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stocking cap egg cozy knitting pattern

Lookit these cute little guys!A couple of months ago a friend of mine found a picture of some long stocking-cap type egg cozies and hinted broadly that she would love it if some friend who knew how to knit could knit her some. 

I felt like that would be such an easy way to do something nice for a friend, so I volunteered. And then spent HOURS searching the internet for "stocking cap egg cozy pattern", like, a MILLION different ways and could not find a knittable version anywhere. Not one that I liked anyways. Or one that was free. 

So I decided to do it myself. I've never really designed a knitting pattern before, but come on, how hard could figuring out a tiny hat be?The answer was "not very hard at all". And so I did it. And I've got the pattern here for you to make some too!

Click here to download a copy of the Stocking Cap Egg Cozy Knitting Pattern. Its free!

These are super fast to knit. One evening's worth of reality TV and you'd have a finished one in your hand. And you can use any old worsted weight that you have kicking around in your stash. I went with good old acrylic Patons Canadiana because A: its cheap and B: you're probably going to want to wash these at some point, and I don't think cashmere is the most practical choice. This is a pretty easy pattern too, though if you've never ever knitted before I might not start with these as they are a bit fiddly due to the small number of stitches, the double pointed needles and the decreasing. But don't listen to me, just go look up some online knitting tutorials and give it a go!

The hardest part (for me) was getting the pom pom just right. Frankly, the pom pom makes it, so I really wanted that to look good. I found a good tutorial for that on Meyamo (scroll down and click on the Valentine's Day Pom Pom Creature's tutorial for a pdf with the template), so when you finish knitting my pattern, head on over there and make yourself a nice little pom pom to go on top. This has been my first successful experience in making pom poms (I have no idea why it took me so long to figure this out ) but I have learned that its all in the trimming. Make sure to trim your pom pom nicely. ("that's what he said." Sorry. I couldn't help myself.) Also, the book Pom Pom would have been helpful, but I did not find it till after I made these. 

Oh, and just in case you are wondering, the wooden egg-cup man is vintage, from Hubs' childhood days. I did a quick look around on the web and it was made by an Italian company called Sevi, and you could buy a similar one here on etsy. And the plain coloured egg cups are also from Hubs' childhood, passed on to my by his sweet mom, who knows how I love all things colourful and vintage. They even have little matching spoons (not pictured here) and get regular use around our house. And the little wooden toy eggs that I've used as props (yep, they are wood, not real) are German, and came in that cute little egg carton, and I believe were purchased for us from Citizen Kid in Hamilton, but I'm not sure who makes them. Oh, here they are!

Ok, so enjoy the pattern. Its free. Because I like you. But please don't make them to sell them though. Unless you are going to send me a kick back on each one you sell. You know, to be fair.

All right, go knit a cozy or two. And then keep your boiled eggs safe and warm for that extra bit of time between when they come out of the pot and when you get to eat 'em. 

little squares

I'm getting more and more proficient with my quilting and patch work skills as the months go by, and I've gotten better with all sorts of more complicated piecing, but my favourite is and always will be.... ...squares.

Specifically those quilts made of really little squares called postage stamp quilts. I did a quick search for more specific information about postage stamp quilts and found some interesting thoughts and tips from someone who is really obsessed with postage stamp quilts here. Also interesting is this very old postage stamp quilt that you can zoom in on really close with the little minus to plus bar above the image. 

But I digress. Basically a postage stamp quilt is one made of very small squares. Usually cut 2" x 2" max so the finished square is between 1" and 1.5". Anyhow, I just love the kaliedescope, pixel, grid like nature of them. So fun. But they are a lot of work to cut and kind of tedious to sew. Lots of very little seam allowances to press. Hard on the fingers. 

So I was very excited to find this good tutorial on pinterest for a simpler way to sew them. I did not take pictures of the technique myself, because they have a perfectly good tutorial right here, but I did take pics of my before and after sewing.  The upshot is that you cut out your tiny squares, and they lay them out on a sheet of very lightweight interfacing, and then you iron them to the interfacing and sew all the seams in a given row at once. You are basically batch piecing. You fold it along the line where the square line up, and then sew your quarter inch seam and then use your rotary cutter to trim a tiny bit off the edge of that seam so that you can press it open. The seams line up perfectly and also, no pinning. So awesome and time saving. I didn't explain it that well here, but if you are one of my sewing/quilting readers you're going to follow the link to the tutorial and see for yourself, and if you are one of my friends/relatives here for stories about the kids I can hear your eyes glazing over from here. 

But see how pretty that is? How neat and orderly. How nicely the seams line up. The only problem with it (the finished one on the left that is) is that I sewed all the seams in one direction (from the top down I think) and so it has skewed slightly as you can see from the curve along the right side. I was smarter with the second one and alternated the direction of the seams which corrected for my slight leaning in at the bottom. 

Oh, and this will be part of a project that I made out of scraps from a member of my quilt guild. We all swapped scraps and then are going to make something fun out of them and then we'll give them back as gifts at Christmas time. 

I'll show you my finished project after the swap is finished. Don't want to ruin the surprise!

pinterest tips

I must say, I really, really enjoy pinterest. It just a whole world of pretty things and good ideas and I love how clean and neat and tidy it all looks (unlike my life). But I've been noticing how I pin a lot of good ideas and interesting things, and how I rarely do any of those interesting things. Its like I'm a pinterest voyeur. Just a lot of looking and very little action. Or as one well pinned funny bit that describes the inner monologue of a pinner goes : "I want to sew! No, I want to workout. Wait, is that a mason jar? Oh f*#k it, now I want cake." 

So I've decided that at least once a week, I am going to take action on something I've pinned. Whether is actually making that really cool recipe (hello Warm Gingerbread Cake with Caramel Sauce), or doing a little home organization (refolding t-shirt drawers anyone?), or a little beauty DIY or whathave you, I'm going to stop pinning and start doing. And then after that I'll pin some more. 

And in the interest of sharing what I've learned, I decided to tell you all about it. So far I've done this foot treatment that was really lovely.  I have super dry feet with chronically cracked heels, and spending time at the pool and the beach does not help. So I tried this soak/scrub deal. You take a hand full of rice flour, add a generous squeeze of honey and then add enough apple cider vinegar to make a paste. Since my feet are so dry, I also added a slug of olive oil. The vinegar is supposed to help to dissolve the layers of dead skin and the rice flour will gently exfoliate the top layer off. Honey and olive oil are natural moisturizers and will l prevent further cracking. I slathered on a thick layer and then put my feet up and watched tv for a half an hour. Then I soaked it all off in a warm bucket of water. And I must say, they did feel softer. Though a foot massage would have been nice as well. 

But my favourite pinterest tip so far was this home-made bath scrub originally from MarthaStewart. Non-toxic, cheap, smelled good and it worked great. There will be a jar of this ready to go in my cleaning cupboard from now on. I used one cup of baking soda, added one tsp of Dr Bronner's Castile soap (orange citrus flavoured) and a few drops of Eucalyptus oil (which I just happened to have on hand) and then added just enough water to give it a paste-y texture. Next time I'd like to use peppermint oil because I'll bet that also smells great.  I'm not a huge fan of artificial scents, as they are chemical-ly and weird and give my mom a headache and may even be carcinogens, but both the Dr. Bronners and they oils are scented with, well, natural essential oils and extracts, so I have no worries there. This was great on my tub, and I used it in my sink and countertops as well. We have hard water that has lots of tannins in it, which can make for very stubborn dark yellow stains. A couple of weeks ago really had a go at the shower to get all the tannin stains off, and you know what worked really well? Cream of Tartar mixed with Hydrogen Peroxide. Another good pinterest tip. You make a paste and put in on and let it sit for a couple of hours and then scrub at it with a brush or a scrubby pad. Took a bit of effort but made a huge difference. Now if I just keep on top of it every week with this new baking soda paste I'll bet I won't have to work so hard at it again. 

For other tips and tricks have a look at my pinterest board titled "good ideas". 

quilt planning breakthrough

I'm working towards a new quilt project and I had the best idea ever. Instead of getting out some graph paper and pencil crayons, I made another plan.  I got out my paint chip collection and my little square craft punch.

Then I matched up my fabrics to my paint chips and popped out some nice little coloured squares. (You can see that some of them don't match perfectly, but that's ok, it still gives me a pretty good idea. Also, if I'd preplanned this, I totally would have taken my fabric down to the Home Depot and found paint chips that matched perfectly. Or at least better. Paint chip colours are also better than pencil crayon colours because there are waaaaay more of them. Have I mentioned that I love paint chips?)

Using scissors I cut the little squares into half-square triangles. (Because the quilt I'm planning will be half triangles, but you can stick with squares if that suits your needs better.)

And then I was able to start playing around with the patterns. 

All mixed up....

...or Monochromatic pairs. (sorry about the lighting difference, one picture was taken at night and the other during the daytime.) The possibilities are endless. And its all so easy to change and play around with. And every time I come up with a composition I like, I can just take a picture of it, and then start over again and reference the pictures on my camera to see what I like better. So much simpler than colouring a bunch of little squares and not being able to change them at all if I just want to make a small adjustment. 

Not to pat myself on the back too enthusiastically, but this is going to save me so much time. Also, its fun. Also, its nearly free as paint chips don't cost anything. You've only got to buy a square punch. Hm, I wonder if they make hexagonal punches?

framed brooch display tutorial

I have a problem with stuff. I like to collect things, but often find that all my carefully chosen treasures somehow disappear into boxes and don't get enjoyed, by me or anyone else. It was my New Year's resolution to try and display some of my collections and make them accessible for use. I decided jewelry would be a good place to start. I have a ridiculous collections of costume and vintage jewelry that I've been picking up here and there since highschool, and yet, I wear the same necklace, ring and earrings all the time. So maybe if I could see some of this nice jewellry I'd wear it more often. Or not. Brooches are my weakness, but ever since the big vintage-style-brooches-on-cardigans trend of the mid 2000's, I've been kind of over wearing them. But I still love them. They are beautiful, and I wanted a better way to display them than in a jumbled dusty heap on a saucer. 

So I decided to make myself a lovely brooch display picture frame dealy.
Ta-daaaah! I've seen this kind of thing around before, but did not want to hand over the money to buy one when I could conceivably make one myself. And you can too, because I'm going to tell you how.

Lets start with materials. You will need the following:

An old frame, the more ornate the better. 

Spray primer

White spray paint (I prefer matte, because then it has a sort of porcelain look, but you could use glossy too, if that's your style)

pliers and flat head screwdrivers

cardboard/foamcore/cork board

quilt batting/flannel/felt

fabric large enough to cover the area inside your frame, plus at least 2 inches all around.

Thick thread (I used top stitching thread, but in a pinch I'll bet dental floss could work too)

scissors

sewing needle with an eye big enough to accomodate your thread choice

staple gun with staples

So here's my original frame:

I got mine from the Value Village, but just keep your eyes open when you are in any second hand shop and if its meant to be, one will eventually come your way. This one originally had a lovely needlepoint of some daisy's in it, which I used to make this tote bag.  1. Start by pulling whatever was in the frame, out of the frame. Make sure not to damage the frame. Use your pliers and flat head screwdriver to pry out staples and such. Then useing a damp cloth, wipe down the frame to get any dust or loose dirt off it. But you don't have to go crazy. You're going to be spray painting it after all.

2. Priming. Make sure to do this in a well ventilated place, like an open garage, or your back balcony. Lay down some newspaper if you don't want to get spray paint every where. Following the manufacturer's instructions, apply one or two coats of primer. I used two, as after the first coat had dried, there was some yellowing showing where there were cracks in the frame. 

3. Spray painting. Apply however many coats of spray paint until it looks the way you want it. I did two coats of matte white, just to be thorough. Allow to dry completely.  See how pretty that looks?

4. Make the part that goes into the frame, the pin-board we shall call it. This is a bit tricky, since it really, really depends on your frame and its never going to be the same as mine. Mine was a very shallow frame, so a lot of possible materials would have been too thick. Foam core, for example, would have worked well, but was too deep. And I was shocked to find that my local craft and hardware stores did not stock bit sheets of cork, or even anything like it. I did buy a role of very thin, adhesive cork that turned out to be totally useless. You're just going to have to shop around and find something at a store near you, or maybe on the internet that works. What I ended up using was a plain old piece of corrugated cardboard, which I cut to the size of the opening. I put a layer of that adhesive cork on it, but that was no good, because the adhesive actually made it hard to poke the brooch pins into it. I ended up turning it around, and then cutting a layer of quilt batting and a layer of cotton flannel and putting those on top. 

  Anyhow, your goal is to end up with something like this. Test it for 'pokeablility' with safety pins or something, because you just want your brooch pins to poke into it easily, and not slide out until you want them. 

5. Cover with fabric. Choose something you like. I decided to go with a plain charcoal grey cotton, as I wanted the brooches to really stand out against it, but you could also totally do a print and make it really fun. Stripes would be awesome, or some vintage style print would be great too. There are so many fun fabric options out there. But do stick with a light-to-medium weight fabric. A heavy upholstery fabric might make it hard to get a nice clean wrap around, and would be bulky in the corners making the whole thing too thick to fit. If you do decide to go with something thicker, like a velvet or something, just be sure to cut your pin-board backing a little smaller in order to make it fit. And also test the size of it in the frame before you go to all the work of securing the fabric to the board.

You have a two different options to get the fabric to stay in place. You could just wrap it around and use a staple gun to keep it in place, but then you'd need to be using a thick enough pin-board substance that the staples would not show thorough in the front. It wouldn't have worked with my little piece of cardboard. Instead, I decided to lace it together.

To lace the fabric around the board, start by laying the fabric, right side down on your work table. Then position the pin board in the middle of the fabric. Starting with the sides, take your thick-ish thread, and your needle and sew back and forth from side to side as though you were lacing a corset. Or putting shoe laces in your sneakers. Whatever you are more familiar with. This is going to take a very long piece of thread, so what I usually do is I just keep it on the spool. Istead of trying to measure the length of thread I'd need and cutting and knotting it, I just thread the needle onto the end hanging off the spool, and sew away, while unspooling what I need. Start at one end, and a scant three eighths of an inch in from the egde (just enough so it wont be too close to the raw edge) and go across the back of the pin-board and insert your needle from the top down into the fabric on the other side. Continue, going back and forth and catching the edges of the fabric, making the stitches about three quarters of an inch apart, until you reach the bottom of the pin-board. Then, after you've tightened all the "stitches", and are holding the last stitch taut, go in and out around the last spot a lot of times, and run your needle underneath this bunch of stitches, and pass the needle though the loop you've created to make a knot. Do this a couple of times, so that it is really secure. Repeat with the top and bottom edge. 

Alternatively, if you don't feel confident with a needle and thread, you could also just go ahead and use good ole' duct tape. That would work too. Won't be as pretty, but then again, you won't really be seeing the back that often, will you?6. When you are done with that, you are going to pop the pin-board back into the frame.

7. Then, using your staple gun, you are going to to staple all around the edges, so one side of the staple is in the frame and one side is in the pin-board back. 

As you can see, you don't need to go crazy with the staples. Just enough to keep in in place. Also, in this image you can see the lacing back and forth that is holding the fabric in place. 

8. Now comes the fun part. Get out your brooch collection and enjoy making a lovely arrangement of them. Go by theme, by colour, by category, or just make a fun, pleasing random arrangement.

As I said, this really gave me the chance to appreciate my collection aknew. I have some really lovely little pieces here that deserve a chance to shine, or at the very least, see daylight. 

Et voila! Find yourself a nice patch of wall and hang that puppy up there. And then give yourself a pat on the back for being so clever. And think about wearing brooches again sometime soon.