Updating With Home Projects

Hello!  Long time, no hear; I know.  For me, craftwise, 2016 was somewhat of a writeoff.  I made the decision back in May that I would not be participating in craft shows last year.  I needed to tend to some family and personal matters and just didn’t have the steam to prepare for shows for the fall season.  That decision guided me, because I was very tempted to apply for “just this one show” a few times!!  Overall I am glad I slowed down in that regard.

On a personal note, one of the highlights of the year was my older child’s high school graduation!  He completed a home-based education (Yes, Grades Primary to 12) and was accepted with full scholarships to a BSc program in a university, so he is pretty content with that.  My younger child is working her way through home-based education high school, with a few different plans in mind for afterwards (and with a ton of extracurricular activities during!).

Back to crafting:  I have been “making” still even though not producing to sell very much (though I did sell a couple of pairs of the cashmere mittens from the last post soon after it was posted).  Remember this post about granny squares from last year?  Well, I finally finished making one set of those granny circle squares and assembled them into a cozy blanket for my daughter.  She wanted a white border, so I crocheted one on.  I love the bright watermelon, blue, and green colours repeated everywhere.  She likes snuggling with it in bed while reading.

crochet granny circles squares blanket watermelon blue green white with white border

Usually for Christmas gifts, I try to make things for the people to whom we are giving presents.  As I said above, 2016 was a writeoff craftwise.  So a couple weeks before Christmas I said to my family, “How about we all just give each other food gifts from the farmer’s markets around here?  It’ll be fun and simple, and we’ll have some unique and possibly gourmet products.  It’ll also help local makers.”  So that’s what we did.  One Saturday about an hour before closing time, I whipped my way around the Halifax Forum Farmer’s Market.  I quickly scanned booths, figuring out what each of my kids plus my husband might like.  I couldn’t quite believe it, but this was pretty easy!  I found gifts for everyone within the hour, and I put a little money into the pockets of three different vendors.  I felt a little bad that I didn’t get gifts for anyone else in my life, but 2016 was just not the year for that.

And then a few days before Christmas, my usual desire to make something for my daughter kicked in (I have been making things for her since she was born).  She was in a phase of loving sunrise/sunset colours and galaxy images, so I wondered what to do.  One day in a thrift store I found a big cushion, so I snagged that and set to work making a padded cushion cover for her.  I dug out my cotton fabric scraps, decided on blues, pinks, purples, and oranges; and set to work creating a patchwork design similar to four of the pillows in this post.  I layered this over some padding to add more “squish” for her (she loves coziness) and added a simple black back envelope cover.  I couched some sky blue cotton yarn over the whole thing to make it look galaxy-like.  The result is below:

Sunrise Sunset crazy patchwork padded orange blue pink batik pillow cushion cover

One other personal project I did was crocheting a hat for a friend going through cancer.  I researched “chemo caps” and discovered that soft linings are necessary.  When I mentioned that to her because I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it completely comfortable for her, she told me she wears a soft cotton baby hat under all her headgear, so it didn’t matter.  She also said she loved bright colours and fun designs, so yippee!!  I could do whatever I wanted in the design!  😀  Here is the result:

purple crochet cotton hat beaded edge orange blue flower

purple crochet cotton hat beaded edge orange blue flower

I hope this brings you somewhat up to date.  I have a few more posts to share in the next week or so, as I’ve been taking some other photos of things I am working on.  THIS year I do plan to apply for craft shows!  On a somewhat funny (in hindsight) note, I filled out an entire application a couple of weeks ago for a big spring show here.  Around 10:30 p.m. on the night of the deadline, I was all set to press “Enter” to submit the application, when, BOOM, all got lost somewhere in cyberspace.  Clicking “back” did not recover my application.  I could have worked like a madwoman to create a new one (now that I’d gone through the process once, everything was fresh in my mind) before midnight, but I was too tired to care anymore.  Oh well, next time.  I will keep you posted!  I have really missed taking photos of my work and showing you!!!

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