Footstool Makeover

Last week the girls and I took a walk to visit both of the neighborhood thrift stores. We needed to buy a tie for Daddy, who is an ecologist and has a closet full of classic plaid button-ups and cargo pants that can transition easily from the classroom to the field easily, but not so many formal outfits. Until last week he had three ties, none of them quite right for the event he was going to.

In classic thrift-store fashion, we did find an Italian silk tie for 50 cents that worked perfectly, and we also came home with other items we hadn't been looking for. I found a very ugly little stool that was crying out for a makeover hiding inside an entertainment center at the Salvation Army. Since furniture was all half-off that day, I decided that for $3.50 I could take it home and fix it up. Annie happily carried it on her lap in the stroller all the way home, chattering about how she would use it to play with her dollhouse.

The stool was so ugly that I second and third-guessed myself both in the store and once I brought it home. The brown rug-like cover had flecks of what looked like carpet padding peeking through. However, it didn't smell bad, it was sturdily built, and it was so small that I was pretty sure that I could transform it in a day or two.

That day I took off and sprayed the legs with black Rust-Oleum semi-gloss paint (which, it turns out, is a lot better than the generic kind), and stripped off the hideous brown rug covering. Then Annie and I dug into my yarn stash, and finally agreed on a ball of tie-dyed cotton that I unraveled from a sweater last summer. I spent longer knitting the cover than I initially planned, but a little more than a week after I started the project, it's finished! I love projects like that.

After I knitted a big oval to cover the stool, I made a few flowers and a butterfly from the patterns in 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet by Lesley Stanfield. I sewed them on with clear thread, and embroidered a few stems and leaves. These served not only to decorate the stool, but bring in some other colors and hide a few small holes from the increases in the knit fabric.

Annie was very excited when she woke up this morning and discovered that I'd finished the stool for her. It is exactly Annie-sized!

And, best of all, it works for its indended purpose! Annie can finally reach the attic level of her dollhouse.

This is the kind of project that I really don't see making to sell, since even a tiny stool like this still took 8 days to finish. But if you live around Bloomington, I'd love to teach you how to do it yourself!

Poco Rojo ("Little Red")

"Once there was a dear little girl whom everyone loved. Her grandmother loved her most of all and didn't know what to give the child next. Once she gave her a little red velvet cap, which was so becoming to her that she never wanted to wear anything else, and that was why everyone called her Little Red Cap."

-Grimm's Fairy Tales

Last year it took me until after Thanksgiving to finish knitting Annie a winter hat. This year I wanted to get it done early so my own daughter wouldn't have cold ears while I spent my time making hats for other people's children. A knitting design contest hosted by the yarn company Manos del Uruguay gave me the perfect opportunity to design and knit Annie a hat well before the first frost.

I designed Annie's hat to be reminiscent of the cap worn by Little Red Riding Hood from Grimm's Fairy Tales. However, since it was designed around yarn from Uruguay I named it "Poco Rojo" - Little Red in Spanish. It is both whimsical and practical - perfect for a little girl!

Annie hates to have hats constrict her ears, so I chose the vintage "pixie" style for this design. It is looser than most stocking caps, but still fits well around the head and has a chin strap to hold it on securely. Plus, it has an adorable curl in back!

The hat itself is a simple rectangle, grafted together at the back and with a neck band attached to the bottom. The red Manos Del Uruguay yarn was perfect for this project. The semi-solid coloring really highlights the cables, and they seem to shine even when there isn't any direct light on the hat. And the deep red really brings out the blue in Annie's eyes!

If the hat wins in the contest, the pattern will be available through Manos Del Uruguay. Otherwise, I might publish it as a free pattern here on my portfolio.

Suggested Retail: $25.

The Plarn Collection: Poppy Hat

How's this for something different? "The Poppy" is a cloche-style hat made out of plarn from white shopping bags, red newspaper bags, and VHS tape! It was inspired by the crocheted pattern by Teresa Wooley, and makes for a really unique and fun fashion statement.

This hat will be one-of-a-kind, because to be honest, I hated working with VHS tape. It hurt my fingers and squeaked SO LOUDLY that you could hear me knitting from across a really big room. But I'm glad I soldiered through! VHS tape offers unrivaled sparkle, plus there's just a certain cool factor of wearing something made from so unlikely a material.

I really love the flower on the hat. I made it on a little flower loom, which I'm especially proud of because I made it all by myself. The loom itself is hideously ugly - it was a plastic jewelry case which looked nice until it got all ripped up when I drilled dozens of holes in it. I'll probably only put up pictures if Collin decides to build me a nice one and then I can show you how ugly the one I made for myself was. But it works, and I really like the resulting flower! It totally completes the look of this hat.

It is an adult-sized hat and doesn't fit Annie at all, but she was so adorable when she tried it on that I had to include pictures. Besides being a fun around-town hat for a woman, it would make a great dress-up hat for a girl!

Suggested retail: $30

Polka-dotted Alien Hat

Sometimes I dye yarn for a specific project, and sometimes I just come up with a fun color combination and the yarn tells me what it wants to be. This alien hat was the latter. I was trying out some new dyes, and the yarn came out brighter and darker than I'd expected. It was a really fun kid-themed colorway that screamed, "Make me into a polka-dotted alien hat!"

The hat is knit out of recycled, hand-painted wool warn. There are short pieces of a bamboo chopstick completely enclosed in knit tubes to stiffen the eyeballs. The eyeballs are ping-pong balls, securely glued into the wool eye sockets.

This hat will fit a toddler or a young child, with a head circumference of approximately 18-19.5 inches. My glass model has an adult head circumference of 22 inches and the hat is too small for it, I just had trouble getting Annie to model a wool hat for more than a minute in the summer heat. But come winter, this hat will make some toddler a very cool (yet very warm) winter hat!

Suggested Retail: $20

Annie's Birthday Dress

Yesterday was my daughter Annie's first birthday. (Happy Birthday Annie!) Just in time, I finished the dress I'd been knitting for her all summer.

The dress is from SoKnitPicky's "Flora Dress" pattern. I added straps and buttons and embroidery, but it's very much the same dress. I am so thankful for how many knitters share their patterns for free! (Speaking of which, I have a couple more patterns I'm hoping to publish in the next couple months, so keep an eye out for those.)

I added embroidered flowers on every other panel. The variegated yarn I used for the top worked so well for this!

The bodice is slightly smocked with threaded elastic and the straps are adjustable with two buttonholes, so I'm hoping Annie will get at least two years out of this dress. If she has a growth spurt it will look extremely cute over blue jeans, and when she outgrows it entirely I'm planning on hanging it on the nursery wall. Annie's room is decorated in lots of rich rainbow tones, and this dress will look perfect on the wall!

Suggested Retail: I wanted to put this up on my portfolio just because Annie is so cute and the dress turned out so well. But since it took me a couple months to knit this dress, selling dresses like Annie's isn't really an option. It would need to be about $125 to come close to compensating for the vast amount of time it takes.

She's a GIRL Headbands

If you have a baby girl, you probably know how annoying it is when people come up to you and exclaim, "Oh, he's so cute! How ya doing, little guy?" Annie and I get this all the time, even if she's wearing a pink shirt or a skirt. When we went places in the winter I'd put a pink hat on her, but that's not an option when it's 90 degrees outside. So here's my summertime solution: flower (and bow) headbands! These are all based on Amy Anderson's "Spring" Baby Headband Pattern, with Susan B. Anderson's flower from her pacifier clip pattern.

This first one is Annie's headband, so it's not currently for sale. However, I do have more of the yarn I used to make it, so I'd be happy to make a similar one to order!

Depending on the weight of the yarn, the flowers can be made in different sizes. Annie's headband is knit with sock-weight yarn with sport-weight petals, resulting in a medium-sized flower. I could custom-make this headband for you for $12.00.

This one I made for fun to see how a knitted bow would look on a headband. I like its simplicity.

Because it is simpler than a full flower headband, I am offering this bow headband for $10.00. As always, you could order a custom headband in your choice of colors for the same price. However, please note that if I don't have the colors you require in stock the price might go up some to cover materials.

This was the first of the headbands I made, and it has already been sold. The flower is larger than the others, although since the photos are older Annie's head is a smaller comparison size.

This flower has two leaves attached under the flower, and stamens embroidered in the center. Those are two more options available for custom orders. If you like this one, I could make this headband for you for $12.00.

And finally, we have this beautiful little green and pink headband. This one is sized nb-9 months, so Annie's head is on the large size for modeling it. The yarn is pretty light-weight, so the flower is the smallest in this collection.

Along with the bow headband, this flower headband is currently unclaimed and up for sale. $12.00 buys you this perfect little girly headband!

*Update: This headband will be for sale locally in Bloomington at the Paper Crane in starting mid-October*

...And just to get your imagination working, I'd love to try custom-making headbands with butterflies or ladybugs or something else entirely. I also have a headband in stock just for boys that I'll be showcasing in the fall, so stay tuned for that!

Annie's booties

I thought it would be fun to do a post with pictures of the booties I've made for Annie. Up first: the Sunshine and Salsa booties which inspired the collection and helped me decide to open up Seasonal Arts. Collin and I unraveled the yarn from a wool/acrylic sweater last winter and dyed the yarn into five beautiful colors with kool-aid. I'd been saving it for something special, and over Christmas I knit these booties up at the Hobbs homestead in Wisconsin. I loved them so much I decided to knit more and open up an online store.

For more information, see post on "The Sunshine and Salsa Collection"

Suggested Retail: $20.00

Next up: Annie's Baby Hobbs booties. I made these booties a few days before Annie was born, before we knew if she was a boy or a girl. We were kind of thinking she might be a boy, but since we didn't know (and were definitely wrong!) I went for a semi-neutral teal colored theme. I like these booties a lot, even for a girl. They're nicely squishy, but still have a stiff enough band to stay on fairly well. I also love that they are knit in the round, making the knitting a little more tedious than 2-needle booties, but eliminating the seam. And, of course, my favorite part is the personalization on the sole. Way fun!

For more information, see the post I wrote on my family blog, "Baby Hobbs Booties," and the original pattern, "Blue Steps."

Suggested Retail: $20.00

For Christmas my mother-in-law gave me a gift certificate to a local yarn shop called Yellow Dog Knitting. There I bought some of the most beautiful yarns I've ever had the pleasure of knitting with (stay tuned for more pictures of things I've knit from that yarn). One project I made from that yarn are these Ugg-style alpaca booties. I never liked Ugg boots when only sorority girls were wearing them, but these are great! The neutral colors make these the most versatile of Annie's booties, and she often wears them with winter tights and sweater dresses to church.

These booties were based off the DIY pattern for "Fashionable Baby Booties." If I could've found suede yarn like the pattern suggested the booties would probably have been better, but the alpaca was very nice too. The other major change was that I whip-stitched white alpaca over the original cuff, which made a really nice round, stiff cuff.

Suggested Retail: $20.00

The last pair were the first I made for Annie, and fit perfectly when she was a newborn. Sadly, however, although I have lots of pictures of Annie in her Sunflower Hat, I don't have any of her in her moccasins. I loved them so much, though, and they're so tiny and cute that I'm going to put them in Annie's baby scrapbook, if I ever get it made.

These booties are knit from the Purl Bee's "Baby Mocs" pattern.

Suggested Retail: $20.00

The Sunshine and Salsa Collection

Infant booties, $20.00

And God said, “LET THERE BE LIGHT,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. Genesis 1:3-4

My mom used to call me her “sunshine and salsa” daughter because I lived on sunlight, and life with me could be a little spicy at times. I thought that was the perfect name for my first collection of winter knits because the bright colors bring a bit of cheer into the bleakness of the season. It is also an overflow of my joy in the birth of my first daughter, Annie Sunshine.

Red infant earflap hat, $20.00

This collection is made of 100% recycled wool/acrylic blend yarn which I unraveled from a thrift store sweater, and then hand-dyed bright colors with kool-aid. The yarn has a a beautifully mottled pattern because the wool absorbed the bright colors and the acrylic stayed white. Each piece is a one-of-a-kind item, designed, knitted and embroidered by me. I took inspiration from Peruvian patterns and Latin American colors, invoking the playful warmth of summers remembered.

Green infant earflap hat, $18.00 (SOLD)

Orange infant earflap hat, $18.00

Purple small adult earflap hat, $22.00

Red-soled infant booties $20.00 (SOLD)

Infant moccasins $20.00

Child size medium mittens $22.00

Child/toddler small mittens $20.00 (SOLD)

Annie's booties, which started the whole collection. $20.00 (NFS)

Because the yarn preparation takes so much work (and days from buying, unraveling, dyeing, drying, winding and knitting), I would need to have several items requested before I start a new dye lot.