A Very Pinterest Holiday 2014, pt 3

One successful, healthy Pinterest Project - the Salad Fixin's Tree:

One not-so-successful, school treat that I went all "Semi-Homemade" on:

The cookies on the rack are snowmen, duh!

FYI - Pillsbury refrigerated cookie dough is not a roll-out cookie dough, even if you knead in more flour...

A Very Merry Pinterest Holiday 2014, pt 2

Saturday there is a bake sale for the school at 5 Below. I Pinterested up my favorite gingerbread cookie recipe (spicy molasses cookies) to sell. Whatcha think??

More ideas here: http://theorganisedhousewife.com.au/holiday-seasons/christmas/gingerbread-reindeer/

A Very Merry Pinterest Holiday 2014

What is it about the holidays that makes everyone - crafty or not - run to to Pinterest to craft or bake *SOMETHING*?  I'm no exception.

Last Friday, the first Friday of December, the Friday after Thanksgiving weekend, the Friday before the big PTA Holiday House that I help organize, I was feeling very Grinch-like. No holiday spirit whatsoever. I forced myself to go find my Santa baseball hat and work on my best Cindy Lou Who attitude and go decorate the school.

This is what I got:

Holiday House is a big festival complete with Breakfast with the Holiday Characters, Santa Photos, Silent Auction, Elf Shop, Mistletoe Market - that's my event, and free International Holiday Games. It went off beautifully even though I set my alarm for PM instead of AM and woke up 5 minutes before I was supposed to be there (good thing I only live 3 blocks away and had packed my stuff the night before - one of the vendors was there before me though). My introvert husband volunteered to help make the breakfast. My 13 year old daughter spent most of the day volunteering by either babysitting the children of adult volunteers or working at one of the game stations. My 10 year old ran around the school with the 7 year old and they had a blast!

all of the halls were decorated with this much glitter and pizzazz

Well, come Sunday, the Holiday House was over and cleaned up, I slept all night long and after a leisurely breakfast, we cleaned the house that's been ignored for 3 weeks while I worked on orders and Holiday House and PTA treasurer stuff and stressed about selling our townhouse which finally closed just before Thanksgiving (original closing date was Nov 4). I finally felt up to even addressing the tree.

Now, our tree is tiny. It's 18 inches wide. We bought it b/c we lived in a 12 ft wide townhouse with 3 kids; anything bigger just takes up too much space. I love our tree and I don't want to clean up anything bigger!  My husband set up the tree and we decorated it together.

Now, back to Pinterest. Today, I'm in an even more holiday mood! I decided to tackle a pinterest project that I had bookmarked months ago - Peppermint Ornaments.  I don't really like peppermint (love the smell, eh the flavor) so I can take or leave candy canes but there's always a few that don't get eaten when I take the tree down and I end up using them to make peppermint ice cream in the summer. I wanted something fun and I came across this pinterest photo when I was looking for ideas for our summer art camp and bookmarked it.

It looks easy, I said! Cookie Cutters, Peppermint Candy, cooking spray (??), a toothpick! No problem! I even bought some more non-painted metal cookie cutters this fall. Okay, so it took a while to find the peppermint candies. I like a particular brand and no one carries them anymore. Oh well!

So I follow the directions:
pre-heat oven to 350 - check
spray metal cookie cutters with cooking spray for easy release - check
fill metal cookie cutters with peppermint candies - check
put into oven until candies melt - huh, no time listed...

I picked 5 minutes arbitrarily since cookies bake in about 7 minutes.

The first batch turned out ok but there were a few mishaps - a missing mitten thumb, an armless snow man, a curvy light bulb.

No problem - I'll just add a couple extra candies to those ornaments for the next batch. But the layered one weren't melted so I put them back in WITHOUT SETTING A NEW TIMER! oops! When I pulled the tray out, the sugar was boiling... well, the back looks kind of fun!

I watched the next 2 sets and they turned out great!  The hardest part is putting the hole in them. Even with cooking spray, the toothpick stuck to the candy a lot.

I put them on the tree - they are WAY cuter than the candy cane crook!

What's this year's holiday best seller at Hamburke's? Coffee Cup Cozies - specifically, this guy!

Busy Autumn, Best Advice

Most of my lovely listeners know that we moved just over 2 years ago and house prices being what they were, our townhouse was not breaking even and was not approved for a short sale (boo!). We got some good renters in there and were biding our time until the market turned. It did late this summer - the DC Metro (subway) came through almost all the way to our house driving the home values up. The house went on the market, went under contract in 5 days and we're closing very soon!

On top of that, the autumn has been extremely busy - I took a volunteer job as PTA treasurer not realizing the sheer volume of hours that it involves to do a good job without prior bookkeeping skills and Hamburke's has been very busy with mostly local orders (yay for local!) and the kids have activities that overlap. I've neglected to write, well, for a while, so today, I'm going to pass on my very favorite crochet tips.

Get a GRIP! If you have the regular Boye or Bates hooks that are just a thin piece of metal, you may have noticed that your hand hurts after a while. I've been switching over to Clover over the course of the last year and I can go for so much longer! After I found the Soft Touch, I stumbled upon the Amour hooks and love them! Crochet Dude has some great ones as well. I'm faster and can crochet much longer without a break for my hands to uncramp or stop tingling.

More than anything else, sizing crochet is a challenge without the wearer right there! I've spent more time taking out hats than getting them right in one go after adjusting a pattern. Last spring, I came across a blogger, Anne Granger, that had made a chart to help - "size/age", head circumference, hat circumference, crown circle diameter and top of hat to bottom of ear - and it's EXCELLENT! I haven't had to pull a single hat out for sizing problems since I measure the crown circle!  I printed out just the size chart, put it in a sleeve and tucked it into the front of my patterns binder.

Speaking of my patterns binder, ORGANIZING my patterns is huge. I buy or acquire most of my patterns online rather than from books or magazines and for portability, I print them out. Reading patterns on my phone just gives me a headache! That's a lot of paper, folks, and I'm kind of a reuse-reduce-recycle nut so I try very hard to only print them once. So I take care of that paper - I have multi-page capacity sheet protectors that I slip the patterns in and have them in a 3" 3-ring binder organized (with tabs) for hats, booties, sweaters/cocoons, blankets and "other" (this tab has the viking hat with attached beard my husband wants me to make).  I also write the name that I sell the product under as I often rename an item to sell it. Listen, folks, I have 3 very different hat patterns called "The Elizabeth Hat" and 2 "Everyday Soaker/Diaper Cover" - if I went with the pattern name, I'd be even more confused and confusing!

Hooks - I don't have a special crochet hook organizer with slots for the different sizes. Instead, I have a smaller, zippered makeup bag that I got for 50 cents on clearance at Target. I think a zippered pencil pouch would also work well and might be prettier (yeah, there's a reason it, and all of it's twins, were on clearance). I also keep stitch markers, a pen, nail clippers for cutting yarn, tapestry needles and a small retractable tape measure in this case.

Projects - I keep the plastic bags that my yarn comes in inside the box to use for organizing projects. They're just simple clear 2mil open-top bags (think ziplock sandwich bag quality plastic but produce bag size and shape) but I use them to store unfinished projects. I put all of my yet-to-be-used yarn in them along with the pattern and if it's an order, the printed packing slip. I reuse them until things fall out of them.

Yarn - this is something that I need to work on. There are a zillion-trillion ideas out there for organizing yarn. I keep mine in clear plastic file boxes organized mostly by yarn weight and use (sport weight cottons are in one, worsted weight cottons are in another and kitchen cottons are in a third. All else is in my ottoman) and scraps (anything less than 10g) go in a plastic shoe box to be used for embellishments. I found out today, though, that I'm not as organized as I wish I was as I pulled out a worsted weight cotton from the sport weight bin... oops! and that's the one that's over flowing so I'll have to clean it out again and track my inventory better.

Finally, I know that I don't know it all - there are very few people who do. My first go-to when I don't understand a stitch is YouTube and I look for well known crochet v-loggers who tend to be concise and not overly chatty (it's distracting when I'm learning something new). Sometimes a stitch sounds complicated on paper or is poorly worded or mis-named by the designer. Last week, I was working on a pattern that called for a V-stitch - no problem - that's a dc-ch1-dc in the same stitch, skip the next stitch but the pattern wasn't working out like I expected it would. The designer had put in her own definitions of a V-stitch - dc2 in the same stitch - in the notes and I hadn't noticed it b/c I just skimmed that part (even worse - I was working with black yarn so it was hard to see what I had done). This is a simple example but there are a bunch like it - Crochet Street blog just published the difference between a bobble, popcorn and puff stitch using Moogly blogger Tamara Kelly's videos - you'll see how words and video are so excellently paired! I watched Tamera's 3 videos yesterday and I cannot tell you today which one is which (wrong side, right side or drop and pick up). My second go-to resource is my mother-in-law when she's in town - she's been doing this longer than I have and can sometimes sort out what the designer is saying better than I can.

So - review of pro-tips: find a comfortable hook (don't be saddled with grandma's arthritic handmedowns), learn or reference sizing, find ways to organize your crazy crafter space and don't be afraid to search out help!

So - review of pro-tips: find a comfortable hook (don't be saddled with grandma's arthritic handmedowns), learn sizing, and find ways to organize your crazy crafter!

I'm leaving you to gaze upon this cutie patootie in a custom request knit-look crochet hat that will very soon be on my Etsy page!

Summer Vacation: DIY Art Day Camp

I love arts and crafts (obviously) and this summer, I wanted to share with my kids. I came up with the idea for Art Week after visiting the VMFA (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts) downtown with out-of-town friends (hey - who knew that it was free?). I brought up taking the kids to the museum over the summer to a couple local friends and when they were receptive, I sprung the week-long DIY Art Day Camp idea on them! We picked 2 or 3 activities for each day that we anticipated would take 2-3 hours for the kids to complete (we underestimated how long kids take on some projects - most were done in 20 minutes).

Day 1
Monday, Aug 18
Drawing

We got a late start after a sleepless night but our resident artist let us in on the secret to drawing (psst - it's finding the simple shapes in an image)

Day 2
Tuesday, Aug 19
VMFA Day

We made it downtown without getting lost and over an hour in the museum before the younger kids started melting down.

Day 3
Wednesday, Aug 20
Painting

I think this was the most fun! I taught them a little bit about watercolors (I set out a still life but mostly, they painted minions) and we did a Michelangelo style painting (they painted the papered-over underside of my dining room table).

The little kids had fun too with Paint With Water books!

Day 4
Thursday, Aug 21
Tie Dye

BYO Shirt! It's so humid here though that these are still hanging in my shed (it rained last night and this afternoon).

Day 5
Friday, Aug 22
Kid Craft

This one kind of fell apart. I had a couple things that had to be done in the morning and my friends have kids who nap but I did one of the activities anyway!

This is ribbon embroidery done on paper

I also finished this lovely Christening/Baptism/Dedication baby gown and booties (both will be listed soon!)

Baptism Blanket - free crochet pattern

I had a request last night for the pattern for this blanket:

Truth is, I made it up and used my KAL (knit-a-long) creation skills to create the image. (eh - I'm not a big knitter -it takes me forever and I make a lot of mistakes - but I have fun with washclothes with pictures on them). Instead of the purl replacing a knit stitch, I used a ch1 space to draw the picture, dot matrix style.

I make this rectangular. Typical sizes I get asked to create are 24x30 (baby) and 32x40 (toddler)

So here's the pattern:

generally, I use a 5.5 mm hook with sport weight yarn (my fave - knit picks shine sport).

Row 1: dc foundation chain row (how to HERE) made to the desired width minus double the height of a dc (that's the trim)

Pause -
1-Since gauge is not that big of a deal for this pattern, count your stitches here - it just needs to be an even number. I make various sizes of this blanket and have never written down the number of stitches. The toddler blanket shown has about 100 stitches across. My gauge is generally around around 3-4 stitches per inch.
2- Grab some graph paper. Using your number of stitches, draw out your image using 1 square across = 2 stitches (double crochet) and 1 square down = 1 row. For the toddler blanket, I use 10 holes (20 stitches) as the width of the vertical portion of my cross (width of stipes) centered on the blanket, 10 holes (10 rows) including the top row down to the patibulum (crossbar), the patibulum is a total of 56 stitches wide (10 holes out on each side including the last hole that makes up the stipes). The stipes continues down an additional 19 holes/rows for a a total of 38 rows down. Yours doesn't have to be the same as mine.

Row 2 & 3: ch2 turn, dc in the same stitch, dc across, dc, ch2 turn
Row 4: assuming 100 stitches (use your graph if you got something different or have a wider or narrower stipes), dc in same stitch as the ch-turn, dc 39, *ch1, skip a stitch, dc in the next stitch* repeat from * to * 9 times, dc 40, ch2 turn
Row 5-12: dc in the same stitch as the ch-turn, dc 39, ch1, dc 18, ch1, dc 40, ch2 turn
Row 13: dc in the same stitch as the ch-turn, dc 20, *ch1, skip a stitch, dc in the next stitch* repeat from * to * 9 times (the last ch1 should be under the ch1 space), dc 18. *ch1, skip a stitch, dc in the next stitch* repeat from * to * 9 times (the first ch1 space should be under the ch1 space in the row above), dc 21, ch2 turn
Row 14-21: dc in the same stitch as the ch-turn, dc 20, ch1, dc 56, ch1, dc 21, ch2 turn
Row 22: dc in the same stitch as the ch-turn, dc 20, *ch1, skip a stitch, dc in the next stitch* repeat from * to * 9 times (the last ch1 should be under the ch1 space), dc 18. *ch1, skip a stitch, dc in the next stitch* repeat from * to * 9 times, dc 21, ch2 turn
Row 23-40: dc in the same stitch as the ch-turn, dc 39, ch1, dc 18, ch1, dc 40, ch2 turn
Row 41: dc in same stitch as the ch-turn, dc 39, *ch1, skip a stitch, dc in the next stitch* repeat from * to * 9 times, dc 40, ch2 turn
Row 42 & 43: ch2 turn, dc in the same stitch, dc across, dc, ch2 turn
Row 44: ch2 turn, dc in the same stitch, dc across, dc, ch2 do not turn

Pause -
Starting trim rounds here - you can do any trim you want. I kept this one simple with 3 rounds. You can pick a different one that you like better if you want.

ROUND 1- turn the blanket so that you are working down the side of the blanket, sc in the same stitch as the turning chain, sc down the side putting 2 stitches in the side of every dc. At the corner, ch1 and sc in same stitch. sc across; at the next corner, ch1, sc in same stitch, sc 2x in the side of each dc; last corner now, ch1, sc in the same stitch, sc across except the final stitch where the ch 2 is. Join with a slst in the ch2 space. ch4  do not turn
ROUND 2 - dc in same stitch as chain, working down the side of the blanket, *ch1, skip a stitch, dc in next stitch* across. At the corners, ch2 and dc in the same ch1 space. join with a slst when you get around. ch1, do not turn.
ROUND 3 - In the ch2 space, sc-ch1-sc2. sc in each dc and ch1 space. In the ch2 space of the corners, sc2-ch1-sc2. join with an invisible join slst bind-off.

I don't write a lot of patterns. Please let me know if you have any trouble with it or find a mistake. Thanks!

Don't want to make it? I can make it for you! Check me out on Etsy!

update: I was asked for a pattern for a throw-sized blanket. I use math to expand this so I don't know if it works quite right but here's the throw sized version: 

the typical size of a throw blanket is 50”x70”

If you’re using the same materials I used and about the same gauge, doing the oh-so-fun ratio math, your blanket will be 156 stitches wide x 90 rows long which is a little longer than a traditional throw but it makes for some easy math with the cross!

to turn all these rows, I ch2 and the first stitch was in the same stitch as the ch2

R1 - foundation chain dc 156 stitches 
R2-5 - dc across 
R6 - dc 58 stitches, ch 1, skip 1, dc in the next stitch 20 times (40 stitches), dc 57 stitches (156) 
R7 - dc 58 stitches, ch 1, skip one (will be directly under the first ch-space), dc in the next stitch, dc in the ch-space, dc in the next stitch until you have one ch-space left, ch 1, skip one, dc in the next stitch, dc 57 (156) 
R8-24 - dc 58 stitches, ch 1, skip one (will be directly under the first ch-space), dc until you are at the ch-space, ch 1, skip one, dc in the next stitch, dc 57 (156) 
R25 - dc 10, ch 1, skip 1, dc in the next stitch 24 times (48 stitches, the last ch-space will be under the previous row’s ch-space), dc 37, ch 1, skip 1 (the ch-space), dc in the next stitch, ch 1, skip 1, dc in the next stitch 23 more times (24 ch-spaces total), dc 10 (156) 
R26 - dc 10 stitches, ch 1, skip 1 (will be directly under the first ch-space), dc in the next stitch, dc in the ch-space, dc in the next stitch until reach the center section, dc in each stitch until you read the next ch-space, dc in the ch-space, dc in the next stitch until you have one ch-space left, ch 1, skip one, dc in the next stitch, dc 9 (156) 
R27-44 - dc 10 stitches, ch 1, skip 1 (will be directly under the ch-space), dc until you reach the ch-space, ch 1, skip one, dc in the next stitch, dc 9 (156) 
R45 -dc 10, ch 1, skip 1, dc in the next stitch 24 times (48 stitches, this will line up with the top ch-space), dc 37, ch 1, skip 1, dc in the next stitch 24 times, dc 10 (156) 
R46 - dc 58 stitches, ch 1, skip 1 (will be directly under the last ch-space), dc in the next stitch, dc in the ch-space, dc in the next stitch until you reach the next ch-space left, ch 1, skip one, dc in the next stitch, dc 57 (156) 
R47-84 - dc 58 stitches, ch 1, skip one (will be directly under the first ch-space), dc until you are at the ch-space, ch 1, skip one, dc in the next stitch, dc 57 (156) 
R85 - dc 58 stitches, ch 1, skip 1, dc in the next stitch 20 times (40 stitches), dc 57 stitches (156) 
R86 - dc across with a dc in the ch-spaces (156) 
R87-90 - dc across

I like to add a border but you don’t have to. There are whole books written on different blanket border patterns! The one pictured is a simple border: sc around once then ch 1, skip 1, dc in the next stitch and then sc around again. A picot would also look nice or something more elaborate like pineapples would also look great!

Manuscript & Cursive - our summer project

I'm kind of a stickler for handwriting. I think it teaches more than just letter recognition and formation but organization and planning - and I'm not alone! This article talks about some differences in brain patterns associated with manuscript, cursive and typing (favorite quote: "When the children composed text by hand, they not only consistently produced more words more quickly than they did on a keyboard, but expressed more ideas."). This article talks about how taking notes by hand is a kinesthetic learning activity which requires cognitive processing verses on a laptop where students tend to take notes verbetum. And this article talks about the benefits of cursive (spoiler: functional specialization that leads to efficiency). There's more but these are a good place to start.

I have 3 kids in public schools here in Virginia and only one of them ever spent time learning cursive (ok - the youngest is just going into 2nd grade). That one had a 3rd grade teacher who is much older. I looked into whether is was still included in the curriculum and it is - it's under English SOL 2.10 and 3.8 but since it's not tested, very little time is spent on it. Studies say that most classrooms (nationwide) devote an average of 1 hour per week to handwriting. I remember spending 15 to 30 minutes each day on handwriting AND my papers always got handwriting grades - I don't know if this was the case with my peers as I went to Catholic schools and hubby went to DOD schools.

So, this summer, I decided that we should work hard on cursive since they weren't getting it in school. I bought 3rd grade lined paper and a cursive handwriting book (from the makers of Handwriting Without Tears - it's not as formal as the cursive I learned and is very - um - vertical - rather than italicized but it's also taught in a verbal manner (for example, "magic c, up like a helicopter, keep going, slide down the pole, bump the line and travel away" is lower case d) which works for my kids, especially my son. I do a week's worth of lettering with dates on the specially lined paper and put it in the workbook for them to do in the morning before they can do what they want.

I recently made this solid elf hat for a neighbor! Visit Hamburke's on Etsy for more styles and colors

Yes Day - a success!

Several years ago at a Scholastic Book Fair, one of my children chose this book: Yes Day by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld

They read it and wanted to have a Yes Day of their very own. So we had one - ice cream for breakfast, their cousin over for the day, some now-forgotten activity that I would typically have said no to without quite a bit of planning, a lot of junk/fast food, a late afternoon trip to the pool and staying up "late" (my kids idea of late is not equivalent to others experience - I think it was 8:30). I picked the day after school got out b/c it seemed like a fun way to kick off the summer and gave them a mini-break between school and summer vacation (who doesn't need something to make transitions fun?). And thus began our summer vacation kick off tradition!

This year was no different except that I turned the tables on them and asked them to tell me in advance what they wanted - they planned breakfast, lunch and dinner, they decided they wanted to go to the pool with friends and invited them and they even shopped for it (I paid, of course).  I love that we have moved to a community where it's safe to lets my kids run around independently and have the confidence to plan something like this.

So on to the rest of summer - summer bridge workbooks, summer reading list, some minor household chores and LEARN TO COOK! Maybe with this: