Harvesting Yarn

Recycling older or unused sweaters is a great way to get cheaper yarn. You can find a more in-depth tutorial here

Preserving your children's artwork

I got this idea from my good friend, Liza. Since I love primitive stitchery, I thought this would be a great way to display my kids' artwork. I traced the artwork with a pencil on muslin using a window or a light box. Once it's traced, I chose the same embroidery floss colors that the children used in their artwork. When the embroidery was done I covered a cookie sheet with tin foil and laid the muslin over it. Then I boiled a cup of water and put two or three tea bags in the cup and let soak for a few minutes. When that was ready I took the tea bags and used them like a sponge, dabbing water from the tea cup onto the muslin till the whole surface was wet. Put the cookie sheet with the muslin on it into the oven and set it to bake at the lowest setting. Check the muslin ever 10 minutes until it is dry. Then take it out of the oven and remove it from the tin foil. All that's left to do is frame it!  

The hands I had traced off some individual artwork off projects from school. I made it as a Christmas present to ourselves. 

When Laura was four the story was her Family Home Evening lesson that she gave to all of us. In the original she used a real leaf that we still have taped to the paper we helped her to write it on.  

This was self-portrait of my youngest daughter, Sarah. I used the same colors that she did right down to the freckles. 

On the left is a snowman Laura drew, once again I used the same colors she did, hence the brown snowman. On the right is a drawing Sarah did of our visit to Kennebunkport, Maine where we played on the beach and fed the seagulls.

Just a little spring cleaning...

I spent part of the day organizing my Bond Knitting Machine area. 

Usually I have them covered with embroidered dresser scarves to keep the dust out of them. 

My most used keyplates are in the blue basket and my tools are up in the red wooden box. The white cigar tins are holding my larger sized crochet hooks and are labelled on top.

When I'm working on a pattern it goes against a salvaged piece of metal that has quite a few magnetic strips across it to hold the pattern up and to keep my place. I made the magnetic strips by gluing on grosgrain ribbon to the strip, works great and looks cute. 

The original bond is the cream colored one that I got as a gift from my husband when my children were little. I since then bought the blue one at Goodwill for six dollars. I combined them to make it larger. They both work fantastically. 

The white muslin that is hanging underneath the machines helps me to better see my project when I'm manipulating stitches. The basket to the right is filled with old Bond magazines and patterns and in front of that are my claw weights.