Craftiness: crafts

crafts

Showing posts with label crafts. Show all posts

3rd time spinning, tried dying some things:

April socks:

May socks:

Horse cross stitch for a friend:

June socks:

July socks:

August socks:

Baby quilt for new neice:

September socks:

October socks:

Novembers socks:

Crocheted Ood:

Polymer clay Poogi:

Tardis shawl:

So to continue my soap adventures... today I unmolded the soap and cut it into bars. I was quite surprised to see that the soap had turned purple. Yes, apparently blue + yellow = purple. Who knew! It's unscented though, so unfortunately the smelly stuff I put in did not work. But the colours worked, just not how they were supposed to.

Now, to let the bars cure for about a month. Then comes testing, if I'm not too afraid of what the lye has done to the dye.

I've done a couple more of these cute cross stitch designs. I think they're from a company called Yicai in Korea but I can't really remember. I get them from a local grocery store here. I just bought another one to do of the same type. It's nice and mind-numbing.

I decided to make some soap today. A while ago, I bought some dye and scent to use so I thought now I'd experiment with it. I took a few pictures of what I did:

Weighed out the ingredients. Coconut oil is solid at room temperature. In the background is the measured portion of olive oil.

Ready to combine the two solutions. Oil on left, lye solution on right. They need to be roughly the same temperature when combined. (Lauren will recognize the cup in the background)

In the mold, aka a bread pan. Ta daa.... or not.

The end product looks yucky so far because the dyes and the lye did not go together. So it's kind of a brown mess. And I'm not sure the scent took either. I put quite a bit in, but it didn't really smell that much. So, this is perhaps a failure. I will have a better idea of what happened when I take it out of the mold in a couple of days and cut it.

I like making soap. Soon, I am going to try making detergent for clothes, and conditioning rinses for my hair. Not just because I love making useful things and saving money, but because I want to know what kind of chemicals I'm using for such things. I don't want all these other chemicals that aren't necessarily good for me being all over my skin on a daily basis.

I found this pattern on ravelry and I knew I absolutely had to make one of these. I actually finished this over the Christmas break, but couldn't think of someone to give it to, and honestly, I wanted to keep it because I love cute plush toys. I want to make some more.

I think I made it better though. The original calls for a bobble kind of nose on the top (a la Rudolf) which looks stupid to me so I embroidered a more natural nose. Which is still a little off but I think it's cute anyway.

Since I learned how to make my grandma's Christmas cookies, my family has demanded that I make them every year. They're not hard to make but the recipe sure makes a lot of them. Fortunately, I have a lot of people to feed! I'm heading to my fiancee's family's place for Christmas this year, so I thought I'd bring cookies. So I also made shortbread, Mexican wedding cake (cookies), and regular sugar cookies. Today I also made ginger snaps. I think I'll probably gain 10 pounds over Christmas, which is not good but cookies are delicious and I gain weight every time I make them. However, I hope to give away most of them (already sent a bunch off to the rest of my family).

Also, some pictures of our tree, just for fun. We put it up mid-November, and there were even presents under it by then!

Lastly, I've gotten into soap making recently. I like to be as self-sufficient as possible, so this was a good thing to learn. It also makes great gifts for Christmas. Most of what I made is now gone, either because I used it or gave it away. The first batch I made was just oil and lye, and it made a nice plain soap. The second, I got a little more creative and added teatree oil and cloves. Both of these things are somewhat antibacterial/fungal, and are supposedly good for all sorts of things. I think they're good for a little extra cleansing, such as for acne, and the cloves provide a nice scrubby texture. For my next batch I'm trying cucumber melon.

Last week I went and knit with a friend in a coffee shop. She had a nice bag for her knitting while I had an ugly reusable shopping bag. I decided that day that I would make a nice one I can take for next time. So I went to Fabricland and got the supplies, which only cost about $13.

I had found a nice design online so I figured out what to do, drew up a pattern and did some sewing. I added a pocket on the outside, which isn't done so well but it was the first time I had tried that technique. The zipper portion was a bit tricky and so it looks kind of messy but I'm quite happy with how the rest of it turned out. I didn't end up using the buttons which is too bad because I think they would have added a nice bit of contrast. Still, I have a cute bag for my knitting now.

These took hardly any time at all to make! So happy :D I plan on wearing them in my office when my feet get cold. I think the reason I didn't think they took too long is because a) I'm actually a pretty fast knitter and b) the colours were fun to knit.

Materials: Kroy Sock Yarn, Color "Summer Moss"

Pattern: Lickety Split from Knitty.

Socks for my mom. She requested slippers, but I'm sick of making those. Socks are way more fun! And hopefully she'll like them just as much. I made these out of special sock yarn bought from a local store. Expensive! As you can see, I'm not quite done yet. I burned my fingers baking cookies today, otherwise they'd be finished by now. Pattern is from here

Update: finished these, but no new pictures.

Since they moved to a darn cold place, I figured Andrew and Jenna could use some warm things, so, thick warm crocheted scarf for Jenna! Just hdc all the way. Modelled by the ever so cute Jerry.

Craftiness

Projects of 2014

A lesson in colours?

More cross-stitch

Soap-making Adventures

Adorable Reindeer

Christmas Crafts and Baking

A crafty weekend

The past month and a half in pictures

Flip Flop Socks!

More socks!

Scarf

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