Crystal Madrilejos

Here are the final pieces of felt from my felting session fully dried! Aren’t they beautiful? There are three pieces each measuring roughly 3’X4′ but they still need to be trimmed.

The trimmings from around the edges can still be used for other projects that I have yet to plan. I think I’m going to try my hand at needle felting. (Andrew’s mom make beautiful needle felted objects including pillows, scarves, and Christmas ornaments.)

The faint diamond shaped pattern in the felt is from the felting machine and over time it disappears. I also forgot to mention in my previous post, these are made up of a combination of 80% alpaca and 20% merino wool.

-c.

Here is the second crocheting project for baby that I mentioned a couple posts ago. A turtle mama with some surprises!

There is an opening in the back end of the large turtle, out of which comes all the rest of the pieces. All in all the whole project is eight pieces including, the mama turtle, two babies, four eggs and one cracked egg. I was so ready for it to be done and those babies were hard to make! Small things are always harder to make. I’m surprised I’m not cross-eyed by now.

It’s from the same craft book as the Peas in a Pod (Ana Paula Rimoli’s Amiguri Two!). I’ve already been asked about the eyes and their baby-safeness. They are safety eyes and though I’ve tried my hardest to get them out (never with any success) I would recommend supervising baby when playing with any dolls with hard plastic eyes.

–c.

The other day I had the wonderful experience of making wool felt! As most of you know, Andrew’s parents own alpacas and have been shearing them and, more recently, having their wool processed. Andrew’s mom has been felting for a little while now and last Christmas she got me a gift certificate for felting classes at a local fiber studio.

We went to Places in Time Farm & Fiber Arts (which is also founder and home of the Ohio Natural Fiber Network) for my first felting session. So so much fun! I love the place, it’s so relaxing and there are so many beautiful things to look at and the owner, Karen, is a lovely person.

Andrew and I are working on another baby related project that involves felt and it is an amazing feeling to actually have felt that was raised, sheared, processed, and then felted all locally. Here are pictures of the process:

I still need to take pictures of the fully dried pieces, but will post those soon.

–c.

Another reason why I have a million craft projects going is because I have this tendency to do something so much until I get sick of it and have to do something else. Maybe it’s ADD passed down from my parents. After sitting in front of the sewing machine for so long working on the quilt, after a few squares I already felt burnt out.

Luckily, I had been itching to start crocheting again. 2 projects later and I’m burnt out and back to the quilt, but I got a couple cute things out of this burst of crochet energy. Both patterns were from Ana Paula Rimoli’s Amiguri Two! I got this book at Barnes & Noble on a whim and have been pretty happy with it thus far.

I’m realizing that the majority of craft books that I own are in Japanese, I mean, literally written in Japanese. I’ve been able to figure out the patterns relatively easily but I have to fill in the blanks most of the time. This book is in English and I have to say that was a bit easier on the brain. Though mine didn’t turn out exactly like the ones in the book, they were fun to make nontheless. Here is one of them: Peas in a Pod!

The one in the book only has 3 peas in the pod, but for some reason my pod turned out extra large and I was able to squeeze in 4. Go figure. I know everyone’s crocheting styles and stitches are a little different but I have never really paid attention to how many stitches per inch, etc. This might come back and bite me in the ass when I’m crocheting some type of clothing, but until then I’ll just do what I do.

One thing I have yet to perfect is the invisible decrease (which I’ve never heard mention of in any of the craft books I’ve read). I always wondered why the bottoms of all my spheres were lumpy and just not attractive in general. I finally googled this problem and discovered the invisible decrease which improved the look of my pieces greatly, but they still aren’t as smooth as I would like. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to advise!

I’ll post the other crochet project as soon as I take pictures of it. It’s been so cloudy here I haven’t been able to get any good light!

–c.

As if I didn’t have a million craft projects, add a baby into the mix and my brain is about to explode. Andrew has made me promise to not get carried away and take on too many things because sometimes even the most relaxing things can become stressful when you load them on nice and thick.

It’s been a dream of mine to make a quilt. For years and years, I’ve kicked the idea around in my head but it always seemed like such a daunting task since I’d never made a quilt in my life. Finally, I decided on a pattern that I found in Suzuko Koseki’s Patchwork Style that will be our baby’s first quilt and hopefully one that he or she will keep forever.

I’ve had this book for a few years now, first the Japanese version that I bought online and then more recently the English version that came out this year. At first I debated on whether I needed the English version, but I’m so happy that I bought it. The Japanese version was great for inspiration, but for a first time quilter I had to study the English version for a week before I was sure that I had it right. And not until I actually sat down and started sewing did it really start making sense. Here is my progress so far:

Luckily for me, the pattern doesn’t call for too much precision or for much planning. It’s very “decide as you go” which is nice because it’s less repetitive than I imagine a tradition quilt being. Each square is different. There really isn’t a color scheme and it’s sort of all over the place, but so far I’m happy with it. I just have about 24 more squares to go! Yikes.

I hope this baby like bright colors!

–c.

This is my newest sewing project, a request from one of my co-workers for her new niece. Cat pillow! You can see ones we’ve made in the past here and this is the very first one I ever made years ago.

–c.

I’ve started a new sewing project (a request from a co-worker) and it inspired me to re-list some items in our etsy store. You can buy 8″X10″ prints of these photos I took at my sisters old tailoring business.

Enjoy!

–c.

I crocheted this dog from a pattern in a Japanese crafting book. If you haven’t looked through a Japanese crafting book, you should. And be ready for cuteness overload! I became obsessed with these craft books years ago and my collection has grown steadily. I’ve made more than a few items from these books but the one downside is they are almost all in in Japanese. I don’t happen to read Japanese but luckily for me crochet patterns are universal and I can usually follow those without much problem. It is a little taxing on the brain, trying to decipher which pattern is for which part of the doll but in the end it works out.

I’ve gotten my books from a variety of places, mostly Japanese bookstores. Andrew used to live in Chicago and, during one of my visits, I stocked up at Mitsuwa. In NYC, my favorite Japanese bookstore is Kinokuniya, which is not only great for books but movies as well.

A few online sources that I’ve found useful are Crafting Japanese, YesAsia, and Amazon: Japan.

Here is the book that I got this dog pattern from: ISBN-10: 9784774750712

–c.