I have been knitting washcloths these last few weeks! I’m digging them for their instant gratification and relative ease in putting down and picking up. I’ve been reluctant to start on any longer projects lest I go into labor and never pick it back up again, and hesitant to start anything too complex, imagining I will want to knit through early labor but will definitely lack the mental energy to focus on much.

I’ve also been finding washcloths a really stress-free and nearly foolproof way to work on my knitting pattern-making skills. I mean, if something starts to go really south, ripping out and starting over isn’t nearly as traumatic on a small washcloth as it is on, say, a pair of longies. I started out only knitting from patterns I found online, but now I’m largely working on designs from my own head. It’s really amazing how two basic stitches - knit and purl - and a few basic techniques - slip, knit together, knit front and back - can turn into a stunning array of unique cloths.

And - if you’ve never used a hand-knit washcloth, you really should. They are just luxurious. We use them both in the bathtub/shower as well as for dishes.

I started out making these for Christmas. I’m planning to give each woman in the family (only four this year) a set of two or three cloths along with five or six soaps and a small bag of bath melts. I’m going to give a few to other people as gifts, as well. And then I’ll sell the rest in the shop!

Yesterday, I finished up part of my gift packages for my nieces. I have three who are close in age, and decided to give them all largely the same things this year: a set of pouches, some fun soaps, and a few other small things.

I’ve had the soaps done for a month or so, but just finished up the pouches. As I’m reasonably sure that none of them read this blog, I’m posting pictures for you to see.

All of the zip-top pouches were made from fabrics I had in my scrap bin, so really my only expense was the zippers, which I buy in bulk anyway, for about $.50 apiece. The pouches with the zippers in the middle were inspired by this blog post. The pinch pouches were made more or less following this tutorial. None of them are perfect, but I think the flaws are noticeable only to me. I had fun doing the hand embroidery - it’s been years since I embroidered anything! I was happy that the technique came back to me quickly, but I was well into my third pouch before was embroidering with anything resembling competence.

So, each girl gets three pouches, about five soaps (rainbow, animal, etc), and then a few little things chosen just for them and not hand-made: a few High School Musical pens, some favorite snack food, etc.

My 2 year old niece will be starting Montessori in January. My sister suggested that a nice lunch bag would make a great gift, since she will need to take her lunch every day. So I whipped this little number up yesterday afternoon. It was surprisingly not difficult to make, and so cute. (Now, what she didn’t say was if her Montessori school forbids licensed fabrics like this. I know a few do. But I guess if I find out that this bag would be against the rules, I can easily make another one.)

I followed this tutorial from about.com. I found the directions to be a little confusing, but this late in pregnancy, with my mind really half somewhere else most of the time, I couldn’t picture how to put this together on my own. Which is sad, is it not? I hope my brainpower comes back soon!

My sister is going to find out for me if her daughter also will need reusable napkins and placemat. I’ve had several Wallypop customers mention that this is a requirement for their Montessori schools, and I actually have a Montessori school on my list of wholesale customers - they buy napkins in bulk for resale in their school store. If she will need napkins/placemat, I’ll make her a little set of solid-color linens to coordinate with the bag.

If not, I’ll either make her a skirt or a little tote bag to go along with the lunchbag.

I just realized I’d never really posted about my soap-making after I really got going. First, can I say that I love it? I’ve wanted to try cold-process soap making, but really don’t feel comfortable doing that with young children around (and while pregnant), so decided to go with the melt-and-pour for now.

I started off using recipes I found online, then began experimenting with my own recipes, adding things I thought would be fun or beneficial in some way. My family has been testing soap for me, and so far, we haven’t found one we really don’t like. I’m not saying it’s foolproof, but with some careful forethought, it’s hard to mess up too much!

Rather than making full-size bars, I made little half-size bars. Personally, I like that size better - they’re great for travel, yes, but they’re also just smaller so they take up less room on the counter, they fit preschool hands easier, etc.

I packaged them up really nicely and sold a few at Craft Saturday this fall, and I have a few listed at Etsy, but most are destined to be gifts. Christmas for the women in the family, as well as thank yous for the many wonderful people whose time and skills I have relied upon during all of the ups and downs of this pregnancy.

If you’ve been wanting to try something new, I really encourage you to give melt and pour soap a try. You can buy kits at many craft stores, and those are not a bad place to start. Most of them are Life of the Party brand. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this brand, and it’s a very good and inexpensive way to give M&P a try. If you like it, however, you can get much higher quality supplies at online stores such as Brambleberry,  Majestic Mountain Sage, and Bubbles and Beyond, all of which I’ve used and been happy with.

LINK via Whipup.

I have just purchased some pinch-open hinges to make some Christmas presents, but I will have some leftover and might just have to make myself a cell phone case! I’ve been looking for a case that completely encloses the phone, and that I can attach a carabiner to, for easy clippability in my diaper bag. I’m not sure felt will ultimately be sturdy enough for the abuse any such case is likely to encounter, but it’s worth a shot.

So it all started with a picture posted on Facebook by my friend Betsy. Of her baby in a hammock. What a fantastic idea, I thought. I asked her where she got hers, and she found it super cheap on Ebay. I started stalking Ebay, but I have really bad luck on there. And the prices for name brands like Happy Hangup and the Kanoe Baby Hammock were, well, a little out of my price range.

Then I wondered if I couldn’t just make one. I found this post of pictures of another homemade baby hammock and decided I definitely could do it, but without ever seeing an actual hammock in person, I was reluctant to just throw something together without knowing what I was doing. I eventually found a set of instructions here by Karyn.

The hammock itself was not hard to put together. I found all the hardware I needed (rated to at least 100 lbs) at Lowe’s. I used a Cedar board and carved out the notches on either end with a boring bit on my drill press and then my circular saw.

I still need to sand the board down, but I’m actually going to wait on that until the baby arrives, and then I’ll probably make Randy do it. I was completely unsure how long the board should be. I have asked several people about their hammocks, and it seems the hanger part REALLY varies. Now that I have it assembled, I understand.

My board is 3 feet long (I started with 4, but that was too much). I like how that width supports the hammock in a wider position, but dislike how close that makes the baby to the wood beam. So I am either going to make a new hammock, but start with 5 yards of fabric instead of 4, or I’m going to cut the board down to 2 feet and re-notch the end. But I need an actual baby in there first to see what, if any, other modifications I’d make.

Then I’ll definitely be making a new hammock so that I have two (one for the laundry, one for use), and I’ll probably dye the plain unbleached muslin to make it more fun.

If you prefer to buy one, Peaches and Nips at Etsy sells what appear to be very nice hammocks, for much cheaper than the better-known brands like Happy Hangup, etc. (It’s usually cheaper to buy direct from the source. Happy Hangup and the like have to pay all the middlemen, too.)

Please pardon the bad pictures in this post. I was having contractions, didn’t feel like carrying the heavy hammock upstairs, and it is a pretty dark day here anyway, and I would have had to use the flash regardless, so I decided to just leave it in the basement and photograph it where it is.

Over the weekend, I finished this blanket for the new baby. You may remember that I bought this skein of Misti Alpaca while on vacation, and then was stumped about what to do with it. I eventually decided upon a baby blanket, but didn’t think that one skein was enough. And I wasn’t sure how easily I’d be able to get my hands on another skein. So I started on the blanket, making little squares to be sewn together later.

I ended up being able to get another skein at a local yarn store, and made 16 squares total. I hate hate hate seaming knitting, but managed to get that done. But then it seemed a little floppy around the outside. I knew I wanted to put some sort of border around it, but didn’t think the leftover alpaca would provide the support needed. So I found this wool, remembered how to crochet just enough to put on two rows of single crochet, and now it’s done.

I keep joking that it’s clearly made more with love than with any particular skill, attention to detail, or talent.

But it’s just the right size to cover the carseat this winter.

While we’re waiting for this baby to make his or her appearance, I’m keeping busy with more crafts, but I am limiting the time I spend in my office, which is really really nice. At the present time, I am working on making pants and soakers from old sweaters, and getting at least that part of my inventory restocked for January.

And then today, I found several cool websites that talk about recycled crafts…

Amy Quarry shares some of her favorite old clothes into new things projects. (And I swear that giant tub of old clothes in my office WILL be made into new projects some day.)

Here is a bathmat tutorial for those of you with lots of time on your hands.

For those of you who own wine bottles, this is a fun idea for a wine rack.

And the old standby Make Stuff has a whole page of recycled craft ideas.

 So this is the last of the things I wanted to try out with the dye before starting on real projects.

This is a baby nightgown. I dyed it orange, intending to leave it that way. Then decided that was kind of boring, so I tossed the bottom half into the red dyebath.

Purple clothes. Now, see, the pants and one shirt were intended to be dyed such that they went from really light purple at the top to dark purple at the bottom. I’ve read online several places that it’s just a matter of how much time the item spends in the dyebath, but then I’ve read a few other places that it really requires three shades of whatever color you want. I personally didn’t have much success with the “more time in the dyebath” method, as you can see here.

And more prefolds. See, this red is the best I could get with the fade-out dye goal. It goes from dark red to pretty much white over about one quarter inch. Not quite what I wanted. The orange one behind it is a little better, but not much.

So, there you go. I feel a little more confident about dyeing things for the shop, for projects, etc.

So the last few weeks, I’ve been trying out batik. It’s so much fun. Wow. I am using soy wax, which is not what is traditionally used in batik, but it’s nontoxic and has a lower melting point. Plus, it washes out in the laundry. Regular batik wax can give off toxic smoke, has to be hotter to use, and needs to be boiled out. Not really a good idea for us preggos or for working around small children.

So this is a dandelion design I totally copied from a project I saw on Craftster. It was one of the first things I put the wax on, and I learned really quickly that I need to watch the initial blob when brush meets fabric. You can see that I got better as I went, but I think I need a different applicator to get really smooth thin lines.

This one I batiked first, then dyed it purple, then washed out the wax and dyed it yellow. You can see the times when I let the wax get too cool while I was using it - it doesn’t saturate the fabric as well, so more of the purple dye got through. I also continued to struggle with smooth, thin lines. That continues to be a frustration, actually. You can also see how the yellow overdye changes the color of the purple just slightly.

Well, when I was at my computer printing off a few designs to test out in batik, Wally saw the batman logo in my folder of saved clipart and got all excited about making a batman hankie. So here it is. This one was first dyed yellow, then batiked and dyed black. This is where the soy wax really shows its drawbacks. Because of its lower melting point, it’s not as stable as traditional waxes. It doesn’t hold up as well in the dyebath and can’t be used in very hot dyebaths. To get a dark black, you need to leave fabric in the dyebath, particular after adding the soda ash fixer, for a fairly long time. But leaving the soy wax in the soda ash solution for very long will ruin the design. So you’re supposed to limit the amount of time the batiked design sits in the soda ash solution, thus limiting the amount of time the black has to darken and set. So you (or I, at least) end up with this kind of dark gray instead of true black. Close enough for me.

The dragon. My favorite. Batiked it (still struggled with the glob problem, you can see on the rightmost foot). Then dyed it in red, leaving the top corner out of the dyebath. Then dyed that corner in black. I really like how it turned out.

This one was really an experiment for a Christmas present I’m planning to make for my nephew. The flames have a bit more crackling than I’d like, so I need to think about that one a bit, but overall I’m pretty happy with it. It was a LOT of work. I dyed it yellow, then batiked on some flames. Dyed it Orange. Washed it. Batiked on the flames a bit bigger. Dyed it Red. Washed it. batiked on the flames bigger. Dyed it Black. When I dyed it black, I tried to keep the bottom flame design OUT of the dyebath, and I think that’s what I should have been doing all along.

But what I’m most unhappy with is the way the black is not really black, it’s really dark maroon, because it’s black over red. I’m not entirely sure how to prevent this from happening, but might give it a try with some sort of technique like I used with the dragon hankie.

And two baby shirts. A rooster and a spider. The spider didn’t turn out as well as I wanted it to, but I also was rushed when I was doing it, so it makes sense. Also, see the light gray there in the middle of the spider shirt? Yeah, dummy, UNSNAP the shirt before dyeing.

So batik was really super fun and I hope to be able to do more of it soon!!