fabric left over from the backing to do that.  I’d also like to make a Christmas tree skirt.  I have my Grandma’s which is nice but I’d like to make one of my own.

And in addition to sewing there’s my other craft projects, knitting.

Hat for the Tiny Patrick

This is going to be the “Bumble” pattern by Tin Can Knits.  It’s cute and fun to knit.  I think it will make a comfortable toddler hat.  I’m going to use green yarn (Spanish Moss by Dragonfly Fibers) for this one.  It feels nice and I think it’ll make a warm hat.

Sweater for Tiny Patrick

I think this will be the Hearthstone pattern (though I’m still thinking about it) and I haven’t picked the yarn yet.  Luckily tiny person things are fun to knit and go quickly.

Blanket

The last blanket I knit was really comfortable and awesome so I’d like to do another one.  I’m thinking maybe the “Marley” blanket by Tin Can Knits since that one looks comfortable and will probably knit quickly.  Afterwards I’d also like to try “Bounce” pattern, but we’re going to start with the easy one!

In addition to crafts I’ve got my garden and my food preservation plans.  They’re pretty closely linked this year since I’m hopefully going to be sticking to what the garden produces (except for jam, that’s a special case and the fruit trees need a few years after all…).

For the mid-summer part of the garden I get to do the following:

Harvest: Beans, Cucumbers, Hot Peppers, Bell Peppers, Eggplants, Tomatoes, Cherry Tomatoes, Strawberries, Herbs and maybe some New Zealand Spinach, Lettuce and Zucchini and maybe some Blueberries

Plant: Beans in July, Lettuce and Brassicas in August

And there will be a bunch of different things to preserve:

Can: Strawberry Jam, Raspberry Jam, Peach Jam, Pickles, Crushed Tomatoes, Pickled Hot Peppers, Relish

Freeze: Beans, Hot Peppers, Bell Peppers, Eggplant, Strawberries, Spinach, Zucchini

Dehydrate: Cherry tomatoes, Thyme, Lavender

For the late-summer/early-fall part of the garden I get to do the following:

Harvest: Beans, Cucumbers, Hot Peppers, Bell Peppers, Eggplants, Tomatoes, Cherry Tomatoes, Strawberries, and maybe some New Zealand Spinach, Lettuce, Winter Squash and Zucchini, and maybe some Raspberries

Plant: Lettuce and Radishes

And there will be a bunch of different things to preserve:

Can: Plum Jam, Apple Butter, Crushed Tomatoes, Pickles, and I may make a couple jars of apple pie filling for fun (since instant pie appeals)

Freeze: Beans, Hot Peppers, Bell Peppers, Eggplant, Strawberries, Spinach, Zucchini

Dehydrate: Cherry Tomatoes, maybe Catnip?

Then in late fall I get to plant garlic, tulips and daffodils.  Next year there will also be a lot more herbs to freeze and dehydrate.  I’m also hoping to have more established fruit which will give me more options there.  And maybe I can expand my canning plans a bit.  I have definitely learned from past years (canning a reasonable number of jars of jam with multiple types is best, pickles need some work, as does salsa, tomatoes are useful, but crushed tomatoes are probably more useful, pickled hot peppers are great but could use pickle crisp…).

Next year I also plan to expand the garden a bit and add asparagus and potatoes and try onions and peas.

Then last there’s the house projects.

I want to organize my room and the kitchen (since those haven’t been reorganized too much since we moved in).  I also want to fix the table situation and the seating the den.  It would also be nice to get some chairs for the patio, but we’ve got the garden wall, so that helps.

So, plenty to do!

Summer Returns

And it’s summer again. It’s been awhile, but hey, sometimes life has that effect.  But hey all three of us are doing well, and we have a home of our own now, so those are happy things.

Despite all the big things, there have also been projects.  We’ve got a garden going, there will likely be canning and freezing for fruit and veggies this year and there’s been sewing too.  And even a little bit of knitting.

So first, the garden.  After we bought our house we put in 4 raised beds, which has been amazingly helpful.  Around here the dirt has so much clay in it it’s an impressive bright orange (you could make pots out of the topsoil around here) and is also full of large (sometimes melon sized) hunks of sparkly pink quartz.  So being able to garden in actual light fluffy dirt has been a huge difference.  I may even get cucumbers this year (fingers crossed)!

In addition to the raised beds we made some changes to the landscaping in the backyard.  The previous residents had a lot of hydrangeas, knock out roses and other perennials.  For the most part they were pretty but there were a bunch of issues since they took up a bunch of the yard and a lot of them were incredibly spiky and shedding spiky thorns everywhere (one bunch looked like they were ready to defend a magical fairy tale castle they were so big and spiky).  So with a lot of work (largely Patrick being impressive with a saw, heavy gloves and lawn trimming bags…) we swapped those for a mix of tomatoes, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, rhubarb, herbs of various kinds, strawberries and currants.  So now they’re manageable, much less spiky (blackberries are still a little spiky), and will produce tasty food.

The other big news is I finally got to plant my trees!  We now have two apple trees and a plum tree which will hopefully grow into awesome fruit trees (of a reasonable size…).  Overall things are going really well despite doing a lot of work in a short time.  I think several years of gardening practice is paying off.  It’ll be a couple years before we get much fruit (just strawberries this year I think) but hopefully it will be successful.

There’s still more projects left to do (of course).  Next year for example we want to try onions too and I want to put asparagus around the back of the shed (it’s sunny back there) and add shallots and bunching onions to the multiplier onions for scallion production.  Oh and since other previously challenging veggies are doing pretty well, I want to try peas next year too.

So far we’ve gotten lots of lettuce and radishes and we just got the first batch of beans, so I’d say all those are successful.  And it looks like we might get hot peppers and cucumbers soon too so that is awesome.

For sewing I have made a lot of curtains.  A. Lot. of. Curtains.  But hey, that’s part of moving.  The people we bought the house from left curtains (included curtains?) as part of the house.  But…they were roman shades, with cords, or polyester Target curtains.  And some were really dark navy and they had dogs, and they were kind of funky…  So, lots of new curtains were needed.

So I made curtains for 8 windows, which ended up being at least 14 curtains, with a bunch of them being lined curtains too.  On the upside, I definitely learned from my last make-all-the-curtains experience and these are much nicer.  I had originally planned to but grommets in them, but I ended up doing rod pockets instead.  I decided they’d give better coverage that way and the grommets that were available were kind of sad looking plastic and it is really annoying to do nice custom sewing on beautiful fabric and have to finish it with ugly plastic hardware (that usually ends up falling apart).  But on the upside we now have nice looking (and baby safe) curtains and sheers for all the rooms (haven’t hung up all the sheers yet since first we need to hang double curtain rods…but that’s another project…and hey the curtains are all up!).

So that was a lot of sewing, yeah it was all straight lines but I still had to cut them all out (precisely) and match them with the backing (precisely) and sew very straight seems (precisely) so it was a major project.  I’m very happy with how they turned out though.

So now that that’s done I can start other sewing projects.  My body is more or less a consistent size/shape again (and I hit my goal on that too, yay!) so I can make my 4th of July dress this year.  And yeah, it’s totally one of the dresses I mentioned in the previous post, not much clothing sewing ended up happening last year.  Size changes were too rapid and life was too intense.  But hey, it means I have awesome fabric waiting for me to make something fun with it.  I’m starting with the green dress (since I had that one cut out).  I re-cut it to my current size/shape using my old traced patterns.  I should remeasure and adjust my patterns but…life is busy…and the fit is close enough it works based on my clothes I made before.  I have most of the bodice sewn up, so I just need to add the pockets, sew and attach the skirt, hem and do the buttons (sigh, buttons…).   I think I can do that by the 4th of July.

I also got some fabric panels for fun projects. I’ve always wanted to do those.  I have a cloth book for the tiny sir which matches the curtains I made him, I have a panel with a cute US map for a play mat and I have an advent calendar.  I think a quilted/sewn advent calendar sounds like a great plan since not only does it look fun to make but it will be easy to set up and store (yay unbreakable, roll-able fabric!).

I’m also planning to sew some shirts for the various Patricks.  I have nice fabric waiting for that too, and tiny person clothes, because those sound fun.

I also have done some knitting, mostly baby socks since it was really hard/impossible to find socks that were comfortable for the tiny son’s feet.  I’m also making slow progress on a pair for me and re-knitting the top of my yellow hat so hopefully it stops sliding off the top of my head (I think I need at least one more repeat before doing the decreases…we’ll see).

So yeah, there are definitely still projects and this is an excellent thing.

Cicadas, Heat and Long Summer Evenings

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Technically the longest day of the year is the first day of summer, but to me it’s evenings in August when the air is hot and sticky and summer has been here long enough everyone feels laid back and the main sound in the evening is the buzz of the cicadas that feel like long summer evenings.  Soon it will be fall, but it still feels like the middle of summer.  This may be because of the nice hot humid weather we get here though….

I’m happy to say some craft projects have made pretty good progress this month.  Not fast progress, but I figure any progress counts since there’s a tiny person who gets most of the time right now.

My hat is actually getting close to done.  I have a little more than one repeat of the pattern to do and then I just need to do the decreases, which generally goes pretty fast.  So that’s a happy thing.  I’m looking forward to having my hat back!  And this time I’m going to try really hard not to lose it!  I haven’t lost many hats/scarves/mittens and I always feel bad when it happens.  I think before I lost this hat, the last thing I lost was my favorite scarf in college.  I worked evenings at one of the libraries, and I set my scarf down in the restroom when I was getting ready to go home.  I realized it a few minutes later and went back to get it, but it was already gone…  I guess I just hope someone ended up using my scarf and my hat and enjoying them.

I also made progress on my skirts for work.  These are the knit skirts using Butterick B3134 (assorted gored skirts in woven fabric). My theory was that I could make it in knit fabric which would be easier (no zipper, no finishing, no lining, no ironing!) and would be more forgiving since my body is still changing size/shape.  It turns out I was right.  The only issue was that I forgot I should take it in more to account for the zipper, but that was easy to fix before I put the waistband on.  I also added elastic to the waistband to make it more stable (I didn’t bother with interfacing).  I started with the black fabric since I had enough for two skirts in case my first attempt needed a lot of rethinking, but it turned out great.  All I have left to do is hem it!  I just need to decide if I’m doing a twin needle hem or a zigzag blind hem.

If I finish these, maybe I can make some of my dresses, or the little winter hood or the fabric wreath… there are always more projects, but that’s part of the fun.

Summer Dresses for August

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Usually I make myself a new summer dress every year for the 4th of July. I started doing this when I wanted to enter a contest for one of my favorite sewing patterns (Colette Hawthorn). And while I never got around to actually submitting my entry (though I finished my dress!) I decided I really liked having a nice new dress right before the massive humid hot weather of the middle of summer rolled in.

Since then I’ve made myself a new dress every year, sometimes two when I’ve been really ambitious. This year for obvious reasons I missed the 4th of July for my new dress, but I think August is still pretty good!  So this year my goal is a summer dress by Labor Day, maybe three dresses if I can manage it.  Luckily I have lots of help from the fuzzy household residents. They very much enjoy cutting out fabric.

I’ve also researched how to use knit fabric for my gored dress pattern (it’s a basic Butterick pattern B3134) I’ve made before.  This seems simpler than drafting my own right now.  And since it’s knit fabric I (hopefully!) won’t have to line it and it will adjust as my shape changes (hopefully!).  Also I can just serge the seams rather than sewing and finishing them all.  Also I shouldn’t have to iron it.  And I got my fabric from Nancy’s Notions so I’m hoping this means it will be good fabric of a nice weight that won’t pill a lot.

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Summer Thunderstorms

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Our storms finally arrived and things have cooled off a bit, or as much as they’re gong to with the humidity…. Luckily my fabric arrived yesterday so I can start working on some new tiny person compatible sun dresses.  The fabric is from Cotton + Steel and it has awesome pretty selvages.  Usually the selvage is boring so these are pretty neat.  They’re even three completely different colors which for me is an accomplishment.  I’m usually tempted to default to just dark blues since those always work.  Of course I forgot I’ll need thread so maybe I’ll visit the JoAnn’s briefly today.

That’ll be an extra adventure since I will have to match coral and green which are tough.  Matching blues is usually reasonable, but corals and greens are really tough…  We’ll see how that goes.  Maybe I can get some lining fabric while I’m there.  That would be good.  I’d like to sort through my button collection too so I can decide if I need to get some.  At the moment though my experiment with vacuum storage bags is sort of taking over my sewing room…

Waiting for the weather to break

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Still no luck with rain for us. They said the heat wave would end early if we got a good storm, but no such luck. Still, there should be a change in the weather pattern today which will finally give us our thunderstorm. And after that it will be cooler.  I hope so, I’m looking forward to taking little Patrick for walks again (it’s been too hot for him during the heatwave, and going for a walk at 2 AM would be a bit too weird).  I also hope to walk down to the farmer’s market Saturday morning.  It’d be nice to have a short break and if I get cucumbers I can make fridge pickles.  We can only have those in summer (when there are good cucumbers) and they’re amazing so I’d really like to make some.  That and cucumber sandwiches since those are also really good.

My dress fabric should also arrive tomorrow so I’ll get to start those.  I have my pattern pieces already to go, so hopefully the fabric arrives on time!  I’m looking forward to those.  I still need to pick out buttons, but that’ll be easiest to do when the fabric gets here.  I have a bunch in my collection (yay thrift store button hordes!) so I want to see if I have any promising ones in there.  Otherwise there’s always JoAnn’s or G-Street.

My other sewing project is drafting a new A-line skirt pattern.  I found the tutorials I used last time so I just need to do some math and take some measurements.  I need front and back pieces with darts (darts are the hard part for drafting…) and a waistband (which is weirdly hard to get to look right).  Maybe I’ll try doing that today.  Once I’ve got a pattern again I’m going to do a trial version, probably with the surplus trouser fabric I have.  I hate sewing trousers and it’s a good color for work clothes.  It’d make a good skirt for wearing on Fridays.  I’ll just have to make Patrick a new shirt to make up for borrowing some of his trouser fabric.  On the upside I’m much better at making shirts than trousers!  I also need to go get some lining fabric.  The JoAnn’s has Bemberg Rayon lining which is probably what I’ll use.  This will be my other independent trip out of the house.  Little Patrick isn’t quite ready for the mall yet, but I don’t have to go far so this should be a good way to get out of the house for a little while.

In terms of knitting I’m still making slow progress on my hat.  But hey, the little bits of progress accumulate over time.

Regarding my other mini-projects, the exercise bike is set up now (yay for Patrick assembling large objects from the Internet!).  So I’m making progress on getting good at biking again.  The exercise bike is a recumbent bike, which makes getting started again a lot easier!  (and I can read and bike much more easily!)

Heatwave Knitting

There’s something about summer that makes me want to come up with knitting projects (and watch Predator 2 and Yakuza, which are the best heatwave movies). Maybe it’s because the summer edition of the knitting magazine always has awesome patterns, maybe it’s because I can take my projects out on the porch and enjoy nice weather (in the mornings before it gets hot!) or maybe it’s because somehow the AC always makes things feel more arctic than real winter does.

I suppose the fact that summer has actual sunshine (unlike winter around here, which is grey, damp and cloudy) makes me want to make lots of awesome plans.

I’m thinking about a couple potential projects, a knitting project and some sewing projects. For the knitting, I think I want to try making myself a pair of convertible mittens with gloves inside.  I have a nice range of fingerless gloves and a couple pairs of mittens, but I’d like to have a pair for the coldest weather.  I would want the inside to have fingers like gloves (though not covering the fingertips) under colorwork convertible mittens.  I think that would cover the bases well and still make it easy to extract my train pass.  I like the franken mittens pattern on Ravelry, but I’m not super thrilled with the pattern for the colorwork. Maybe I can use the overall mitten pattern and come up with my own colorwork pattern?  I also really want to knit a shawl, but I’m only making very slow progress on my hat, so I’m pretty sure sticking to the hat is the better plan (especially since I really want a warm fuzzy hat when it gets cold again!).  And given my rate of progress by the time I finish the hat it will be cold weather.  And I’d really like to knit a small hat and some baby mittens for little Patrick before it gets too cold.  So maybe I should aim for a hat, convertible mittens and a little hat and baby mittens by the end of the year.  I will have time for shawls later.  After all they don’t really wear out and they don’t have fit issues so there’s no rush.

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For sewing I’d like to do those sooner.  I want to sew three new Hawthorn dresses.  They button up the front so those will work well with needing access for little Patrick, and I’ve sewn them before so they should go together well.  I will need to trace new pattern pieces given size changes, but once I’ve done that I can do all three at once assembly-line-style.  I think they’ll be fun dresses, I have one piece of fabric I picked out, and two Patrick picked out.  (I decided to get both since one was on clearance for really cheap, so yay three dresses!)  I also plan to alter these to add pockets, with of course, a button hole for the insulin pump.  It will be nice to have something pretty to wear that is comfortable and fits well.  It’s been difficult needing to buy clothes, I’m looking forward to making my own again.

Speaking of clothes, the other thing I need to do is sew myself some skirts for work.  At least those are easy to sew.  Trying to buy them is egregiously terrible since apparently the only thing people want to buy is pencil skirts or trousers.  Lets just say pencil skirts don’t suit my shape (I am not and never have been a square, if they don’t go in at the waist, they fall down, even at this  point they need to go in at certain spots to fit).  And trousers are ok, and I can find some that fit if I put a lot of time in but they generally look terrible and are really uncomfortable.  Also, skirts are much more flexible for DC weather.  They’re like wearing shorts in summer and in winter I can wear fuzzy tights and they’re way warmer than pants then.  So yeah, buying skirts is a no-go so I need to make some new ones.  I have some nice wool I was given as a gift, I just need to get some fabric for the lining and then sew them up.  I have a month though to do it.

Other than those projects, the garden survives, it’s still making some peppers and tomatoes which is nice.  We’ve also got lots of herbs which is very useful.  The slow cooker also remains useful, Patrick made awesome pulled pork.  It’s really nice producing a lot of food that can easily be turned into lunches or dinners when we need them during the week.  It’s also nice for the budget.

Speaking of food, we’ve agreed to wait on canning this year since we want to move and things are busy.  I will probably miss that the way I missed clothes I made myself, but it’s probably a good idea.  And I’ll get to can lots of things next year.  And I have plenty of things to keep me busy right now anyway…

On we go

So my projects are making progress in various ways. I’ve made progress on my knitting, the garden (luckily!) is making progress with little intervention and I’ve gotten to try some new cooking adventures out too.

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Ta Da!  Actual knitting progress!  Knitting (while not very fast) has been very useful with my new sleep schedule.  It’s a lot harder to space out and start to fall asleep if your hands are busy.  And since I’m into the cable pattern now, it’s really obvious if I’m not focused enough!  I want to start my Beatnik sweater too, but I think I’m going to stick to finishing my hat first.  For one, this gives me the chance to get used to knitting again after a few months off; and for another I want my hat back!  I don’t really need a fuzzy hat in July, but if I don’t stick with it, I won’t have one when it starts to get cold again so there are good reasons for sticking with it.  Speaking of hats, maybe I should make a hat as a Christmas present for my brother-in-law this year.  He likes to critique the hat I made him a few years ago…which in my defense was an early knitting project…giving him a newer fancier one would require him to up his game in terms of critiques, which would be fun.  We’ll see though since I don’t think I’ll be doing any projects quickly this year.  If not this year, maybe next year.

Things are actually looking pretty good in the garden.  There’s plenty of lettuce and radishes out there and there’s a bunch of beans that should get picked.  Also, the mystery squash hasn’t been killed off yet by squash vine borers!  It even looks like we’re going to get tomatoes this year and the peppers have recovered pretty well from the insanely cold/wet May we had.  I haven’t checked the cucumbers recently, but they were alive and trying to make cucumbers last time I looked, so I consider that doing well.  The potatoes look a little sad, but that’s because they’d like to be watered more, and well, there’s a lot to do right now.  Still, all things considered I think it’s doing petty well.  And since the goal was “whatever we get, if anything, is awesome” I consider things a success so far!

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The new cooking adventure is our shiny new crock pot.  Our old crock pot which was an older one from family no longer maintains high enough temperatures (which is a problem!) so it was time to get a new one.  After a lot of research we picked this one since it’s bigger (6 qts!) it’s oval (yay meat cooking!) and it’s programmable (not burning the house down!).  As for why we’re interested, the hope is that with the crock pot we can prepare a meal early in the day when we have a little more time and then there’s no rushing around in the evening when we’re tired and trying to get things done so we can get as much sleep as possible.  The other idea is making a nice big meal that produces lots of useful leftovers and doesn’t generate a lot of dirty dishes to deal with.  And since the lid and stoneware insert go in the dishwasher… there are some definite benefits.

So last night was it’s maiden voyage/cooking attempt.  I think it did well, everything fit in there, it cooked it well, the timer worked, it was easy to clean, etc.  Our first attempt was a nice simple pot roast (I was tempted to do the fancy recipe, but since this was our first try with this crock pot and since things are busy I went with the straightforward one).  I think next week I’ll try the beef and dumplings recipe I have.

So, all in all, that’s a nice bit of progress on my projects I think!

Summer Crafting

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My list of planned crafts is probably going to be shorter than last year.  After all, I’m starting half way through the year!  So this makes sense.  Also, given that we’re probably going to be moving at some point in the next year the smart choice for craft projects is going to be to use up what I have already in terms of materials.  I may make a few exceptions to that, certain changes to my physique mean I have no sun dresses that fit right now so enough fabric to make two dresses might need to be purchased unless I find some in the bins somewhere, but for the most part I’m going to do my best to stick to what I’ve got since I’d rather move completed projects than move lots of stashed supplies.

Almost all of my supplies are stored in plastic bins from Costco (so they all match, hurray!) with most of it being fabric, but there’s also yarn too.  For the most part my craft plans fall into two categories, knitting and sewing.  Knitting is easy, I have a couple of bins of yarn right now (I think 2.5 bins?) and the highest volume yarn is the yarn I got for sweaters.  So the best thing to do is probably going to be to work on knitting sweaters.

Knitting

Beatnik Sweater

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The first project I want to make is the Beatnik sweater.  I got the same yarn used in the pattern (same as the above picture) and I actually started knitting this several years ago.  Unfortunately it was my first time knitting a sweater in a really long time and my first time ever trying to knit something with a chart.  Needless to say this was a bad idea.  So I’ve ripped out my first attempt, and now is probably a good time to try again.  Also it’s a mostly cotton yarn so that will be nicer to work with during summer.  And since I’ve already got the pattern and yarn, it’s a no cost project, yay!

Rook Sweater

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The second project I want to do is the Rook sweater.  This is another one I’ve tried knitting before.  I want to use some Wool of the Andes Tweed I have in a really dark grey with light grey and white flecks.  Last time I tried I could not get gauge no matter what I did.  It always seems to me that I can only get gauge to match vertically or horizontally, but not both.  If I can’t get it to work this time I think I’ll try to calculate any changes to the pattern I might need and try to use my yarn anyway.  Luckily despite the challenges, I already have the yarn and pattern, so this one won’t cost anything either.

Mystery Light Blue Cardigan

 

RT-prairiefire-18a

The purpose of this one is to use up the light blue Wool of the Andes yarn I have.  I’ve considered several possible patterns for this one, but its hard to figure out what would be best.  I really like sweaters, but a cardigan is probably more useful at the moment.  There’s also the dilemma of using a pattern I already own vs finding the perfect one.  A sweater/cardigan takes a long time to make so finding a perfect pattern is a good idea, but at the same time I have a bunch of patterns (free, from my magazine subscription, from books, etc.) and actually using the ones I’ve got makes me happy.  Currently I’m leaning towards Prairie Fire, but doing another Peabody sweater, a MacGowan  or a Jean sweater or a Two Trees cardigan also sound like decent ideas.  A Prairie Fire or Peabody sweater would probably work best with the color though.

Socks and Hats

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These are projects I’ve already started, one pair of socks for me, one pair as a Christmas present for Grandpa Patrick and a replacement yellow hat (replacing the one that was lost sometime in January).  They’re smaller projects so I figure I’ll probably work on these when I’m on the train.

Sewing

Then there’s sewing, which is harder…  Some stuff is obvious, since the goal is to use up some of my fabric stockpile before we move.  I have 1 pair of pants cut out for Patrick and fabric for at least 3 more.  If only sewing pants wasn’t annoying (welt pockets are pretty much the worst, even if I get them right the darn things start to fray right away).  I also need to alter my summer dresses, which won’t use up much fabric, just some small pieces to make gussets, but it will mean having dresses I can wear this summer (and boy am I ever glad I like shirt dresses, since they’re the only ones that are ‘functional’ at the moment).

The other stuff I have a lot of is small pieces of patterned cotton fabric and shirting.  The shirting is easy, more shirts for me and Patrick (yay shirts!).  Luckily unlike pants, sewing shirts is awesome.  The patterned fabric is best suited for household crafts and things for little Patrick.  Luckily making things for little Patrick should be fun (and useful!) and household crafts (ie potholders, pillow covers, etc) are usually fun and relaxing.  I have patterns for rompers, onsies, overalls, shirts and pants for little Patrick, so I’ll probably try out some of those.  I think I’ll probably be making some adjustments to the patterns.  For example, why in the world would you put the snaps in the back for a romper?  When you lay the baby down to change them they’re laying on the snaps!  So yeah, some changes will be needed.

Oh, and I’ll be making myself some work clothes too.  Definitely skirts since I think I’m probably going to need to adjust my sizing there, at least for a little while longer (luckily this is a simple self drafted A-line skirt pattern, so that’s easy enough to adjust).  I have some very nice wool I received as a gift so I’ll make some for that fabric.  And I have some other bottom weight fabric of various kinds that I can pick out one or two types to make the first versions of the updated pattern (never test a new/adjusted pattern on beautiful wool fabric!).

I might make some shirts for work too, it depends on how well those do or don’t fit in a couple months.  Depending on what fabric I have I’d also like to make both me and Patrick some casual shirts too.  We’ll see.  For Patrick (little and regular sized) I’m going to use up some of my knit fabric to make T-shirts and things.  Those go quickly and are useful.  I really wish there was more good quality knit fabric though.  Maybe I’ll try some from Nancy’s Notions.  So far JoAnn’s has been pretty terrible for knit fabric and Fabric.com has been a mix.

There’s lots of other stuff I’d like to try:

  • Luggage!
  • A new bag/purse (my poor green one is developing holes despite years of being awesome)
  • Dresses for me
  • Curtains (can’t do this until we move though)
  • Cute household things (fun but not practical and will take time and not use much fabric)
  • etc.

But those have to wait until later.

Miscellaneous Other Projects

There are of course many other things I’d like to do.  I want to improve in terms of physical fitness and bike more.  I want to finish fixing up the knitting machine and get better at using it.  I want to write again and make my own knitting patterns. I want to go to museums and places downtown with Patrick and take little Patrick on walks to the park.  I want to get farther with relearning to play the piano…  There are lots of things to do that should be fun.

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