Travel Sewing & Knitting

During our spring break a few weeks ago, my aunt and I took a train trip to Boston. The train itself was a bit of an adventure. We started at a small station near(ish) her town in Wisconsin and took a train to Chicago, where we caught the train that we stayed on all the way to Boston.  We were on that one for about 23 hours, and while we had a sleeper car, I apparently can't sleep in a moving train, despite the fact that I have no problems sleeping in cars or on a plane.  Lesson learned.  I wasn't quite as crabby about it on the way back, both because I knew what to expect and the timing worked out better.  I'm not sure whether I would take that long of a train trip again, but it was a cool experience. 

Before we left, I made a few travel accessories.  More coffee cozies, one for my aunt and one for myself, as well as a hot chocolate cozy for O.  I used the same tutorial as the other times I've made them.

Guess which one is O's.

I also made an earbud pouch to throw in my purse.  It's been on my mental to-do list for quite a while, but I kept putting it off, thinking it would be putzy.  Not so; it was quite quick and is super handy.  It and the cozies are great uses for scraps.

We broke out the cozies in the Chicago train station while we were waiting for train #2.

I packed three knitting projects, thinking I'd knit a ton on the train, but I only ended up finishing one and a half.

The first project was some boot toppers for myself.  It was a different pattern than the last two pairs I made, but the same yarn and a similar feel (Details on Ravelry). I am still all about the cables.  I finished them on the way out and wore them a couple of times on the trip.

I also wore them today.

On the way back I worked on a cabled -- of course -- headband to wear running, but I was pretty tired by then and wasn't able to either memorize the cable repeat or manage to keep track of where I was on the chart despite the use of sticky notes and marking the row.  It's called Bamboozled, and that's a pretty accurate description of my state by that point, so I finished it at home (Ravelry details).  I'm quite pleased with it.  I'm more of a hat-wearer in the winter, but like a headband for running in the in-between weather.

This is unrelated to my trip, but my oldest nephew's birthday was shortly before we left.  He recently declared that he should have been named Zebulon, so I broke out the freezer paper and xacto knife and made him this.  Hopefully he found it half as amusing as I did!

And now I need to make a dent in my hour for Spring Kids' Clothes Week.  I have a lot of projects to work on and really only one is something for the kids (a new fleece jacket for O), so I'm going to stick to just an hour a day this time.  Of course I have a long list of things I'd like to make if I have extra time, but that's probably overly optimistic...

Handmade Holidays: All the Rest

So I had big plans for blogging the holiday crafting in a timely manner with nicely categorized posts. It started off well, but then I started reading the A Song of Ice and Fire series and more or less stopped being productive entirely.  A friend sent me the first four books a couple of months ago, and I smartly decided not to start them until after I'd finished my gift-making, but I probably should've held out until I'd both blogged everything and cleaned up my ginormous mess in the sewing room.  I haven't picked up the final book from the library yet, so I'm taking this opportunity to catch up in one big blog post.  I've made a good dent in the cleaning department today too, as I mentioned on Facebook.  Tomorrow, back to reading!

E's most time-consuming gift was a stroller blanket bag thing.  Technical term for sure.  We've been using a Papooska (which seems to be defunct now, unfortunately) on our walks to school and back, but it was getting too short for her.  I basically just enlarged the Papooska, adding about 4" to the width and a foot or so to the length, so it should work for several years.

Snug as a bug

The original had a nylon outer, but I used some lightweight Windpro (I think) stash fabric along with fleece lining like the Papooska.  It's heavier and seems warmer, but the one drawback is that it's considerably bulkier.

 

Like the original, I used reflective tape -- although I wish I'd either have moved it down a few inches or added another stripe -- and used buttonhole elastic to cinch it up.  The buttonhole elastic goes down along the sides below the buckles and through a channel on the top of the back part.

 

There's also some elastic that gathers the bottom and loosely gathers the upper between the buckles.  In hindsight, I'm not sure either of those is necessary.

Other than fabric selection and enlarging it, the only other change I made was to use adjustable buckles rather than snaps.

That's her owl bag peeking out from the bottom of her stroller.

It took waaaaay longer than I thought it would, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.  Since we walk to school pretty much every day -- unless it's below 0F with the windchill like today -- it will get a lot of use.

I made a couple of other blankets also.  For one of my nephews, this one is made from cuddle fleece with a Lego-esque applique, minus the yellow.  The font is Legothick.

I tried to make it the same way as the kindergarten quilts, but since that method requires precision, ironing, and a lot of marking, and cuddle fleece doesn't really allow for any of those things, it didn't go well.  One of the corners is extremely wonky.  Fortunately, my nephew loved how soft is is and wasn't bothered by its issues.

I made O a fleece blanket also.  His was Star Wars fleece on one side and blue cuddle fleece on the other, turned and topstitched, which worked much better with the super-stretchy cuddle fleece.

Christmas morning action shot

Also sneaking into the above picture was the Camp Half-Blood shirt (from the Percy Jackson books) I made for him with a freezer paper stencil.  I'll be sharing more about this one next month as part of Heron's Crafts Storybook Craft Project Series.

For my younger niece, a quick headband from Heather Bailey's Hooray for Headbands (opens a PDF).  This was a fun little pattern.  I think there will be more of these in my sewing future!

Ray participated in a Secret Santa exchange at work.  One of the days, he gave her this ribbon bookmark.  He chose the ribbon, beads and charms; I just  had to put it together.

I also made Ray some Green Pepper Glove-itts like O's in some blindingly bright lime fleece, thinking he might wear them running on really cold days.  He's been wearing them to work, though, instead.  Even better!

I also made the Green Pepper Tuck-Away Balaclava hat, without the balaclava part. I'm not sure if I miscalculated or the sizing is off, but it's way too big, so I still need to decide how I want to fix that one.

And that is finally it for Christmas sewing (okay, there's one more thing I still have to make for my oldest nephew, but that's it for the completed gifts).  I have a few things that need to be sewn up soon, but I probably won't blog again until I've finished A Dance with Dragons.  ;)