Friday, July 31, 2015

LEISURE ARTS WONDERFULLY WHITE PATTERN BY CAROL PRIOR COMPLETE!!

Wonderfully White by Carol Prior


Good morning!  a dear friend of mine ordered this baby blanket from me after seeing another wonderfully white blanket that I made a few years back, and wanted to purchase one of her own.

The pattern can be found in several Leisure Arts knitting pattern books but the one book that I can remember on the top of my head as to where you can find this pattern is called "Our Best Knit Baby Afghans Book 2".  I will almost always use the Leisure Arts patterns because I find them really fun to use and the patterns are written very well, but every once in a while I will go to ravelry for an original pattern designed by another crafter.

If you're knitting at the moment, what are you currently knitting up?

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

ELFIN STITCH FOR MY SONS AFGHAN!

Elfin Stitch pattern can be found in Leisure Arts 99 Knit Stitches book.  I'm so excited to be getting further along with my son's gift!  

I've been lagging in updating you on my knitting so I'll try my best to write another post about what I've been working on this past month!

Be blessed!

OATS IN A JAR!!!



If you are someone like me that has to be on the go throughout the day and you don't want to have to sacrifice your breakfast because of that then you MUST try oats in a jar!!

Let me tell you that this concept has completely changed my morning rituals with my kids and with myself as well and I couldn't be more relieved.  Not only is this yummy meal pretty delicious, it's simple to put together, there's no need to use the stove, it's super healthy and your options to making different types of oats in a jar are endless!

Yesterday my kids and I started out with trying oats with almond milk, blue berries, strawberries and strawberry yogurt and needless to say we LOVED it.

If you're up to try a jar for yourself then here are a few tutorials to help you out!!  

https://youtu.be/ddGi1wwAISg

https://youtu.be/afP9gWUQnG4

https://youtu.be/MQHqekDSAuc

Be Blessed!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SON!!


I know that I'm well over a week left but I want to wish my oldest son a very happy birthday.  Due  to us just trying to survive the heat and keep it low key, we had a very small and private celebration for our Bubba.

The cake doesn't look the greatest but I made that double chocolate goodness from scratch my friend so I'm proud of my accomplishments.  

If you want to try a easy cake recipe then check this recipe out by clicking on the link!
http://addapinch.com/cooking/the-best-chocolate-cake-recipe-ever/

I added everything that the recipe required except for the coffee except for the coffee and that was because I just didn't have it on hand, otherwise the coffee would have been included

The icing was something that I threw together myself so there's no link to a recipe for those.  What I can say is that I used two packages of cream cheese, confectioner sugar, vanilla extract, cocoa powder, and softened margin.  I can't tell you how much I used though because I added stuff until I got the flavor and consistency that I wanted.  Oh and don't let me forget that I also used food coloring and sprinkles!

With that said we enjoyed the cake and we also enjoyed my son's special day.

Be Blessed!

Saturday, July 18, 2015

My first knitted baby sampler afghan!!

First square : Waffle Stitch

I love to knit.  I really REALLY love to knit and I almost love it more than crocheting.  Well to be honest I do love it more than crocheting because your yarn goes a longer ways when working on a project and your work looks more polished and refined.  Well at least to me anyways:-)  

After finishing up a baby blanket a friend requested, I wanted to go ahead and start working on my youngest son's Christmas gift ASAP so I started to work on a sampler.

Second square : Panel Diamond Lace

I don't know how many squares I will do altogether but I do know hat every pattern that I will use will be from the Leisure Arts 99 Knit Stitches book that you can find at your local crafting store, Ebay or Amazon.

I will share square three soon:-)

Be Blessed!!




Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Turning Something Old Into Something New!!! My Experiment With Re purposing!!!



Hey you guys!!!  Ya'll seriously don't know how much I've missed blogging here to share my latest projects and experiments!  While crocheting up my puppy a sweater, since I don't have enough fabric to sew anything yet, I decided to put my crochet hook down to finally share some fun activities that I've been trying out with myself and with my kids.  Everything that I will share with you over the next couple of days and weeks ahead are budet friendly crafts that can be fun to do by yourself or with family and friends.

When I first decided to re purpose some of my things I decided to do so because I was just in a artsy kind of mood honestly.  Knitting and crocheting just wasn't doing it for me anymore and so I really wanted to try something different and out of the box instead.  So tie dye became the thing to do, well after making flubber but that's a totally different subject for a totally different entry!  So after one almost failed attempt at tie dying some shirts, I'll explain in a different entry, I decided to try a much simpler and cheaper alternative which happens to be acid washing or tie dying with bleach.  

From what I read you want to be careful with what fabrics you use and what not but I didn't take much care to worry about the fabric my first couple of times around because I just wanted to see what kind of results could be made possible for the future.  

So here's what I did.  With the help of some pics I hope that my experiment helps others who may want to try this:-)

 Now I didn't take a picture of the extra items needed for this my first go at this but you will need to work in a well ventilated area, a solid colored shirt or scarf, a plastic bag to place your work on top of, rubber bands and some form of bleach in a bottle.  I used the Clorox Bleach Foamer for this and my work turned out pretty well.

So I tied my rubber bands onto my scarf in sections like you see on my picture below and then I sprayed every other separated section with bleach. You may also want gloves for this but I didn't use them. Once I got my sections as saturated as I wanted I let it sit until the sprayed sections got as bleached as I wanted them to and then I cut the rubber bands off of my scarf and washed it with warm water in the washer.  After I washed my scarf I dried it like normal and it was ready to use!
This is a picture approximately 20 minutes after I started spraying my sections.

This turned out to be pretty fun for me and I hope that this will be fun for you if you happen to try it!

P.S To avoid any accidental smudges make sure that your bleached areas DO NOT TOUCH the areas of your work that aren't supposed to be bleached.  That includes making sure that your hands are clean of bleach when handling your work where bleach isn't supposed to be present.