Vivien lace baby cardigan

Vivien, my youngest niece's name, means alive or lively. I thought that was perfect for this sweater I designed for her that features leaf lace motifs (leaves are alive!).

My adorable niece wearing her cardigan!

I fell in love with the lace yoke of this Prinsessa Estellen nuttu cardigan, which was inspired by one worn by Princess Estelle of Sweden. (You knew there were other royal families of Europe, right? Princess Estelle is second in line for the crown after her mom, Crown Princess Victoria!)

I would have just used that pattern, but there were two problems: it was only available in the 0-3 months size, and . . . it was in Finnish.

Strangely enough, our (the Wayward Girls') dad is fluent in Finnish (he was a missionary there in the 1970s), but I didn't figure he'd have knitting terminology on the tip of his tongue. However, because of Dad's Finnish connection, I remembered that another friend, writer and knitter Annette Lyon, also speaks Finnish. In fact, she learned to knit in grade school in Finland (while her father was in charge of the missionaries there).

The lace pattern had a chart, which makes it almost universal, but I wanted to make sure I'd read it right, and Annette was kind enough to check my translation. With a whole bunch of math and some trial-and-error, I knit up a six month cardigan with the lace patterned yoke.

I wanted to make it even more unique, so instead of a seed stitch border as on the cuffs, button band and neckband, I used a provisional cast on and designed an original leaf lace border. It's a bit bigger than the sweater, though, so the leaf pattern is more obscured, and it looks more like a ruffle, which is also cute!

I'm planning to write up the pattern to share--anybody interested? I'll get around to it much quicker that way!

View the project on Ravelry

Learn to craft with Craftsy--on sale!

Wayward Girls' Crafts is an affiliate of Craftsy, so we receive a small percentage of any sales made through these links. But even if we didn't, we'd still love their classes!

Do you know Craftsy? I think it was Jaime who first introduced me to this awesome site for online crafting classes. They've got classes on quilting, sewing, knitting, baking, gardening, jewelry making, fine art and more! Best of all, their classes are on sale up to $20 off now through Monday, May 11! This is a great Mother's day gift *hint, hint*!

Here are a few classes we Waywards have taken & enjoyed.

Knit to Flatter

Jordan: I was already a fan of Amy Herzog's body profiling and fitting techniques from her blog and book on the subject, and now I have a live class with hours of her live instruction to complete my knowledge of making flattering sweaters!

More fiber arts classes on sale

Sewing the Couture Dress

Jordan: I don't know if I'll every be quite talented enough as a seamstress to pull this off, but I learned a lot just by watching this class, from structuring garments to working with fine fabrics to fitting!

More sewing & quilting classes on sale

Watercolor Flower Bouquet

Jordan: Jaime picked out this class and put it on her wishlist (on Amazon, but Craftsy has a wishlist feature too!). When she got it, she told me, "I'm really excited! It was the first gift I 'opened' on Christmas morning!"

More art & photography classes on sale

Be sure to check out their other classes on Jewelry & Paper Crafts, Home & Garden, and 
Cake Decorating & Cooking, too!

Calli-Cardi! Sweater with a caterpillar

Last year I made sweaters for everyone in my family (except me...). My four-year-old's lovey is a multicolored caterpillar we call Cally. I wanted to incorporate it into her sweater to make it personal and unique for her: a Calli-Cardi!

I looked for a cardigan with an off-center opening to maximize the room for the caterpillar on the front. As with my six-year-old's sweater, I knew I didn't want to buy five colors of yarn to only use a little of most of them so I dyed the caterpillar colors:

Each hank was about 14 yards; the eight of them together weighed about 36g.To dye them, I used food safe colors in Mason jars on the microwave (but that's another post!).

Red: one packet of cherry Kool-aid
Yellow: about five drops of yellow McCormick's food coloring (and white vinegar)
Green: about five drops of green McCormick's food coloring (and white vinegar)
Blue: one packet of mixed berry blue Kool-aid.

Originally I planned to work the caterpillar design as part of the sweater itself using the intarsia method of colorwork, but I realized that would be a big challenge, especially with two different weights (thicknesses) of yarn. So I made the cardigan normally and then knit hexagons to appliqué the caterpillar on.

I left an extra long tail on the end of each hexagon and used the tails to sew the caterpillar onto the sweater. I used backstitch in black yarn to make the caterpillar's face and short i-cords to make his antennae.

As you can see, she loves it!

For pattern notes, modifications and in-progress photos, see this project on Ravelry!
Cardigan Pattern: Peach Blossom Child Jacket by Jennifer Little
Cardigan Yarn: Cleckheaton Country Kids 8-ply (superwash wool in DK/8-ply weight) in purple
Caterpillar Pattern: Merit badge by Amanda Ochocki
Caterpillar Yarn: Knit Go Craft Super Soft Cashmere Wool in white (cream), hand dyed (claims to be DK weight but knit up more like fingering weight)

DIY Carnival

I, along with helpers, decided to throw an activity at church that was family friendly and more geared toward your inner kid. We decided to do an indoor carnival. So, I'm including some tips of making your own carnival too! This could be indoor or outdoor. This was a while ago and the weather still wasn't as reliable as we wanted for something outdoor. Anyways, here we go!

These were our booths:

• Duck Pond -pick up a duck, if it has an "X" on the bottom you win a prize!

• Cupcake Walk-Number spaces 1-8. The contestants walk around the spaces while music plays. When the music stops hope your number is called from the mystery hat

 

• Can Toss-We used tennis balls against 6 stacked cans. Get them all down for a prize.

 

• Target Practice-Get a set amount of points in 3 throws for a prize.

• Kissing Booth-guess how many Hershey's Kisses are in the jar (we had 3 jars and differing amounts. Each jar had it's own separate guesses)
• Face Painting-we bought a simple pack at Wal-Mart. It didn't dry very quickly so I would do better research on that!

Here's some additional ideas for booths:

• Fortune Teller-fortune cookies or someone dressed up and has a fun imagination
• Go Fish-attach a string with a magnet at the end to a stick. "Go fishing" behind a curtain or in a baby pool with cut out fish with a paper clip attached so the magnet will stick. 3 tries for a fish!
• Ring Toss-rings and glass soda bottles or pegs, get the ring on the bottle and win
• Balloon Dartboard-Tap small balloons onto a board in a grid and pop with darts. Careful of pointy darts!
• Spin Wheel with a bunch of different prizes 

Food:

Now as for food. Since this was an indoor carnival, popcorn would be a bit too messy. We opted for other carnival food. In a crockpot we stacked hot dogs standing up and cooked them on HIGH for 1.5 hours and they were ready to serve! That's all it took. We fit 75 into a medium sized crockpot. We served with chips and had a potluck for desserts. So yummy and VERY successful way to do a lot of food at once. Although we opted to save money and not to this, certain companies rent out cotton candy machines for as low as $25 a day! I know some Uhauls offer rentals, just go see if your local one does!

Prizes:

• Our prizes were just candy but if you wanted to go all out here are some other ideas
• Restaurant Gift Cards
• Stuffed Animals
• Blow-up Toys (like guitars or saxophones)
• Bouncy Balls
• Temporary Tattoos
• Bubbles
• Nail Polish
• So much more! Just go to your Dollar Store, I'm sure they have tons of "prize" worthy stuff

All in all, we budgeted for about $150 and we got right around there. In addition to the supplies for each booth (rubber ducks, face paint, tarp, etc) and prizes we also bought table cloths, balloons, printed signs, and the food. We did this in our church's gym which supplied tables and chairs for free.

Oh yeah! I made a cool invitation too:

Download the font here! I promise it's safe and didn't give my computer some weird virus. This is for the carnival like font. And I found the picture of the tents online just looking up clip art.

Things to do with Zucchini

Last summer we decided to start a garden. We planted zucchini, jalapenos and watermelon. Our watermelon plant died pretty quickly but the other two thrived. We can talk about the jalapenos in another post because this post is solely dedicated to our zucchini plant. We weeded and watered as needed and by the end of the summer we harvested over 2 dozen zucchinis big to small. So anyone else ever been in the same boat of what on earth to do with all that zucchini?! Well, we definitely got creative.

Here's my list of things to do with zucchini:

Sliced thinly:
Saute them in olive oil and garlic salt
Ratatouille (I didn't attempt but I thought about it!)
Oven baked with butter, salt and pepper
Oven bake chips
Fried zucchini
Pasta noodle alternative (large cheese grater or they have a veggie noodle device)

Sliced not so thinly:
Fries! (these turned out pretty tasty. Just dip in an egg and then a flour/breadcrumb/Parmesan mix and bake!)
Raw with veggie dip
Grilled (brush with olive oil)
Stuffed zucchini

Pureed/Grated:
Bread
Muffins
Pancakes
Baby food
Fried patties (with cheese and onion and other Pinterest recipe stuff!)

AND you can freeze your grated zucchini! My freezer currently has 7 cups of frozen zucchini...

Hope these ideas help or inspire you! If you want any additional information on recipes or techniques just ask! I will be happy to make additional posts that are more descriptive.

Logo Bleach T-Shirt

For the 3 Christmases my husband and I have celebrated together I tried to include at least one homemade present. This past Christmas I wanted to get him something with one of his favorite band's logos on it but the t-shirts I found online were too dang expensive for our budget. So there was my handmade present idea! The whole thing cost about $8 to make. If you want to do the inverse of the logo check out Jaime's Bleach T-Shirt tutorial.

What you'll need:
Colored T-Shirt
Bleach pen
Pins
Chalk or chalk pencil
Traceable pattern (I did mine on computer paper)

First, I cut out the lettering of my pattern. I then pinned the pattern onto the shirt. I put a piece of cardboard in the shirt so the bleach wouldn't go through. This also made pinning the pattern onto the shirt easier since the pins could go straight into the cardboard to really hold everything in place.

Next, trace the pattern onto the fabric with chalk.

Now you're ready for the bleach pen! I just used a basic Clorox bleach pen that had 2 sized tips. I used the narrower tip so the outline wouldn't be too thick. I found this at Wal-Mart for a couple of dollars in the bleach aisle. Something I wish I would've known was to watch out for sputters and bubbles when the bleach came out. Don't squeeze it out too hard either. Oh well, makes it look more rustic, right?

This only needs to set for a short time. I let the bleach sit on the shirt for maybe 3 minutes then quickly threw it in the wash. As the washer filled up with water, I ran the bleached part under the water to wash off the excess bleach and to ensure no bleach would get anywhere else (which it did because I wasn't as careful as I should've been. You can see this on the right side of the shirt.) Dry the shirt and now it's ready to go!

Pair with a cute baby onesie with a matching logo (it was an iron on patch!) and you'll have the coolest dad and baby outfits!

Valentine's Day Party

Last year we were inspired by Jaime to throw a Valentine's Day party. We wanted this to become an annual thing but this year Valentine's Day is a week before my due date so we opted out of this year's celebration. But anywho! Here's some of the fun things we did last year:

The Dollar Store was the perfect place for the decorations (some pictured below.) They had plenty of items that were Valentine's day themed including the napkins, plates, fabric rose petals and doily hearts that we got. With the doorway decorations I cut rectangles and squares from red cardstock and wrote love, kissy, and xoxoxo with one letter per square then threaded them with red thread and viola, doorway garland!

Games:
the Newlywed Game,
Battle of the Sexes,
Guess the Famous Couple through hints,
make a story with 10 conversation hearts,
love song charades (whichever couple could guess 2 songs in the shortest amount of time won),
and a group mad lib (on strips of paper were written adjective, noun, etc and were put into a mad lib which was hilarious!)

The food had to be within the theme of course. We included on the invitations for our party guests to bring a treat that was red or pink.

Treats We Made:
Of course I didn't take hardly any pictures especially of the food...
Sliced red potatoes with sprinkled cheese and bacon bits on them (and baked for 15 min at 400)
We did a red fruit platter with Cool Whip for a dip
Pink Rice Krispie Treats
Ok, we didn't make these but we did supply hot tamales and red hots...YUM

Treats that were brought:
Strawberry Kiwi drink
Pink Oreo truffles
Chocolate covered strawberries
Cinnamon sugar donut holes
Brownies
Red and pink trifle (which won the prize for best treat which included taste and overall pinkness)

We gave out prizes for some of the games and treats. The prizes were:
Newlywed game: My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Famous Couples: Gossip magazine
Best treat: Oven mitt with matching hand towel with a large french chef
Love song charades: lollipops (get it? Pop stars?)

What do you like to do for Valentine's Day? Go out to dinner? Netflix night?

I tried to figure this out but just couldn't. If anyone knows how to embed a PowerPoint into your blog post let me know and I can share our Newlywed and Battle of the Sexes games!