All of the things.

I've been doing a lot (a lot!) of design work lately. Perhaps I haven't told you, but... I have a sweater pattern coming out in the Fall issue of Holla Knits! I am seriously over the moon. But of course, now that I have a bunch of knitting that I must do, I of course want to cast on all of the things. Like these.

1. Tadpole by Katie Boyette, from Petite Purls Summer 2009
I want to make it for my still-cooking nephew, who we loving refer to as "The Avocado." Because every kid needs a stuffed submarine. Duh.

photo by Brandy Fortune

2. #32 Cropped Jacket by Jacqueline van Dillen, from Vogue Knitting Early Fall 2013
Not a fan of cropped styles, but as this is knit top-down it will be so easy to make longer. I love, love, love it. I will likely go with navy and white, because I actually can't help it. Plus then it will easily fit in with my nautical wardrobe.

photo by Vogue Knitting

3. Admiral's Knot Halter by Ashley Rao from Interweave Knits, Summer 2013

This one seems tricky. The construction is wild, but so clever. My only issue with it is I'm not sure how to wear the um, appropriate undergarments with it. Once I figure it out I'm totally making it.

photo by Interweave Press

4. Gradient Pullover by Amy Miller, from knit.wear Spring 2013
I am a sucker for anything a) coral, and b) ombre. This looks like a sweater that's easy to wear, which sounds goofy, because it's just a sweater, but so many of the things I've knitted are hard to wear. They're tricky to style, or sleeveless wool (I've learned that lesson now), or too fancy, or something. This, however: easy.

photo by interweave knits

5. Slip Stitch Dishtowels from Purl Soho
Is it weird that I want to knit dishtowels? I totally do.

photo by PurlSoho

6. Blush by Kessa Tay Anlin

I actually already made one of these, but it was before I was the awesome Knitter I am today, and it doesn't fit as well as I'd like. Also, I used yarn that drives me bonkers with the itchy. So I want to try again and do a better job. It's a cute, versatile vesty-thing, and I like it. 

photo by Kessanlin

7. Toulouse Pullover by Leah B. Thibault, from Knitscene Winter 2012

Love this. Love the bow, love the fit, love the idea. Plus it's mostly stockinette, which is often totally what I need. Plain stockinette makes me feel better about life. I know, I'm weird.

photo from Knitscene

So, I want to make all of these, plus like eleventy million other things that I don't have to design while I knit. I think I just need to do a better job of always having one thing on the needles that is not coming from my own head. I think my sanity would like that.

Goodbye, Google Reader.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin My beloved Google Reader is going to interwebs heaven on Monday. I tried out a couple different readers before picking Bloglovin. So, follow me!

A graduation dessert table

Last week, my husband graduated with his PhD. Finally. After the ceremony, we had a lovely backyard barbecue, with requisite dessert table.

I made cookies n' cream cupcakes (his favorite, my own recipe), brown butter rice krispy treats (recipe from Smitten Kitchen), double-chocolate cookies with sea salt, cake pops, and champagne lollipops. Yum, yum. I was going to make chocolate French macarons as well, but luckily, I had a reality check. And a short time frame.

I was reading someone's blog post about dessert tables a couple of weeks ago (not a great story because I can't remember what blog), but the main point of this post was that "this awesome dessert table was done for only $40!" I thought, hmm. My tables never cost that much! Thinking about it, and looking at these photos, I think it's because I never buy anything new for my tables. The stands the cookies are on- I've had those since I was a professional cupcaker-ist. They are little glass ice cream dishes epoxy-d to glass plates. All from the thrift store. (Except for that silver one, that's inherited from a grandma.) The platter holding the rice krispy treats is one of my everyday white platters, and the cake pop one is from the dollar store. Cupcake tree- I have like 4, and they were all gifts. When you make a lot of cupcakes, most of your birthday and Christmas gifts involve cupcakes. Go figure. The owl lives on my credenza normally- he just got a quick cardstock and yarn graduation hat, along with those gold spray-painted sticks. And the fabric is just a large piece of white satiny stuff from my craft room. So really, for me, dessert tables come down to little details. And a color scheme! I make my own labels with just cardstock and sometimes ribbon, using this method to fake calligraphy. The rice krispy treats have little sticks in them (cheap on Etsy) with ribbon flags at the top. The background cost like $.50 in streamers from the dollar store. But overall, the effect is terrific. Right? And cheap!

Closer view of the sticks with ribbon flags. There in the corner are the lollipops. I love making them for my dessert tables, although they don't often get eaten. They are ridiculously easy. Sugar + water + corn syrup + flavoring, poured in little pools on a greased cookie sheet. Insert stick, add sprinkles, package in small plastic bag. Done. 

Another successful dessert table. Love doing these. Especially now that I have my credenza! Most favorite piece of furniture ever.

The necessity of handmade gifts.

I have some sort of psychological problem that does not allow me to buy gifts, ever. Under no circumstances may I buy a gift. Even if I'm under a huge time crunch, or have eleventy-million other things to do, nope! Cannot buy anything. Must make something.

Case in point. Wedding gift. Two oven mitts and two hot pads.

I actually really enjoyed making these. I order a lot of fabric on Etsy, and it often comes with a little pack of a few 2" by 3" or 3" by 3" squares of different fabric. I just kept tossing them in my scrap bin, not knowing what to do with such little pieces of fabric. Fortuitously, I pulled out my scrap bin (which really, was getting out of hand, and something needed to happen with it) to make this set.

The bride is an ocean lover, and an ecologist, so I was thinking blue and green would be the way to go, and I knew I had a lot of blue and green scraps. In my search I found a bunch of these little squares that totally worked with my color scheme, so I included them in the patchwork. I love it. The little pieces of unique fabric are so cool. And they add a great variety to the oven mitts. I especially love the blue glitter crown fabric. I might have to buy some yardage of that. Which when you think about it, is surely why the Etsy sellers include little pieces with your order... Hmm. They got me.

Girly-Girl.

Yet another baby shower gift. I was looking through my pregnant friend's baby registry, and noticed she'd registered for a ton of jungle-themed baby stuff. Super cute. So I bought 2 yards of this fabric:

(Jungle Bungle by Moda)

My thinking was that this would be the back, and an amazing ombre quilt from the book We Love Color would be the front. (If you go to that Amazon link and click "look inside book", it's the first quilt shown.) So I ordered like 12 different fat quarters of Kona Solids in pinks and purples, and when I got all the fabric and piled it up, I realized that there is no pink OR purple in the jungle fabric, and that they in fact looked awful together. Luckily, I had a couple of yards of a pretty dahlia-printed quilter's flannel that totally went with the pinks and purples. So I forged ahead. By that, I mean I procrastinated until literally the morning before the shower, and I made the whole thing in one day. Like 9 am to 2 pm. It was a quilting marathon. 

I love it. I want to make a big one for me. I think it turned out perfectly. Except, um, the quilting. Clearly, straight lines are not my forte. 

I bound it in the same fabric as the backing, something I'd never done before. I really love the way it looks. I also figured that I didn't have time to hand-sew the binding down, like I usually do, so I used some Steam-a-Seam (like double stick tape, but for fabric) to stick the binding to the backside, then machine-stitched it down. It's certainly not perfect, but it saved a ton of time and my hands. I'm getting old and it's getting harder to hand-sew. Boo. I'm not even that old.

Gratuitous close-up.

So now the question is what to do with that adorable jungle fabric? And when am I gonna have time to make one for me?

Chevron and Cherries.

I'm going nuts not knowing if I'm going to have a niece or nephew come September. Luckily, my sister is kind of streamlining things- if it's a boy, the baby's room will be green and gray, if it's a girl: orange and gray. She's decided that it's definitely a girl, and my brother-in-law is for sure that it's a boy. I sort of split the difference and went with gray front, girly back, and green binding. Ha!

I bought an issue of Quilty on a whim at Michael's a while ago. There are several quilts in the magazine that I intend to make, but one in particular caught my eye: Chevron. I thought that it would look great in white and gray patterns. I went through my fabric collection and found a bunch of gray, gray print, and black and white print that I thought would work, and luckily, I had enough for a baby sized quilt. Aside: I love having a fabric stash big enough to be able to do things like this. This is my first time actually using a quilt pattern. It's nice to not have to figure out measurements on your own.

Here's the back: it's cherry-printed quilter's flannel.

I quilted it really simply with straight lines. This is what the pattern suggested and I decided to roll with it.

For the binding, I pieced a light green and a dark green together randomly. I also made actual bias-binding this time because it's for a baby, and I'm hoping it will get used and spit up on and washed a lot.

Now I just need to make a label and mail it off!

A Slightly Nautical Easter Brunch

Yes, Easter happened awhile ago. Right after Easter, I went to the Midwest to visit my family, and got stuck there for longer than planned because of a massive ice- and snow-storm. Literally every item outside was coated in a thick layer of ice. I didn't know that individual blades of grass could look like that. It was shockingly unpleasant. When I got back to the glorious place that is California, I couldn't make myself sit down and blog at the computer when there was outside stuff to do. Like plant tomatoes and sunbathe and grill and really just enjoy the perfect sunshine, beautiful and crazily abundant flowers, and sheer happiness that is living here. As my (cancelled, delayed, cancelled again, more delays) flight was finally landing in California, I thought I was going to cry of happiness when I saw all of the green. That, or sheer exhaustion. Maybe both.

 
So anyway. Here's my Easter brunch. This year I went with a slightly nautical theme, because I'm pretty sure that I am meant to live in New England. I love all things nautical- always have. I seriously get asked if I'm going sailing at least twice a month. Usually by the same old man who works in my building, but still. I stuck with a navy, white, and pink color palette, so I guess it should really be "nautical preppy," or "Ralph Lauren." My decorations were super simple, and made of things I already had on hand. I love it when I can do a whole party with stuff I already have in my craft room. Makes me feel thrifty.

We had 16 or so people for brunch, so we moved our picnic and beer pong tables into the house and stuck them end-to-end. I have several white sheets I use for tablecloths. Some day I mean to buy actual tablecloths, but sheets are so easy. The low-thread-count ones from Walmart are cheap, come in lots of colors, and when people inevitably spill on them, you just chuck them in the washer. So I used the white sheets, and for a table runner (which I must always have on a long table like this, or I get twitchy) I used a satiny navy scarf I had in my dresser. I really wanted to do a centerpiece of pink peonies, but my florist didn't have them in yet. Instead I bought a pink, white, and green bouquet from the grocery store and took it apart. I cut everything way down, like you must do with the crazy long stems of grocery store bouquets, and I added in some pink roses and greenery from my yard. The vase cover was incredibly simple. I measured a piece of tagboard to the height and width of my vase, then hot-glued it into a cylinder. Then I took some navy and white yarn and glued it on in stripes. Easy.

For napkin rings, I cut strips of navy-and-white striped fabric, cut a "V" into the ends, rolled my oatmeal-colored linen napkins, and tied a strip of fabric around each one.

I've developed some sort of pathological need to have a dessert table at every event ever, even if dessert would be kind of inappropriate, or if there will only be a few people there. Can't help it. My credenza is perfect for dessert tables, and they call to me. For this one, I made three cakes- carrot, white with raspberry filling, and coconut. The carrot I baked in a heart-shaped pan, and the other two, a 6" round. The coconut cake was especially fun to make. Inspired by this tutorial, I made pink ombre sugar dots to cover the cake. They were so easy to make, and fun, too. They're pretty much just sugar cubes, like the ones for coffee. For the white cake, I made a simple little bunting with scrabooking paper, string, and two skewers. I have quite a few clear cake stands from when I was a professional cupcakerist that are perfect for dessert tables, so I put the cakes on those. I have an apothecary jar that is usually full of wine corks, so I just replaced them with pink peeps to keep with the color scheme. I always like to decorate the wall behind the dessert bar, so I made a simple bunting with navy and white cardstock and pink ribbon.

Everything bagels are one of my favorite foods, but I have yet to have a good bagel in California. So in true over-doing-it fashion, I made bagels. From scratch. It took forever. They were delicious, but ohmygosh were my arms sore from kneading the dough. My husband decided that if I was making bagels we'd need some smoked salmon to go with it, and our smoker is new enough that he's still enamored with it, so he smoked a few salmon pieces to go with the bagels.

And of course we had a Bloody Mary bar. What's brunch without it?