I’ve always loved making cards and filling them up with LOTS of words, but this was the first time I mixed crocheting and card-making and I really like it!

This card was for a bridal shower I recently attended. The bride’s registry included these luxurious-feeling white towels with olive-sagey stripes and her kitchen registry included lots of red things. I went to find a gift bag large enough to hold the towels and realized that a large gift bag was going to cost over $5! While passing the Target storage section I found a red canvas bin that cost a little over $5. Why not package the towels in something useful?

I wanted the red and green to coordinate somehow and happened to find the perfect scrapbook paper with a dark red and sage green design in my huge bin of horded scrap papers. I also found a handmade scrap of white paper with green embroidery thread embedded in it that I’d forgotten I’d made years ago, which reminds me that I should really get my paper-making stuff out again. I think Jho would really like to do that one day.

My own, personal heart pattern is a fat, squatty heart and I didn’t really want to use that one for this project. I found this pattern and used it instead. I’ll be writing out my own heart pattern and posting it soon, by the way. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while now.

I left two long ends to the heart, wrapped them around the card, and tied a bow in the back. Now the heart can be removed and reused by the recipient! I debated using an envelope, but thought the card really pulled the gift basket together and added interest the way a pretty tag does. Plus, the crochet I did was with worsted weight yarn so it was a  bit thick to put into an envelope. I really need to buy some cotton crochet thread and some tiny hooks and try making some more delicate things. I just get frustrated with fidgety, nimble handiwork. I like the results, though.

I made this collage card a year ago and now I wish it had had a pretty orange crocheted heart, too.

For this card, I used some found cloth doilies that I cut and glued on. Back then I’d never considered crocheting my own!

I think I might have to experiment with framing crocheted collages in 3D frames! Or maybe take pictures of my amigurumi with collaged backgrounds like I tried to do here.

So many things to try and so little time!

I guess that’s preferable than having no ideas and too much time, right? Right.

I know this is nothing new or exciting, but I definitely plan to take the family to Disney this weekend. It has been a while (and by “a while” I mean more than three weeks) and I’m getting the Disney shakes. I’d like to go check out some of the new Fantasyland attractions opening up little by little. I think parts of the new Storybook Circus part of Fantasyland are up and running. Maybe we’ll go to EPCOT and see the Flower and Garden Festival, though the Flower Power group this weekend is Paul Revere and the Raiders. That’s not nearly as good as next weekend’s The Turtles or May’s Peter Noone of the Herman’s Hermits who I have seen in concert and is one of the most entertaining performers I’ve ever seen.

Speaking of the Magic Kingdom, one of my latest custom orders will have his own tavern inside the newly revamped Fantasyland. Gaston! Check him out…ponytail, chest hair, eyebrows and all!

Until Gaston’s Tavern is open for business, stop by Hollerbach’s Willow Tree Cafe where I’ll be having lunch tomorrow and get some delicious German food and beer and then head down to Park Avenue Massage and Boutique to see some of the best handmade items Central Florida has to offer. There are over 30 artists and crafters represented there now and I am continuously surprised and impressed by the things on offer there. Check out the pictures of boutique items on their new website! http://www.parkmassageboutique.com/

Have a happy and Disney-magical weekend!

You saw the egg-dying results on Sunday, so today I thought I’d show the process. I have been dying yarn since I realized that many of my most-used yarn colors were no longer being made because the company that used to make them was bought out by another yarn company that discontinued the old colorways. I love the cotton yarn I use and don’t want to switch to a different kind of yarn to have more variety of color options, so I decided to delve into yarn-dying. This is only my second batch of dyed yarn, so I’m just a beginner and offer no expert advice….just my experience so far. First, I bought a couple different products to try and to compare. I’ve now used Rit in powder and liquid form, as well as Tulip brand powder dye. I haven’t noticed much difference in the results between the two, other than that the shade labelled on the Tulip pouches don’t accurately describe the color you’re going to get…especially the yellow. The Tulip yellow looks bright yellow on the pouch, but turns out to be more of an orange-yellow when dyed. I used the Rit yellow and it was more the shade on the box.

I chose 6 colors I knew I needed for upcoming projects. I’d never dyed more than one at a time, and that was a bit much. I had to gather up 6 clean buckets, heat 6 gallons of water to steaming, and find several spoons and a pair of tongs for stirring.

I put my son, Jhonen, and my Mom to work. At the bottom of the picture you’ll notice the pile of white yarn waiting to be transformed. It takes a bit of work to get the yarn prepared for their hot, colorful baths.  First, you have to turn the packaged ball into skeins so the yarn can flow around in the water and dye evenly. To do this, we wrapped the yarn around and around something wide. Here you see my son wrapping the yarn around a barstool (make sure you don’t wrap the yarn so tightly around the stool that you can’t pull it off again! oops!)

Then use both ends to tie a little bow loosely around each end of the skein and you get this:

I have debated a lot about that step. I have noticed that my nice skein doesn’t remain nice through the dying process. It always tangles and unravels. I’m going to hopefully remedy this situation in a couple ways next time. Despite the package instructions, I’m not going to stir the yarn next time. The instructions are meant for fabric which I could see bunching and dying unevenly. I don’t think I’ll have that trouble with the yarn. I will just sort of poke at the yarn occasionally to make sure it’s floating around. I also thought of buying a bundt pan specifically for yarn dying and put the skein around the inside of the bundt pan so that the skein remains a skein instead of a bunched up spaghetti-like pile that takes an hour to unravel…or takes your poor Mom an hour to unravel when I force her to do it for me.

I’ve been following the package instructions, adding salt, and leaving the yarn in the hot water for a certain amount of time. I don’t know that the yarn needs to sit as long as it says and have found that I’ve accidentally made my yarn too dark as a result of leaving it in for so long.

Here’s the finished result hung out to dry…and dry….and dry…it takes a loooooong time.

I didn’t want to leave the yarn to bleach out in the direct sunlight, but it wouldn’t dry, so I eventually put the yarn in a 200 degree oven for a couple hours and it dried much better. Here they are!

The pink came out darker than I wanted, the gray came out bluer than I wanted, the orange yellow came out lighter than I wanted, but the others are great! This will take some practice.

As for the eggs, we all had a great time dying them and the color was so instantly vibrant and lovely that we didn’t tie-dye them as I had originally planned. Instead, we dyed the eggs first and used them as our color-testers. Jho loved dying the Easter eggs and his review was, “this is a great activity for me!”

Mom quickly suggested separating the eggs with the coffee filters. They were brushing up to each other and I ended up with a couple unwanted spots. I also ended up with a pooling problem…one side of the eggs have a dark spot on them from sitting too long without being moved.

All-in-all it was fun AND productive and I love that I can keep these pretty colored eggs until next year and then add to the collection with some multi-colored ones. I now regret the decision to make them all one color because, with a small swatch of yarn, I did THIS and I LOVE it:

With results like that, yarn-dying could get addictive. Mom asked that I crochet her an Easter egg using that yarn. I will have to post a follow-up photo of that when it’s finished.

So, that’s that! I have 6 Easter eggs and their 6  matching skeins of yarn that all need untangling and then will turn into happy bumblebees, broccolis, piggies, corgis, octopi, and elephants.

Hope you’re having a happy and colorful week!

Details on the egg and yarn dying process next time!

Happy Easter!