Advent Calendar Photos!

 Before we took down our advent calendar, I got Chris to take a couple of GOOD photos of it. Here they are...

Beginning of Advent

End of Advent. Artwork courtesy of the talented Kimberly Swait.

With the ornaments

Pen Holder Bookmark - Free Crochet Pattern

I have been pretty obsessed with pinterest lately as a source of ideas for crafty fun times. After seeing a photo of a knitted pen tube bookmark on pinterest, I decided I had to have one. But I don't knit, so I just winged it and came up with a pretty simple pattern for a crochet version for my notebook.

Download the printer-friendly PDF version.

Materials:

sock-weight yarn
Hook Size: D -3.25mm
button
Yarn Sewing Needle

Stitches:

ch = chain stitch
hdc = half double crochet
hdc dec = half double crochet decrease (one hdc across two stitches)
FLO = front loop only
sc = single crochet
sl st = slip stitch
st = stitch

Pattern:

ch 5
R1: sc in 2nd chain from hook, sc in each additional chain (4 sc)
R2: ch 1, 4 sc (4 sc)
R3-6: Repeat R2
Rnd 7: ch 1, 4 hdc FLO, turn and in the SAME stitches, 3 hdc FLO, 1 hdc inc FLO in last sc. join first hdc with last hdc using a sl st. (9 hdc)
Rnd 8 : ch 1, turn, 9 hdc around, sl st to join. (9 hdc)
Rnd 9-21: Repeat rnd 8
Rnd 22: 2 sl st, 2 sc, 2 hdc, 2 sc, sl st
Rnd 23: ch 1, turn, skip sl st, 1 sl st, 1 sc, 2 hdc, 1 sc, 1 sl st
Rnd 24: ch 1, turn, skip sl st, 1 sl st, 1 sc, hdc, 1 sl st
Rnd 25: ch 1, turn, skip sl st, 2 sc
Rnd 26: ch 1, turn, 1 hdc dec
ch 40 to create bookmark strip. FO and leave a long tail.

Finishing Touches:

Sew the button to the middle of the area made by the first 6 rows. If you will be using this bookmark with one specific notebook, put the body of the bookmark on the spine, wrap the tail into the book, wind the end around the button and pull tight. Use that “measurement” to tie a loop that can hook onto the button.
If this bookmark will be “multiuse” between books, you can just pull the tail tight and wind it back through the book to keep it secure.

Notes:

The person who wrote the original design sells the knitting pattern on ravelry and on her own site, as well. This crochet pattern is released as Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. You may not sell this pattern. You may sell bookmarks made using this pattern.

Jesse Tree Advent Calendar project

Having a young child has really made me want to start establishing some Christmas traditions that keep us focused on the "reason for the season," if you will. Last year I learned about the Jesse Tree advent calendar from my church's Children's Pastor, and I really liked the idea on a number of levels. It seems like a simple way to introduce children to the Bible stories that lead up to Christmas, with just a short reading each day, and I love that it's reinforced with an image for each day. So this year, since my fall calendar is already pretty full, I decided to get a head start on Christmas by making my own Jesse Tree Advent Calendar that will last us for many Advent seasons.

I used this book, The Advent Jesse Tree to get the idea for the symbol for each day, as well as the Bible verses to read to children for each day leading up to Christmas. Our church uses the same book on Sundays during advent, so I wanted to stickHide all with the same thing to keep it familiar (Google searches taught me that there are a number of lists of verses and symbols to choose from). And after many Etsy and Pinterest searches, and some crafting advice from friends, I finally settled on what I wanted to do for our family. I wanted something I could make myself, that would be lasting and could help build tradition for the years to come.

There are a few components to the final result.

1. Advent Calendar - made out of stiff cardboard and purchased at Hobby Lobby; the drawers are 2" cubes. I used Modge Podge to glue 2" squares of scrapbooking paper to each drawer, and after searching high and low at the craft store for some number stickers I could use, gave up and made the number labels myself.

2. Ornaments - I made each ornament out of Paper Clay, which is pretty nice air-dry white clay. It was my first time using it, and was actually pretty easy to work with. For more of the symbols I just made round ornaments that I could paint symbols on, but I had appropriate cookie cutters for a couple of them, and a few more I decided to hand sculpt just to add some variety to the ornaments. Once they had hardened, I used water color pencils to add the symbols to each one. Then I wrote the day and symbol name on the back of each one just so it will be easy to return them to their appropriate boxes at the end of the season.

3. Verses - I typed out short verse cards to accompany each ornament in their respective boxes. Every day had a short memory verse and a longer Bible passage to read. These verse cards contain the name of the symbol, the full text of the memory verse, and the name of the other passage to be read. Verses are rolled up and tied with a bit of string.

4. Tree - so this part isn't done yet, because I haven't decided the best way to go about it. But I need a small tree that we can hang one ornament on every day. My requirement is that it be something simple and affordable (if I need to buy anything at all), and it can't take up too much space in my closet during the year. This isn't to take the place of a traditional Christmas tree, it's in addition to it. (Not that we're very traditional when it comes to the tree anyways).

5. Oh yeah... I'm also planning on one extra piece to this whole thing, but it's hard to explain so I'll just post about it when I'm done.

Ok, so I showed you mine. Now it's your turn!

What's your favorite Christmas tradition? Do you have any projects planned to make your holiday season special?

Crochet Octopus

I bought this crochet octopus pattern back in January. I started crocheting it, piece by piece, tentacle by tentacle, sucker by sucker in May or so. I wasn't in a hurry, I just wanted to work on it whenever I had a little bit of time. You know, during lunch breaks, long car rides, church service, whatever. The cool thing about a pattern like this is that you really can just bring a little bit of yarn with you and just work on one piece of it at a time and then put them all together at home later.

And last night I finally finished him! I haven't named him yet. I think he will be Zeke's Christmas gift from me. So maybe I'll let Zeke name him.

I love how realistic he looks, and how easy the pattern is. I recommend it to anyone wanting to get into crochet. I've actually taught a few people how to crochet recently, and plan to do another craft night at my house in a couple of months to do a "refresher" course for anyone who needs it. Crochet is just too enjoyable to keep it all to myself.

dodecahedron

I finished the dodecahedron. I think it turned out pretty well! It took much longer than I expected though... I think each point took me about an hour, how absurd is that?! I put a bell in each point, too, so it will jingle. I'm going to give it to Zeke tonight. He saw me working on it the other night and was all excited about it, so I hope to get the same excitement when I hand it over... and I really hope he plays with it, considering it took me at least 12 hours to complete! (Am I just a super slow crocheter?)

Booties

A friend of mine from work is having twins soon - a boy and a girl - so I made these booties for them using my two favorite free patterns for baby booties. I think the boy shoes are bigger than the girl shoes but that couldn't really be helped. Maybe we'll be lucky and the boy will have bigger feet so they can still wear them at the same time.

Foamies...

I love this idea for crocheted bath toys / scrubbers. So I got a couple of skeins of organic cotton yarn on sale and made one for Zeke. My yarn was a bit thicker than the one from Carrie used, I think, so I wound up making a smaller version, and used different eyes. But it's nice and soft and I'm looking forward to using him at bath time!

Octopus Crochet Pattern

I just bought my first crochet pattern. Usually I make up my own or find free ones and modify them to my purposes. And in the past 8 months I've had very little time to crochet, thanks to the awesome little man that requires my attention.

But yesterday I was browsing around crochet patterns and happened upon this awesome Octopus pattern. I tried once or twice to crochet my own realistic looking octopus, but wasn't having much luck. I searched in vain for patterns that weren't cutesy... I at least wanted some realistic looking tentacles! Alas, I finally found what I was looking for, and for just $3 on ravelry. I saved it as a favorite so if I ever have time to make it I could look it up and buy it. I told Chris and he said, "You should just buy in now in case you can't find it later." So I did. I have no idea when I will have time to make this 3-foot long bugger, but I am super excited to now have the option to do so!

Too Freaking Cool.

This one goes right up there next to this tree frog in my "Patterns I want to make for myself if I ever get around to it" list. Of course maybe now it will be made for that awesome little guy that takes up my time.

The next thing I plan to actually make, though, is this dodecahedron for Zeke. I will put bells in it. Then I will hope he actually wants to play with it.

ceramics fun day, and the craft tables...

A couple Saturdays ago, my friend Bethany and I (and little Zeke!) went down to my local independent coffee shop and had fun painting ceramics, courtesy of Glazy Dazy. Zeke was pretty well behaved for most of the time, playing in his car seat and sleeping in the carrier I was wearing, so that I was able to get most of my set painted before I had to get Bethany to help out with him so I could finish it up. We had a good time and I have a new addition to my teapot collection!

The pottery was really reasonably priced, and the woman who does the ceramics also does parties, so we're thinking we HAVE to get a party together to paint once we get our all-purpose-creative-room finished. Chris and his dad built some super cool work tables for the room, but Chris has to put the finishing touches on them and finish organizing that room. I can't wait until it's all together, it is going to be an awesome room.

Here is a sneak peak of the work in progress.

baby booties

I have a couple of friends who are having babies soon (actually, I have a lot of friends who have either just had a baby or will have one soon, but two of them are in my small group, and our small group is throwing us a joint shower next weekend).

One is having a girl, and the other a boy, so I thought it would be fun to make them some cute baby booties. So I found a couple of free patterns online (for mary janes and for sneakers) and made these. I made up the leaf embellishments for the mary janes, but otherwise just followed the patterns. They were both pretty quick to whip up since they're so small, so they were a fun project.

Chris wants me to make cowboy boots for Zeke, and I actually have a friend who has this pattern book with the cowboy boots pattern, so I will probably do that at some point, too. Man... never thought I'd be the "crocheting baby booties" kind of gal. How things change.

First Etsy Sale!

I just made my first Etsy sale! Some fabulous etsy customer bought my Sea Creature Mobile pattern. I was starting to think the whole crochet pattern writing experiment was a big waste of time (and it still may be, who knows, if I only sell the pattern a couple of times it certainly won't have been a profitable endeavor... that thing took forever between designing, writing, creating the layout, and testing it!) but it's pretty exciting still to have my first sale. Huzzah!

Etsy Store and free baby jellyfish crochet pattern

I've finally gotten around to finishing the pattern for the baby mobile, creating an Etsy shop, AND posting the pattern for sale on the Etsy shop. Hooray! Now to see if anyone actually wants to buy it. :-)

Update: Now you can also buy it through Ravelry for $4.95.

I've decided to post the instructions for the baby jellyfish from the pattern here for free, to give you all a tiny taste of what you could be making. So here it is!

Baby Jellyfish Pattern

Materials:

• fingering weight yarn in whichever colors you want your creatures to be (sample uses Claudia Hand Painted Yarns)
• 3.0mm D crochet hook
• Needle for sewing pieces together
• Stuffing

Abbreviations:

Abbreviations:
• ch = chain
• sc = single crochet
• fo = finish off
• inc = increase (two sc in one stitch)
• dec = decrease (one sc across two stitches)
• sl st = slip stitch
• st = stitch
• x2 = repeat two times (etc for multiple numbers)

Body:
Worked in a spiral. Do not join, do not turn.
Start a circle via magic ring or whatever is your preference.
1. sc 6 around (6)
2. inc 6 (12)
3. [sc, inc] x 6 (18)
4. [sc x 5, inc] x 3 (21)
5-7. sc 21 around for 3 rows (21)
8. [sc, dec] x 7 (14)
FO, cut string and weave in end.

Tentacles:
Make 2 dark and 3 light tentacles. Attach each one to the inside top of the body. Loose chains should help the tentacles to curl.
1. Loosely ch 28
FO, cut yarn short, but not so short that the knot will come undone. Alternately, you may try to weave the end back up the chain and hide it in the leg. Use the other tail to attach inside the body.

Note: some yarn doesn’t curl as well when loosely chained for the tentacles. If your tentacles don’t curl, try these alternate tentacles:

1. ch 30
2. inc in each ch
FO, cut yarn short, but not so short that the knot will come undone. Alternately, you may try to weave the end back up the chain and hide it in the leg. Use the other tail to attach inside the body.

Get the rest of the sea creature mobile pattern from my Etsy store at
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=22891478

SF Galleries

Last post for the night! I decided that the "arts and crafts" post for San Francisco needed to be separate from the other post.

One of the things Chris and I love about traveling is checking out museums and galleries. While we didn't do nearly as much of that in SF as we did in New York, we did see was lots of quality stuff. Of course the SFMOMA was great times, and we especially enjoyed their new exhibition of Martin Puryear's work. The ladder to the left is pretty much the only thing we could take a photo of, because it was in the lobby. No photos allowed in the actual exhibit, of course.

We also hit a couple of gallery shows, one at Gallery 1988, where I fell in love with the artwork of Yoskay Yamamoto (left), and Chris fell in love with the artwork of... just about everybody, so I'm sure he'll post about it eventually. For more info about the show, check out 1988's blog.

Then we made our way to the Plush You show at DoublePunch, which was just plain crafty fun.

And I think Chris gets just as excited about street art as he does about anything in a gallery... the boy took a TON of photos on Haight street. Here are just a couple of them... of course he had to take a photo of the huge Shepard Fairey mural.

green resalvaged purse

So I started this purse MONTHS ago, and it just didn't turn out the way I imagined it once it felted... I used a different brand of yarn for the base when I ran out of the expensive yarn for the rest of the purse, and it shrunk a lot more... plus for some reason the whole thing just looked crazy-misshapen when it was done. So I put it away for a while, and then wound up cutting a whole lot off of it, made a new base (and felted it separately) and hand-sewed the pieces back together to make a new purse.

So this is the final product. I like the color, but it still didn't wind up exactly right, so it doesn't sit well. I don't know if I'll use it much, but that's the story of my disaster purse.

In other news, I have a couple of other purses that I not only slaved over, but I even wrote patterns for them. But right now we're using the laundromat at our apartment complex, and it turns out the hot water cycle there isn't hot enough to actually felt them. So they're just sitting in my house waiting for me to figure out a way to get these felted.

Whenever that happens and I have final products (to make sure they actually look good when they're finished) then I want to find a couple of people to test the patterns to make sure they work. I'll let y'all know when I have something to show.

Hooray for days that don't go as expected...

I spent all week looking forward to my crafty Saturday, going to the Craft party with a couple friends, then checking out Wonderroot with another friend. But before I even left for the Craft event, the friend who was going to pick me up from the Marta station bailed. I decided I would not let that stop me, so I just walked the mile and a half from the Marta station to Young Blood. The craft party wasn't what I expected... I was the first person there, and the only activity they had was a cheesy straw loom weaving project that I tried to get into, but it just didn't do it for me. Normally I would have walked in there, realized the project wasn't fun, felt dumb being all alone, and left. But I was still determined, so I hung out and met a couple people, like Carey from full of fluff, who taught me some new stuff about patterns.

After that I decided to walk up the couple blocks to Knitch, only to find that they closed early, just 30 minutes before. I was supposed to meet up with my friend Kat when she got off work around 4 to go to Wonderroot, and I was currently on the way from her house to where we were going, so I just... walked. I window shopped and browsed through boutiques along North Highland. I went to Paulo's Gelato to see if they could give me info about the ingredients in their gelato, and the girl behind the counter was absolutely not interested in helping, so I marked that place off my list for good. And I kept walking. By the time Kat called, I was just a few blocks from her house, so I walked the rest of the way and met her there. The whole trip (from Marta to Kat's) was only about 2 1/2 miles, and not a bad walk at all. Suddenly Atlanta seemed a lot more manageable... sure it takes a while to walk through all that, but there are a TON of cool communities and great shops between Inman Park and Virginia Highlands.

View Larger Map

So then Kat and I hopped in her car to head to the less walking-friendly area where Wonderroot is, only to find that it was closed for Labor Day. Not to be thwarted, we headed over to Java Monkey instead and hung out for a couple of hours, which was tons of fun. Now I'm finally home and winding down for the night, grateful for a fun and relaxing day, even if nothing went according to my "plan" for the day. I mean shoot, I had so much fun, I just had to blog about it.

Craft:08 Release Party Saturday

Indie Craft Experience in Atlanta is hosting a Craft:08 Magazine release party this Saturday at Young Blood Gallery. I got my copy of Craft:08 a couple weeks ago, actually, and I've been psyched about the cold pressed coffee instructions. I was also intrigued by some of the other articles (like how to make your own silicone ice pop molds, or a turning an old necktie into a sunglass case), but haven't taken the time to tackle any of the other projects yet. So I'm looking forward to the party, maybe I'll get to try some of the cool stuff they featured, and meet more Atlanta crafters. A couple of my friends are coming with me, so it should be good times.

The Gourd Purse

I made this a month or so ago, but just finally got around to having The Chris photograph it for me. Both pieces are crocheted with Lion Wool, using a popcorn stitch for the bumps, then felted. I call this my gourd purse because once it was done I decided it looks very much like a gourd, although I don't think that was the intention.

In case it's hard to tell from the photos, the purse has a small handle and a large one; the large handle fits through the small one to close up the purse for carrying it. That does mean it takes a little more work to get things out of it, because you have to slide the handle out, but it's so cute that I decided I'm okay with it. I'm pretty happy with the metal ring for an accent, too... it's great for clipping my keys onto. And the little orange cozy is actually the perfect size for my ipod mini, but I find it comes in handy to hold my Marta card, my apartment complex gate card, and my chapsticks. You know, all the little things I need to have handy at a moment's notice.

And since this shade of green is currently my favorite color, the gourd has become my favorite purse.

I made these up on the fly and I'm still terrible and writing out patterns as I go, so I'm no help there. Sorry.

chalkboard paint revisited

I was just taking a look at apartment therapy's site and saw that they featured some other awesome chalkboard paint ideas... in fact, they've had a few blog posts about the awesomeness of chalkboard paint. They even have instructions on making your own!

I still haven't had time to be crafty, but I can't wait to find some fun uses for magnetic and chalkboard paint!

inspiration

So I've got the crafting bug right now, and am dying to mod lots of stuff into cooler, more useful stuff... so I dragged Chris to Home Depot last night so we could walk around and be inspired by the tools and supplies that are available. Let me just say, I love Home Depot. In college I used to wander around coming up with solutions to whatever art projects I had to complete, but it's been far too long since I just got to walk around and oooh and ahhh at stuff.

Last night I discovered panels of pre-built tile for backsplashes and the like (very fun), but even better, we stumbled upon Magnetic Paint! And chalkboard paint, and whiteboard paint. I wanted to buy them all! (But we were good, we didn't buy anything... just filed it all away in our brains until we're ready to actually use them in a project). Back in college my friend Dan introduced me to the wonders of tool dip... between that and all these other cool surface paints, I'm in resurfacing heaven!

more felt coasters!

Friends of ours got married this weekend, and they requested handmade gifts for their wedding, so I decided to make another set of felt coasters for them. This time I went with brown and tan, and I actually steam-ironed them to make them more flat and well formed.

Chris suggested I do different designs on each coaster, instead of doing the same thing for each one like I did for my gray set. He thinks they look like crazy monsters, so while that wasn't my intention when I started, I guess the grommet can't help but look like an eye... but that means I have some pretty deformed monster coasters!

I'm also working on a couple other ideas with felt circles, but those will take a while to finish. I did make a couple other crazy felt things this past week that I'll have to get Chris to photograph... it was a crafty week for the Kendra.

I've got all sorts of ideas for things I want to make, and some of them are things Chris and I can work on together, which is really exciting... I think we make a good team, skill-wise. So hopefully we're able to do some of the things that have been floating around in my head, and then I'll have all kinds of new stuff to post later. But probably things will slow down the rest of this month, because we are moving to a new apartment soon, and I have some freelance stuff that needs to take precedence over crafty fun. Alas!

the coasters (above), and the trivet (below)