Toothbrush Rag Rug Progress Days 1, 2, & 3

Day 1

Day 2 & 3

It's already big enough for Melody to sit on, but I want it big enough so she can play on it. Each day, she checks on my progress and exclaims in delight to see a new fabric/color added. Then she likes to tell me that I am taking "forever". The kid needs to learn some patience. Lol.

It's been a lot of fun picking out fabrics from my collection. What a great way to use up the fabrics that I will never get around to sewing with. I love how simple the technique is and that there is no pattern to memorize or look at.

For those of you that want to give this a try, these videos via Etsy are a good starting point. But she doesn't talk about increasing which is important if you want your rug to lay flat. Day to Day Adventures has a 4 part tutorial on how to make a oval rug and where to increase. After you do this for a while, you will get a feel for when you need to make increases. It's best to do this on a flat surface so you can check to make sure your rug is flat.

There are so many ways to make a rag rug. The more I search, the more techniques I find. If you know how to crochet, Sugar Bee Crafts and Vintage Chica have crochet tutorials. Crazy Mom Quilts knitted a rag rug with the selvedges that she has collected from her sewing projects. If I have more time some day, I want to make a braided rag rug. Homestead Weaver and Little House in the Suburbs have tutorials on a no sew braided rag rug. Moda Bake Shop has a tutorial on a hand sewn braided rag rug. If hand sewing is not your thing, Crafty Captain has a faster technique by using the zig zag stitch on a sewing machine to join the braids.

Happy Monday, everyone!

Trying Something New

There are some days that I am itching to try something new. Often it's triggered by seeing something on the internet that peaks my interest. Then I scour the internet and fall down the rabbit hole into information and inspiration overload. Other times I call it Crafter's ADD. Wave something new or shiny at me and I am immediately distracted. Most of the time I curb the desire to start something new by allowing myself to browse the internet to my heart's content. After that, I remind myself I still have 10,000 work in progresses that I have neglected. Then there are times that I give in because the desire stays with me for days and weeks. Hey, we all have our weak moments. I am only human.

 This week, I decided to indulge in a few small projects. I saw some pretty woven squares and rectangles on a Pinterest board that uses small hand looms like the Weave-its or Weavette. (No, I do not have a account. I already get distracted enough. I don't need more temptation.) I noticed it was not woven the same way as I usually use those looms. It was warped like a regular loom with warp threads running just up and down. Of course, I immediately wanted to experiment and give it a try. That little square above was my first go at it. Not bad, but I need to experiment further. I was satisfied that I gave it a try so now I can move on.

I am not sure how I found out about Rag Rugs. I saw a colorful rug online and boom, I fell down the rabbit hole head first. I spent a few days researching techniques and different styles of rag rug making. The technique that I came to focus on is called Toothbrush Rag Rug or also called Nålebinding. Basically, if you can make knots, you can make this rag rug. I happily dug through my collection of fabrics and ripped up strips of fabric. Since I didn't have a toothbrush handle that I could cut up, I took a large paperclip and altered it with pliers and electrical tape. It works great as a "needle". With any craft, there are many ways to go about doing something and it takes a lot of trial and error to find a technique that produces the results I want. I made mistakes along the way, but I think I have the look I want and the rug is growing and growing. Okay, enough writing. I need to get back to my new obsession rug making.

Have a great weekend! And go out and try something new. :-)

Over the Weekend

During the early morning hours while everyone was still asleep, I pulled out a old weaving project. It's a 6 inch Weavette and the yarn is Stonesthrow Farm Vintage IV (53% Cormo/47% young mohair). I am still not sure what it will become and it's fine with me. For now, I am just enjoying a mindless weaving project. I will see how many squares I end up with when I am done weaving.

Another advantage of waking up early is that I get to enjoy one of my favorite breakfasts in peace. A toasted NYC Everything Bagel with whipped cream cheese, tomatoes and lox, sprinkled with sea salt, black pepper and dill. Delicious. Usually, I am busy making everyone their breakfast requests and I am always the last person that gets to eat.

One of the fun things we have discovered after we moved to the suburbs are Garage, Yard and Estate Sales. In NYC, we were use to Stoop Sales since most people don't have yards or garages. The selections here are very different. Most of the garage sales around here are empty nesters or older folks getting their house ready to sell. There are lots of treasures to dig through. In NYC, I rarely ever bought anything since it's usually younger people or people my age getting rid of their things to make space in their tiny apartments or people moving out. Whenever you see moving trucks in NYC, you can be sure that it's either the end of the month, the first of the month or the middle of the month.

I think we went to 6 yard sales over the weekend. Melody's treasures are on the left of the picture above and mine is on the right. See those clogs? She put them on and never took them off. The girl does love shoes! I was happy with my single purchase. One of my neighbors had a box of crocheted doilies, table cloths and runners. She told me that her mother-in-law made them for all the daughter-in-laws in the family. I picked out a very large table runner. It just needs to be washed and blocked.

As you can see, she adores everything she got. The doll has never left her side once. It plays music when you wind it up and the song is starting to grate on our nerves. She plays it in the house, in the car, while eating dinner ...etc. Lol.

What did you do over the weekend?

What we are working on.

I know that there hasn't been much knitting shown on the blog these days. Believe me, I have been knitting. Almost all of my current projects are for publications so it has to remain a secret until they are published. Last night, I started a pair of slipper socks for myself. The pattern is called First Time Tube Socks by Ann Budd. This is my first time knitting 2 socks at the same time with magic loop. I have done sleeves that way before, but it was with giant needles. These socks are knit in a worsted weight yarn with a simple stitch pattern and no shaping so it's the perfect comfort knitting amidst all of my deadline knitting.

I can finally reveal my current cross-stitch project. Anna will be releasing the pattern soon and has already given a peek on her blog. Super cute, right? It's been my Netflix watching project at night and I am so close to being done. Though I still need to get a frame for it.

Last, but not least, is Melody's project. She says it's a castle. Everyday, she adds and subtracts to it. This is what it looks like today.

Warm Up with Blankets

The first signs of Fall had me scurrying for my blankets. Unfortunately, I think I may have been over zealous in my Spring cleaning this year. Lots of things were donated to charity or simply thrown out. So, I quickly dug through my large collection of worsted weight yarns to put together a scrap blanket. This was inspired by a knitted blanket I saw on Ravelry. I am crocheting my own version. It will be done in the style of a coin quilt. I am plan on making 4 strips of colored stripes and then bordered all in white. The edging will be decided when the blanket is assembled.

After the successful blanket that I made with a hand loom, I immediately started another one. This one is done with a 4" x 6" Weavette. I chose to do a diamond pattern for the rectangles. I let it languish over the Summer, but I pulled it back out again. I just need 8 more rectangles before I can start seaming them together.

Speaking of blankets, I received some news from Potter Craft this evening. They have signed on with Warm Up America! to collect knitted squares that will be made into blankets for people in need. Potter Craft is hosting a Knitting Block By Block-a-Thon. The first 25 people who send in their blocks will get a copy of Nicky’s book. The next 25 will receive another free pattern. All the info and address can be found here.

To help out, Potter Craft is offering two free block patterns from Nicky Epstein’s new book, Knitting Block by Block. (Click on the pictures to get to their Flickr page so the pattern can be enlarged.) I hope many of you will participate in this worthy cause. I have my yarn and needles ready!

Sewing and More Baking (Long Post)

These are the blocks that I made for the last 2 classes of my "Quilt Making By Hand" at Purl Patchwork. The second class was about triangles and the third class was about set in seams. Apparently, there are blocks that are much easier to hand sew than to machine sew them. Like the one on the top left hand corner, the Spool block.

Sadly, the last class is tomorrow. I have really enjoyed taking another class with Cassandra, the teacher, and I am sad that it's ending. Tomorrow we will be learning about basting, marking the top, quilting designs, hand quilting with a hoop, and binding by hand.

Someone asked me what fabrics I am using in the comments, but there was no blog link or email link, so I will answer it here. It's called "Bleeker Street" by Marcus Brothers. I got it as a fat quarter set by this Etsy Seller. The green solid fabric is from Joann Fabrics. There was no specific project for this class, but I would like to turn the blocks that I have made into a quilt. I just have to make more blocks and figure out how to arrange the blocks.

This big block (11 inches square) was made for Rebekah. I was invited to join a virtual quilting bee called Common Threads. For round one, Rebekah sends fabrics out to the 12 of us and tells us how big she wants the block to be and what general design that she would like. We have a month to complete it and send it back. Then the next month, it's someone else's turn. My month is December and I still haven't decided what I want yet.

My sister emailed me a link to these cute cookie cutters and I had to have them. Home made Animal Crackers!! There are 5 spring-loaded cookie cutters: Lion, Elephant, Giraffe, Tiger and a Seal with a ball on it's nose. They are made by Williams-Sonoma.You can buy the pre-made mix for $12, but there is a recipe on the back of the box and it's on their website along with a how-to video. I didn't want to spend money on the mix and made the recipe from the back of the box. Easy peasy!

I do have to say that cutting them out and imprinting them is not as easy as the video demonstrates. First off, the cookie dough softens really easily, so do it in a air conditioned kitchen or keep frozen cookie streets on hand. You can put the cookie dough on the cold cookie sheet to firm up the dough or throw the whole thing back in the fridge. I had problems with the giraffe's neck and the elephant's trunk. The other animals were easy. Flouring the cookie cutters really well helps a lot.How do they taste? Delicious! They are crisp and crunchy. They are kinda addicting. You can't just eat one. I made a batch for my friend's daughter, Veronica, though I heard that her dad ate them all. DH loved them and couldn't stop eating them. I can't wait until Melody can eat cookies.

All right, this post is long enough. I promise to give my review of my Anniversary Dinner at Mesa Grill next time.

Doing it the Old School way.

Last week, I attended my first class in Quilt Making by Hand at Purl Patchwork. I took their Machine Piecing and Quilting Class last year while I was pregnant and I really enjoyed it. Both classes are taught by a wonderful teacher, named Cassandra.

So, why do I want to hand sew a quilt over using a sewing machine? I am finding less and less time that I can sit in front of the sewing machine. Especially now that my sweetie pie can roll over onto her tummy and raise her chest with her arms. I swear, she seems like she is going to be crawling any minute now. She claws the ground with her hands, but doesn't realize that she needs to use her legs to crawl. So, she ends up crying in frustration and then I have to flip her back on her back again. Then she does it again and we repeat ourselves over and over again all-day-long. Gone are the days where she would lay on her back and play with her toys that dangle above her.

Anyway, I wanted to learn hand sewing so that I can have small portable projects while watching her. During our first class, I made the 4 Patch Squares in the above photo. I had a lot of fun learning to hand sew a quilt square. I thought it would take forever, but once you get going, it doesn't really take that long. At first, it was hard sewing a straight running stitch and keeping the stitches even length, but you soon learn it doesn't really matter when you flip it over to the good side and iron it. Practice does make everything better. After a couple of squares, my hand stitching looked a lot better.
We didn't get any homework, but she did encourage us to keep making squares when we got home because that is the only way to improve our hand sewing. She said that we could continue to make the 4 Patches or start a different design as long as there wasn't triangles involved.

So, you start off by drawing your design on Quilter's Graph Paper. You draw the exact size that you want and you don't add in seam allowances. That's one of the differences between machine piecing and hand piecing. The design is then transferred onto a plastic template and then you cut it out. The above photo shows how I used the template to trace rectangles onto the fabric. A piece of sandpaper on the back of the fabric really helps with the tracing. You have to leave a little room for the seam allowance but preciseness doesn't matter. Then you cut out the pieces with scissors.
The reason why you don't need to add in seam allowances when you make and cut out your template is because you sew on the drawn pencil lines. So if you want a 6 inch square, your template would be 6 inches and then when you trace it onto the fabric, you leave room for the seam allowance. For this particular quilt square, I wanted the finished square to be 6 inches, so the rectangle template is 1.5 inches wide by 3 inches long.I think that it's pretty cool that you can make quilt squares with just scissors, fabric, thread and a needle. No machine necessary! And I find that the running stitch used to sew the squares is similar to the garter stitch in knitting, very meditative. I can't wait to see what we will be learning this week.
On the machine sewing side of things, I have pieced all the squares together on this quilt that I blogged about a few weeks ago. All that is left for the quilt top is to piece the border pieces together and then sew it to the quilt.

The Making of a Quilt

It may seem monotonous to cut 6 pieces out of 5 inch squares 36 times, but I find the process to be meditative. There is a sense of satisfaction seeing all the fabric pieces stack up as I get through the 36 squares. In the beginning I am attentive, but after a while, it becomes a repetitive motion, much like knitting. My mind starts to wander and I zone out, but my hands keep moving and cutting as if they are on autopilot.
Then the assembling begins. All lined up, pinned and ready to be sewn.
Now the fun part begins. Arranging and rearranging 36 quilt blocks to create something pleasing to the eye.

I hope that all of you mothers out there had a great Mother's Day. Or if you are not a mother yet, I hope you spent a nice day with your mom. This was my first Mother's Day as a mom and I had a lovely day. DH and Melody took me out to lunch. Her gift to me was that she did not fuss or cry once during the lunch. I was ready to swallow my food and pay immediately at the first signs of distress from her, but she was content to lay in her stroller and kick her legs. I consider that a great meal!

Beautiful Weekend

We just got back from a exhausting road trip to Boston, MA. We brought Melody back to Boston to celebrate my MIL's 70th Birthday. And for her to meet the rest of our family that haven't seen her yet. Traveling with a baby and 2 dogs is a lot of work! I still have to unpack and put things away.

While I get my house/life in order, let me distract you with photos of what we did last weekend during a beautiful NYC weekend.
DH had his hands full. The boys were super excited to go to the park.By the time we got to the park, Melody was asleep. That does not look comfortable.We stopped by Cake Man Raven's bakery for his famous Red Velvet Cake. I got Red Velvet Cupcakes instead. Wow, these are the best Red Velvet Cupcakes I have ever had. Moist and not too sweet, a perfect balance with the frosting.I caved and went back to the Brooklyn Flea to buy some Lotta Jansdotter fabric. She didn't have green fabrics on display so I asked Lotta if she had anymore colors to choose from. She pulled out a bin and let me rummage around. I found the green patterned fabric and I already know what I will make with it (a project from her book). The orange one will go into my fabric collection.
Progress on Trellis has been slow. So far, I got the right front done. I used the 3 needle bind off on the shoulder since many people have complained how hard it is to graft it. This sweater takes a lot of concentration, so I often work on easier projects when I don't have the energy/time to devote to Trellis.

Knitting Progress

I made a lot more progress on Trellis. It's turning out quite nicely, but it is a lot of work! I don't do much cable knitting, so reading from a chart took some time to get use to. I usually like things written out, but I have managed so far. The beautiful pattern emerging is what is keeping me motivated to keep knitting. I took a break from it last night because I felt a headache coming on and this sweater needs complete eye and mind concentration. Tonight is Friday night, so that means DH will be taking over the baby's needs. Hopefully, I will get the fronts done by this weekend. And dare I hope to start on the sleeves?
The knitting for the Top Down Raglan Baby Cardigan is done. Now it just needs the ends woven in and a good soak so I can block it. I still have to find some nice buttons. Sewing the buttons on is always my least favorite part, so it may sit around for a while. Does anyone have a online source for buttons?

I have a bag of crystallized ginger (Trader Joes) leftover from the pregnancy. I had thought that it might help with my "all day-sickness", but it didn't, so it has been sitting in the kitchen cabinet. The other day, I was looking through my copy of the Barefoot Contessa at Home and I noticed a recipe for a Ultimate Ginger Cookie. I had all the ingredients on hand and I got to use up the bag of crystallized ginger. After tasting the cookie, I think that I prefer ginger snaps more. This is a soft cookie that has many spices in it, a bit much for my taste. I had DH take them to work and they got devoured, so maybe I should give it a second chance?

For those of you that don't have the book, I did a search and found the recipe online HERE. If you try it, let me know what you think of it.

Lotta Weekend Fun

I started off Friday morning with a migraine. Luckily, Melody was cooperative and went back to bed when I needed to sleep it off. No medication has ever helped my migraines. I just need to close my eyes and try to sleep through the pounding headache. And oh yeah, also trying not to throw up. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the worst (debilitating), my migraines are always 10's.

I recently joined the Brooklyn Krafthaus. On Saturday, it was Open Krafthaus, so I went to my first meet up. We sat in a cafe and I knitted for the afternoon. I had a lot of fun meeting other crafty folks. A lot of people knitted, but there was also doll makers, scrap bookers, quilters and crocheters. Someone even learned to crochet for the first time on Saturday. She made a camera cosy for her new camera. A finished object in one afternoon, not bad. When I got home, Melody was napping and DH said that she was an angel the whole afternoon. Phew! I was a bit worried that everything would fall into complete chaos while I was gone.

On Sunday, DH and I took Melody for a walk around the neighborhood. We stopped off at the Brooklyn Flea for a little shopping/browsing. To my surprise and delight, I saw Lotta Jansdotter! She had a booth at the market. I have 2 of her books and I couldn't help but be a little star struck. DH has no clue who she was and he started to browse her craft books on the table. It was funny when he exclaimed loudly that the woman on the cover of the books was also the woman standing before him.I really wanted to buy some of her fabric, but held myself back. Instead, I got one of her pin cushions. DH helped me pick out the color.It's a really big pin cushion! I am using my hand to show the scale.
And a baby is also useful to show scale. It's big enough to be a pillow for her.This is the beginning of Trellis. I didn't think that I would ever knit this because it seems so complicated, but I love the finished sweaters that I keep seeing on Ravelry. Micki knit one a while ago and she gave me some tips on knitting it, like knitting the fronts and back in one piece. Let's hope I can do this. (The cute felted sheep stitch markers are from Jelby.etsy.com.)

Maybe I had too much fun over the weekend because I woke up on Monday morning with another migraine! Melody had her 3 month doctor's appointment and there was no way I could have brought her. DH had not left the house for work yet, so he took half a day off and took her to the doctor. The poor thing got 2 shots, one in each thigh and she has been cranky for the last couple of days.

Discombobulated

I got nothing accomplished last week. I was too tired and had no motivation left by the end of the week. I thought I could make Melody a bunny for Easter, but I failed. I started crochetting it on Friday night after DH got home from work. But as of today, this is what I have: a head and a body.I had to make the head 5 times before I got it right. Eyelash yarn is really hard to crochet with. You can't see anything. And I couldn't rip it out because the yarn would get stuck. It was a nightmare. It was just not a good idea to crochet with eyelash yarn for the first time at the end of a crazy week.

My friend finally gave birth to her baby girl, Evie, the one I made this baby set for. We went to visit her on Saturday when they got home. She is less than a week old and was sucking on her thumb already. So precious!
Melody and Evie having a sleep over.
I don't understand how this 9 lb cutie pie can wipe me out. She is a tough cookie. We almost have our daily routine down pat, but night time can be pretty much a wild card. I have been able to keep the crying to a minimum during the day. If she crys, it's usually because she is cranky and needs to go down for a nap. Last week, she decided to be difficult by not going to bed at night. I had to swaddle her, rock her and rhythmically pat her while playing music. She would fall asleep in my arms and would wake up screaming as soon as I tried putting her down. She was like that all week.

I broke down twice last week and starting crying and babbling in front of DH at night. I was quite a sight. It's amazing how a little baby can break your sanity.

On Sunday, I met up with a friend for lunch. This was my first time away from the baby, except for my 6th week post partum doctor's appointment. And boy did I need it. It felt so good to get away and not have to take care of anyone for a few hours. I felt renewed by the time I got home to make dinner.While I was out, DH discovered that she really likes the song, "Row, Row, Row Your Boat". She would smile and laugh whenever he sang it to her. When I got home, I took this picture while he was singing.

Thanks, it worked!

Thanks for all the great tips on straightening the yarn. Even though I wanted to be lazy and just knit with it, I know it was way too curly to knit with it. I used my swift and wound it into a skein and tied it off. I soaked it and then let it hang to dry without any weights. It took 2 days to dry and then it was as good as new.The pattern is called the Gathered Scarf. The pattern requires you to use two different sized needles, so it keeps you on your toes.
My sister got me this cool Hello Knitty Tote Bag. It's a very big and roomy canvas tote that will be handy in holding my WIP's.
I found some quiet time to hang out with the boys today (of course, that meant that the baby bottles didn't get washed right away). I wish I had more time for them, but Melody takes up most of my time right now. I can't wait until Melody can start playing with them. They would really enjoy that.Up close and personal with Caesar. He loves walking up to the camera while Napoleon is very wary of the camera and tries to stay far away. It's a vast improvement from when I first got the camera and he would hide. Caesar has always been the fearless one.Napoleon and his favorite toy, Teddy. He likes to suck on Teddy's face and falls asleep doing it. It's like a pacifier for him.