Pretty Cowl

Love this yarn - it's some sort of hand-painted bulky wool that I bought up in Tahoe last year. I made up a simple cowl with a simple pattern of increasing-height rows - starting with a single crochet row, then double, etc. up to a double-treble and then back down. It's pretty wide, so I folded it in half (which adds some warmth since double-treble stitches are pretty open), sewed a button onto one end, and voila: a pretty splash of color.

New Puppy

This is Scout. She's currently laying next to me fighting a stuffed ladybug. She's the one responsible for taking up all my extra time lately.

Merry Christmas!

In a few minutes, I'm off to my parents' house to make lasagna with my mom - it's about time she passed down her recipe. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

I have a little DIY over at Savannah Smiles for a Christmas tree topper star. I showed how to make the two top layers at Savannah's blog, but that was getting pretty long so I'm showing the other layer here.

When I set out to make my own star, I was sort of inspired by this one. I wanted to see if I could make something roughly similar with paper.

My tree topper

Start with a piece of paper about 2" wide by 4" tall (I cut a strip of 12 x 12 paper into 4" strips, then cut those down into smaller rectangles.) Imagine a 1/2" wide (give or take - I didn't measure this layer!) section in the center and fold "around" it, like this:

Now the little "wings" on the side need to be folded under the center section and back out to be about the same width. Your fold will look like a Z:

Next, you just need to clip the points. Cut at an angle from the outer edge just on the outer flaps; cut underneath the center section to hide the vertical cut, which doesn't have to be perfect.

Snip the corners of the center section only to make a point. The final product will look like this:

It's not complicated once you get the rhythm down, but it's a little weird to explain. Hopefully the pictures help! The last step is to glue all of these into a circle - I just hot glued them to the same circle of cardboard that I glued the center accordion layer onto.

Then, I covered it up with a circle I cut out of decorative paper and glued a piece of cardboard tube from a paper towel roll to make it easy to set on top of the tree. The decorative paper is just to make the back look decent if you're going to see it from that angle - plain paper would work just as well, or leave it out if your tree's against a wall.

Feel free to share photos of any tree toppers you've made - like this one or totally different!

Thrift Share Monday

I'm just barely squeaking in for this to actually be Thrift Share Monday, but better late than never! I did a bit of thrifting this weekend. I specifically went out to find vintage wooden spools of thread (I feel like there should be a shorter way of saying that...) and picked up two other items as well.

The thread spools were made into ornaments:

I was excited about this idea when I first thought of it a few weeks ago, and I'm so glad it turned out the way I expected.

I also found two Christmas decorations that I'm leaving as is (for sale in my Etsy shop). I wasn't planning to buy anything else, but these were too fun to pass up and I've been thinking about adding some vintage items to my shop... this is kind of an itsy bitsy trial run, I guess. The first thing was this glass tree topper:

It's worn and speckled with silver showing through the pretty green, it's shiny, and it has glitter - win-win-win.

The other thing was this set of glass ornaments, unopened in the original packaging. I love seeing how different styles can be so reminiscent of different time periods. These ornaments are actually older than I am.

Well, that's it for me this week!

December's Here

We got our Christmas tree. It still looks like this: http://twitter.com/#!/SmithAndDaphne/status/143506713260199938 (undecorated). I swear it grew when we carried it through the door.

I found my camera + tripod connector foot thing, but haven't been taking many pictures.

I sewed one Christmas stocking last night, hopefully I can make the other tonight and also add a bit of width to our tree skirt.

It's officially winter - we have eaten both Brussels sprouts and clementines. I'm finding myself eating more seasonally - coming back to certain foods at certain times of the year. Paying more attention to what's good when.

I planted a few bulbs yesterday - it was tough to dig some of them far enough into our "soil" - not because it's frozen or anything like that, but because it's basically rock and cement chunks after the first few inches. Another reason I want to sheet mulch. I may try forcing some of them indoors - need to figure out how you're supposed to do that.

It's starting to become that busy time of year. I'll have to remember to pull out the camera and record some of it. So bad at that.

The Usefulness of a Tripod

I have things to share, but no pictures of most of them... I can't find the little thing that holds the camera onto the tripod, so it's kind of difficult to get decent pictures right now. It's getting too dark by the time I get home from work to have any sort of natural light anyways, but I can't even take pics in the morning. For example, I finished my pink jersey skirt and wore it the other day, but... no pictures. I also finished my crocheted neckwarmer, but no pictures... See the theme?

I also picked up a bunch of supplies for Etsy goods this weekend, which are in various states of being washed/dried/just waiting. I use quite a bit of reclaimed materials, such as the vintage (and non-vintage) handmade doilies, wool sweaters for felting, even fabric remnants. I think it's great to use second-hand materials when possible, but I only use things that I can clean and feel that the quality is like-new. I do use a lot of brand-new materials as well, and I like that mix of old and new.

And on a third unrelated note, we're working on our front yard. That is, it's sort of on pause right now, because I'm waiting on other people. But two weekends ago, I spent a good part of my Saturday hauling bags of leaves from a local school to my backyard. I'm planning to sheet mulch our front "lawn," which is basically layering organic materials over it to smother what's growing there now (mostly weeds) and provide a base for new plants above. The stuff we lay down will decompose, and on the very top will be wood chips to be a little more attractive and weigh everything down. So, right now my back yard has:

forty-three bags of leaves. All nicely bagged by volunteers at a school clean-up day. Win-win.