Memorial Day

"Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for remembering the men and women who died while serving in the country's armed forces."

"Veterans Day is not to be confused with Memorial Day; Veterans Day celebrates the service of all U.S. military veterans, while Memorial Day is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving."

The quotes above is from Wikipedia. 

I have the utmost respect and appreciation for current and former members of our Armed Services. But as Monday went on, I became more and more upset by the many, many posts I saw on the various social media sites, treating Memorial Day as if it were Veterans Day. I am proud of and grateful to the members of my family who served in the military, but since none of them (so far as I know based on my genealogy research) died while serving the country, I did not post any photos of them online. I may well do so on Veterans Day, though.

It is sad and rather odd that so many people don't seem to understand the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Or maybe, in the mad rush of "me too-ism" and the consuming desire to post things online, people just don't care.

Crochety

(This post should have been published at the end of March! I just now discovered it wasn't, so here it is.)

Not to be confused with crotchety. Though...that too. ;-) 

I have been knitting since I was a kid, and while I tried crochet about 20 years ago, I didn't stay with it. Made a couple of blankets, then stopped, except for the occasional border around a knitted something or other. Recently I have bit bitten hard by the crochet bug, and have been working on improving my skills and knowledge. One of the things I love about it is that things work up a lot faster in crochet. Above is the blanket made of leftover yarn from other projects (I shared an in-progress photo of it in an earlier  post). I have finally made a serious dent in my stash of medium weight acrylic yarn. And though this blanket is a bit on the small side, more of a throw or lap blanket, really, it has kept me cozy as the top layer on my bed this winter.

My two favorite things in crochet right now are blankets and toys. This owl was my first crocheted toy, and I can't wait to make more.

I especially like granny squares. Who knew there were so many kinds, though?! I used up more stash and tried out some new to me granny square patterns. These were sent to Knit A Square in South Africa, where they will be joined with other squares and made into blankets that will be donated to orphans there.

I am trying to finish up a knitting project or two, then I will get started on another blanket for us! I can't wait to get started.

Baby Gifts

Going back in time a little to show you some things I didn't share at the time. This teddy was a first birthday present for an adorable little boy. I used Lion Brand's Fisherman's Wool for the bear, so unfortunately it can't go in the washing machine; it was all I had on hand. The mom has since told me the bear's name is Bud and that he goes everywhere Ethan goes. :-) The knitting pattern is availble on Ravely and is called Big Bad Beauregarde Bear. Sorry, I still haven't figured out how to make links in this app. It's a wonderful pattern, with everything knit in the round and no sewing to do. I tried to make the card match. I used a bear stamp from the Posh Impressions Circus set, adding colored pencil because I didn't get good coverage when I stamped it. I didn't want to use googly eyes and run the risk that little Ethan might pull them off and put them up his nose or something, so I used a tiny hole punch to make white circles and drew in the black dots. The greeting is by Darcies Country Folk, and the paper was something  i picked up at Target for $1 (package of something like 12 papers).

This was a welcome to the world gift for a baby born last month. I chose the colors based on the layette the parents had picked out. It's just a big garter stitch square with attached i-cord trim. The yarn is a cotton/acrylic blend.

This is the card I made to go with the blanket. The stickers are by Suzy's Zoo.

I've been up to lots of other mischief lately and hopefully will do another post soon. I hope everyone is having a great day.

My Valentines

This is going to be a long post, because I have a lot to share with you. This year I got things in gear early enough to not only send out valentines cards to my parents and sister (and they arrived on time!!) but I also made gifts for the girls. One thing that helped was that I used the same basic design for each of the cards. I am also pleased to tell you that I used up the paper with circles cut out that I had left over from the cards I made for Cards for Hospitalized Kids (the guitar-playing dog). The card above was for my father. The white hearts are by Posh Impressions (a border stamp). The cat is by Eat Cake  Graphics. I stamped him twice, once on plain white paper, and once on patterned paper, to which I added some more dots and some hearts, using a ZIG pen. I think the ladybug sticker is by Stickopotamus, but I might be wrong. The hearts on the red cardstock in all of the cards were inked with VersaMark ink and embossed with white embossing powder. All sentiments were done on the computer. All coloring of images was done with Prismacolor pencils.

My sister's card used a heart stamp by Close to My Heart. The bunny is by Darcie's country Folk.

My mother's card uses a heart by Pacific Stamp Exchange (now sadly out of business) and a bear stamp from Darcie's.

The card on the left was for Liat, and uses a heart stamp by CTMH. The lion stamp is from Stampin Up! and the crown sticker is by Mrs. Grossmans. The hearts on Meital's card (on right) are by Darcie's and the elephant is from the same SU set as the lion.

I would never use "sticker sneeze" (doesn't it just look like that, lol?) on a card, but I figure anything goes on an envelope. I made the pillow gift boxes using a template I found on the Internet. I printed it onto cardstock, then coated the back of the cardstock with glue from a gluestick. I adhered CTMH paper to the back, then scored and cut out the template. The flower stamp is also by CTMH, and was stamped onto watercolor paper that had been colored with Distress Inks and then spritzed with water. The purple embossing powder is by Stampendous. 

I made fingerless mitts for the girls using the leftover yarn from their favorite socks. Meital's was Regia Silk, and as you can see I even had a tiny bit left from each 50 gram skein, after making one sock and one mitt from each skein. I think this will be a great way to use up all of the leftover yarn from making standard ladies' size socks. The mitt pattern is based on a free pattern on Ravelry called Mitt Envy, though I left out the cable decoration. If you are on Ravelry, you can find my detailed notes on my project page.

And last but not least, here are Liat's mitts. I was worried (as it turns out, possibly for no good reason) that I wouldn't have enough yarn, so I added some blue of the same yarn as a design element. The yarn (both colors) is Piedmont Yarn's Oakland Wildsocks, a very nice yarn. While Meital got her Valentine's Day card and gift when she came down for breakfast, Liat didn't get hers until late afternoon. Good thing because I didn't finish these until late morning on Friday!

If you stuck it out all the way until the end, thank you! I hope all of you had a great Valentine's Day and a lovely weekend.

My Kind of Cooking

I'm doing my favorite kind of cooking...cooking up a surprise for my girls! After printing out the pillow box template at Homemade Gifts Made Easy onto light cardstock, I covered the back with glue (good old UHU glue stick) and added some patterned paper. I am using the medium size template, and one piece of 12" x 12" paper was enough for both boxes. I used a piece of cork for a mat and traced around the dotted lines with a bone folder (not sure why it's called that, it can't actually fold bones and it is probably made of plastic. Hmmm...). The cork is cushier than that green cutting mat and made it easier to score the template. Then I cut out the box along the solid lines.

Working on something to go in the boxes. Can't make a gift box and not put anything inside! Using leftover sock yarn, of which I have a ton and a half. I need to make a lot more of these.

And of course, cards to go with the gifts. Gotta make sure everything is ready by Friday! What are you cooking up today?

Let's Chill

A good friend of Meital's has a birthday coming...she really wants a chinchilla for a pet (not going to happen, from what I hear) so I made this card for her, with suggestions from Meital, who hand wrote the message. It says Mazel Tov, which is what Israelis wish one another on their birthdays. I found the image online, and if it's not really a chinchilla, please don't tell me! Hopefully it is, or at least looks enough like one that Yasmin will like it.

I used OWH sketch #160 for the layout. Stickers are Mrs. Grossman, speech bubble stamp by Art Impressions. I used a Cuttlebug embossing folder on the pink cardstock. The pink patterned paper is discontinued Close to My Heart. 

One fine day I will finally use up all of my old paper and be able to get something that was printed in this century!

Card Bowl Third Challenge

Alrighty, last post of the day, I promise! For the third and final challenge of the Operation Write Home Card Bowl, we needed to use the newest sketch, released just this morning, #210 and make, once again, a masculine card suitable for sending to men or boys. I was very excited about dusting off my Posh Impressions stamps, which haven't seen much action in recent years (long story, a problem with fading ink not with the stamps). The stamps I used: tiger, sentiment, and animal print, are part of the Playful Posh Circus set. The fern backfround paper had a white background, but it competed for attention with the animal print, which I really wanted to use. Thanks to one of the many very helpful videos on the OWH YouTube channel, I got the idea to mute the background and make it more of a tone on tone look by sponging over with Peeled Paint Distress Ink. I think it works. I used Memento Tuxedo Blank ink and a multi-colored Kaleidacolor ink pad for the animal print. I stamped the tiger on pale orange cardstock, then boosted the color with a little Wild Honey Distress Ink. After fussy cutting him, I popped the tiger up with 3M foam tape, also known as "the Precious."

I hope you're having a great day! Enjoy the Super Bowl (or not). I would enjoy watching, but it will be broadcast live here, which means about 1:30 a.m. So someone out there have some yummy munchies for me, okay?