Happy Holidays!

This will be our last post for this year, as we're going to be spending much of our time between now and the beginning of 2018 with family instead of being holed up in our crafting spaces.  We're hoping to continue the weekly posts after the holidays for our six regular bots to enjoy.  (If  you take offense at being called a bot, please leave us a comment to let us know!)

Knitting:

Stacey finished her second  Knit One, Crochet Too Ty-Dy Socks in colorway Cherry Cola 1233 sock!  Last week she had started the toe decreases, and now it's done, and it fits, and the ends are even woven in.

For the second sock, Stacey decided to re-knit the cuff as it was taking forever and was not very fun to pick up the ribbed stitches.  From there, the heel turn was completed, with only the three called for repeats this time!  Then Stacey attempted to attach the two halves of the sock, while trying to make the stitches look like knitting, which was not working.  After seven connected stitches and an hour's worth of crafting time, she gave up and went to work.  Later on, she had a thought, isn't this exactly what the kitchener stitch is for?  Why yes, it does seem to be.  More time was spent ripping this out, and then the kitchener stitching commenced.  Kitchener stitching 160 stitches takes quite a long time, but it looks good, and the sock is in one piece!

Woodworking:

Lee decided to use his new jointer and some of the lumber he purchased to make a new end grain cutting board. He made a cutting board in the past that we used quite a bit but it got chopped up a bit too much. He used a program called cbdesigner available at www.lastalias.com/cbdesigner/ to design the cutting board. The wood he is using on the cutting board is hard maple, walnut and padauk.

After jointing and planing and cutting the wood into the correct size strips they are glued together using Titebond III glue. Titebond III glue is one of only a few wood glues that is safe to use with cutting boards. 

The next step is to for the boards to be planed down flush again. It's a good idea to use a paint scraper, chisel or putty knife to chip off any of the solid glue before planing. The photo below is of the wood chips from the planer. It's interesting how the different types of wood produce different wood chips. The maple made nice long curls and the padauk and walnut were more like chips.

Now that the boards have been glued and planed we can cut them into strips, rotate them on end and flip then end for end to create the pattern. 

The board was a bit smaller than anticipated so we decided to put a border all the way around. With the border put on it has a nice size and heft to it.

It ended taking around 4 coats of mineral oil and 3 coats of mineral oil with wax in it. We used the Howard brand oil on our board. Lee took a video of him putting the oil on the board. It's widely agreed upon that this is the best part of most woodworking projects, especially when using exotic woods. 

All the sewing...

This week was dominated by Stacey's sewing projects.

Sewing:

Cross-back apron for Lee:

Stacey spent the weekend sewing up a storm.  She started with the cross-back apron mentioned last week for Lee, who had chosen this awesome Tula Pink Spirit Animal Lunar Otter N Chill fabric (affiliate link), which we have dubbed Space Otter.  The apron was super simple and straightforward to cut and sew and will work perfectly.

Tote bag:

Her next project was a Whistlepig Creek Productions #1144 Six Pack Stack Reversible Fat Quarter Tote, which has been gifted, and should have been received by the intended recipient.  The pattern was purchased from a local-ish quilt and knitting shop back in 2014, and was used in the first sewing class Stacey participated in, marking the start of her sewing adventures.

It is supposed to coordinate with a dark purple luggage set with bright blue and hot pink circles.  We're hoping that this goes well enough.  It was a bit of a struggle to find fabrics in the right color ranges, as they aren't the currently popular shades, but the proprietor of our local quilt store was extremely helpful in finding these fabrics.  I tried to offset the colors a bit to make the bag not seem to crazy, so the bright blue is on one side, and the pink is on the reverse.  The purple and black fabrics are a bit more mellow, so they are on both sides.

 

Stacey stopped paying attention while cutting at one point, and cut the pockets the wrong way in the fabric so they ended up shorter than the pattern called for.  The same thing happened with the straps.  She likes the look of the slightly shorter pockets, that seem to take up half the depth of the bag.  The handles are definitely still usable, but a few more inches on them would probably be better.

She also cut the corners at the bottom to make the box shape a little bit too large, a misreading on her part.  This error actually lines up the bottom of the pockets with the bottom of the bag when it is standing up, which has been perceived as a vast improvement in the look of the bag.

The bottom seam where the bag was turned right sides out was hand-stitched using the ladder stitch technique.  Look at this, you almost can't tell it was hand-sewn!  This shows a marked improvement in Stacey's hand-sewing technique since she started sewing a few years ago.

Stacey's cross-back apron:

Stacey then worked on her own cross-back apron, which she managed to cut out with the print upside down.  C'est la vie.  There wasn't enough fabric left to cut it out again, and it's just going to get messy in the kitchen anyway, so she just went with it.  Since the project was already mucked up, Stacey decided to try out some different stitches on the various seams of the apron.  The bottom hem was just a straight stitch.  The outside seams were done with the seam/overlock setting.  The armhole curve and inside strap seams were done with an S curve stitch pattern, which, in hindsight, may not have been the best idea as the clipped edges in the curve are not fully sewed down.  That can and will be fixed if needed in the future.  The top front seam was done with a rolled hem to encase the edge.  All-in-all, it fits and it'll hopefully prevent some clothing stains from kitchen messes, exactly as intended.

Slouchy headwarmer:

The next sewing project this week was the Patterns for Pirates Slouchy Headwarmer, which is one of their 2017 Holiday Freebies.  Stacey whipped this up out of remnants of the girl scout green lycra.  This project took about 20 minutes, including the hand-stitching at the end.  This is a super easy and versatile project, as it can be worn as a headband, hat, messy bun hat, or a cowl.  As usual, the tutorial from Patterns for Pirates is excellent.

Knitting:

Stacey continued working on her second Knit One, Crochet Too Ty-Dy sock in the Cherry Cola 1233 colorway, and managed to get to the toe decreases.  The stitch-marker is where the sock was last time it made it into a blog post.

Cross-stitch:

Dorothy now has a dress, and there's a rainbow on the Wizard of Oz block of the 2015 Story Time Sampler pattern from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery.

Woodworking:

Lee spent some time in the workshop making a new crosscut sled. The old one went with the table saw it fit when he returned it to his father. The new crosscut sled has some improvements over the old one. This one features a stop block with a tape measure, two T slot tracks and an insert where the blade meets the front rail. The stop block is used to make accurate repeatable cuts without having to markup and measure each piece. The two T slot tracks can be used to clamp your material to the sled so you don't have to hold onto it or to attach a miter gauge that can be used to cut angles. Lastly, the replaceable inserts are used to get a clear view of where the blade will cut. When lining up your material to be cut its important to know where the blade will hit the front rail, the old sled got a little worn out which led to not knowing where the blade would cut without lining up each piece to the blade itself. Now if it gets a bit off, the insert can simply be replaced. 

A sock in pieces and a shed

This week we put a lot of our crafting time towards projects to make our lives easier.  Stacey has been watching The Great British Sewing Bee while she works on her cross-stitch project, and Lee has been watching Star Wars - The Clone Wars while playing video games and watching woodworking videos.

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Cross-stitch:

Stacey finished the top banner and the frame for the Wizard of Oz block in the 2015 Story Time Sampler pattern from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery.

Knitting:

Stacey continued to try to fix her first Knit One, Crochet Too Ty-Dy Socks in colorway Cherry Cola 1233 sock.  She decided that ripping back short rows is not fun, and picked up the stitches from the cuff and the stitches from the foot, and removed all of the heel rows in the middle.  While this took quite a bit of time, the sock looks salvageable again.  Yay!

Sewing:

We are constantly searching for towels to wipe our hands on in the kitchen.  We'll go to grab one we put down two minutes ago, and poof, it's not there.  Where is it?  On the other side of the kitchen or on the other person's shoulder.  The worst part is that we normally have three kitchen towels floating around at any given point.  The solution to this problem is not more towels of course, but to make aprons that we can wipe our hands on that are attached to our bodies so they can't grow legs like those pesky towels.

Stacey likes the look and the idea of the currently popular cross-back apron, so she decided that is what she would make.  After lots of sorting through useless pins on Pinterest, and attempting to mock up her own version, she came across Cynthia Fong's Linen aprons for the whole family pattern at fabrics-store.com.  Ann Martinson's comment on the post helped her figure out how the apron is supposed to fit, and she determined that the adult size listed would work for her.  Lee, being 6' tall, needs some adjustments to have the apron fit, which was easily done based on Ann's explanation.

Here are our drafted patterns, drawn out on tracing paper.  Aside from the adjustments made for Lee's apron, both also had the armholes raised up by 7", as we're not fans of low cut armholes.

Maybe next week we'll have one or both of the aprons finished to show you.

Woodworking:

While not specifically woodworking, our next project was woodworking-adjacent.  We assembled a shed in the back yard to store the lumber cart and other things that simply take up too much room in the garage workshop but are still needed, and should be nearby.  Saturday was a balmy fifty-ish degrees (as long as you were in the sun, which we were not), so we figured it was the perfect time to get this done before winter fully kicks in.