100th Post

This is officially my 100th post. Woo-hoo! I figured I should do something to celebrate with y’all. I really appreciate all of your comments. Although I don’t respond to each one, I do read them and they really make my day– I hope you know that.

As a present to you, dear readers, I’m giving away one Crocheted Hat gift certificate and one Button Necklace gift certificate to my etsy shop. The winner can pick anything  they like  from the current stock–there’s still a bunch of cute stuff in there. Just leave a comment on this post by Friday at Midnight mountain time (that’s 2 am NY time) and I’ll randomly generate the winners! Yay! If you like, you can say which thing you’d prefer, in case it randomly works out that you can have your cake (hat) and eat it too.

Also- I finally joined Ravelry. I’m still finding my way around and haven’t uploaded many projects, but I’m over there as Lindamade, so feel free to add me.

 

And, for photo goodness, here’s my finished wonky recycled bathmat. I love it! (Full photo here for scale.)

Sewing + Cooking

Today I decided to get down to business. I cleaned. I finished my quilt top. I put the laundry away. I saw my bag of “off to goodwill” clothes and rummaged through it. I have 4 or 5 tops– the same exact top, but different colors and stripes– that are just too short from all that laundry shrinking. I’ve worn them to death and yet I was sad to put them in the bag. So I thought, what the heck, I’ll make myself a hand-me-up shirt a la Betz White.

 

I added a section of one to the bottom of another. I repeated with a second two shirts (above). It was much easier the second time. I don’t always take the time to do something twice, but lately I have been, and it’s working out for me. All I did was turn the main shirt inside out, match the raw/cut edge of the wrong side to the main shirt  wrong-side hem, sew, flip inside out, and resew the  right side bottom hem of the main shirt (encasing the raw edge). Super easy. And now I don’t have to buy new shirts, nor worry about my unintentional midriff shirts. Seriously, what’s wrong with clothing manufacturers?

 

After that, I made some chicken tikka masala.  Did you know there are no Indian food restaurants in Bozeman? And no Thai places.  And just so-so Mexican food.  So when I saw Nancy’s post, I was inpsired. But even more inspiring was finding the already made sauce in the ethnic aisle of the grocery store. It was pretty good for not having been made from scratch. Thank goodness for shortcuts.

Friday I will be posting my patchwork swap makings (I just can’t wait any more!) and also giving away a second batch of scraps, and possibly something else.  Stay tuned!

Cloth Napkins

 

Little by little I’m making all of the things that’ll make this apartment feel like home to me. Saturday night (yes, I am a dork), I made six cloth napkins to complement our placemats. They are the simplest sewing project ever. I just cut them to size (about 15″ by 18″) then pressed each edge under twice. First, I pressed a .5″ hem, then folded half of that under for the second pressing. After that, all that’s left is to stitch around all of the edges. Voila! No more paper napkin waste.  I might be a little eco-crazy, but at least I’m in good company here in Bozeman. We actually got 15 cents back for using our own bags at the grocery store. Yay!

Recent Craftiness

Still settling in here…my craft room is coming together, although it needs a lot of organizing. I finally have all of my craft books on one shelf, which is nice! I’m really enjoying Bozeman, although I must confess I haven’t been outside very much (barring my 2 mile walk to the grocery store today. It seems so much farther here than it did in New York, but I needed the exercise).

I wanted to share a little craftiness, since it seems like so long since I’ve posted a project. First up is this cute owl pillow I crocheted before I left New York. He’s made up of several fingering weight yarns, and I had a lot of fun playing with the stripes. Here he is on our futon, with fantastic company (pillows from the Fall ‘07 Adorn).

 

And, while I was at my Mom’s house in Texas, I whipped up a tube for my plastic bags. I wanted to sew on her Bernina since I think that’s the machine I’ll end up getting. It was a breeze! Basically, I sewed a tube with elastic on either end (one end with a very small opening for the bags to come out, one large for the bags to be stuffed into). I sewed the hanging strap down on one side and sewed a snap to the other so that it can hang around the pole in our pantry/closet.  Afterwards, I found this tutorial from Dioramarama, if you’re interested in making your own. Bonus green points for using stash fabric from your mom.

I also took a fabric dyeing class with my mom, and hopefully I’ll be posting some of the results here soon. I wanted to do some overdyeing, but we’ll see if I get around to it.

Tiny Choices

Just a quick note to let you know about a great new eco-blog run by two friends of mine: Tiny Choices. Kari has always been my inspiration for doing little things that can help the environment (she composts with worms– in her apartment!), and the blog is about those things. Maybe we can’t do everything we should, but each little bit does help! It’s about keeping a box under your desk and taking your paper home to recycle (if your company doesn’t have recycling in place), using cloth grocery bags, or carrying your own set of silverware with you instead of using plastic. We can all start somewhere, and this is perfect inspiration! Kudos to Kari and Jenn. Maybe if enough people begin to care, I’ll finally stop getting weird looks at the grocery store when I bring my cloth shopping bags!