Holiday Gifting for the Kids

Last year, I had made my eldest nephew a fleece blanket with a Star Wars theme. His siblings (especially his brother) also wanted blankets as well for this year after seeing their brother get a lot of use out of his.

So, I found some polar fleece that I thought they might like. Owls for her.

Robots for him.

The fleece kits were on sale at JoAnns, and came with a matching colored fleece for the underside. What's nice about polar fleece is that it doesn't fray. However, I don't like the "fringe" finishings that many kits suggest. Instead, I used a zig-zag stitch on my machine. I rounded all of the edges of the blanket and lengthened the stitch to over two inches and made it as wide as possible, then hemmed it completely around.

The cats found the fabric very warm and snuggly. I had to keep removing them from the table in order to cut and pin the large swaths of fabric. However, they were awfully cute.

If you want some helpful tips on sewing with fleece, Craftsy just came out with 12 helpful hints.

Granny Square Kick

I appear to be on a Granny Square kick. I made this the other night in under an hour:

It's made out left over sock yarn. Initially, I was going to make the Sock Yarn Blankie Square (Ravelry Link), but I think I might "spice" it up with a few granny squares in between.

Granny Squares

A friend of mine (actually, a friend's mom, but who is still a friend) was diagnosed with cancer.

A bunch of friends decided that it would be good for us to get together and put together an afghan for her.

The rules were simple:

1. Make a 6 inch square from any craft
2. Make it from a pre-determined list of yarns & colors so that we'd at least be consistent
3. Make it with love.

So, we ordered the yarn, and started. Some people are knitting, some are crocheting, some are using tunisian crochet, and some are doing a combination thereof.

This photo taken during one of our get togethers to see where we were in the process and how much more needed to be made.

I had forgotten how much I really do like knitting granny squares. They're cute colorful projects that take no more than 20 minutes to finish. Here are some of the ones I made:

I also took the time to learn some basic tunisian crochet and make a square out of that. And I found that while it is rather a neat method -- it takes a lot longer than just crochet'ing a simple granny square. BUT, tunisian crochet makes for a wonderfully THICK fabric.

Once everyone is done with their squares, we'll get together and sew together this wonderful blanket

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I think I might be making more granny squares in the future. Several years ago, I made myself a wonderful granny hexagon blanket, which I love to pieces. I might have to make myself a full granny square blanket.

Looms & Finished Hexagon Blanket

The other day, I had to try out my niece's knitting loom, just to make sure I can do it well enough to show her. (No sense in having Auntie buy her something that her Auntie can't even use!)

I think I'm definitely going to have to pick myself up a set whenever JoAnn's sends off another 50% off coupon in the mail. The only thing about these knitting looms is that they're a pretty large guage so you have to use really chunky yarn, which for a child isn't necessarily a bad thing.

On the flip side, I *finally* finished the Japanese hexagon blanket. Or actually, I cut it off short, because I ran out of a specific color of yarn, and I was almost done with it anyways, plus I didn't want to have to send off for ONE skein of yarn. Consequently, I edged it and can consider myself DONE! Yaay.