These boxes are great to add a little extra something special to any small gift. I like them for any kind of jewelty, stitch markers, and other small handmade goodies for friends. I love these boxes and have been making them for quite awhile. I figured it was about time to commit the templates for them to paper. I keep copying the cut outs I made for the original ones over and over again. This will make it nice and easy for me to make them and it will make a nice little project for you. It’s scary to say it’s getting close to that handmade Christmas time of year, but really, all us handmakers need to start making our supply list, checking it twice, and get going on our Christmas Crafting. These are just the boxes to hold our handmade treasures and keep them safe and sound.
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I love printing, just about any kind really. From the copy machine to silk screening to block prints and monoprints. I love it all. And one of my favorites, that’s the easiest, quickest, really fun and super easy to clean up is potato printing. You can print about on anything with them and they are cheap and the supply list is short unlike silk screening or even block printing really. Granted, you can’t get realllly detailed, but it’s great for greeting cards, pots of plants, even fabric really.
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I’m not sure why I never thought about writing about this before, but today as I was ripping back 8+ rows for the 1 millionth time I did. I worked at a yarn shop for almost 2 years (just ending this past May when I moved to Ames) and helped people save their knitting projects over and over again. I want to share that with you, give you a little how to on saving your knit project. Learning these simple techniques will save you hours of frustration. Today I’ll start with life lines because that’s the issue I’m facing right now, but then I’ll go back a bit to the basics and show you things like how to pick up dropped stitches and untwisting twisted stitches and things like that.

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This cowl was inspired by three things. I wanted a scarf that would keep my neck warm in the upcoming months of cold, but that would lay flat in my pea coat… or maybe not have to be tucked into my neckline at all. The issue though is that little area on my neck that my coat doesn’t quite cover up, but a scarf wrapped around my neck will not either, so tucked in it goes… adding more bulk to my already bulked up winter weather form. So that was inspiration number one. Continue reading →

It seems that the dresser was varnished more vigerously than the drawer fronts were. That and I ran out of my good sand paper, which I didn’t realize was my good sandpaper because I didn’t realize there was a better and worse. With the limited selection for my little mouse sander though I had just bought what was available. I did make some limited progress today:

I did some overall sanding and then worked pretty hard on just the top and the little back part:

I focused on the gouged parts and getting things overall smoothed out, I  have lovely things like this to look forward to sanding off:

After Jason got off work we went to Lowes and I picked up a sanding block and some good old fashioned 60 grit sand paper. It’s great for taking off paint and rust. And so I’m hoping also really old crappy varnish.

I’m going to take another whack at it tomorrow and hopefully have some better luck.

In other news, I’m putting together a newsletter for the email mailing list and I’m hoping to have it ready to send out tomorrow afternoon.

I’ll have a nice little post up in the afternoon too, so I’ll see you then!

Happy Crafting!
Kristin

Shortly after I learned how to knit I read about how one could recycle a sweater for the yarn. Sweet! Cheap yarn I thought! I went to the Salvation Army and picked out a sweater I thought would be good for recycling. Huge, an XXXL, and 100% cotton. It was all cream colored and pretty nice. I took it home and gave it my best shot. Which failed pretty miserably at first. I wasted so much yarn that first time around. I still got enough to make into a sizable bath mat. I used the pattern from Mason Dixon Knitting (what a great knitting book).

After a whole lot of trial and error over the last three years, I’ve been able to get the recycling of sweaters down pretty well.

Here is what I do:
First you need to pick out a good sweater. Larger is better as it will lead more yarn of the same type and color. I try to stay away from cardigans because it’s just more seams to take out. Anything with lots of color changes is out. My favorite is something that is a natural fiber (cotton, wool, cashmere) and has minimal synthetics in it. It is really personal preference. Look for what would be easiest to unravel and what you would like to knit.

I’m just going to assume you are going to take my advice and go with a pull over, so you will start with the collar. Find the bind off edge. Don’t use scissors. In fact, I’m going to make that really clear DO NOT USE SCISSORS. Seriously, it will make your life miserable in short and long run. As soon as you do it, you will realize that it is a huge mistake. It will give you all these little short tangled strands that will suck your soul away… so back on track. Find the bind off edge. The yarn end will look like a little lump or a little end sticking out. It should be woven into the ribbing of the collar, go ahead and unweave it and the bind off edge should come unraveled pretty easily.

From there, take out the seams in the following order:

You will then have these pieces:

The arms are pretty straight forward, same as the collar, find the bind off edge, unweave the woven in end and wind it off. The sweater front and back are a little different. You will unbind the one shoulder, then the next, then the bottom of the neck edge.

If you have a ball winder, this is a great time to use it. Just slip the yarn end in and wind your yarn right up.

Look at all this great yarn I salvaged from this one sweater:

Another great use of sweaters from the thrift store is to felt them. Diane of the Crafty Pod talks all about it here in this great post she wrote up about it.

And that’s it for today. I am going to spend the rest of the evening updating green prairie fibers so check that out tomorrow around noon and I’ll see you all tomorrow evening here!
++ Kristin Roach ++