Creamer

A while back, I found a homemade creamer recipe link on Pinterest and decided that I would eventually make a bunch for a coffee bar type thing at our next shindig.

Well, the recipe that I used didn't claim to need a glass bottle, but another one that I found (I know it's in German, so here's an English one) claimed the creamer would taste better out of a glass.  Sooo... I bought a 4 pack of the Starbucks Mocha frappachino drinks from the store.  Once we drank them all (took forever as they aren't that tasty) I wanted to remove the labels.

The hubby suggested putting them into hot water to remove the labels, but not too hot as it would break the glass.

Three was the maximum in this pot.

The labels came off slowly, took about 5 minutes roughly.

Ugh, the label left a lovely residue on the bottle.

Originally, I thought I could take off all the sticky glue with finger nail polish remover. Nope. Didn't work. At all.  After some research on line, I tried soaking paper towels in white vinegar and wrapped them around the glass and left them sit for an hour.

I actually left it there about 2 hours. After one hour it didn't budge... still.

Even after two plus hours of soaking in white vinegar, it still took some extra strength to scrub it off with the soaked paper towel.

FINALLY... let's get to the Baileys/Creamer.... in another post.  

Sonic... the Hedgehog!

Shockingly, Pinterest is fueling my knitting love.  I found an awesome knitting pattern for hedgehogs. Hedgehogs seem to be the latest hipster animal.  First came owls, then foxes, and now.... hedgehogs.  But I've always had a thing for hedgehogs.  Sonic the Hedgehog was my favorite video game as a kid.  My first cat was named Sonic and I really wanted to name Bailey Tails originally (but she's not a Tails so it worked out - eventually I'll have a Tails and Knuckles....).

Also, the hubby got me a stuffed Tails!! He brought it home when I started working on this... fate? Yes, of course.

Let me clear: I am a new knitter, a novice at best. So, while I am critiquing the tutorial, I freely acknowledge that the fault might lie with me as I maybe wasn't ready for it.  

With that being said... The tutorial seemed simple enough but I wasn't a big fan about the make 1 right and make 1 left nonsense.  She had a tutorial linked to how to do it but it wasn't good enough for me.  Plus! She didn't explain how to do it in the round.  I had to practice it a couple times before it came out OKish.   Maybe, just maybe, if I had used a non-slick yarn that would have also made it easier.  But why did things the easy way when I can do it the Laura way? *grumble* So I Googled it and found a better visual of m1r and m1l from New Stitch a Day (love that place!)

I'm not going to lie. I started this project, got around 4 rounds into it, and stared at the tutortial for the next week and a half.  I couldn't get the courage up to try and complete it. I even restarted it a couple times to motivate myself to knit Round 5.  No clue why it bugged me so much, but it did.

The tip of the nose is weird. I don't think I did it like the tutorial wanted.

You can see it better here... weird with the m1l, m1r.

But once I got over my m1r, m1l fear it went ok into the belly (which ALSO had those lovely symbols).  Another thing that isn't written clearly is the last round on the belly to make 5 stitches. I misunderstood it and did something else.  I will give the tutorial credit for having detailed pictures to other knitting techinques that I didn't know (p2tog tbl for example).

 Somehow, I screwed up the final 5 stitches on the belly.

It worked out later with the grey body, but it wasn't easy. Had to add random stitches to make it work.

Now, the body. Ugh. I had all the materials for the project, but there isn't a clear way to get the new needles onto the head/body combo in the tutorial.  I ended up taking a break here and tried reading it multiple times until it made sense.

And then.... it did. A lightbulb went off. (I think too much with these tutorials sometimes).

He's super cute.

The nose still looks funny. No amount of stuffing could fix it. Although, I will admit I should have used more.

You can see that I had a hard time in the beginning attaching the grey to the teal.

Soooo... here's Sonic! I'm going to make a couple more for others =)  I loved the teal and grey combo! (For those that know me, this isn't shocking).

Aren't his ears cute? He looks like an ardvark or anteater. Sigh. I'll pretend it's a hedgehog.

Dominio wasn't sure what to make of him.

"He smells funny."

"Meh, I'm more important than that."

Such a cutie.

Thoughts?

Mother Day's

Happy Mother's Day to all you mommies (including you pet mommies)!

I had been knitting a lot lately so I wanted to sew a little for all the mommies in my life.  There was an adorable pattern I found on Pinterest that I had been eyeing and finally bought it off Etsy.  Totally worth it.  The best part? I didn't know anything about paper piecing and the woman who created the pattern had FREE videos on how to do paper piecing. Amazing, right? Super easy to follow as well.

My mom's gift was easy - horses.  Fawn and Jerry are the horses that I grew up with and they're still kicking (literally - they knocked Dad's dog Luca upside the head a couple months ago when he wouldn't leave them be).  

Here's Jerry, the one-eyed wonder.

Fawn's coat isn't looking too hot here, but you get a better view of Jerry's head poking out.

Since the pattern gave me two angle options, I made Jerry one way and Fawn another. Even though Jerry's a gelding, they're in love and it's adorable.  You can't put them in separate pastures or Jerry jumps over the fence to be with her.  So, I had to do two.

I'm finding that I'm not good with paper piecing and doing it the traditional way. I don't stitch to the paper... ever. I should practice but doing it the correct way, but for these pillows I cut out the big chunks and folded the paper and eyeballed the stitching. I bet all you real quilters are cringing at the thought of me doing it that way, but it worked.... sort of.

On Fawn's you can see that it didn't work out with the right eye and ear.  But the rest was pretty good.

The right eye/side is driving me nuts. But she's super cute.

On Jerry's I made a lot more cuts on the chunks before stitching them together to make sure it was even angles, etc.  It worked better.

Jerry only has one eye so it's supposed to look like this on him. But his is SO much batter!

Looking back on the horse pattern I should have added a tail. But ehhhh. I still LOVE this pattern. I might make another set for others.

Super cute. Love this pattern!

Mom in law was a bit different.  She doesn't have a specific animal that she goes "EEEEE" over (maybe cats... but not like me, obviously I'm the Queen of Crazy Cat Lady Town) but I wanted to have pillows for her that would make Dad in law happy too.  So I looked back at the sewing machine cover I made and made a pillow version of it.  The hubby seemed to think that would be the best option for them and their home.

On the left pillow I stitched Orion, minus his bow.  On the right are the dippers.

Big and Little Dipper.

Orion looks better here.

My Grandmother loves quilting items. All times.  She used to go to Lancaster, PA and buy the prettiest quilts and hang them on her wall, put them on all her beds, and give them to us.  I blame her for my original interest in quilts and mom in law for my love of attempting to make them.  When I was looking through the Etsy shop for the Peeping Horse, there was a Peeping Duck pattern. Sold - I knew she'd like them.

I made four ducks total.  One was a practice set and I took them for our couch and the better ones I gave to her.  I did the first one as the male mallard, but I wanted the second one to be different.  After Googling a couple pictures, I finally decided that I could use a cheetah type fabric to mimic the feather pattern of the female mallard.

This is my practice duck. The nostril is killing me. She's hooked on quack. =D

I love how the female mallard is taller than the male.  These were the better two. Sigh. Need to practice more with paper piecing!

Thoughts? Hope your Mother's Day is a great one!