I'm Having a Give Away....

...when I reach 300 followers. I am nearly at 300 followers and I thought once I reach 300, I'll give away a special prize to one lucky follower.

I see lots of blogs out there who have more than 1,000 followers and I wonder if I'll ever have that many followers? I also see other blogs who have far fewer followers than myself and I know how hard it can be to get noticed out there in blog land. It's taken me about 5 years of blogging to get close to 300 followers, while others have acquired thousands of followers in far less time. Who knows why some blogs get more attention than others? I'm just so grateful to have so many fabulous followers (yes each and every one of you), so I am not complaining, just making an observation.

Keep a look out for when I announce the give away...it may be soon or it may take a few weeks, or months to hit the big 300 followers...you just never know.
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Mini Japanese Origami Kimonos

I made these Japanese origami fabric kimonos at my fiber arts groups. We had a guest teacher who taught us how to make these.  I had taken a class from her a few years ago, but I had forgotten how to do them. The first 3 photos, I followed the instructions, but I did the last one a little differently. If you know me, you know I am always trying to do things easier and find better ways. Read each caption to learn more.

The first 3 kimonos here are lined with a fabric that you can barley see. The lining makes the fabric thicker and a bit harder to work with, since they are folded and pressed. The only sewing is to sew the lining and the outside fabric together. So that got me thinking...

...and so I tried this kimono without any lining at all. You can't see the lining much anyhow and without the bulk of the lining, it made the kimono easier to fold and press and no sewing was needed. So it was easier to make and I needed half the amount of fabric, since I didn't line it. Can you even see much difference?
 

These kimonos are being given to my daughter. I actually made 6 of them, but 2 were of the same fabrics. She is going to choose the ones she wants to keep and give the rest to her friend who just had a birthday last week. Pin It Now!

Knit Sweater

I knit this pullover sweater in a self stripe yarn.

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Knit Sampler Scarf

I am teaching a beginner knitting class and this is the 2nd project that I will teach the class how to knit. This is a sampler scarf from a free Lion Brand pattern I found online, and it's called The Road Scarf. It is supposed to be longer than this, but I ran out of yarn. I wanted to show the class an actual example of how the scarf and the various stitches should look, so I knit this with a skein of yarn I had on hand. I chose this pattern to teach them how to read a knitting pattern as well as learn how to knit different knit & purl combinations.


Knit Sampler Scarf.



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Pocket Coffee Cup Cozy

"You've got to pick a pocket or two dear, you've got to picket a pocket or two."... This is a free pattern where you can choose between knitting a cozy with a stockinette stitch or a cabled cozy. Here is the pdf pattern.

Knit Pocket Cozy with pocket. The pocket can hold sweetener or a teabag. This was easy to make and a good way to use up some leftover yarn.

The empty pocket here.

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Knit Cotton Bag

Here is my lime green cotton knit bag. I knit this with a cotton yarn (Lily's Sugar & Cream). This was a free pattern from Bernat. It's called the Market Bag. I made a change however to my bag. Even though the knitting was easy to do, I found I was having trouble with the stitch pattern in the directions because I would end up a stitch short every so often. So I started again and decided to to knit a k3, p1 combination instead of the knit pattern they gave in the instructions. It looks very similar to the photo in Bernat's pattern, but it was much easier to knit my way.

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Little Witch Quilt

Witchy Poo. I made this quilt block several years ago with the intent of making a larger Halloween quilt with other Halloween motifs. Well that never happened, so I made this into a small quilt for my daughter so she could hang it up for Halloween. I photographed this quilt by setting it on some Mexican Feather Grass in our yard.

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