Knit Market Bag

 For the holiday Bazaar in November, I made a LOT of little knit stockings. It reminded me how much I enjoy a good craft project and how little mess a knitting project creates compared to a sewing project. I was reminded of 4 friends and family members who have taken the time with me over the years to teach me how to knit and crochet (My great aunts, my mom, Aimee, and Ginger.) Thanks ladies for helping me through the awkward stages of learning this skill so I can pick it back up whenever I like and continue learning new things with the knowledge, skills, and confidence you have given me. I think I you all everytime I pick up my needles or hook.

Knit Market Bag

I started with a knit market bag for my daughter. She loves being friendly to the environment and bringing her own bag places. So I made it with that in mind. 

Photo from Sheep&Stitch.com

Pattern:

Website: Market Bag Knitting Pattern (and Free Video Tutorial) - Sheep and Stitch

Youtube: https://youtu.be/jHwBql133Zo?si=By6bXTEGzt3PLNUj

Needles: 32″ 3.5mm circular needle

Yarn: 2 Skeins Cotton yarn (You will only need a small amount of the 2nd skein)

Time Investment:

I made some mistakes my first time around interpreting the pattern, so I had to start again and watch the youtube video to clarify what I was missing. But once I got things figured out, it took me about 4 weeks of knitting as we watched TV as a family each night before bed.

Pros:

The bag looked small when I completed it, but it stretches very nicely and adjusts well to most items you might want to put in it.

Cons: 

What I noticed was that since it took a whole skein of yarn + a little of a second, when not in use, the bag does not condense well. It takes up as much room as a skein of yarn would.  

Also, the open lacework that makes it stretch so easily, allows rain/dirt to come into the bag. So it was good for my daughter's California vacation but it might not protect her books when she takes it home to rainy Seattle.

Would I make it again:

Yes, if I had another environmentally-friendly friend I wanted to make something for. I presented this bag to my daughter when she came home for the holidays. She had to travel so light that she was not able to bring a purse/bag to put her wallet in. She ALWAYS loves to carry a book with her wherever she goes, so she seemed happy to receive it and used it to take her wallet, book, and personal items with her wherever she went during her 2-week visit.

If I wanted to make something similar that condensed better, my mother told me to try something called "jute" (I'm not sure of the spelling) that is much thinner.

I have some more projects I am going to make with the leftover cotton yarn.

Holiday Bazaar Prep

My kids are frequently asking if they can sell stuff to our neighbors. Not for a school fundraiser, just in an effort to earn some cash above and beyond their allowance. The boys normally want to do a lemonade stand but over the years, we have had the kids pop up stands in the front yard to sell paper airplanes, bracelets, hot chocolate... 

However, living on base, there are some strict rules about selling stuff to prevent competition with the Government-run stores/facilities. So you have to wait for opportunities offered by the base and do it on their schedule. In Gulfport it was the quarterly garage sale. Here in Lemoore, we have signed up to sell stuff in a booth at the annual Holiday Bazaar.

Here are the items we prepared to sell at the bazaar:

Keepsake Ornament-Dog Tags $3 each 

I ordered some dog tags with the name of the base and "Christmas 2023" imprinted on them to sell as ornaments. With Shipping and handling, we paid $1 for each, the kids will get $2 profit off of each tag sold. I was surprised, these didn't sell as well as I thought they would. But my husband enjoyed passing them out at work, so it turned out okay.

Salt dough snowflakes $2 for a set of 3.

These are cheap to make with items already in your kitchen and craft area. Plus they are made by children, so no one is paying top dollar for them. They were purchased by people who wanted to give a few bucks to the kids to be nice. The kids helped in the following ways:

• mix the dough
• paint them
• glue the white glitter dust on
• cut the strings
• attach the strings

I rolled the dough/cut out the shapes to ensure they stayed uniform/cooked properly. I also drilled the holes for the strings to make sure they did not all break in the process.

Candy Ornament-Knit stockings  $4 each

The cost of the yarn was minimal per stocking, but it takes me about 5 hours to knit each one. So $4 is a steal. Each stocking is just the right size to put a fun-sized KitKat bar inside of it.

Kissy Creatures $3 each 

$0.11 of Plastic canvas per Kissy Creature and scraps of yarn from my stockings, but they take a full night to put one together. $2.89 Profit per Kissy Creature. Again, these are a steal when you consider the time it takes to make one. I also bough googley eyes because I thought they looked better than the slanty eyes in the examples I saw, but the eyes I bought turned out to be cheep, some of them were defective and others broke after I glued them on.

Peanut Butter "Cups" $2.00 each

about $13.79 to buy ingredients for a double batch. Put them in the large pan (1 size up from 9x13) and cut them into squares 4 across by 6 wide $1.43 profit per square

Peanut Butter Cup Labels. (Cut in strips and wrap around each one.) 

Caramels $0.75 each

it costs $0.22 to make each caramel. My recipe makes about 30 1"x3" pieces with plenty to be cut off of the edges for us to snack on. selling at $0.75 will give us $0.53 profit per piece. These were my bestsellers because they were my least expensive item. Caramel lovers would buy one, then come back to buy some more after they it and realized how delicious they were :)

Caramel Labels (Print 9 pages per sheet, cut on dotted lines and wrap around each caramel.)

Plastic Canvas Kissy Creatures

I like to make a new Homemade ornament every Christmas to add to my tree. While digging around in my craft closet this month I found the supplies to make one of my most favorite ornaments of all time. It was on my Grandma's tree every year and it was always so magical to me.

 

Santa from LifeAtCloverHill.com

When you squeeze Santa's cheeks, the ornament opens up and there is a space for a candy to hide inside.

During my Grandma's Anual Christmas party, she must have come back and filled the ornaments with candies when we weren't looking because it seemed like no matter how many times we emptied the ornament, if we came back to the tree 30 minutes later, there were candies inside them again.

I found a tutorial on how to make them on the site LifeAtCloverHill.com

https://lifeatcloverhill.com/2015/12/squeeze-santas-cheeks-ornament.html

But while searching for the tutorial, I found a lot of other fun designs that follow the same concept. They all had different names to describe them, but my favorite is Kissy Creature

Christmas/Winter Themes Kissy Creatures

Elves from CraftTGram on Etsy

A video tutorial for the Grinch with a hat on top from Caroline's Plastic Canvas Crafts on YouTube

The Grinch simplified

How cute would these mice be for Nutcracker Cast Gifts.

found on Pintrest

Artic Penguins from CraftTGram on Etsy

I'm loving this Olaf

These ones were not Kissy Creatures, instead they were Popourie boxes, so you have 6 sides of plastic canvas decorated as you like, and you fill them with something scented for the holiday before you close them up.

Found On Pintrest

Fox or Dear if you add Antlers from CraftTGram on Etsy

Haloween Themed Kissy Creatures

From CraftyLauries on Etsy

Frankenstine from Pinterest.com

Character-themed Kissy Creatures

Mickey and Minnie Mouse from CraftTGram on Etsy

It was so fun to find all of these and realize the sky's the limit on what you can dream up for your kissy creature. Aside from an ornament, they would be a great party favor because you can make 11 kissy creatures from just 1 sheet of plastic canvas (Plastic canvas is so cheep it normally comes in a multi pack, but each individual sheet is probably worth about $1 to $1.50)

The kids and I will be selling items at a local bazaar next month, we will see how much time I find before the Bazaar to make more than just Santas. 

I think my favorites are the Olaf and the Grinch with a hat because the face shapes are a good match to the kissy creature shape.

Baby Blanket for Ruby

After stepping away from my job as a proposal writer this Spring and focusing on our move this Summer, I have finally found time this Fall to enjoy sewing and crafting again. My sister-in-law gave me her old sewing machine and it has been such fun to jump back into a non-mandatory hobby again. The sewing machine is a good solid one with metal machinery inside and it has a lot of functions I have not yet explored. Just using the basic stitches, it has been nice not troubleshooting machine issues mid-project like I did with my old machines.

My first order of business was to make an antique looking quilt for my new niece Ruby. 

About 3 years ago I was playing around with applique, making some blocks with hearts and some patchwork blocks, but I never put them together completely. When I found them in my craft closet I knew they would be the perfect thing for a blanket that was to go to a baby with a beautiful timeless name like Ruby.

I really enjoyed all the hand stitching I was able to do on the applique blocks, but our Summer was so busy that when it came time to put it all together before I was to deliver the quilt, I was in a bit of a mad rush packing suitcases and preparing for an event we were to host the next day.  I was only able to complete the quilt top before I left for the airport. When we got to town we hosted our event, then the following day we took Ruby's big sister's with us to the fabric store. They picked out the backing fabric with me and I put it all together that night.

Then I decided that to finish it off we needed to add some quilted heart shapes in the white boarder. So we had all the girl cousins meet up to help hand quilt the white boarder.

We got it to Ruby the day before I flew back home.

Welcome to the world Miss Ruby, we are glad you are here.

Clearwood Community Pool

The renovations to the Clearwood Community Pool must be complete because today I received a letter asking me to register my family for pool use.

Below is a link to the pool times and rules. (Dates of operation are yet to be determined)

Clearwood+pool+rules.pdf (sppclientdocumentposts.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com)

We will earn 2 free guest passes each week and can purchase additional guest passes for $4 each/per person/per day. (No more than 6 guest passes can be used at one time.)

Guest Passes can be purchased at the following link:

PoolPass Web Portal (pool-pass.com)

A parent must accompany and stay with children 14 years and younger.

The spa is ONLY for swimmers 14 years and older.

For future years, the link to apply for resident pool passes can be found at the following link:

Access Granted Application Web Portal (accessgrantedsystems.com)

Frequently asked questions/answers for the registration process can be found here:

Clearwood - Swimming Pool Passes

Herb Garden

 When we lived in Puyallup, there was a well-established herb garden just outside the kitchen window. I would never have thought to plant one, but I ended up loving it. While cleaning my office today, I found an old note with the names of some of the plants we had in that yard.

Herbs

• Flat leaf Parsley

• Thyme

• Sage

• Oregano

• Chives

• Rosemary

• Curly Leaf Parsley

• Mint

Other plants I liked

• Weeping Cherry Tree

• Fiddlehead (Ostrich Fern)

Now if I could just find where I documented the names of the paint colors we used. I loved the paint colors in that Puyallup house.

ow i

Cabin/Cottage update

 It's been about 2-years since we purchased our lot, and we still have not started building. But I have been busy with many "projects."

• The RUE-Our first filing of the Reasonable Use Exception (RUE) came back in November 2022 with a request for us to update a few things, including a mitigation plan from our Wetland Scientist. In March 2023 I returned the updates to the County, so we are playing the waiting game with them again. Hopefully, everything will be approved and we can move forward with the next step in the process (Getting approval for our septic plan and attending a public hearing to voice our desire for the RUE)
• Work-Something else I've been doing for the past 2-years is a job as a proposal coordinator at Cavalry Consulting. I recently stepped away from my position so I could focus on our family move for the summer and consider work options in our new location. I am looking for something with a work-flow that will be better suited to my personality and our family's needs. I learned so much during my time at Cavalry and enjoyed building relationships with co-workers and clients. I learned that, with older kids now, I do enjoy working. I think it is healthy for our family as a whole when I am focusing on more than just family life, needs, and dynamics. Stepping out of the homemaker role while the kids are in school helps give me more perspective when they come home, and I put my homemaker hat back on.
• Knitting-I had been feeling a lot of stress and began seeking an appropriate balance between work-life and home life. Each night, I was jumping on my computer after dinner in order to get ahead of the game before a new can of worms was opened in the morning. Even when I tried to spend time with the family, the stress was really overwhelming, and I could only think about what was waiting for me with work. The kids just wanted me to sit and watch a favorite show with them each night before tuck-in. So I decided to start knitting a baby blanket to keep my mind busy while we watched the show. It turned out to work wonderfully. I shared a show with my girls while Sam tucked in the boys, then I shared a show with Sam. By the end of it I was ready to go to sleep and was fresh for whatever work had to through at me in the morning when I came back from school drop off.

I cast on about 130 stitches

Knit every row for 14 rows (slipping the first stitch and pearling the last one)

Put stitch markers 8 stitches in on either side. These first and last 8 stitches were always knit (to continue the garter stitch border (Save the final stitch that was always pearled)

For the stripes, I alternated between knit rows and purl rows (so all my V's were on the same side.)

Each color had about 8-9 rows of V's before I switched to a new color.

For someone who had not knit very much, I think it turned out great. To build my skill, I am starting on a pink blanket using the same border but with Entrelac stitch in the center. (It will give a basketweave effect)

We will see how it turns out.  

• Move Prep-Right now, my focus is on prepping our house for our move in June. In my first week off of work, I tackled the Laundry/craft room and my office.