Posts filed under 'Crafts'
This is a yoga mat bag that I created for Sew News magazine. A friend of mine is a yoga instructor and I was inspired to create something for her, and it seemed like a good piece for a magazine too. I whipped up a test sample out of cotton, changed a few things–mostly how the strap was hanging and the pocket size–and wrote a pattern. I used a heavy canvas for the final bag and picked a fabric that is bold (what I’m typically drawn to) in a color palette I thought she might like.
You can make a yoga mat bag from the pattern I wrote and find lots of other great project ideas in the winter issue of Sew News. I’ve seen it at Barnes and Noble and other bookstores. I’ve got another pattern coming out in the spring as well! It was such fun, hopefully they’ll want me to write a few more.
January 12th, 2009
Wow, after two weeks of being locked out of my blog because of a horrible WordPress (yes, WP I am very upset with you right now. we need to talk.) error, I’m back! My sweet husband seems to have fixed the log-in problem, after much stressing on my part.
We had a wonderful Christmas break, much of it spent trapped inside by the 16 inches of snow clogging the roads outside. I baked and baked–chocolate pistachio biscotti, cranberry cornmeal biscotti, amaretti, peppermint bark, Christmas wreath sugar cookies, shortbread, and a homemade hot chocolate mix. I packaged these up with pretty cellophane and gave them as gifts (of course I forgot about the picture). It was so nice to have the time to leisurely bake and enjoy being cozy inside. That is until six days go by and you start to feel trapped and your husband’s 30th birthday is canceled because of the weather!
I took the full two weeks off from work. I’ve been here for nearly two years now and have never taken that much time off. It was lovely and I feel completely detoxed, although life back at work has been rough–paying the price for my free time!
Hopefully my posting will not be so sporadic in the new year!
January 7th, 2009
These are the ornaments we made for Aja’s tree. Aren’t they cute? They were very low-key to make. We gathered sticks from the yard, hot glued them and tied them with twine to make a star. The hearts and icicles are white, no-bake clay that we formed to shape and then painted/glittered. They look so nice on her tree, in her country/English/modern-style.
And these are the pickled green beans all prettied up for gift giving. I made cranberry shortbread to go with it.
We’re in a winter wonderland (or Arctic Blast 2008 as the news is calling it) here in Seattle. I’ve got four inches of snow at my house and the roads are really really icy. I didn’t go into work yesterday and it looks like I’ll be home today unless the sun is warmer than the news predicts. It’s really beautiful. The city has few to no snow plows and we have hills like San Francisco has hills, so the roads are literally shut down. My work is downtown, a little over a mile from my house, but most of the trip (that I usually walk there and bus back) is a 70 degree incline. Any and all buses that service our hill have been suspended. People were out last night on one of the main roads using any and everything to sled down it! While I do like snow days, I don’t like being stuck. But I can’t complain, we have heat and warm food. But we are supposed to go to Portland for Ryan’s birthday on Sunday, so hopefully things will be tamer by then.
December 19th, 2008
We went with Aja and Ben in Connecticut to a tree farm to pick out their Christmas tree. Aja decided she wanted a big tree. Ben found an adorable tree farm just down the road from their house, complete with barn, 200-year-old stone fences, and an acre of trees. We found nearly the largest one, farthest away from the car. It measured almost 10 feet and probably 12 feet around.
The boys were very manly, chopping it down, carrying it to the car, and securing it.
It was such a lovely day outside, a little brisk but not frigid. The sun was shining, and we had good company.
Aja and I spent hours handcrafting some ornaments for it. We strung 40 feet of cranberries, dried 6 oranges and made ornaments out of them, knotted twigs together to make star shapes, and twisted clay to make icicles that we dusted with white glitter. It’s a very pretty tree!
December 15th, 2008
We went to Connecticut for Thanksgiving to celebrate with dear friends, who hosted us graciously. We had a lovely Thanksgiving meal that was purely vegetarian–quite the treat for two vegetarians amongst large families of meat eaters. Both of us each had a must Thanksgiving recipe, both of which were “salads” as they like to call them in the Midwest. A pretzel salad (a crust of butter and crushed pretzels, a layer of cool whip and cream cheese, topped with strawberry jello and chunks of strawberries) and what we call Acini de Petri. The table was decorated, the food was delicious, and the company was divine.
I’ve got more images to post from our trip, but I’ll save those for later.
Thanks for all the kind words on my last post. It was a really hard week, especially to follow such a lighthearted trip to the East Coast. But, I’m happy to be here. And very thankful for all that I have.
December 11th, 2008
I don’t think I’ve ever been away from the blog this long! I wanted to write a note to say that I’ve had a death in my family and am not gone, just otherwise engaged. I am aiming to be back to posting this week. I hope this finds you and yours well.
xo,
Dacia
December 8th, 2008
These are the dresses from our Project Runway challenge. We each were tasked with choosing a fabric we hadn’t worked with before and making a dress without a pattern. There were five contestants and all the dresses were so cute. Mine isn’t pictured, but I’ll post a picture soon. Sarah worked with silk and I thought had the most well made and well tailored dress. It’s the burgundy one with the pretty trim. Kate’s won the cutest prize, and who wouldn’t have guessed with that baby in a matching dress! And Emily’s was the most fashion forward with the vintage-inspired top and Pucci-esque bottom. I don’t know what mine was, ladies?
The oohing and aahing was followed by dinner at my house. We had a salad, white beans with pecorino and sage, and manicotti. The girls were so kind as to bring dessert. We also had apple crisps with ice cream!
We’re going to continue with our own, personal project runway. The next project is lingerie, inspired by Angry Chicken who made the most gorgeous slips and what she calls “tap pants.” We mentioned our plan when the boys came to pick up their wives and they were all giddy with thoughts of lace and ties and frills and were very disappointed to find out that lingerie can mean PJs, slips, and boring things, too! At least one in the group has plans to make maternity flannel pajamas.
November 20th, 2008
It was my sister-in-law’s birthday last weekend so I made a big dinner and had my in-laws over. I wanted to use the pumpkin–the biggun’–that we bought at the farm and debated over stew versus risotto. The stew was sounding a little bland to me, so I made saffron risotto and stuffed the pumpkin with it. The only thing I didn’t take into account is how long it would take to make enough risotto to feed twelve–about an hour and a half! I cleaned the pumpkin and baked it for about 30 minutes before stuffing it with the risotto, after the risotto was in I cooked it for another 30 minutes at 300, based on this recipe. It was delicious! And very orange! Continuing with that theme, I made roasted carrots with thyme, a delicious salad with orange vinaigrette, and butterscotch cake from the Nigella Lawson book. I think my favorite part was the salad. It was made with mixed greens, walnuts, shaved pecorino, shredded red cabbage, and pears sauteed in butter and brown sugar. The dressing is as follows:
Orange Vinaigrette
1 small shallot, minced
2 tbsp. squeezed orange juice
1 tbsp. orange zest
4 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp white vinegar
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp. salt
The cake wasn’t as good as I imagined it would be. I wouldn’t make it again–it wasn’t very sweet, was too dense, and tasted a bit more like a biscuit with unsweetened caramel cream cheese frosting. I did have fun making my own caramel, a first for me. It was pretty easy and very delicious on its own!
November 11th, 2008
Ryan and I spent a few hours at the pumpkin patch on a lovely autumn Saturday two weeks ago. There were kids, a corn maze, and kettle corn popping. The weather was sunny and brisk–a perfect day for a stroll through the farm. We decided on the South 47 farm in Redmond.
I had originally wanted to get all dark green pumpkins to mimic a spread I saw in Martha that was beautiful and dark. I had white pumpkins last year, so it seemed like a good change of pace.
But, they didn’t have any quite dark enough and I really liked the “Cinderella” pumpkins, partly because of the name and mostly because of the gorgeous orange color and the creamy white stripes. So we loaded our wheel barrel with these.
The had this gorgeous wooden box full of gourds. They had stools pulled up next to it so kids could climb up and pick out the ones they liked. I always chose the half and half ones. Doesn’t it seem odd that something could be split so perfectly like that?
And then there was this spread of edible squash–you can see the mini Cinderella pumpkins in the middle there. I just love all of the coloring on squash. It’s so pretty!
We headed home with about 20 pounds of edible pumpkin and a large bag of kettle corn–that was completely emptied by the time we got home.
November 4th, 2008
I had a plan to make a kitty basket from fabric. My great grandma used to use her leftover fabrics to make braided rugs. I always loved how they looked and thought it might be nice to try the technique in basket format. I braided about 8 yards of rope, but when I started to coil it realized that a) I would still need another 16 yards, and b) that the braid was not nearly tight enough and the fabric not nearly sturdy enough/thick enough. I have no idea how this is done and now wish I’d done a little research before diving in, but that’s the nature of trying things out. I’m a little hesitant to start over with this, because I probably spent two hours mindlessly braiding. But I have no clever ideas of what else to do with the length of rope I made. Any ideas?
I have great plans to go to a pumpkin patch and do some vintage hunting tomorrow. Hopefully the weather holds up and I can get Ryan on board! Hope you all have a lovely weekend.
October 24th, 2008
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