Cozy Scalloped Cowl

It occurred to me that my last two posts were both about boozy craft parties. Sorry to let you down with this boring post!

 

Sometimes my mom randomly buys a few skeins of yarn and asks me to make her something with it. This Lion Brand Jiffy yarn is one example of that.

She only bought one skein, so I searched the Lion Brand patterns to find something small. To my surprise, this scalloped cowl popped up.

 

I gave this to my mom as a Christmas present, even though she technically chose and paid for the yarn. Is that wrong? Eh.

My Crafty Birthday Party

Birthday cow made and gifted to me by Jenn W.

As any December baby will tell you, it's hard to have a birthday party during the holidays. Instead of competing with evening holiday parties, I decided to celebrate my December birthday with a little craft party, luring my friends by offering my hoard of craft supplies.

Leather Craft Night

There's nothing like a boozy craft night to turn a bad week into a good week.

My friend Jessica came across a huge supply of leather and was nice enough to share it with our friend Suzie and me. We ordered pizza, listened to the Lemonheads, and thumbed through craft books for inspiration.

Suzie cut out different colors to make a flower, loosely based on the necklace on the cover of 30-Minute Necklaces. She also braided leather strips to make what kind of looked like a lanyard keychain from our crafty kid days.

We were inspired by a lot of jewelry projects, like Mystery-Braided Leather Cuff
and Camp-Inspired Leather Crafts.

Fabric-Covered Storage Boxes

Part of my Hurricane Sandy organizing meant dividing my craft supplies by craft -- sewing, embroidery, knitting -- to make everything easier to find.

I didn't have enough room in the closet, meaning some of these boxes are going to be out in the open on a shelf. If I'm going to look at these every day, they may as well be pretty!

I bought a plain white box from The Container Store for $4 and used a hot glue gun to cover that sucka in scrap fabric leftover from my Peony dress. Then I filled it with my embroidery supplies.

Crocheted Legwarmers

Fall means boots. It also means crocheted legwarmers.

The photo above appeared on the Martha Stewart Living Instagram, taken by my lovely coworker Justine, who always makes me look cooler than I actually am.

Hurricane Organizing and Crafting

Thank you to everyone who emailed or messaged to check on me during Hurricane Sandy. A lot of my friends are still without power, some are even trapped in their homes because of power lines and trees. It's going to take a long time for things to be normal again.

I was fortunate that I didn't lose power and -- despite being scared -- managed to host a pretty fun hurricane party.

But one can only play the ukulele and watch 80s movies for so long. Halfway through the storm, I got an itch. An organizing itch.

I started with ribbon, placing the spools on a wire hanger that is more easily accessible than the fabric storage bins I keep them in.

 

I restacked my fabric in the bins so that I could easily see what was inside each one. I'm also going to donate a lot of fabric scraps to a local arts center.

Prettying Up the Table

One of my biggest issues at home is my kitchen table. It's my catch-all for mail, keys, notes, magazines -- anything I throw down as I walk into the apartment. I think Sew, Mama, Sew's table setting contest is the perfect opportunity to clean up the table and make it pretty.

The best part about my table? I used fabric from scraps and the giveaway table at work, so it didn't cost me anything!