The Heathen Housewife

What a warm welcome back to blogging you all have given me! Thank you for your comments and questions. So far I’ve sent out around 20 copies of the spiral sweater pattern, and I think I’m caught up with the requests. I’ll continue giving it out for free for a couple more days, since I’ve posted on the Ravelry group to get it and hopefully all the KAL-ers have seen the heads up by then. After that, it will go up for sale on Ravelry downloads and at the store where I work. I can’t wait to see photos of your finished sweaters!

Boots – I’ve had a question or two about the boots I was wearing in my Christmas wrap-up post. I bought them right before Christmas because my old UGGs were about 10 years old, and no longer fit my feet. Before kids, I wore a size 10 1/2, now I need a size 12! I finally went through the house last summer and threw away all the too-small shoes, and my feet are much happier now.

Anyway, the new boots are Sorels, and so far I’m very happy with them. They are great for slipping on and off – I don’t actually have to untie and retie the laces to get them on and off, which is good when you’re trying to herd a couple of cats children out the door. The waterproof bottoms are also great when sloshing through filthy slush in parking lots on days when the temps rise to near-freezing. They are pretty warm and cozy on my feet, although not quite as luxurious as UGGs. You can order them at Zappos, although I think for some reason I ordered mine from the Nordstrom website.

Do you know how hard it is to find good shoes in size 12 womens?!? Most brands do not even go up that high. It can be very frustrating. I tried to buy boots locally at a store nearby that carries some larger sizes. The idiot salesguy actually tried to convince me that I would be okay in an 11. Um, no. If I wanted boots that hurt my feet, I would stick with my 10-year-old Uggs (which were actually in pretty good shape because I only wore them when I really needed to.)

Julie’s Haircut
I was surprised by the huge interest in Julie’s new haircut. It’s hardly new to us any more – she’s had it since maybe late September or early October. No, Sophie did not get at her with the scissors. We cut it short because Julie has a sensitive little scalp and brushing her hair was like sheer torture. Also, she was not willing to let me help her pull it back, so it was always in her face. Her longer hair was always a mess and I could never see her sweet smile.

So we decided to go for a little pixie cut. Actually, she wanted a haircut to look like the main character in My Neighbor Totoro.

We took the video with us to the salon, and the nice lady did a good job giving us what we wanted. The nice thing about this haircut is that even when it is incredibly messy, it still looks cute, and I can always see her beautiful little face. It also saves us from a lot of grief in the mornings.

And now, for another bag story, which is really from September. This is another one of those cases where I was busy doing, and not so much busy writing. I was cleaning out my closet a bit, getting ready for fall, and realized that I had a couple sweaters that I was never going to wear again. I came thisclose to shoving them in the bag for the local charity pickup, but then I realized I could put them to better use myself.

I’d been wanting to try the Shibouri techniques I’ve been reading about for the last few years, and this was my chance to do it without knitting something up special for the purpose. I looked around the house, and found the perfect materials just waiting for the purpose. The girls have a big jar of pop beads, and we had a bunch of those tiny hair binders left over from the baby days.

Using the pop beads worked really well both for the functional Shibouri resist factor, but also because it meant that the girls could hang out with me and play, so we all felt like we were doing it together.

Here’s my work early on – I’d cut up the sweater and was tying the beads into the orange stripe along the bottom, holding them in with the little rubber bands.

Sophie thought the ribbed collar of one of the other sweaters made a great headband.

Julie decided she wanted to do Shibouri too, so I gave her a piece from a dark gray sweater, and she tied in a bunch of beads sort of randomly. – and see? This is an example of how I could never see her face when she had longer hair. Only usually it was worse.

Here’s my piece once I had all the beads in place…

While I was at it, I dug through my stash and found this old, unfinished Christmas stocking, which I had started and then decided I hated. It went into the wash with everything else.

I also had a bunch of leftover shetland wool yarn, which was easily machine knit up into long, scarf-like swatches, and I put some beads into those as well. It’s nice that the pop beads come in different sizes and shapes.

I actually had three sweaters to cut up – this light gray one is from when I was about 13. It was oversized back then, and a little small for me now. Still a nice sweater, just a little dated with the colors. I cut all the seams away and threw it in the wash.

Here’s Julie’s piece pre-wash. Like I said – totally random beads. But she enjoyed participating in it.

Here’s the big picture pre-washing.

All along, I had told the girls that I was going to sew these pieces together to make a bag, so of course Julie wanted a bag of her own. I know that this is a sad, sad looking bag, but I let her pick out the ribbon to go on the handle, and she was proud of it.

Very, very proud of it…

Especially since I let her help with the sewing. Yeah, and of course Sophie needed a bag too at that point, even though she had not done any shibouri-ing. I didn’t really want to sacrifice any more of my felted pieces, so I dug out some cheap store-bought felt and threw this together for her.

I know I’ve mentioned that I have a tenuous relationship with my sewing machine, at best. I know the bag looks a little wonky. But I was definitely going for eclectic, which is wonky’s first cousin, so maybe it’s okay.

And hey! I always wanted the chance to sew some ric rac on something, and this project allowed me a chance to indulge. Here’s what it looks like with the wheel inside…

Yeah, I even figured out how to make little buckle straps. Whee! The backpack straps were a major pain since my sewing machine didn’t want to sew through that webbing Idonotknowwhy. I sewed them on by hand, which is functional if not exactly lovely, except that I also made them a bit shorter than they should be because I was afraid of making them too long. Sigh.

Once it was all whipped up, I bought a bunch of thick foam and cut sheets to fit between the lining and the outside layers to help pad the soft wood from bumps. I used some canvas for the lining because the felted knitting would have been to stretchy and weak. It’s the brick red color you see on some of the outside blocks – I didn’t have quite enough felt to do all the outside, and I was going for wonky eclectic anyway, right?

This bag did not get nearly as many impressed comments at SOAR as the pop-tab tote bag did, but it does put the fun in functional.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 2:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.