The SUPER SECRET BIRTHDAY GIFT!

I forgot to take a picture of the finished thing, because I put it together early this morning, but here's what The Boy got for his birthday from me:

A basket wrapped in celophane and tied with a blue ribbon. In the basket was a box of blackberry jasmine tea, which he'll hopefully really like (since he's a tea drinker), and a bunch of bagels. HOME MADE BAGELS. And let me tell you, those bagels were a pain in the butt to make, but they're very yummy. Perhaps partially because they were made with love. ;)

So, I made a batch of cinnamon raisin bagels for him, which came out WONDERFULLY. The second batch was a combo of onion and poppyseed, but unfortunately the onion ones were undercooked, and the poppyseed ones came out very small. Probably because the recipe didn't have any sugar in it -- which yeast apparently needs to interact with in order to rise properly.

Well, despite the fact that he didn't notice the basket right off so that we ended up having some very yummy apple pancakes for breakfast, he did try one and apparently agrees that they came out wonderfully.

Hurrah for a thoughtful and appreciated gift. I'm glad he likes 'em. <3

Baby Snail! And a SUPER SECRET GIFT

I knitted this baby snail for a friend of mine who just had a baby. I put jingle bells in it and it is SO FUN to shake. I might make one for myself, because it amused me so much.



I'm also working on a birthday gift for The Boy. It's not knitting, but it's a little crafty....so I'll post about it later. :D After he gets it.

Not a Knitting Project!

So, I don't remember who had the original idea for this at Friday Night Waltz, but someone came up with the idea of "braille shirts" during the whole attempting-to-translate-Caity's-shirt thing a few weeks ago. I thought "Hmmm, good idea!" and started poking around online and at people for good saying for one. My favorite was "If you can read this, you're too close"....so guess what I've done!

That's right, I've made a shirt with braille on it. Here's how it was done!

Materials:
- Puff Paint (Any color you'd like, I picked black)
- A shirt with no pattern on it, of a color that allows the paint to stand out (I picked white)
- A printer
- A pushpin
- A Sharpie marker
- Something to put under the fabric as you futz with it (I used a book and piece of paper)

First thing I did was find a braille translator site (I used this one") and typed in the saying I wanted it to say. I set the size of the dots to a fairly decent size...second to largest possible size, I think, is what I picked. Once I had the saying set in braille dots, I printed it out and used the pushpin to punch holes in the dots on the paper.

Now, you take the paper full of pushpin holes and put it on the shirt, making sure you have something underneath the fabric to catch any bleed-through, and use the Sharpie marker to mark where the dots go by pressing it to each of the holes you made in the paper. Now you have a blueprint for the paints!

Now, I put some paper in the shirt so that it could be completely flat as I used the puff paint to make the actual dots on my shirt. Wait for it to dry and, viola! A braille shirt!



Detail shot of the dots.


The puff paint instructions say to wait 24 hours, but I imagine that's for if you use a hell of a lot of paint.....I'm pretty sure this'll be wearable by this evening. :D

A knitted hat!

Just thought this was a cute pattern, and decided to make one. Awww, it's so cute.

My Sis-in-law designed it, I knitted it!

A friend commissioned me for a scarf, and I finally finished it! I chose this pattern that my sis-in-law made, because the person receiving it plays piano. This is called "illusion knitting" which means when you look at it one way, it looks like stripes...



....But look at it from a different angle, and you see the hidden pattern!



Hopefully, the girl getting it will appreciate it. :)

Bite my wooly, knitted ass!

Knitted this for The Boy as a Holiday gift (not Christmas, since he's Jewish). He loves it and has been showing it off to people. :D

Incase you don't know, this is Bender from "Futurama"....he made his Halloween costume based off of him, so I had to make this for him! I didn't have a pattern, so it was pretty much made up as I went.

Meet "Stubby".....the "Special" Dragon

....Yeah, I didn't check gauge before I made this pattern. So my poor dragon is all unproportional. He has a stubby little tail, a severe underbite, AND an overbite (see the teeth?), and his spines are all wonky because they came out longer than the body length.

...Oops? Um, oh well. Love him anyway, even if he rides the short bus.