Here are a couple of projects and works-in-progress currently pending at my household:

Cashmere Sweater Blanket

This is for my grandmother for her 90th birthday. Her birthday is on March 31th. Do you think I can finish and ship it by then?

Stenciled Baby Top

I’ve been wanting to follow Joy’s stenciling instructions for a year now. Here’s the perfect project: a tiny little shirt for my friend Vanessa who is due in April.

My daughter became inspired by the whole process, although she deemed the color choices lacking, she did manage to pull together a cool design.

Another Vest

There was a time when I actually finished an entire adult sweater, usually for the boy friend de jour. Then I started making children’s sweaters, again with collars and full length sleeves. Now I can’t even be bothered to start on sleeves and Elizabeth did not want a collar, which leaves me with another vest.

Elizabeth picked the colors and decided she liked stripes. I thought stripes alone were boring and went through some knitting books to try some new patterns. Now she has a stripy sampler just in time for spring.

So, what are you working on?

I love hardware stores! I like all the little doodads and tools and whatnots you never knew existed. So here is my homage to the humble hardware store, a wrapped washer.

Materials

For this pendant you need the following materials:

• 18 gage copper wire
• 3/4″ washer
• wire cutters
• round nose pliers
• chain nose pliers
• ruler

Instructions

1. Cut four pieces of 5 3/4″ long wire and two pieces of 4″ long wire. Use a soft cloth to straighten the wire.

 



2. Bundle three of the longer wires together and wrap the one remaining longer wire four times around the center of the bundle.



3. Wrap each shorter wire three times about a 3/4″ to the left and the right of the bundle’s center wrap.



4. Here’s the tricky part: center the washer on top of the center wrap and fit the wire bundle against the washer.
5. Then secure the washer as follows: use the round nose pliers and place them in between the bottom center and the side wraps. Coax one strand of wire out of the bundle and pull it toward the center to form a sort of cage that will prevent the washer from falling out. Repeat on the other side and the back of the pendant. You should have two pulled-out strands on the front and two on the back of the pendant.



6. Okay, don’t be intimidated by this picture! You’re almost there. Now on the top of the pendant, from the left and the right side, take a center wire from the bundle and tightly twist one wire around the other three times. Snip off the end of the wrapping wire only, not the stem wire.
7. With the remaining stem wire shape a wrapped loop. Use the chain nose pliers to form a 90 degree angle right above the wrapped stem.



Insert the tip of the round nose pliers in the bend, bring the wire over the top of the pliers, and shape a loop. Reposition the pliers to form a complete loop and wrap the wire around the bottom of the pliers. Using the chain nose pliers, hold the loop with your dominant hand and wrap the wire around the stem covering the end of the previously snipped off wire. (If you’re hopelessly lost, refer to Wigjig’s wrapped loop instructions.)



8. To finish off the remaining wires, use the round nose pliers and make a small loop with one of the wire ends. Continue shaping a spiral around the loop. Once the spiral is complete, press it against the center of the washer using the chain nose pliers. Repeat this with the other wires. Use your imagination to create shapes other than spirals.

Instead of a pendant you could also fashion some earrings. Here is the pair I completed for my 99 Earrings project.

Yes, Easter is upon us and with it our family tradition of dyeing eggs to decorate the house. We generally use blown out eggs.

My mother hangs them in the Forsythia trees in her garden. Eggs are quite hardy. On a recent visit last year’s eggs were still swaying in the breeze. I like to incorporate them into a wreath and hang the wreath on our front door.

This year, I wanted to try something new, so here we go:

Marbleized Eggs

Initially, I wanted to use the float-egg-on-glue-covered-with-paint method to marbleize the eggs. If someone is successful with that project, please let me know. Instead I used two different techniques:

Method 1: Nail Polish and Water

The pink and white egg was created with nail polish and water.

Fill a bowl with a couple of inches of water and add a few drops of nail polish on the water. The polish will swim on the surface and create a thin film.

String the blown out egg on a wire and carefully skim the egg over the surface. The polish film will cling to the egg and create this marbleized pattern.

Method 2: Egg Dye, Oil, and Water

This was easy. The yellow and purple egg acquired its shading with this method. First we dyed our usual batch of eggs with commercial Easter egg dye. This particular egg became a nice shade of yellow. When we were done, I added a tablespoon of vegetable oil to the purple dye and rolled the yellow egg around in that concoction. The oil prevented the dye from clinging to the egg creating a marbled pattern.

Papermache Eggs

For these eggs we used white glue and tissue paper for the yellow chick egg and newspaper for the wanna-be avantgarde egg.

Tear up your paper into specific shapes like my daughter did to create the chick, or just little pieces like I did with the newspaper.

Use your brush to apply a little glue to the egg. Position your paper on the egg and then brush glue on top of the paper. Continue until the egg is covered to your liking.

Once your egg is done, you can rest it on some pins pushed into the egg carton to dry.

How do you like to decorate your eggs?

When I was in elementary school my mother would extend the life of my jeans with a piece of jacquard trim. As an eight-year old I hated it, but now in the age of craft and retro design what could be cooler than a personalized pair of pants.

So, when my daughter began to outgrow her much loved khakis I began my hunt for some trim. Luckily our local notions store had a stack of it. I decided on three different kinds and bought a yard of each. The trim should be at least two inches wide to get a noticeable extension of length. To ensure my daughter’s buy-in, she decided which trim would go with which pants and we were on our way.

To attach the trim, you measure the perimeter of the leg bottoms and add two inches to that number. In my case the perimeter measured 13 6/8″ plus 2″ equals 15 6/8″. Cut two pieces of trim to this length.

To clean up the cut edges, fold over a half inch at each end and zigzag stitch across the width of the trim.

Then attach the trim along the line of the bottom leg hem allowing for an inch of overlap at the inner leg seam.

Once you’ve come full circle, sew together the overlapping ends of the trim.

Finish with a few stitches across the bottom of the trim overlap.

Should you have some leftover trim as we did, you can fashion a stylish and quick headband by attaching 1 inch wide braided elastic to each end of the trim.

At the beginning of the year, I set myself a goal of making 99 different pair of earrings this year. Here is Pair No. 3. Admittedly, progress has been a little slow lately, but it is only February. So in the spirit of the season here are the origami hearts.

To make them use your favorite origami heart folding technique and make four hearts. These were folded out of 5 x 5 cm paper scraps. Glue two hearts together, which leaves you with one pair. You can varnish the hearts to make them more sturdy. To suspend them, pierce the heart (very dramatic) with a pin and ease a jump ring through the hole. From there on out it’s up to your creativity: turn them into earrings, make a bunch for a charm bracelet, or skip the piercing and glue a pin back to the heart.

If you want to follow my progress with this endeavor, here is the 99Earrings project blog.

. . . a.k.a. Stencils

I bought a set of these stencils for a beach bag project and have gotten quite a bit of use out of them. Two years ago, we rented a beach house with two other families. In anticipation of the toys that would soon be all over the rental, I wrote each child’s name on a tote bag using the stencils and fabric markers hoping that it would make it easier to organize their stuff.

The organizational aspect of that project was a total failure, but the kids were excited about seeing their name “in print.”

Recently, I used the stencils for a treasure box a la Amy Karol for a special girl’s birthday present.

The letters are cut out of scrapbook paper, glued onto the box, and covered with several layers of varnish.

And here, finally a work-in-progress. When I visited my parents in Hamburg last summer, I saw all these army surplus canvas bags with lettering at different craft markets.

With my handy-dandy stencil set I traced a certain little girl’s name on fusible web, ironed it on some scrap fabric and fused the letters onto the bag. Now they just need some blanket stitching and other decorations and Elizabeth’s handful of Pokemons will have a fashionable and comfortable mode of transportation to Grandmother’s house.

Since today is a blustery day, I thought I’d introduce my new blustery day outfit:

Tada

I made the hat over Martin-Luther-King-weekend and finished the scarf a view days later while glued to my monitor watching 34 episodes of Heroes. (No, I never display compulsive behavior, ever) For the hat I started out with the instructions for the Twirly-Top Toque out of One Skein Wonders. I couldn’t figure out the lace pattern for the bottom part and just used a different one that was easier to read.

After I finished the hat, I had one skein left for the scarf. I used the same lace pattern for the scarf, which ended up too short to tie. Out came the buttons. My grandmother had thrifted them from some goodwill clothes. The buttons push through the holes made by the lace and can close the scarf at whatever height and in whatever pattern strikes my mood.

I can display all four buttons, just the daisies, a combination of a triangle and a daisy, you get the idea.

So here I am ready to weather the weather.

During the last year, I frequently found myself turning to Nicky Epstein’s Knitted Embellishments for inspiration and instruction.

The book is filled with ideas on how to create those little details that take a simple knitted piece from “that’s nice” to “where did you get that.” Knitted Embellishments is divided into seven major chapters:

• The Heart of the Matter, a collection of different heart shaped patterns
• Applique
• Borders and Edgings
• Cords
• Embroidery
• Fringes, Tassels, Pom-Poms, and Ties
• Creative Combinations

For the vest above, I used an embossed heart and a ribbed edge with daisy stitch embroidery.

I embellished this baby jacket with i-cords to create the letters and the frogs and closures.

The book is not for beginning knitters. You have to be pretty comfortable with charts and basic knitting techniques. But it’s a great book when you’re ready to jazz it up a bit.

This bracelet is a birthday present for my friend Jessica and a salute to her family. On October 5th 2005, after he had just turned four years old, her son was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. Last week, Spencer’s mediport was removed signifying the end of his chemotherapy and a huge milestone in his treatment. As Jessica wrote:

.. after 778 days,
approximately 200 pokes of a needle,
over 2,000 pills,
countless doses of tylenol,
anyone’s guess as to how many I-V drugs and fluids,
hundreds of thousands of prayers and wishes,
and at least 250 trips to the hospital,

I am so very very very very happy to announce that this extremely brave, tough, amazing little boy is completely finished with chemotherapy!!!

The bracelet is inspired by the red Relentless bracelets Spencer’s family and friends have been wearing to support him and anyone else fighting this disease. To put it together, I collected anything red I had in the house; new beads, old beads from jewelry I bought on a trip to Taiwan 21 years ago, charms I received as presents, glass, potato beads, sterling, clay, and metal. I then started making loops to attach all these treasures while listening to the book Jessica selected for our book club.

Happy Birthday Jessica!

Okay, I understand, enough with the holiday theme already. However, as the year draws to a close and you are contemplating the pretty cards on your mantle, consider saving them for one of these projects:

A Ball

All Free Crafts.com has a tutorial on making a ball shaped ornament out of a card. This is a fun little project that turned out better than I had expected.

A Box

Julie Bolduc has instructions for a hexagon shaped lidded box. I actually didn’t receive enough suitable cards to make this box (16), but it looks like a cool project that you could make out of a variety of papers.

A Book

In July, Jennifer shared a guest posting on making a mini journal. You could follow her instructions and create a similar journal using a holiday card as a cover. The book could be left blank, you could turn it into an Advent journal with a little thought or activity for each day, or you could make a special address book for next year’s holiday cards.

A Luminary

Kawaii Crafter made these pretty luminaries out of Christmas Cards. I think the picture says it all. They are the perfect thing for dreary days during the next three months, at least in the Northeast.

Other Cool Ideas

Jenny Harada made a funky star. It looks like you’ll need about 10 cards for this project.

And here is Diane Gilleland’s popular greeting card gift box as featured on her blog CraftyPod

I hope this is some inspiration to Reuse before you Recycle. Maybe you can make a little something before 2008 begins.

From all of us at Crafty Daisies: Happy New Year!