DIY Utensil Bouquet

I plan to do a round up post in the future with all of my favorite somewhat-homemade and DIY gift ideas, so I thought I'd post one of my favorites so far.

A utensil bouquet makes a great housewarming, bridal or baby shower gift, or maybe even wedding gift if you go really over the top with it. As you can see,  it's basically a gift basket made to look like a bouquet, or in my case, a pot of flowers. (This was a bridal shower gift for the same SIL who received these). It can take an inexpensive or ho-hum gift like utenstils and make it more memorable or visually appealing.

"Crafty polygamy" and my current (knitting) project

I think I may've written an earlier post a few months ago about how I like to practice what Sunny from A Fashionable Stitch terms "crafty monogamy"-- I prefer to only work on one project at a time until I complete it and move on to the next one.

Today, I realize that if I were a stranger I would tell myself "you just keep telling yourself that, dear." I currently have no fewer than four-ish projects going on, ranging from knitting, sewing, quilting, and DIY. There was a time when I'd tell myself that knitting and sewing projects can't really be counted on the same "finish it and move on" list, because knitting is more portable, takes longer, and can be done in front of the TV with the family, while sewing is much more instant gratification, and furniture makeovers can only be done when the weather's nice...you get the picture. I think this is how I ended up doing so many projects at once  right now. That, and nesting. I'm pregnant.

Are clogs comfortable?

No, seriously. Are clogs comfortable? This is not one of those posts where I  pose a question in the title and then seek to answer it in the blog post. I'm really hoping someone will pipe in in the comments and let me know whether clogs such as Lotta from Stockholm, Sven, Dansko, or Swedish Hasbeens are comfortable.

I've had shoes on the brain, so I wanted to blog about them, natch. And have been pinning them like crazy.


It all started when I went to pin some Worishofers (they're not clogs), which I've wanted for several years now. I've never purchased them because I don't like spending more than 40, 50 bucks on a pair of sandals (the cuter, more popular and harder to find Worishofers run about 70-80). But right now I'm pregnant, and I've heard the wonders they work for pregnant feet.

Plus, after having to purchase heels for my brother's wedding, I've really been looking into the numerous benefits of orthopedic shoes in general, pregnant or not. I've come to realize that a.) if shoes aren't comfortable for me to wear, I won't wear them, and will resort to my usual, unstylish Reef flip flops and Costco Ugg knockoffs. And b.) shoes and how they're built can effect the entire health of your body in terms of posture, how you walk, and leg and back pain. So. I'm an orthopedic shoe convert (well, I will possibly be when I get around to buying some) and have been discovering just how cute some of those shoes can be.

I was mostly pining for (just realized how close "pining" and "pinning" are) Earthies...


Clarks...


Bass...


And Worishofers...


But it was when I was pinning Worishofers from Amazon that it "suggested" another shoe. Lotta from Stockholm.


Super cute, but they have wooden soles! I've owned one pair of wooden-soled shoes and they were just horrendous. They weren't necessarily clogs, however. More like wooden wedges.

So I Googled wooden shoes extensively looking for an honest review as to these cutie clog's comfort. I found plenty of fashion bloggers sporting them, but we all know that many fashion bloggers will sacrifice comfort for looks.




And reviews on sites that sell these shoes are no help either, because some (high arched?) people swear by these clogs, while those with low arches say they're the most uncomfortable thing since the chastity belt. I have average arches, so where does that leave me? I even checked on one of those germy Dr. Scholls "custom fit orthotics" booths to verify-- I have about the most average feet on the planet.



So, if you have tried these shoes, please let me know, honestly, what you think. I'll happily pay the price for a pair if I know they'll be as good for my feet as they look.

PS -- I had this song on the brain when I was writing this post.

Embedded Pinterest images are gone...

Ugh, well this is an annoying little development that I had no way of forseeing when I began using Pinterest, and their codes to embed my pins within blog posts...

I've been noticing that in some of my older posts with embedded pins, those pins are no longer showing up. Some of those roundup style posts are nothing more than a bunch of broken image links. I'm not going to link back to a specific old post to demonstrate, because I hope to get the broken images fixed as I discover them. (There's already been one post where I simply saved my pinned images and them uploaded them to Blogger as a fix, instead of using Pinterest's new embed feature-- which I have yet to try).

"Knitting Wars"; the faketroversy, and the clueless "knitter" behind the campaign

Local  PBS affiliate WNET has a new ad campaign out that they're getting their full money's worth on--because it's getting them plenty of attention outside of the New York area that they broadcast to.

I work in broadcasting and am seeing some of that attention come from industry blogs and such, as to be expected.

But, unexpectedly, some of that attention is coming from knitters. In fact, the first place I read about the campaign was on the Vogue Knitting Facebook page, which first posted a status update that said "New York's PBS station is using knitting in a campaign that slanders reality TV. We're not happy..." The New York Times article they linked to (with background on the ad campaign that I'm to lazy to summarize) is here.

Project: bandanna pillows

You may remember that making throw pillows for my sister was on my "Early 2013 Project Queue". Well, here they are, better late than ever. My sister's birthday is actually a full month before my mom's birthday, but I completed my mom's grocery bags well before these pillows.

Fabric dyeing: revamping ruined bedding

Recently, the Lifetime Moms Facebook page, or some other similar FB page, had a status update about how it would be nice if "your husband does the laundry once in a while."

Aside from being annoyingly sexist by assuming all families have traditional gender roles (or even that all moms have husbands), it just wasn't true... I HATE it when my husband does the laundry. Mostly because, in my opinion, he does it all wrong. But all other housework, besides laundry and cooking, is actually my husband's domain as he's such a neat freak. Unfortunately that means if I let the laundry sit around for a little too long, my husband's clean freak nerve starts twitching and he gets to washing. Which brings us to today's post.

So, in my previous post I confessed my love of discounted high end bedding. But I also professed my love for mismatched and shabby chic bedding. Rachel Ashwell's Simply Shabby Chic line at Target is kind of a perfect blend of the two, except several years ago it was still pricier than the Ralph Lauren bedding at Ross. I think the Target bedding is still a great value, as long as I wait for it to go on clearance or at least on sale.

So it was a big splurge when I bought this amazing coverlet at Target back in, oh, 2005 or so.

Ugh, I love it just as much even today. Target doesn't even carry it anymore, I had to find this picture on eBay. I believe the print is called "ditsy daisy."

Anyway, the splurge was huge because I also bought some pink floral bedding to go with it, which Target amazingly still carries (but not online, so I can't link it). I think I spent something like $80 or $90 for the whole she-bang, which was a big deal because I was in college at the time. My husband and I weren't even married yet.

We used it on our bed with the coordinating sheets just once, when my overzealous clean freak then-boyfriend somehow managed to do this to the coverlet...

The entire thing was bleached out! I still don't know how he managed to do that (I was too broken-hearted to ask at the time), and when I asked him recently how exactly it happened, he had no idea what I was talking about. It had been three moves since he'd seen this blanket, and, after all, it had only looked like it's previous incarnation above for a very short time.

The bleached out version really doesn't look so bad in these pictures; it's almost even kind of appealing. I blame my camera. In real life, it was not. cute.

I'd already planned on dying most of our bedding to coordinate with each other, and knew if I dyed this coverlet a light enough color, the bleached out flowers might still show through.

I usually tend toward pinks, blues, and purples for our room, but I decided to go with yellow after pinning these images:

I love these two images (I think it's the same bedroom snapped with a different camera), and thought the yellow would couple nicely with the orangish hue the flowers on our blanket had become. (I could not find a source for the pictures outside of random Tumblrs and re-blogged pages; if you know who took this pictures please tell me as I prefer giving proper credit where credit is due.)

I went with Rit Dye this time, because I already had some Sunshine Orange on hand, and opted to dye in the washing machine since I was working with such a large piece. I bought a bottle of Lemon Yellow and added the entire thing to the dye bath, and poured in a small amount of the orange. At first, I thought the orange might've been a mistake, as indicated in this Instagram. But I actually quite like how it turned out.


Granted, it doesn't look so saturated in this collage, but again, I'm blaming the camera. It's a very sweet yellow closer to nacho cheese than to butter in real life, but I like it.

There's a length of blue scallop stitching around the end that not only didn't bleach out, it didn't turn yellow. So, obviously the thread is synthetic. It doesn't really "go", but it's not that noticeable.


The pillowcases in the back are the original pink Rachel Ashwell ones I purchased to go with this coverlet. The front ones are authentic vintage feedsack pillowcases I nabbed from my mom's house-- I usually ask before claiming goods that aren't mine from my parent's house, but these weren't being used and I didn't want them to get ruined, plus I just love them! I think they came with the house when my parents bought it in the 90s. They live in a 1906 farmhouse on an actual ranch, so perhaps these really did hold feed at one time!