Craftiness for Alex

In attempting to further find my mommy craftiness skills I've broken out the sewing machine, for the first time EVER!!!  Tada!  I made Alex a small, square-ish, very bright, overly colorful quilt (if you can call it that) blankie-thingy.  It is one that any adult whose seen it (so far my husband and sister-in-law) try their hardest to say it's great and ignore the crookedness and, did I mention, overly-bright colors... 

And they didn't even see the reverse side of the fabric!  That was a mess of thread strands and huge flaps of extra fabric because I have yet to master the technique of a straight line with a sewing machine, and after all the pulling, stretching, groaning, thoughts of giving up, I decided I didn't have the desire to cut off all the extra, I'd just tuck it in, who'd know.  I'm shocked I mastered threading the needle and the really insanely difficult contraption called a bobbin that took about eight times to get going!  But, no matter how difficult it was actually really fun and I didn't so much care that it wasn't coming out perfectly straight at all whatsoever because I knew it was project number one and my dear son would love anything his mommy made for him as long as it wasn't green beans or avocado.  Luckily, I was right!  It came out okay, a little bunchy in small spots, a little ripply in places, a little extra padded in places, and a completely lacking of the annoyingly stretchy super soft fabric the pattern called for, and oh yeah.. I didn't so much follow the pattern because it was dumb a little complicated, so my way was better:)  Nonetheless, it turned out done, if anything.  And the only thing that mattered was that after Alex woke from his nap and I gave it to him he Loved it!!  I think it's just the bright colors, but whatever it is he seems to think it's pretty darn cool!  So, mission accomplished and I've concluded that I need more practice on sewing machine usage, but I think I'm going to like it.  It's part of being a mommy.  My great grandma hand quilted tons of big beautiful quilts that are still being used at my mom's house and I would love to make something as pretty one day.  My mom follows her lead by hand-quilting as well.  I just don't have THAT much patience, so mine will be made via machine power, but with just as much love, and much less time :)             

                                                        

Next project to start: Crocheting. I have all the yarn from when I thought I'd learn to knit, which did not go according to plan, I ended up with a pretty pink, pretty crooked, very uneven, not at all pretty scarf, ughh, and that was a couple of years ago. So, when I was at the fabric store the other day getting supplies for the blankie I picked up some crochet needles and a little booklet on the basic stitches, or loops or crochet-lies or whatever they're calling them. I figure one needle's gotta be easier to handle than two, and a little hook at the end of that stick's gotta help grab something somehow to maneuver. So, this week I will attempt to teach myself to crochet. My goal in this project is that I want to make Alex one of those cute little earflap hats that are so cute on the little ones in the winter. There are tons of them for sale, handmade on etsy which are all very cute, but I really want to try to do this stuff myself if I can, so I embark, again, on the third brand new misadventure in my mommy-hood tale in just a couple of weeks! I'm being daring, and maybe soon I'll master something useful!!  Haven't begun to attempt the hats yet, but here are some ideas I've borrowed, got these from