A Teachers Treat

This past year I've had the opportunity to watch Jasmine fall in love with arts and crafts, and I've really enjoyed the challenge of finding crafts you can do with a child.

One afternoon we went to the dollar store and spent a few dollars on clay pots, pipe cleaners and card stock. The result was a fun afternoon of painting, talking and watching my little one sneak candies while basking in her sense of accomplishment.

The next morning I watched her get on the school bus proudly clutching the little pot she made for her teacher and I dont think I could have been more in love :). 


You will need:

•  1 small (4") clay pot
• 1 matching saucer, preferably with a drain hole already in place
• 1 green pipe cleaner
• 1 sheet of green card stock
• Red paint, paintbrush, newspaper and a cup of water for clean up

Spread your newspaper on the table and squeeze out a decent amount of red paint. Paint the outside of your clay pot and put it aside. Paint the bottom of the saucer and set it aside. Use thin coats of paint, it will dry faster and you can always add another coat.

After approximately 3 coats of paint, turn them around. Paint the inside of the saucer, and the inside of your pot. Using thin coats of paint (again), do 3 coats (again). Let them dry.

Cut a leaf out of your card stock and write the recipients name on the leaf. Punch 2 holes (with a hole punch, as seen in the photo) and weave your pipe cleaner through it making a loop at the top. Slide the bottom of the pipe cleaner through the hole in the saucer (bottom end up) and twist a loop on the inside of the lid to keep it from coming out when you lift.

Fill with candy and enjoy :).

A Sweater Coat.

Here's the pattern.  I really wanted my daughter to have something that I made her - I've sewn her some doll clothes, and knit her a shawl, but I wanted her to have something in her wardrobe that really got some use, so I settled on making her a sweater-coat. I think it took about 3 weeks to knit this, and the pattern was relatively easy to follow (except for the part where I knit 20 rows in the wrong stitch and had to tear it out and start over, haha..) after that, it was easy :).

Jasmine loves her coat. Its thick and warm without being heavy, and is just large enough that she'll still get some use out of it this fall. I passed on using the recommended yarn, and instead went with something I could buy locally - the yardage on this pattern is way off, I used over 700 yards of wool.

Be careful when you're picking up the stitches along the collar, its tricky and the stretched holes will show on the finished product. Other than that, this was a fun knit, with lots of stitch fluctuations to ward off boredom :). Here are my notes:

• I used Red Heart Comfort Chunky, in cream
• I knit 2 sizes larger than necessary. It looks cute when its a little baggy, and she'll get another season or two out of it.
• I went with handmade wooden buttons (cherry wood), Make sure you plan for large buttons or toggles, or come up with your own idea for smaller button holes. If you do as the pattern suggests, they will be large!
• Remember that because you'll be picking up stitches for the buttons and collar, keep the edge stitches loose
• I added extra length, because that's the current style for kids and I wanted Jasmine to actually wear the coat :).

Home made Brown Sugar

Have you ever seen the cooking show "Good Eats"? Alton Brown is the most incredible food genius on the planet! He has a nerdiness in the kitchen that really speaks to me, and its because of him I know weird things like how to use sugar to dissolve an egg protein, best practices for sterilizing jars and as the title states, how to make brown sugar.

I could go into detail about how refined white sugar has the liquids extracted, etc., but I'd butcher the info and really, you should just watch the show! But for those of you who dont have time to fall in love with Alton like I have, here's the recipe:

You Will Need:

Food Processor with the blade attachment
3 cups of white sugar
1/4 cup of black molasses
Air tight storage container for brown sugar

Procedure:

Put the white sugar in the bottom of your mixer and secure the lid. Turn on low and slowly pour in the molasses until your sugar is as dark as you like (I use a full 1/4 cup, but you can try 1/8c. if you want your sugar lighter). Take the sugar out of the mixer and put it in an air tight storage container, and maybe give it a final stir to fully combine all those sticky ingredients.

The final product is beautiful brown sugar! Its darker, fresher, and tastes so much richer than what you would buy in the store. Plus, you store it and use it just like you would the stuff from the store :).

Crafting my Stash

Lately I've been feeling a little guilty about the many scraps of fabric and skeins of yarn neatly tucked into their bins in my craft room, so I've decided that before I buy another thing, I'm going to craft my stash.

I have a pile of recycled denim, a few tapestry panels, loads of scraps, half meters and even chalkcloth. I'm hoping to use up at least 90% of my stash by making useful things around the house and gifts for my loved ones.

Homemade Flame Pots

Greg and I had two large flame pots for our deck, big sturdy things that took up a ton of table space, but they looked great. That is, until they got left outside and the first snow fell. A little cold air and some wet snow and they were reduced to mush, no kidding. You would think at $40 a piece you would get something that was good quality!

Of course, it gave me an opportunity to perfect the system :). I made my own flame pot for $25 (including the gel!), it doesnt take up any table space (unless you want it too) plus I made it to match my outdoor furniture. You can make yours to match anything you like as well :). In fact, I might make one to sit in my garden on top of an old stone bird feeder. 

Materials:

• 2 Large terracotta pots, the flame holder needs to be at least 10.5", and the second one (the base) needs to support the top one (at least 8"). - $11
• 1 large terracotta plate to fit the 10" pot - $4
• 1 door handle of your choosing - $2.50
• Some decorative stones (The dollar store!) - $1.00
• Some dirt - free
• A flame-gel insert - $7
• 1/4" drill bit and drill
• 1 spray can of Tremclad (I used semi-gloss black so I could make it look more 'cast iron') - $5.48
• Floor covering - I used my trusty craft blanket
• Fine/Medium grade sand paper
• Tin foil
• Duct Tape

Procedure:

1. Prepare your area and pots: Lay out your floor covering in a well ventilated area and give your pots and plate a little sanding and brush them off, this will help the paint adhere. Then with your drill bit, carefully drill the holes (or hole) for your handle into the terracotta plate. Do this before painting so you dont end up having to retouch the paint like I did :). Be careful! Terracotta is fragile. Just go slow while drilling.
2. Put your pots and plate on the floor covering face up and spray the inside and outer edges.  Let them dry for 2 or 3 hours, then spray on a second coat. Be careful you dont get drips but if you do, you can always sand them off after it dries and touch up the paint. Let this dry for 24 hours.

3. The next day, turn the pots and plates over and spray the outsides. Wait 2 or 3 hours and then spray on the second coat. Let dry for 24 hours.

4. The next day, screw the handle into the plate to complete the lid. Turn the base upside down and place the flame holding pot on top. You CAN use an adhesive if you want, but the weight of the dirt is going to keep it pretty steady, so dont worry too much about it.

5. Fill the top half full of dirt, this should keep the heat from the sides of the pot. Insert your flame gel holder (see below) and then fill up around the outer sides with more dirt to hold it in place. Finish the top with your decorative stones and put the can of flame gel in the holder. See? Super easy!

Flame Gel Inserts:

I had the inserts from my old pots, the ones that broke, so I didnt need to do this next step but the completist in me made sure that I thought it out so others could make one :).

Take your can of flame gel and wrap 2 layers of tinfoil around the bottom, leaving only the top exposed. Then take duct tape and wrap several layers around the sides and bottom. Slide the can of flame gel out the top and voila! You have an insert that you can put in the center of your pot. If you want to be sure that the can will slide out easily, do a layer of plastic wrap under the tinfoil, then remove it once you're done.
 
Variations:

There is always more than 1 ways to do everything, and I made mine this way to match my outdoor sofa, table and canopy. I also wanted to keep costs down to prove you can make a flame pot for under $25 with the gel included. For a little more money you can buy a nice plant stand and put the top pot on that instead, or for less money, get rid of the base entirely and just put your pots on the table top.  Have fun!

Dye Job

By Guest Blogger: Joan Gilmore

They discontinued my favourite yarn about a year ago.  that’s a big deal for a yarn geek like myself, and i’ve been searching local yarn shops for any remnant of it since.  unsuccessfully, i might add.  the yarn: filatura di crosa, 127 print.  a good measure of how much i loved it, is that it was $10 US a skein and i still paid it.  plus shipping.
i found a bunch of it on ravelry, but after contacting the sellers and discussing shipping, it was just going to be way too expensive for someone married to derek.
so my solution was to dye my own.  there were many reasons not to do this but i decided to take a chance and see what happened.
step 1: order a skein of bare superwash from knitpicks, and read this tutorial every day until it arrived.  first order of business was to loop it (literally) from one end of the house to the other in order to mimic the pattern repeats of the 127 print.  then i tied it off every 16 inches (roughly) and used a different colour of ties to mark where the colour belonged.  then i soaked it all night in a bucket of water & vinegar mix.



step 2:  clean the house so that i have room to lay out my massive loop of yarn and dye it.  you can see the steps in the tutorial, so i’m not going to go all specific on you.   i’d read on a few other websites that my water needed to be hot before dissolving the gel food colouring in it, so   i nuked a bunch of water and then made several mugs of colour.



step 3: dyeing!  the moment i’d been waiting for had finally arrived!  i started with the black since it was my dominant colour (not shown here, i used a huge measuring cup for that one).  i had a full cup of black mixed up, but i’ll have to make more than that if i do this colourway again because i really shouldn’t have had to skimp on the dye).  i had plenty of the other colours though, and i’d only done about half a cup of each.
step 4: baking.  after it was all coloured i wrapped it tightly in the plastic wrap and threw it in the oven.  i was pretty paranoid that all of my hard work was going to end up a mass of melted plastic wrap and dye, but i checked on it often and it was fine.  in case anyone out there is wondering; i used kirkland wrap (the stuff from costco) and only set my oven at 200˚.  i don’t think that i would do the full 250˚ after seeing how soft the plastic became, but 2 hours at 200˚ was good.
step 5:  the reveal!  this was my favourite part!  after the baking and the cooling, i cut the plastic wrap off of my yarn and revelled in the brilliant colours that had been soaked into the yarn.  i definitely noticed spots where i could have used more dye, and that’s a problem that i’ll solve next time.
after i washed the yarn and squashed the water out, i hung it up to dry in the dining room and listened to my kids “ooh” and “ahh” over how cool it was.  quite gratifying.



step 6:  the worst part!  untangling all of my (now dry) wool and skeining it.  despite the millions of ties that i used to prevent the problem, i still had some huge knotting issues.  i’m chalking that up to two things:  inexperience and a sickly huge loop to achieve my colourway.  pretty sure that a more traditional loop of yarn (one that wasn’t the size of a house) would have been more cooperative.



dyeing the yarn was seriously an all day job, but a creative one and i rather enjoyed it (except for untangling 220 yards of wool).  did i successfully recreate filatura di crosa 127 print?  no.  unfortunately, not on my first try.  but neither did i create an unusable mass.  the colours in this skein are really bright and not as muted as in my favourite yarn, but i’m still happy with the results.  i’m also satisfied with the lessons i learned here and i’m looking forward to the next dyeing experience.  i have some undyed philosopher’s wool in my knitting stash that’s just begging to be experimented on!

Salty Chocolate Caramels.

The pretzels make great vessels for the caramel and chocolate, and the flavor combination of slightly bitter chocolate with little chunks of salt and sweet caramel just blows your mind. Trust me. My sisters act like they've had a good dose of crack when I make these, which is nice because when you HAVE 5 sisters, you occasionally need to get back on someones good side :). These salty treats make sweet bribe/apology any day of the week.

Materials:

• 3 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate
• 20 individually wrapped caramels
• 25 salty pretzels
• 2 tablespoons of milk
• 1 teaspoon of margarine
• Kosher (coarse, rock) salt

Procedure:

**Before you start, get 2 baking sheets ready by lining them with parchment paper and a light spray of cooking oil.

1. Unwrap the caramels and place them in a microwave safe bowl. Add 1 tablespoon of milk. Microwave for 1.5 to 2 minutes, stirring every 30 seconds. Remove the bowl once the caramels are melted and creamy, dont over cook.
   
2. Dip one side of each pretzel into the caramel and lay them out on the parchment paper. You may need to coat them with a butter knife, I usually do :). Put the tray in the fridge for about 40 minutes.
   
3. When the time is up, take them out of the fridge and start on the chocolate. Put some water in the bottom of a double boiler and place the chocolate and margarine in the top portion. My double boiler is huge, so for this I use a small pot with a metal bowl on top. Let it melt down, whisking until smooth. Add the last tablespoon of milk and whip quickly. The chocolate will thicken slightly. Remove from heat immediately.
   
4. Carefully pick up the caramel coated pretzels (they'll be goey) and coat them with chocolate. Since the chocolate is kind of thick, I use a butter knife for this too.  Lay them on a fresh sheet of parchment paper.
   
5. Sprinkle some kosher salt over the tops. Dont try to be healthy here, in my opinion you've already gone past the point of no return :). Put the tray in the fridge and let them set up (another 45 minutes) and then package and enjoy!