How-To Tuesday: Alexander Wang Cage Dress

Inspiration

Results

What you need:

• 1 large T-shirt
• sharp scissors
• patience and sticktoitiveness!

The How-to: click here for the tutorial! :)

Kool Aid + ..Yarn?? = An Interesting Experiment

When I'd been knitting for about a year or so I read an article on Knitty (yes, I'm a knitting dork. lets all laugh :P) with a tutorial for how to dye your yarn in a crock pot. I just laughed thinking, Wow. Knitting is one thing, but I can't believe some people actually spin and dye their own yarn. Sheesh. Lets not take a good hobby too far here people. Sooo here we are 4 years later and I'm blogging about my first yarning dying experiment! :)

We start off with a simple little 2 gram hank of sock yarn. Hmm, what color to dye it though?

Oooh how about Strawberry Kiwi! That should make the white parts look pinkish and and give the blue parts a plurply look I'm guessing. Let's see how this turns out! :)

Ok, so the instructions say I should wash the yarn and soak it for a bit.

Alright now it says two packs of Kool Aid per 50 grams of yarn. My super awesome math guesstimation skills say about half 1/2 a teaspoon should do it.

Mix in a little water and I'm almost ready to toss the yarn in! 

Ahhh ok. Apparently my super guestimation skills are a tad off. Definitely NOT enough color. Lets try another teaspoon of Kool Aid.

Perfecto!

Now for the mad scientist portion. Gotta zap my yarn baby in the microwave for 2 whole minutes. Eep!

Looks like the experiment was a success!

And the colors turned out just how I expected them to ^_^

And it looks quite cozy in my sock yarn blankie :)

July Is....

National Ice Cream Month!


In honor of this special and oh-so-tasty holiday, I've put together a collection of ice cream inspired handmade items from artists on Etsy.com. Enjoy!

Strawberry Ice Cream Candle by kokocandles

Ice Cream Birthday Banner by DevinPrather

Ice Cream Scoop Soap by countrycraftsncandie

Ice Cream Journaling Spots by ChelseaVanTol 

(not sure what journaling spots are, but these are cute!)

Ice Cream Bowls with matching spoons by LRStudio

Chocolate Mint Ice Cream Soap by sailormouthsoaps

Origami Thank You Card by tokyocrafts

Hot Fudge Sundae Candle by Culinarychiqconcepts

How-To Tuesday: 8 Uses for Men's Neckties

A lot of us have several extra ties lying around. Especially since Father's Day was just about a week ago....


Here are some creative ideas for upcyling those ties and putting them to good use!

Necktie Skirt

Tie gadget cozy

Necktie Pillow

Tie a tie (hehe) around your waist and wear it as a belt. Easy!

Or tie one around your head to be worn as a headband. Just as easy!

Necktie Purse

Necktie Quilt

Happy how-to Tuesday, everyone! :)

Adopt a Shelter Cat Month

Meowr. Hi, my name is Blaze. You may remember me from this post where I introduced myself and told you a few things about me.

One thing that you don't know about me is that my family adopted me from a pound.

This is what I looked like when my family brought me home.

I've had a wonderful life ever since then! Now...

I have plenty of toys to play with

Lots of laps to lie in

And board games to play.

Also, instead of lying a tiny cramped cage all day,

I have plenty of sinks and windows and floors and couches to lie on

And a nice yard to frolic in too!

I love my family! In honor of National Adopt a Shelter Cat month, I think you should adopt one of my friends from your local animal shelter. I'm sure they'll love your family as much as I love mine :)

Happy June 23!

Happy June 23 everyone! There's lots of celebrity birthdays today including 

Jason Castro

1987

Kris Allen

1985

Vivin

1989

and

Randy Jackson

1956

Ok, ok... so Vivin isn't actually a celebrity, he's my boyfriend (the guy who bought me all that awesome yarn for my birthday, remember?). But he's born on the same day as THREE American Idol people. Isn't that awesome (dawg)?! He turned 21 today, which means he's..

7670 days 

184,079.8 hours

11,044,789.1 minutes and

662,687,343 seconds old

Dang, man! You're soo old!!!

Some quick trivia: on June 23, the US Secret Service was created (1860), Walt Disney's "Lady and the Tramp" was released (1955), and the Nintendo 64 went on sale for the very first time (1996). What a day!

Works in Progress: Blanket Obsession

Ever since I started working on Shelly Kang's Sock Yarn Blanket, I've become obsessed with knitting Blankets!

I'm working on two sock yarn blankets (one with worsted weight acrylic yarn, another with actual sock yarn) and a 10 Stitch blanket (official pattern is on Ravelry, similar instructions can be found here as well).

Pixels of my loverly blankets to be:

This is the first blanket I've ever started for myself. I started it June last year and its been growing ever since! As you may notice... it looks a little lopsided. The squares take so long to make that sometimes I forget what colors I was gonna use on the next row, so I cheated and went ahead a little. :P

Here's my "actual" sock yarn blanket. I started it just last week :) I don't have much sock yarn so each of the colors was used about 3 times each for the first two rows. I can tell that this one is gonna take a while!

This is my 10 Stitch Blanket/Scrap Yarn Blanket/Ugly Blanket. I'm doing this to use up scraps and not worry about the blanket turning out pretty. In fact, I expect it to be ugly. lol :P This pattern is very interesting, though.    Most blankets are worked across hundreds of stitches, but this one...only 10. Its basically one reeeally long strip that connects with itself. In the end it longs kind of like a long sqaure snake, like in the old video game... Snake.

Have a great week everyone! :)