Bits and Bobs of Random Goodness

Let's catch up, shall we...

:: Knitting ::

Knitting is definitely my gateway drug *cough* craft addiction which has opened my world to all of the crafty goodness that currently occupies my life...and the majority of my apartment! I have recently re-fallen in love with knitting because of the amazingly awesome, though slightly sinister time-killing, Ravelry. I'm a little obsessed...

I finished the Broadripple Socks,



And last night I started the Umbilical Cord Hat from the first SnB book at 11:00pm...and finished in a crazed knitting stupor roughly around 3:00am!



The hat is one of a few I'll be making for the upcoming baby showers in my life. I'm might do a little embroidery embellishment on them, we'll see.

:: Christmas Gifts ::

Speaking of baby gifts, I finished another teddy bear! Two down, one to go! This one is wonky and a little asymmetrical. I like him - Matt thinks he's ungiftable. I think Matt's silly! What do you think?



:: Shopping ::

I've made some fun Etsy purchases in the last few days. First off, I bought a golfer window decal for my dad for Father's Day. Secondly, and not to be missed, my sensational artist blog friend, Flossy-P, has made some of her works available in form of a super affordable post card! I was able to purchase two of my all time favorites, String Theory and the set Looking for Love/Sometime Soon. Very exciting, indeed.

:: Cooking ::

Still with me? I made the Asparagus and Morel Bread Pudding sans the morels from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Very tasty, and it made a TON! Oh my, has it been more than a week since I've sung the praises of this book?! If you haven't read it, please do. It will likely change your life, give the warm fuzzies, make you feel like you can change the fate of the planet by doing your little bit.

Made the Rhubarb Crisp from Slow Food by Alice Waters again. Came out scrumptious, again. **EDIT** I just popped over to my mum's blog and she's posted a delicious looking recipe for Rhubarb Bread. I'll have to give that one a go!

So that's what I've been up to - how about all of you? Having a productive week?

Until next time, cheers!

Bears for Babies

New England is so crazy! I sat down to write this post five minutes ago, tops, and it got dark and the rain came down so fast and hard I couldn't see across the street through it. Now it's sunny and balmy. So weird.

Anyways...just had to share that! I have many babies to make presents for, for the holidays this year. Two yet to be born, that means shower gifts will be forthcoming too, and my little nephew Mason. I thought it would be cute to give each of them a little hand made bear. The pattern is from Last Minute Fabric Gifts, though I adapted it slightly to my liking by giving the little dude eyes.



He's not quite as lumpy looking in person as he is in this photo, I'm quite pleased with how this came out. It's odd, but the colors I chose are EXACTLY the colors of my childhood bear Pookie - who I'll have to introduce to this blog someday - I didn't even realize it before I put it together! They'll be two more of these to follow, hopefully I can keep up the ass-kicking on my Christmas list ;)

CHRISTMAS SPOILER :: MOM DO NOT READ THIS POST

Let me tell you something about my mom.

My mom is a bag lady.

My mom is a bag lady and boy do I follow closely in her footsteps in that regard!

Rarely are we Duclos women seen carrying purses. God forbid! They are much too small to accommodate everything, except the kitchen sink, which we need to be carrying with us at all times, just in case. Of course there are specific bags for specific jobs...The magazine bag, in my mom's case, sometimes categorized into different bags, or sections of one bag by topic: craft magazines and cooking magazines. There's a small purse within one of these bags that holds the essentials, wallet, keys, checkbook and the like. Then there's the ever present project bag, or knitting bag. This is where my mum's Christmas gift will come in handy!

You see - all of these bags that follow my mother around, are always full to the brim. Scissors, needles, threads, crochet hooks all become buried in the rubble of crafty goodness. When I saw Mackville Road's Sewing Bag Tutorial I knew that it would be a perfect, useful, yet sweet gift for my mom for Christmas.

I chose one of mum's favorite color combinations for this, red on white, or natural in this case...



There's an awesome little felt needle booklet on the inside.



Pockets...



I did modify one step of the tutorial. I attached the cover section to the back pocket via machine before stitching up the sides of that pocket. I'm lazy and I didn't feel like hand sewing it. It was a little tricky to maneuver via machine, but I like how it came out!

I'm going to tuck some fun things inside, like new spools of basic black and white thread, needles, some pretty pins, some special buttons. I hope that she likes it! Thanks again to Diane of Mackville Road for posting the tutorial.