A New Yarn

When I announced my New Years resolutions a month or so ago I had no idea what an effect it would have on me. Yes, this is me admitting, "You didn't really expect to actually go and do those things, did you?"

But I did!

For two years I shared my daily train commute with my husband but since he has taken a new job in the city, I am back to riding solo. Which means becoming engrossed with knitting again and suddenly I am working on two projects at once. I love knitting on the train in particular because it gives me about 80 minutes of knitting a day without interruptions. During that time I finished projects like this

'Salina' by Rowan Knits

And these two beauties...

Koolhass by Interweave Knits

Minimalist Cardigan by Interweave Knits

The only downside to knitting on the train is that it can invite the chatty Cathy's to sit next to me and tell me about how their grandmother used to knit or if I could tell them about what I am working on. But for the most part people leave me alone. 

Not only can I knit on the train, but I also knit in the car (while the spouse is driving of course). It is one of those great hobbies that travels well. While my husband is at the wheel I can simultaneously knit and hand out snacks to the kids in the backseat. Multi-tasking at its finest!

On our way to Lake Tahoe

The green mass on my lap is for the Yoked Cardigan also for my daughter. This is a really easy knitting project done all in one piece with no seaming. Love that!

I also love to knit on the couch in the evenings and I think it goes without saying that wine and knitting really shouldn't mix... but I ignore that rule.

When I saw this top-down raglan dress called Nova I immediately wanted to make it for for my daughter. It looks deceptively easy, but it is knit on teeny tiny needles that could easily double as toothpicks. Ah well, it will be a fun easy raglan knit. No seaming!

Let's hope I finish these projects before the end of the year.

Tutorial: Shrinky Dink Necklaces for Valentine's Day

I never was much of a fan of the holiday/craft thing till I had kids and now I feel like I am making up for lost time. My son was interested in making something for Valentine's Day this year, but candy is not allowed at his school. A few days later a co-worker and I were talking about creative Valentine's Day cards and she told me about how she and her daughter (this was back in the 90s) used Shrinky Dinks to make name plates for the children to put on little handmade satchel bags one year. The Shrinky Dink idea stuck with me and when I mentioned it to my son, he was all over it. Mainly because it involved using the oven and an oven mitt. But instead of name plates, we decided on making necklaces for his classmates. Below is a short tutorial on how we made Shrinky Dink Valentine's Day Necklaces for my son's first grade classmates.

Shrinky Dink Valentine's Day Necklaces

Makes 35 necklaces

Here is what you need:

1 package (6 plain sheets) of Shrinky Dink paper
A hole punch
Sharpie markers in a variety of colors
Necklace string (you could use yarn or even embroidery thread)

Have your child draw all over the sheets of Shrinky Dink paper with the Sharpie markers. This took us a few days since my son lost interest pretty quickly with drawing. I didn't want to prod him too much with the drawing, so he did a variety of rainbows, stars, smiley faces, squiggly lines and lots of hearts with arrows.

I cut a heart out of an index card measuring 2-1/4" across the widest part to use as a template. You can play around with the size of the heart, since the Shrinky Dink will... wait for it... shrink quite a bit. Our hearts shrunk down to 1 inch after it was baked. Carefully cut out the Shrinky Dink hearts.

Put a hole punch in the heart, but not too close to the edge. If the hole is too close to the edge then it will crack like an egg. I wrote out each child's name on the heart to personalize it a little bit.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees and have your foil covered cookie sheet in the oven while it warms. You want the cookie sheet to be hot when you are ready to bake the Shrinky Dinks. Place the cut-out hearts on the cookie sheet in the oven quickly. Make sure to turn the inner oven light on so your kids can watch the Shrinky Dinks do their magic. This was by far the best part of the whole process for my kids.

When the Shrinky Dinks stop moving and flatten out - usually within one minute - take the cookie sheet out of the oven and let them cool off. If any were a little lumpy when they first came out then I used my oven glove to gently press down and flatten them out. If they are not done yet or look a little wonky, then you can put the sheet back in the oven and they will flatten out.

Lace the necklace string through the hole punch and, Viola! You have just made a totally cute handmade Shrinky Dink Valentine Necklace!

I cut 4x4 cards from some cheap-o card stock paper we got on clearance from Michael's and my son signed the cards.

Other cool Shrinky Dink tutorials:

• Make your own Shrinky Dink rings
• DIY Shrinky Dinks using a plastic salad shell
• Using photos and Shrinky Dinks

Extreme Cookie Edition

A few weeks ago I was craving Christmas cookies, so I went through my books, magazines and clips of recipes trying to find the right ones to bake and the choices were overwhelming: Thumbprints, bar cookies, sugar cookies, tassies, drop cookies, coconut, marshmallow, chocolate, pecans... the list went on. In order to have all the cookies that I wanted it was clear to me that I'd have to host a cookie exchange. But not just a regular cookie exchange. No... I just couldn't keep it simple.

I thought it'd be fun to host a cookie decorating party for my kids and their friends... and their siblings... and their mothers who would bring homemade cookies with them for the exchange. Five mothers and ten children ranging in ages from 12 weeks to nearly seven years old. This had potential disaster written all over it.

The week before the party I made the dough from this recipe, part of a feature on how to host a cookie decorating party with children. I have been hanging on to this article for seven years. Now why do you think I thought this sounded like a good idea back then? Because I didn't have kids back then, that's why.

Don't you love getting a glimpse of what an unrealistic person you were before you had kids?

The day before the party I baked over 80 sugar and gingerbread cookies as well as a double batch of  Chocolate Espresso Crinkle cookies for the exchange on the morning of the party. I covered our dining room table with a disposable tablecloth and gave each child their own tin tray with sprinkles in cupcake liners and a Ziploc bag filled with royal icing.

This was the best idea of the party - the disposable trays. I put the sprinkles in mini cupcake liners so it would provide containment and quantity control with how much the kids could dump onto a cookie. I had visions of fist fights breaking out over sprinkle containers, so by giving everyone their own supplies, I think I eliminated a lot of potential tears. I thought of this myself and will be patting myself on the back for it for the next year.

The Swedish Ginger Cookie recipe was alright, but it was not nearly as sweet as I had hoped. However, it bakes up nicely and when decorated with icing, the kids loved it.

The Sugar Cookie Cutouts recipe was very good and is one that I would definitely make again. (Please don't tell this to my family who regards my grandmother's butter cookie recipe as if it were legend.)

I really appreciated the tips in this article about hosting a party. I'll show before and after pictures below, but the author's advice was on the money: Make more frosting than you think you'll need, because kids will pile that stuff on. I had back up canisters of store bought frosting and the younger children ended up using these because royal icing is stiff and can be tricky to squeeze out. Only trouble is that canned frosting, or any buttercream frosting for that matter, will not harden.

I prepared myself for the mother of all messes and just let it happen. One sweep of the vacuum cleaner and it was back to normal. (Did I mention that I am a bit of a neat freak?)

One mother was kind enough to bring Champagne for mimosas and I provided bagels and cream cheese with smoked salmon. We had a civilized time exchanging some of the most delicious homemade cookies while the kids completely went nuts with the cookies. Everyone left after two hours, pleased with their cookies and I got to spend the whole day nibbling cookies rather than eating real food.

Ah well, it's Christmas and I got what I wanted - a variety of Christmas cookies and some fantastic memories. Can't say I'd do this again, but then again, there is always next year...

Christmas wishes

Things I hope I can pull off for Christmas this year:

1) Make a strata on Christmas Eve so we can throw it in the oven on Christmas morning to snack on all day.

2) Have all my ingredients mise en place for our traditional Gingerbread Waffles on Christmas morning.

3) Have all the kids presents wrapped and ready to be put under the tree before Christmas Eve. (Hey a girl can dream, right?)

Things I plan to do between the week of Christmas and New Years:

1) Finish the felt circle garland that I started last year but never finished. Absolutely adorable on our tree (in concept) but I only made it about 6 feet long, so it looks kind of pathetic.

2) Finally (!!) make the yarn wreath that I have been admiring for three years. Who knew Starbucks would be a source of inspiration? I have all the supplies and it just needs to be done. So cute.

3) Make a hanging book display for both kids.


Things I wish I had done this year for Christmas:

1) Get the advent stocking garland up and filled on December 1 for the kids. I usually end up getting it up around the second week of December. This year I didn't get it up at all. Did they notice? Nope.

2) Make snow globes. I saw this idea and want to do one for each of my kids for every year they've been around. It'd be fun to see how they have been growing through the holidays.

3) Bigger cookie exchange next year. This time without the kids and more friends. While I loved the cookie decorating party, I'd rather sit back with mimosas and friends and enjoy looking at the pretty cookies. And have some bacon, too.

4) Salt dough ornaments - I loved making these at Halloween and these would be great ornaments for the kids to make for the tree.

5) Make these for friends next year. I am going to start looking for nice white mugs at thrift stores this year to make them.

6) Bought a rubber address stamp for addressing our Christmas cards. Doesn't seem like non-profits are sending out those pre-printed sticker address labels anymore. Maybe it's because we aren't giving them as much as we used to. Ah well. You give and you get.

Handmade Halloween - the squid edition

**Updated! My son's costume won a dubious (yet loving) award at SFGate's The Poop. Check it out!

Halloween is my holiday. I can do without the hard boiled eggs at Easter, the roasted turkey at Thanksgiving and the figgy pudding at Christmas... but give me orange and black and pumpkin decorations and I am a happy girl. From October 1 -31 I am in a mad dash to get it all in - the pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pancakes, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin patches, fall festivals, apple picking... the whole thing. It is like I am a manic fall freak for 31 days a year and then I calm down and go back to normal.

This year my son wanted to be a red squid. He decided on this after taking this picture of one at the California Academy of Sciences.

I loved the idea of making this costume and my head was spinning with ideas. I could have gone the whole "cut up a sweatshirt" route, but I knew I could do better than that. So I started searching around on flickr and came across this amazing costume.

                                                    (Photo courtesy of Lucy Lou via flickr)

My son took one look at this and said, "That's it!" Great! (Pause) Now how do I make it?

I searched around and found the original creator's blog and posted a comment about what an amazing costume it was and did she have any advice on how to recreate it? She never replied and maybe that was for the best because I was left to figure it out on my own. Sometimes the best results come from just winging it. By studying the photos on flickr, I could see the construction of the costume and went to work. I drew my pattern pieces on brown paper grocery bags and tinkered with the size of the squid head. I made a mock up with some leftover red felt that was passed on to me from a friend. After sewing it together, I kept thinking it looked sort of off, maybe a little strange. I took a few steps back from the table and it hit me, my squid head looked  phallic. Oh dear. So I ripped it all out and tried it again two more times and on the third try I hit pay dirt and stuffed that squid head with batting.

Knowing my son wouldn't wear it if it were made out of scratchy felt I ordered soft pink and red fleece online. I attached the head to the the rest of the body of the squid which was made by tracing one of his hoody sweatshirts onto the fleece fabric for the arms and body. I then then lined the inside of the tentacles and arms with pink fleece and sewed it together like a traditional shirt. And a Halloween costume would not be complete without the use of a glue gun so I attached the suction cups onto the tentacles and viola...a squid was born.

In honor of Lucy and Nora (the squid creator extraordinaire), my son happily posed just like Lucy did in her squid costume. Thank you to the both of you for such great inspiration. We will likely never meet in person, but you inspired us and we thank you for it.