Toffee!

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Originally uploaded by dippitydo2000

Lots and lots of toffee. I plan on sending it out to friends and family. It's from the 101 Cookbooks blog. It was easy to make and tastes wonderful - butter, sugar, chocolate and pecans always taste wonderful though, don't they? I have a few more baked goods to make to add to the packages. My goal is to get it done and shipped by Wednesday. Wish me luck!

We had Nick's 6th birthday party this weekend also. I'll try to post pictures of the robot cake and goodies if I get a chance. The holiday is bearing down on me though and I feel I am running out of time to get everything done.

Version 3.0

I finally got back to the sewing machine and made another pair of fingerless gloves. I cut into the black sweater and was able to get 4 pairs out of it - this is the first one. And it has a thumb - yay!



I ordered some of this premium wool felt from here to embellish the remaining pairs. Wow, this felt is sooooo much nicer than the 35% wool/65% rayon from the local craft/sewing store. I am glad I splurged (the felt cost more than the thrifted sweaters!).

Now I need to crank out 3 more pair of black, 3 pair of pink and maybe a couple of ivory before Christmas. I am shirking all my other responsibilites at this point so I think I am going to have to give up the dream of getting it all done.

Brilliant

Two left hands.



Brilliant, huh?

On the plus side, I think I figured out how to add a thumb.

Upcycled, baby!

I hit up Value Village on Saturday and found three cashmere sweaters for a total of $18 and some change. There were a few more but the condition and colors weren't so great. I may have to go back and get them though because I am over the moon with how these fingerless gloves turned out.



Here I am pretending to be a hand model with not so good results (ignore the man hands, please!).



For the ruffled pair, I cut up the front of the sweater into two rectangles and two long strips. I zig-zagged the edges of the long strips and sewed a gathering stich down the center. On the rectangles, I did a little hem were the thumbholes are, sewed the ruffle on, hemmed the bottom and then sewed up the side, leaving the thumbhole open.

The other pair with the buttons was made from the sleeves. I did the thumbholes, bottom hem and side hem as above and just stitched on the decorative buttons.

I still have the back of this purple sweater left and two more sweaters - one black and one ivory with tiny cables. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to work on them this week.

Thanks for reading!

Mr. Funny Bones and Skully

I made a couple of softies for the boys from this tutorial.  It's super easy and, if you buy a 10-pack of socks from Target for $6.99 like I did, it's super cheap! I may make a couple more for the Toy Society.  If so, I'll stuff them a bit more - I think these were a little understuffed and show too many wrinkles around the neck and mouth.  Now I just need to figure out what to do with the 6 other pairs of crew socks......

Get ready for a handmade holiday.

One of my favorite blogs is gearing up for a handmade holiday. Please check it out here!


I've also added a button to the Handmade Gift Guide on the right side of my blog page.

I am planning on making (read: completing!) some handmade gifts this year. I bought a pattern from Ravelry for a super fast and cute gift that I plan to give to the nieces and some friends. For now I am keeping it a secret but I will post some pictures when I have some FOs!

I'm a Slacker

Well, it's obvious that I am a blog slacker. Over 2 months since my first ever blog post.....no pictures to show you what has been going on but if your interested in a few tidbits, keep on reading!

I could have posted about this lemon blueberry buckle I made and told you all (is anyone reading this, anyway?) how absolutely wonderful it was. But I never took a picture of it so I felt like I shouldn't blog about it without a picture. I will say that if you get the chance, you absolutely should make it. It is sweet and tart, moist and dense. Just wonderful.

I also made this awesome apple crumble cake with some granny smith apples a co-worker gave to me that were straight from the orchard. This is another one that you (anyone there?) people should make. Easy, moist, tart and good right out of the oven or at room temp. And I need to give a shout out to Posie and her Sour Cream Apple Pie. I made two or more last fall and wolfed them down. I am not really a pie person but this I loved. Tart (I'm on a tart kick, I guess) and creamy from the apples and sour cream. And super easy to make if you use a store-bought pie crust (like lazy ol' me).

Finally, I got around to making another toy for the Toy Society. I did manage to take pictures of the toy and the drop, as seen below. Hallelujah. The pattern is super quick and fun to make with scraps. I changed the face, as you can see from the original. I thought I wanted something more delicate but I didn't quite get the impact that the other face makes. Oh well, hopefully someone will love it. The toy was dropped in the vegetable garden at the Kennewick Grange Park on the gourd teepee. We're having one of our lovely wind storms, so hopefully the gourd vines will shelter it until someone finds it.