Monday, April 16, 2012

More springtime flowers.

Hello,

Although I originally set out to write a post about a pair of mittens I knit up last winter, while going through my photos I stumbled across several more photos I took of the flowers that have been cropping up.  Anyway, I figured I'd just go ahead and make another flower post while some of these guys are still in bloom. The wisteria's gone, and the roses are a little less intense, but the azaleas are going strong and I may be taking some photos of the violets and rhododendrons rather soon.


This is the best picture I have of this year's wisteria blossoms. It was a little overcast, and many of the photos came out too shadowy.

...more pictures after the break.
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Monday, March 26, 2012

Spring Has Sprung. Ish.

It's been kind of a weird winter/spring combo. The winter in GA was REALLY mild-- I hardly wore anything more than a long sleeved shirt and jacket when going outside. Now, many of the plants are blooming and sprouting leaves at the same time, which is a tad unusual. The only tree that seems to know what's going on are the dogwoods. Anyhoo, some of the plants are so pretty, and the weather has been so nice, so yesterday I decided to take a few photos. Here they are.

Here are some pictures I took of the little red dogwood.



And a few of the texas roses we have growing. No, not real roses, but still very pretty.



A bebeh peach!


A close-up shot of blueberry flowers.


The Kwanzan flowering cherry. It has double blooms. One of my favourite ornamental flowering trees.



....and that's that. Sorry for the picture bombing; I'm going to go read up on the HTML for hiding posts soon.

-Cat

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Sunday, March 25, 2012

From Coat to Rug.

Hey, look!

It's me again!

So, I still make stuff, but when it comes to the world of the internet I'm a lazy mofo. Oh, I'll save and print out patterns and tutorials to knit/crochet/nalbind*/sew/etc. with. I'll even take pictures with my digital camera, and sometimes I'll upload them to the computer.

That is the extent of my online efforts, usually.

However, today I'm really excited, because this past winter I bought a big wool coat from a thrift store that has a 10 dollars per basket deal. The pattern was super pretty, but the coat itself was fugly. On top of that, it was a size 1X, so even if the cut wasn't outdated and unnactractive, it wouldn't have fit anyone in my family. So, I decided to carefully undo all the seams, remove the lining and interfacing, then cut the cloth into roughly 1 inch strips, salvaging as much material as possible so I could turn it into a rug.

So far I've made one toothbrush rug (a form of nalbinding) in the past, That one was made from some old queen-size bed sheets and I gave that to my parents for their bedroom. It's been holding up really nicely, and gone through two washing like a champ. I used this tutorial on toothbrush rugs my mother and I found while killing time on the internet. It gives guidelines rather than explicit instructions, but the videos are very clear and explained throughout. Both rugs I've made were ovals, and I increased in all four corners on each round in order to expand the ovals and make them lie flat.

Now for the part everybody has been waiting for...



Ta-da! It's only 23 inches width-wise and 28 inches length-wise, but when you think it came from and old coat that's not too shabby. Right now it's in the living room, at the foot of a rocker. It's super squooshy.



Isn't it lovely? The coat had a plaid of blue, red, and mustard yellow. The colours all blend together beautifully as a rug.


Aaand...


Closer....


BEHOLD ALL THE PRETTY COLOURS INTWERTWINING.

I love how I made something pretty and functional out of something gotten for maybe like 2-3 dollars at a thrift store.

Oh, and...this past new year's day, one of my resolutions was to blog more-- at least once a week.

HAHA NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS FTW.

-Cat

*I'm nalbinding this, I nalbind, I nalbound that...is that how the word is used??

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