Still Counting Down!
We’re a few days closer to the Holidays on the Homestead at the Antelope Valley Indian Museum and I’ve got a few more new items! There’s a few more cross stitch pieces I want to complete for the event, but they’re small and I still have time.
I want to stitch another Woman’s Place, a counselor Troi mini, a Geordi LaForge and maybe a second Kitty Puke.
And I still need to get a couple small dishes to hold my little inexpensive items on my table. I’m hoping to find these at the dollar store though in a few days.
This event is hands down my favorite, and there’s a reason I keep going back year after year. I really hope you’ll come by and check it out too!
13 days and counting!
What’s that? Oh yes! Thirteen days until I’ll be live at the Antelope Valley Indian Museum with my awesome stuff!
I’ve been trying to work on some other inventory over the last few weeks and things are slowly getting added. I’m also adding to shop inventory while I’m at it.
I managed to get all my beading patterns up, all my crochet patterns (some of both of those are free, BTW!), and I just did a much needed cull of my commercial sewing patterns and listed I think 36 of them, most of them brand new, up for sale. I’m hoping to get some cross stitch patterns up soon too but that might take a while.
I really hope I can meet some of you at the AVIM on the 30th and you can see my creations in person. I’ll have items ranging from $1 up to about $45, for kids and adults both.
I’m Still Around
I’m still around, I promise! I haven’t been doing much crafting though because quite simply, my craft room here since isn’t quite right. I can’t pinpoint what doesn’t feel right about it, just that I don’t find it super conductive to actually working. I did finish off a skein of yarn the other day in a project I previously thought was completed, and I did cast on a new knitting project the night before last with some of my more precious yarn. I also finally sorted out a ton of beads and selected more to be culled from my collection, which were donated yesterday to thrift along with a few stacks of other items. I have more I would like to let go, I just have to decide what. Some of it is yarns I likely won’t use- those will probably get returned to Micheal’s for store credit when I go into town again.
I’ve also been adding some books to my shop. I don’t have room for physical copies and I would rather read digital ones, so I’m slowly putting my remaining books up for sale. Right now that’s trade paperbacks of comics. The comics don’t have a shipping fee- the price includes media mail shipping to CONUS. Actually all of my books I have listed have no shipping fees and prices are low to help them move quickly. If they don’t sell in a reasonable amount of time, they’ll be donated to thrift.
I’m hoping to get some new handmade items up in the shop soon. I’ve made a few items but haven’t gotten around to listing them yet so that’s next on my list. I can think of at least 2 new necklaces that need to go up that are a lot of fun!
PS – There’s an extra coupon you can use at checkout- just enter LSG into the coupon code box!
Summer Clean-Up
Hi guys! I just spent some time in my craft room (yes, my mom was so gracious as to let me have a craft room here!) culling beads to be donated that I will likely never use (about 4 pounds of them) which cleaned out several containers. Now to now rush out to find more beads to fill them up…. LOL.
I also took the time to really look at my creations and take anything not quite perfect and pull it from my shop. A lot of this was stuff that I was still learning a new technique when I made them, or they were made with not quite the usual quality materials, or I just didn’t feel they were up to par.
These have either been put into bags to be donated, or added to the small pile of designs I want to reclaim the components of to make other lovely creations.
And when the weather cools off, I’ll be going through my knit and crochet creations the same way!
A Clock Fit for a Crafter
I’ve been wanting a clock in my craft room, but I wanted something a little different, and something that would actually coordinate with my space. I decided to make my own clock, but I had no idea what to make it with. A trip to Michael’s had me walking out with this stuff.
Clock hardware, plus larger hands, a package of numbers, 4 4″x4″ canvases. 
I painted the canvases, including one larger 5″x5″ one I already had a bright cheery turquoise color. 
The numbers 3, 6, 9, and 12 were applied to the 4 smaller canvases with E6000. 
I had to use the Dremel to gouge out some of the wood to make my clock case fit into the larger canvas. Its not pretty but it worked perfectly. 
The finished clock, mounted on my wall. The 3 is a little crooked though. I’ll have to rehang it. This ended up being a super fast project, takingĀ aboutĀ an hour, and most of that time was spent waiting for the paint to dry. And if I ever repainted my craft room, I could easily repaint the canvases to match.
A Stand for my Ukulele!
So back about 6 months ago, I was super excited to purchase and hopefully learn to play the ukulele. I bought one,
loved it, but wasn’t so great about practicing. Then a few weeks back, I joined Ukulele UndergroundĀ and I found this.Plans to build your own ukulele stand, this one already sized perfectly for a tenor uke, which is what I have.
All I needed was a piece of wood for the base, a 1″ thick wooden dowel at least 22″ long, some felt, some screws, and some metal hooks sold at Walmart to act as the brackets.
I was super tight on money but really wanted to do this, so I improvised a bit. The wooden plaque I bought from Michael’s, with a 50% off coupon for $1.90. The felt I already had on hand, thanks to getting sent the wrong item when I ordered fabric ages ago. Wood stain and E6000 I had on hand. The dowel was the most expensive piece at about $4.50 for a 48″ length, and the screws were about a dollar for a package of 8. The hooks/brackets I made myself out of polymer clay, then cast them in resin which I dyed a deep red color with some mica powder.
TheseĀ are my polymer clay originals, slightly burnt from a slightly too warm oven. I drilled holes in them to test the placement, but not because I actually expected to use these pieces. Baked clay is pretty tough, butĀ not that tough. 
This is the first piece being cast in Amazing CLear Cast resin, after the original was molded in Remelt, another Amazing product. 
The felt pieces I cut to act as a soft surface for my uke to sit on. I cut 8 of the smaller bits and one larger piece to build up and really cradle my uke’s bottom. 
This is the completed stand. Besides using more felt, I also drilled a hole into my base and glued the dowel into place instead of screwing it from the bottom. I’m not great at screwing things in straight, so this seemed like a better plan for me. 
The finished stand, with my ukulele in it. Not counting the cost of materials I already had on hand, I spent about $8 building this.
A Surprise for a Friend
Some odd weeks ago, I was texting my good friend Nikki who now lives in Washington and I showed her a blanket pattern I was considering making. She commented that she loved it and the next thing I knew, I was crocheting it for her without telling her. It was a baby blanket pattern that I worked to a larger size, and it was so easy to make once I found a video explaining the instructions a bit better.
I didn’t get any good photos of it really as I worked on it, but I do have this close up of it that shows the colors really well. I worked it up in Red Heart Super Saver yarns in Black, and Blacklight, and I used one entire Jumbo skein of black plus 3 regular sized skeins of Blacklight. The colors in Blacklight are truly neon and super bright.
Nikki shared this photo she took of the blanket after she received it (which is another story!) and posted it to Facebook where it got lots of compliments, which made me super happy! One of the points was a little odd center due to me not properly counting my stitches at the beginning but otherwise it turned out really well.
I’m planning on making another star blanket, but with more points next time, and in different colors. I’m thinking Pink Camo, Light Raspberry, and Aran. I was dying to share this one with you guys for weeks but had to wait until after Nikki had received it.
I was super worried she would never get it though. I dropped it in the mail one night and only after it went into the chute did I learn her phone had auto-corrected her mailing address into a street that does not even exist so I had no idea where her package would end up or if it would find its way back home. Luckily her mail carrier is stellar and figured out the correct address and delivered it to her!
Things I’ve Been Doing
I’ll let the pictures do the talking this time!
A photo posted by Debra Leigh Wilson (@kittyloafdesigns) on
A photo posted by Debra Leigh Wilson (@kittyloafdesigns) on
A photo posted by Debra Leigh Wilson (@kittyloafdesigns) on
Art Resurrected’s Fantastic Tree or Gift Tags Tutorial
What do we have here? Some fantastic (and so easy to make!) Christmas tree or even gift tags you can make this season. Tracy fromĀ Art ResurrectedĀ shares this great tutorial on the Amazing Mold Putty blog on how to make these great tags.
The idea behind them is so simple, and I’m sure anyone could make these, even without a lot of the tools she uses in her tutorial. All you really need is polymer clay, some ribbon, paint, and a few basic tools for working with the clay. Check out the full tutorial here!
Adventures in Knitting
Several weeks ago I decided to teach myself to knit. I went onto You Tube and looked up some videos. I picked one and learned what I thought was the basic knit stitch. I did a little half ass project to get the feel of things and then started on a wide scarf. After I had finished 40″ of my scarf, I realized I am supposed to be working left to right, and then back right to left. The whole time I was working left to right, then flipping my work over and working left to right again. I talked to my friend Christy and she asked for some photos. I sent her this.
She said this was known as garter stitch. Then I sent her this photo showing when I worked left to right and then right to left.
She said this was stockingette stitch. She also said I apparently knit backwards, which explained why the other videos I watched after the first one all did everything the opposite of the first video I had watched.
That was the point I decided to just say the heck with it and mix things up and try out new things. My next thing was ribbing, which turned out fantastic as far as I’m concerned. Its so springy and soft.
So, I can knit a couple of different stitches, I can purl, and I did finish my scarf. Is it pretty? No. The colors work okay together but its just a mes with the different stitches, the obviousness that I am still learning, and that bit where I discovered that stockingette stitch will roll and garter stitch will not. In short, its a mess but its okay because it gave me hours of practice.
After that, I started working on a hat. I only had a single 16″ circular needle, and I was able to get fairly close to being done before I had to stop and get different needles. I tried the magic loop method to finish it up but that proved way too awkward for me, so the needles I ordered were a set of double pointed needles (5 of them) and a 9″ circular needle, which proved way more awkward than working with five different needles at once.Its a terrible photo, but I finished what I am counting as my first legitimate knitting project and it turned out great! I’m really happy with it and I honestly want to make another one right now. I had no idea knitting was going to prove so enjoyable, and so simple to learn, and wish I had tried it sooner. Its a fantastic TV watching hobby.
