Felted slippers

Now that I've unveiled the cupcake hat, I have to show you my most recent pair of felted slippers. I knitted these with 100% wool yarn my mom found at an estate sale. She wanted me to make slippers out of the yarn, and I managed to complete them just in time for her birthday! Whew!

After the slippers were knit using a pattern from this book, I washed them in hot water with a small amount of detergent and a pair of jeans in order to shrink them. This process is called felting. I had to check them every few minutes to see how they were doing, because you never know what is going to happen. With this pair, it took a good 10 minutes for them to start shrinking, but when they started to shrink it happened quickly. For me, one of the best things about felting is that I can shrink things and they come out fitting better and looking nicer than when I started. Most of the time shrinking is the is not viewed favorably in our house (ask James about one nice ski hat)!

Sweet little cupcakes

Have I mentioned that I like knitting? My grandma taught me to knit when I was in elementary school, but I didn't make much besides a few dishcloths until I went to college and took a couple classes through the campus craft shop. After I made two and a half pairs of socks, I threw in the towel and didn't knit much until Emily was about four months old. My mother-in-law is an avid knitter, and she helped me through a slipper pattern that had me perspiring as I tried to keep up, not lose my place, and pay attention to my baby.

I started checking out knitting books from the library and found them just as delightful as reading cookbooks (yes, I seriously like reading cookbooks). I found this blog in my search for knitting patterns and fell in love with Susan B. Anderson's cupcake hat. When I found out my best friend from college was having a girl I ordered everything I needed to make a hat and mittens for her little one and Emily. I've been a cupcake knitting maniac the last couple of months. Maybe that's why I haven't blogged. Emily has a set, two of my friends have a set, and one little one has a hat (I was in mitten rebellion at the time). I'll have to post a picture of my sweet, little cupcake in her hat soon!

This hat was knit with Swish DK yarn from KnitPicks. It includes some crocheting to make the cherry on top of the hat and the picot edge on the white portion of the cupcake. Emily's hat was the most difficult to make because I had to do four inches of ribbing to make the pink "wrapper." If you're a knitter, you know my pain!

Emily's dress

A month or so ago, I decided it was time for me to sew a dress for Emily. My mom gave me some fabric to use, so I only needed to find an accent color to go with it. It seemed like it should be a simple task.

The problem...I know very little about reading patterns. I've pieced two quilts on the sewing machine, so you would think I should now how to read a pattern; however, I find that words like selvage and bias cause my heart rate to rapidly increase.

My mom helped me place the pattern on the material, and she brought a fun tool called a bias tape maker to make the trim for Emily's dress. The pieces were cut out and I thought to myself, "I should be fine from here." I had carefully studied the pattern. It was time to dive in. I sewed and sewed on her simple little dress, sometimes ripping out seams because I accidentally put a wrong side and a right side together (which is wrong because usually the right sides are together). After a few late nights sewing, I finished it.

When I tried Emily's little dress and bloomers on her I found out it wasn't so little. It was huge! I ended up taking about four inches off the top of her bloomers and adding a pleat (or a tuck, I'm not sure) to the front and back of her dress. This setback added at least one week to my project time. I didn't feel like working on it after it didn't come out perfectly the first time. The hat was the only thing that fit Emily instantly, but it's snug enough that she doesn't really care for it. "No, no!"



I have to say I'm pleased with the finished product. I'm hoping Emily will be able to wear it next summer too. The good thing about adding pleats to make it smaller is that I should be able to rip them out if I want to make it bigger.



The moral of my sewing story...try something new, even if it scares you. You'll be relieved when it's done!

Frugal Friday - Getting Tough Stains Out

It's Frugal Friday, and Crystal at the blog Biblical Womanhood is asking for advice on getting tough stains out of clothing. This is my first time participating in this blog, but my mom gave me such a great way to get tough stains out that I just can't help but share it.

Mom shared this idea with me before Emily was born because she knew what I did not...baby poo does not wash out of clothes. For simple stains, commercial stain removers do the trick, but not with baby poo (a funny term for an icky thing). Mom recommended putting automatic dishwasher detergent directly on the stain and then rubbing the fabric together. It's good to use gloves when you try this because of the bleach in dishwasher detergent. Sometimes I have to rinse the item out and then use more detergent, but not always. You should always test the detergent on a hidden area of the fabric to be certain the bleach will not remove the garment's color.

The funny thing about this stain removal idea is that one of the dresses my mom saved from my baby clothes had several stains on it. I decided to try using dishwasher detergent to get the stains out. Yes! Those stains were over 25 years old and they came out easily. If you have stained clothes that nothing else will work on, try dishwasher detergent.

Raspberry jam

There are a few things about raspberries that I truly enjoy. I love picking them at the end of the day when they are ripe and warm from the hot summer sun. I love watching Emily searching for raspberries in our raspberry patch and then working hard to pick everything she's found, ripe or not. And, I love spreading fresh raspberry jam on homemade bread.

Then, there's the fact that when I was around 8 weeks pregnant with Emily, James and I started calling her "Raspberry" because all of the pregnancy books said she looked like a raspberry around then. It's funny how pregnancy books always compare babies to fruit in the beginning. We even joked around about naming our little girl "Raspberry," which is cute, but we're not granola enough to try something like that.

It's nice that a simple, little fruit can rouse so many happy thoughts and memories.