I've finally knit for Bean.

Elsie Cardi
Originally uploaded by kdmade

You'd think I would have at least knit her a hat, but no. I'm a bad knitting mama. But I finally found a pattern I love, that knit up in only a few days (hello?! Knitting baby sweaters makes me feel like a knitting superhero), and will be perfect for when we all start school in the Fall. Also, I'm a sucker for raglan sleeves. And patterns with no seams to bind.

I used Knitpick's organic worsted cotton and it knit up like. a. dream. Such a fantastic drape, much softer than I thought it would be. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

I chose not to do the crochet trim even though I was planning on doing it in a contrasting color. I just finished knitting and felt it was perfectly sweet the way it was.

These are some faboo vintage buttons I scored somewhere.
I put it on her this afternoon and she smiled and smiled. I think she understands "handmade".

Does this make me a hacker?

Altoid tin ipod speakers
Originally uploaded by kdmade

I think I might have pulled off my first hack.

We have half of our belongings in storage since our house is on the market, including our CD collection. It's not such a big deal because I have almost everything on my ipod, but the speakers for the ipod live in the bedroom. It's not a huge speaker set and could totally be moved, but when you are living in a house that is on the market, moving anything is not advisable since, at any moment, you may have to move it back for a showing. Also, we are headed for our annual trip to Maine in a few weeks and I wanted to try to find a way to play some music in the car.

Enter the altoid tin ipod speakers. I found this tutorial and thought that little old techno-idiot me could pull of a stunt that was advertised as a "10 minute" project that was so simple a "monkey could do it". Well, 4 hours and a few choice words later, and I'm happy to say that this monkey has herself some portable ipod speakers.

Dear Andrew was quick to point out that I made the project more complicated than it was originally intended to be which must, of course, account for the extra 3 hours and 50 minutes I took to complete it. Well, that and my level of expertise with electronics is best summed up by the fact that installing one of those little snake thingees to wrap around and control all of the cords for my computer makes me feel like I've accomplished a huge technological feat. I didn't use earbud style earphones so getting the speakers out was a little more tricky than it needed to be. I used one big saffron tin instead of two altoid tins because I thought it would be cool to be able to store my ipod in there as well. Also, there was a wire connecting the two speakers and I didn't want to have to cut through any more wires that absolutely necessary. Let's just say I was a bit shaky on the whole putting-the-wires-back-together part of the project. I mounted the speakers onto a piece of really thick cardboard that was a pain in the freaking arse to cut through and then found a cool picture from an old calendar (yes, there is a reason why I save all of my cool, old calendars!) to cover the masonite/speaker mess.The speakers were hot-glued to the masonite, the masonite was hot-glued into the tin, the card covering was stuck into place with glue dots and Bob's your uncle, we have speakers!

I did have to cut the wire that runs into the ipod so that I could get it through the back of the tin . Splicing it back was no biggie, except I had no idea what they meant by using a lighter to melt the plastic after twisting the wires back together. The only plastic I could think of was the casing for the wire and I couldn't think of any reason why I would want to melt that. Just wrapping the wires wasn't reliably working though. At one point I actually got it to work, glued it all together, and then found it wasn't working anymore. In the end, I realized that there was a plastic fibery part in each the wires (along with the metal parts of the wire) and I took a lighter to that. That did the trick and I had sound!

I don't know if these are going to be loud enough for a car ride, but we'll test that out shortly. In the meantime, they are totally great for around the house and I now have a pretty place to store my ipod!

Quilt Along Progress!

Quilt Along!
Originally uploaded by kdmade

OK, technically I'm a week behind here. I blame it on the heat. I've decided that, in the new house, I'm going to put the craft room on the second floor and our guests can roast their bippies off on the third floor while I happily work in the relative cool of the second floor. But in this house, I'm stuck and dear lord it's hot up there...only an idiot would add to that heat by turning on an iron. Ahem.

I actually have two more of the patchwork sides done for this quilt so I need to do two more and then sew on the next round of white strips to be caught up. Despite the fact that the heat is showing no signs of letting up, I think I might be able to crank it out tomorrow and then be up up to speed. Good thing, because I hate being behind (yes I was THAT kid who turned everything in on time)!

I'm trying to keep with the random nature of the quilt by pulling my pieces from the basket, but I'm not sure it's a perfect solution. A lot of the squares stuck together after I'd cut and stacked them because I'm not sure I mixed them all up well enough. I'm getting scared that I'm going to end up with 25 peices in the same pattern at the very end, but we'll see.

If I don't melt finishing up this week's work, maybe more pictures tomorrow!

Gathering Moss

Gathering Moss
Originally uploaded by kdmade

After waking up at 5 am this morning (house-selling stress) I decided to a) make myself a caramel latte*, and
b) pack up my moss in preparation for our move.

OK, maybe I'm a little crazy but how do I know if the new owners will love the moss or if they, like the previous owner before us would take drastic measures to destroy it ("I just spray it with bleach!" he said, generously handing over the pesticide sprayer he regularly filled with bleach to get the job done). That said, there are no new owners yet, just potential buyers who are snooping through our house and the fact of the matter is that some folks just don't get that moss-covered brick is a good thing, not a neglected shade garden. So our realtor (who is also our friend) gently suggested we do a little yard work this weekend since we have, in this insane heat, recently given up many of our plants for dead. She said nothing of the mossy walkway, but I decided that that's exactly what she was referring to. I mean, I was going to take the moss anyway!

So that is how I ended up at 5:30 in the morning, in my nightshirt and leggings with a caramel latte in hand, gently scraping up the moss with a spackling knife. In this picture you can see part of the walkway that I've de-mossed. I left some in some places (I mean, for pete's sake, I couldn't take all the woodsy-gnomey charm out of the garden) and the walkway actually curves around at the top so there was a lot of moss to be harvested.

In my moss class I was told that I should lay the moss out on some sort of screen or something with a fan blowing up underneath it to try to dry it out and allow it to go dormant (that's how they ship it all over), but we have a showing tomorrow night and I can't see a realtor trying to explain away a basement full of moss and fans. It was pretty dry anyway, thanks to the insaneinthemembrane heat that is killing everything green right now, so I put it into a box, stacked moss-side to moss-side (I gathered enough moss to fill a copy paper box!) and put it in the basement. We'll see what the movers think when I hand them a box that says "moss! live plants!" all over it.

*my caramel latte involves this stuff. I'm not trying to be overly dramatic or anything, but it's kind-of given me reason to live when the house selling stress really gets to me.

and, p.s., I finally figured out how to post to my blog from Flickr. I'm not sure what else to say about that, except that I'm feeling quite techno-savvy right now (it doesn't take much).

I'm a Moss Maven.

No one ever told me what Date Night would turn into when you had a kid. Come to think of it, I never considered asking because every night is Date Night when you are childless; it's only when you are suddenly responsible for a little person's life that you look up one day, see your partner scraping poo off a diaper into the toilet and think "oh, hey. I remember you...you're kind of cute, want to go out?" only to fall asleep 10 minutes later just because the baby finally went down. A year into our new roles as parents and we're finally realizing that baby-free time is OK. It helps that we have two eager grandparents who want nothing more than to stare at Bean all night so really, I don't know what took us so long.

Enter: the Moss Date.

I like moss. A lot. In our current house we have a fantastic shade garden with a lovely brick path that is covered in moss. When we bought the house, the previous owner told us that it got slippery and so every once in a while he (sit down for this one) sprayed bleach on the moss to kill it. He was generous enough to leave us his bleach-spraying device, even. After promptly throwing the sprayer out, we sat back and watched the moss take over, carpeting the walk and making the space feel positively enchanted. I had no idea how to cultivate moss, but any time I'd be digging around in the shade garden, I'd toss any dislodged mossy bits onto new ground, stomp on it a few times and leave it be. Turns out, this plus a little water is about all you have to do to grow moss.

So when Moss Acres hosted a moss workshop in nearby Radnor, I said to Andrew: I'd like to go to that and can we drop off Bean at her grandparents and have dinner and call it a date? And that is how we ended up getting a coffee, learning about moss, and having grilled cheese at a diner on our (I think) second official date since Bean arrived.

And here is what I am thinking about now...

- There are 22,000 species of moss. I'd like to know about at least 10...seems like a good start.

- I need to gather some of the moss from this house and move it with us to our next house. I also need to start sourcing old bricks so that I can recreate our little path. And I need to take the rock that I moved into the garden which is now covered with moss with me to the new house. Sorry new homeowners, you can't have my mossy rock.

- I need to put a moss green roof on the chicken coop in the new house. I don't know how I'm going to accomplish this, but I really, really need to do it.

- I need to spread the word that sphagnum moss / peat moss is bad bad bad because it is being overharvested and is destroying ecosystems.

That is all. Go moss!

Stray dogs and center squares.

We found a little beagle on the side of the road very near to our house on Thursday night. It had a collar with a rabies tag, but nothing else. It took a long time to track down the owner...we called the vet from the tag who didn't want to give us the address but called the owner on our behalf. They reached the wife who was out of town who couldn't get a hold of her husband who was with the kids at the park. Arg. The dog (Celie) was very sweet but very eager to explore her surroundings and without a leash, I spent a good half-hour hunched over, keeping her held back by her collar. We got her back to our house and borrowed a leash from a neighbor and waited outside, but not before Celie got a little freaked, strained against the leash and succeeded in pulling my back out of whack. You may remember that I threw my back out a few months ago while needlepointing. Well, at least this time I was being slightly more athletic, but the result is just as crappy: I'm OK lying down or standing up, but sitting really hurts.

Nevermind, I have a quilt along to keep up with! I've been going at it in short bursts since I can't sit for too long, but so far I have all of my strips sewn, a little less than half of them ironed, and the center of my quilt all made up. Pretty, pretty!And in the interim, when I have to be lying down, I am happily involved in the fourth book of the Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. I'd started the series a while back, put it down and then picked it back up again when I heard they'd done an HBO series based on the book. I think these are just about the sweetest stories ever (perfect summer reads) and although I think Jill Scott and the woman playing Mma Makutsi are doing a wonderful job, there is a lot lost in translation. I also cannot figure out why new characters have been made and plots changed significantly (like, entire mysteries are solved to be something completely different) but I'm trying to be open minded about it. I think that's what Mma Ramotswe would want at least! Anyway, I have lots to do while laying down, even if I can't figure out how to rig my sewing machine so that I can operate it whilst horizontal.

Simple tools, scary tools.

Here's the latest progress on my JJ blouse...
I covered some buttons which was very fun and a little addicting. You get a little kit that comes with a simple tool to make the covered buttons. It's kind of like the potato chip phenomenon, you can't make just one. I don't think this project calls for seven buttons, but I couldn't help myself! Extras will be dealt with in an appropriately crafty fashion.

I also secured my ruffle (I'm using only the one ruffle on the princess seams) to my shirt. More importantly, I USED MY SERGER! That's right, that wonderful machine that I have owned for (dare I admit it) over two years now and haven't used yet. Well, I did try to use it once. I'm a big believer in the no-first-project-is-too-big-too-attempt and therefore I decided to break my serger in making a t-shirt. Out of knit fabric. Had I ever worked with knits before? Did it really matter because could anyone have convinced me not to try knits for my first serging project? Long story short: major failure; serger gathered dust (and the occasional pissy sideways glance from moi) while covered in knit t-shirt fabric for a few years. But I bought a book, mustered up some confidence and found the rolled edge stitch on my cotton fabric to be very easy. Yay!

I'm continuing with my french seams, though it seemed a little odd to make them over the ruffle. May be a little too bulky in the end, but we'll see. For now, I'm still loving the project, though the impending sleeve and collar instructions are scaring me. Never mind, I still have my quilt along project to distract me...