Not just yarn (but mostly yarn)

Yes, we've already started to decorate for Christmas! It's the best time of the year. First there's Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then nothing until Halloween rolls around again! We didn't do much for Halloween, carved some pumpkins (can you guess which one is mine? I bet you can't), had some decorations up, but mostly ate too much candy. I'm determined to enjoy the holiday season for as long as I can. We also picked up a new bookshelf for our books and movies the cat. There's a tree right in front of the window with lots of birds, and it overlooks the neighbor's yard where all the street cats hang out. He's been pretty happy with his new spot.

I finished knitting a pair of socks just for myself as part of a Halloween knit-a-long. I dyed the yarn myself with food coloring and I'm so in love with them. I've been wearing them around the house for the past few days. I was going to try to wear them out but the only shoes I have are bright orange flats and it looked kind of ridiculous. Regardless, I love them. I picked up some professional acid dyes to experiment a bit more with dyeing yarn. Most of what I have come up with has been extremely ugly, but some of it looks nice. It's definitely a work in progress. I'm currently making a pair of Endpaper Mitts for myself with the teal yarn I dyed and some glittery mint yarn and I am thoroughly impressed with my progress so far. It's my first time doing any kind of color work. A month ago I had never knit anything more than a simple scarf and now I'm doing fair isle. Look at me go. My advice for anyone who wants to knit something scary looking is to just go for it, it looks much scarier than it actually is.

Sean took me up to Julian a couple weeks ago to get me out of the city. I get frustrated with driving, dealing with crowds, and never having any real peace and quiet. I'm not much of city girl. He got the most adorable little cabin. I'm obsessed with tiny houses so I was so excited to stay in an (almost) tiny house. It was just so precious. I can't wait to go back for a weekend, I would get so much knitting done!

Dear Blog, I'm sorry

Dear Blog,

I am the worst. I have neglected you for so long. I wish I had a good excuse, but I don't. In the span of my absence I have moved into a new apartment, started a garden, and learned how to crochet and play the ukulele. I didn't blog about my awesome birthday or the awesome cake waffles I had for breakfast (you basically just cook cake in a waffle iron, it is in the best thing ever and I want to eat it every day). I didn't share my recent craft projects. I didn't even post pictures of my cousin's visit! I have fed you all these empty promises about being a better blogger, but this time I mean it. Please forgive me.

Yours forever,
Cait

The new apartment. Craft corner, living room, and dining area.

Pineapple plant, new bedroom, dress I finally finished sewing, first harvest from the garden, our favorite dinner as of late: lemon cream pasta with garlicy green beans, my sweet baby pineapple uke

What I've been up to lately

I have done a little bit of crafting lately and I'm especially happy with my cat lady deluxe pouch. For the past week I've been really wanting to make quilted pouches with pieced designs like this and I finally sat down to do it last night. I originally wanted to do a heart, but kitties are way better. I also made some cupcake earrings that have taken me forever to list because I've been too busy wearing my own pair of them. Luckily I have another pair for sale here. 

 

I also have FREE SHIPPING for this weekend only (7/9-7/11) for the Sweet Deers and Retro Patchwork pouches. Free shipping WORLD WIDE! These pouches need a home.

Coming soon

I've been working hard to replenish the pouches in my shop and have a big shop update coming soon in the next few days. I already have my one pouch available here and will get the others listed soon. I tried to add appliques and rick rack to make them more interesting. I also have one coming that includes pink UNICORNS and GLITTER. You'll just have to stay tuned to see that one!

Meet my new sewing machine!

I'm spending my summer vacation in Portland,OR with my boyfrand and he bought me this vintage Sears Kenmore sewing machine yesterday so I can continue to do my crafting! I'm so in love with it. It comes in a cabinet, so when I'm done I can fold it upside down and put the lid on top and have a regular table. The top part folds to the left, and give me plenty of room to put my computer and other projects I'm working on. Right now I'm still trying to unpack and organize my craft supplies, but I'm hoping a little bit later I'll be able to start sewing some new pouches for the shop. The next few days we'll be exploring Portland and the surrounding areas and clearing up the back and front yards, so I should have some fun gardening and general posts next week!
Don't forget to enter my little giveaway, going on for a few more days!

New pouches in the store

Hedgehog love, French poodles, and spring time pouch

Just a few new items added to my Etsy shop. I'll work tomorrow to update with some new bobby pins with deers, poodles, and hedgehogs, and maybe make some mini-wallets. Mini-wallets are great to keep business cards in, and I like to use mine to store gift cards so they won't crowd my wallet but I'll always have them in my purse. There's nothing worse than getting up to the register and realizing you left your gift card at home. I still have this amazing Japanese import animal Russian nesting doll fabric that I haven't made anything for the shop with. I made a large zipper pouch that I intended to sell, but I liked it so much that I ended up keeping it for myself and it's now my makeup pouch. It's as cute as it sounds.

I'm back!

Finally did some sewing for the first time in over a month! Remember my last post where I said my anatomy exam was "not bad at all"? Well when I went to check my grade online, it said that I had failed it! I was pretty devastated for the past two days, waiting for my professor's sheduled office hours to roll around so I could go talk to her about it. It turns out someone had inputted the wrong grade, and I actually got a B, NOT an F. (thank god!) I was so relieved. Part of me knew there had to be a mistake, and the other part felt like I was totally delusional thinking that test went fine and am actually a giant idiot. Well, I'm glad I'm not an idiot. I'm also glad that I got a little motivation to sew some stuff, because check out how cute this is.

More pictures here

I've had this fabric sitting around for a year. I bought it to go with a quilt I wanted to make for my bed. Obviously that never fully came together, because I have the attention span of a pea, but I think it makes an adorable coin pouch!

Short and sweet

I'll make this quick because Artoo is currently laying on my arms/computer and he's so fat that I can hardly move my fingers. If you're thinking "aw, he's a sweet cat:" you are WRONG. Look at the mess I got to wake up to this morning. (He also puts his food in his water bowl before he scoops it out to eat it, leaving a bunch of soggy kibble bits in the water which drives me crazy)
Here is what I've been up to:

I also made a few other zippered pouches, but I think these new slouchy makeup bags are my favorite. I will have to go buy more interfacing to make more, though.
Ok, I think my arms are falling asleep because of all his weight on top of me. I promise I'll make a better post over the weekend.

Let's fly, let's fly away

new makeup pouch available here

Whenever I look at this fabric I always get Frank Sinatra stuck in my head. I had to listen to Come Fly With Me while taking these pictures today, and I just noticed that I opened my blinds into the living room so all of my neighbors could have seen me dancing to it, which looks something like Elaine from Seinfeld,  Snoopy, and Pee Wee Herman all combined. Oops.
I have another pouch like this all cut out and ready to be sewn up in cute Japanese fabric with little animals holding hands. I also have a few regular rectangular pouches finished, I just need to take pictures of them. I'm still trying to adjust to my school schedule. It's pretty crazy now that I've changed my classes all around, but I have Thursdays almost all clear, so I'm expecting to be able to do all of my shipping/sewing on that day to relax a bit. I'm happy I have sewing as a hobby because my head might just explode if I didn't have something to take my mind off school.

In progress..

These pictures are brought to you by my new camera! I was borrowing my dad's Cannon Rebel T1i for all of my pictures, but I will be going back to Austin soon, where the best available camera is on my phone. :(
So!! My dad and stepmom got me an early birthday present!! I'm excited to use it more and learn how to work all the bells and whistles.

I have all of the supplies I need for pouches laid out on my ironing board so I can make some makeup bags/larger pouches today. I love the weight of the linen blend (it's heavier than 100% cotton) and all of the adorable designs. I'm all out of pink zippers so I am unable to use the rest of my new fabric, but never fear! I have an order of zippers coming in next week.
My earrings have gotten a pretty good reception, too! I think these Russian nesting doll earrings are my favorite so far. I also made them in a slightly larger 7/8" size so that two dolls fit on one earring.

Paying it forward

I have two of my packages ready to be shipped out on Monday! The rest should be finished by the end of the week. I figured I should do it all now before I get lazy and forget about it. I'm the worst when it comes to sending things out. My family lives back in New Hampshire while I'm in Texas, so every year for Christmas I make all of their presents on time, but they end up sitting in my closet until June because I hate dealing with the post office. I promise that won't happen for my Pay It Forward people!
Also, I got a custom banner for my blog made by Rai! I gave her a picture of me, my cat, and my scooter and told her to have at it. Look how fabulous it is.

I love Artoo Detoo riding the scooter!

Today I'm being really lazy and laying around watching TV. I like to think I'm recharging to be productive for the next week. I have to finish registering for my spring semester classes and buy textbooks, mail stuff out, and hopefully add more items to my etsy store so I can keep up with my goal of 20 items listed at all times. All very exciting stuff, I know. I'm surprised I don't make blog updates about school more often because it feels like that's all I ever talk about anymore, but I know how uninteresting it can be. I started this blog to share cute stuff, and physics and evolutionary neurobiology are certainly NOT CUTE. It's almost like I live a double life. In my free time I do lots of crafting and other creative things, but the rest of my life is all about very technical stuff. It works for me, though. It gives a nice balance.

pouches!

Available here

I had a friend over today for some sewing. I taught her how to make these pouches, as well as some mini-wallets, and she put together a cell phone case all on her own! I was able to finish up a few of these makeup pouches, as well. I added little charms to the zipper so they would be easier to be open and closed, since the zipper pull is fairly thin. I really like how it all turned out. Hopefully other people like them, too, because I've uploaded them to my etsy! Right here

I haven't had much time for any interneting lately. Our new pup, Ripley, has been keeping me pretty busy. I'm also doing a three week mini-mester statistics course over my winter break, so I come home around noon and get stuck on puppysitting duty until 5pm or so. I wanted to be able to make a tutorial and a big last minute Christmas crafting post a few days before Christmas, but I haven't even touched my sewing machine in two weeks, except for some last minute sewing at 11pm Christmas Eve. I was able to make my stepmom a set of makeup pouches following this tutorial, and it was a lot simpler than I had anticipated (or else I would have just stopped after one pouch)

I normally try to avoid zippers because I don't have a zipper foot and I have no idea what I'm doing with them. I like the look of the covered zipper ends a lot. I think it makes it easier to sew, too.
I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. I got tons of Longhorns stuff, a Pulse smartpen for school,  my first ever mani-pedi, and a bunch of yummy molasses cookies that I hoarded in the breadbox and ate ALL of on Christmas, so I would say it was pretty good.

Procrastinating

I've lost my point and shoot camera (or, rather, I'm too lazy to look around for it) so the past two entries have been with cell phone pictures. Hopefully this will change soon.

I have my American Literature and Calculus finals tomorrow and I have zero motivation to study for them right now. All I want to do is listen to my Christmas with The Rat Pack cd and start on my Christmas presents. At this point the system is one hour crafting, and one hour studying. On one of my allotted hours last night, I made these little toys for my dog for Christmas. I saw them here, but since Jenny over at Allsorts (which is a fantastic and inspirational craft blog that I encourage you to check out if you're interested in that stuff) was all sold out, I made my own. I used leftover fuzzy fabric from cat beds I made a year or so ago, with cute Christmas cat fabric by Robert Kaufman that I bought a fat quarter of a long time ago. I put leftover squeakers in each one and took apart an old pillow to stuff them with. And viola! My first present done and I didn't have to spend a dime. Rocky is older and only cares about cleaning his toys now, so he'll have fun with the silky soft faux fur and I won't have to worry about him destroying it on the first night. Hopefully Santa will bring us a puppy so Rocky can have someone to share his presents with. (hint hint)

Finally sewing again

Over the weekend I was able to get a little sewing done. I haven't touched my machine in over a month, which is a long time for me. I have about a million yards of leftover red satin from my dad's quilt binding so I made a cute little bow belt. There's a tutorial for it over at Tilly and the Buttons. I also made one out of black linen which was so much easier to work with and came out a lot nicer, but photographs terribly. I'm in the middle of trying to make another belt out of gold lamé, which I'm dreading the sewing, but am excited about the end product. I also managed to make a few pairs of potholders, too, which I am really happy with. I used to use bias tape for the binding, but I've started to make my own binding and I think it looks so much better. I also use two layers in insulated batting and quilt each top, so I'm really pleased with the overall quality. What I'm NOT pleased with, however, is Artoo's new favorite hiding place. I've been in my apartment for almost a year now and he has never bothered my stash of fabric before, but lately that's where he has been hiding out. At least he's laying on the pile of fabric that I never use. I'd be pretty irked if he chose to start sleeping on my nice designer fabric.

lil hexies

This weekend I didn't do anything besides clean and do tons of these paper pieced hexagons. I like hand sewing because I can lay on the couch with Artoo on my lap and watch TV while I do it, as opposed to being on the noisy machine in the uncomfortable chair facing the wall. I have 10 completed flowers so far, as well as all the pieces for 4 more. I'm not exactly sure what I want to do with all of them yet. I may just keep making them and save them for some day when I feel like making a grandmother's garden quilt, or get impatient and sew them together and use it as a wall hanging. I'm leaning towards saving them, though. I love the idea of these going into a good heirloom piece, with my old reports and homework used as the paper inside. It was nice cutting up all of the stuff that I despised and caused me stress in the past week and crafting it into something I love.

Bow Tutorial

These bows are simple to make, they just take a little bit of patience and tweaking to get the perfect shape. Follow the jump to find a printable pattern and step by step instructions with on how to make these

What I've been up to

The pink/green pin and mushroom tote were for two separate swaps, and all the hair clips and barrettes are currently waiting to be listed on etsy. I'm really excited about these.. they're cute, and quick enough where it doesn't feel like a huge chore making them. Right now I'm looking to sell the barrettes for $7 each, $8 for a pair of hair clips, $9 for a pin, and $3.50 for a set of two fabric covered button hair elastics.