Beautiful fruit and other things

First and foremost, Happy Easter to all you folk out there! I hope you have had a glorious day! I am thankful I was able to spend today with my family - it's always a good time.

I've had a great weekend thus far - Ryan and I went over to Malibu Canyon yesterday for a little morning hike. It was a beautiful day and perfect for hiking. We didn't go too far or anything, but it was great just to be spending time outside. On our drive back we stopped at a little roadside fruit stand that was selling some beautiful looking strawberries. I bought a case of them with the intentions of making some strawberry jam. And strawberry jam I made.

I love jamming.

I also made some lemon curd for some poppy seed tartlettes I brought over for Easter dinner. I love homemade lemon curd. I have some leftover from the tartlettes so I will probably be eating spoonfuls of it this week.

In other news, I have been trying to brainstorm different types of fiber art classes I can take this year. I was thinking perhaps an advanced needle felting class? I know the basics...but I think it'd be fun to learn more techniques. Any ideas?

I can't believe how quickly this weekend flew by...it's already Sunday night?! My how time flies. 

Here's to a new week!

Knitting a couple of crayfish

As promised, here are a couple shots of my most recent knitting project form Swedish handknits: the crayfish hot pad.  It's knitted in the round and the seams will be sewed shut when it's finished. Then, I will wet felt it so it shrinks up and becomes a little sturdier.  I'm using a 100% wool yarn...I couldn't find the exact color blue I wanted, but the one I settled on is working out better than I anticipated.

I've been working on it here and there for the past couple weeks. A couple rows while watching TV, a couple rows in the morning...a great leisurely project.

 

For those of you who don't know, crayfish are very popular in Sweden. Most Swedes throw crayfish parties in the summertime and it's quite a fun party to attend if you ever get the chance.  I'm thinking about throwing one this year...IKEA sells frozen crayfish for just the occasion!

Friday update!

Confession: I have been horribly horrible about regularly blogging these days. But I suppose you already figured that one out on your own.  I haven't been doing much crafting lately, but I've been doing a lot of list-making for projects and just plain ol' relaxing.

Our life these days have been great. Ryan and I are getting settled into our daily routines and, slowly but surely, I feel like our life is slowing down for a minute so we can play catch up. It's been wonderful to relax and just be. I've been watching a lot of TV lately, and quite frankly, I don't even care.  Maybe it's that Spring is upon us, but I feel like I am coming into a new season of life. And I like it.

Back to crafting. Thanks to Rachel's post during her craftbook review series, I found this little gem of a book:

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I strongly encourage you to check out Rachel's review of this book, it's what made me buy it! I am so excited about some of the projects in here - especially the Dala horse garland and crayfish hotpad. I've already started the crayfish hotpad...pics to come!

Then I was purusing through Etsy and found these inspiring things that went into my mental idea bank:

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I love the Scandinavian vintage look for the pillow.

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My mom just sent me a set of these little tins and I am quite excited to try a batch of sandbakkel!

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Ryan and I have been into vintage maps lately. Ryan has always had a place in his heart for geography, and during a recent antiqing venture we picked up an early 1800 map of the Virgin Islands for a few bucks. We went to the Virgin Islands for our honeymoon so it was fun to find an old map of a place we've been.  We framed it and hung it up and decided it would be fun to start collecting vintage maps of places we've been.  I love this old Stockholm map above - so cool!

That's all I have for now, folks!

Fabric galore!!!

I was in a little part of heaven this weekend.  My sister and I had our 3rd sister craft day and we ventured to the fashion district of LA to track down some seriously cute fabric. Mission accomplished. 

My good friend, Jo, told me about the amazing fabric store known as Michael Levine. Holy cow is it amazing. Overwhelmingly amazing. I only wish I had remembered to put my memory card back in my camera so the pictures below would do it justice.

Look at all that fabric!!! And that's just one section of the store!

 Caryn with our bolts of red fabrics for the advent calendar.

 Jo starting the decision making process with her fabric choices.

 Me realizing that not only do they carry a vast amount of fabric, but yarn too!!

"There's nothing like the feeling of fresh cut fabric!"

And here below are the final five that made the cut:

And what's a girl to do when she sees some blue and yellow (the picture makes the yellow fabric look a little green-ish, I promise it's yellow in real life) adorable fabric that coordinate so well?! I already have a few projects in mind for this color/pattern combo...

All in all, the day was a raging success.

Time to get some crafting on. Happy weekend.

DIY heat pack

I have been meaning to make a quick, rice-filled, heat pack for quite some time now and today was the day it finally got made.  After one too many instances of needing one and not having one on hand, I finally perused through my fabric stash and decided to use this old Swedish fabric calendar as the fabric.

I forgot to take a picture of the calendar before I cut it up...so here it is just pieced together. 

A short while later and here it is! Filled with rice and sectioned off into 4 rectangles.  You can microwave the entire pack and the rice retains the heat.  Voila. Cheap DIY heat pack. I used this tutorial from the blog Fellow Fellow. I love that I finally found something to use the calendar for! 

It's been a great weekend.  I can't believe it's already Monday tomorrow. My how time flies. And it's March already?! Wow.  

Hope all is well!