Ubercrafty

Toy Society Christmas Drop: the Montreal Owls

This morning was absolutely freezing outside, but I convinced my girls to put on an extra layer and accompany me on my super-stealth mission of dropping my 4 owls. They were having a very hard time understanding the concept, peppering me incessently on the drive there with questions like:

• Why are we giving them away?

• Who's going to find them?

• What if nobody finds them?

• Do we have to dig them into the snow?

• Will they be cold?

• Why are we doing this?

• Can we keep them?

• Why mommy, I don't understand!

But once we got to Place Royale in Old Montreal and I told them that we were now super spies and had to make sure nobody caught us, they were very much into it!

Drop 1 was in fact the first owl I made, with it's little scarf made from the belt of a sweater that inadvertently felted in the wash (aka shrunk) We picked a little lit tree near the museum entrance and hung him in the branches.

 

the second drop was actually Owl #3, which we hung on the other side of the staircase, on the fire hydrant. Even in the worst snow conditions, the hydrants are always shoveled and the red really stands out against the snow. I played with taking pics of hydrants last year in my photoclass and this particular one always stands out to me because it's sort of in the middle of the sidewalk and I'm always wondering how many people fall over it.

 

 

The 3rd drop was on the side of the building, the street people would walk by when going from the one museum to the other. We tied him up on a pole and he started flapping about. I double checked to make sure he was secured and we got out of there before we were spotted!

 

 

Finally, for our last drop, we actually left Place Royale just a little bit and crossed the street to leave our last little bird in the phone booth.

  

 

 

Dumpling was absolutely frozen by then, but Beach Ball was still having a ball, this having been one of her two drops.

The pattern I used can be found here. But I didn't even bother printing it, I just opened it and enlarged it on my screen, then totally eyeballed it. I did add a base to mine rather than tighten the bottom, and as I made more, I made the shape more and more elongated, which gave me much nicer long beaks on the thick felted wool.

It's Drop-Eve!

this weekend being the weekend before christmas, hundreds of handmade toys will be stealthly dropped by crafters around the world. Check out the map at the Toy Society Blog.

My little owls will be dropped tomorrow morning in Place Royale near my store in Old Montreal. It's got nothing to do with my store, but I chose the location for convenience and because it's very popular both with locals and tourists and I'm hoping they find not only good homes, but get found by people who will write in and tell us!

Come back tomorrow for pictures for pictures of the cuties in their  bags and at their drop site.

If McGyver were a knitter....

I've been knitting up some holiday presents and found myself short a set of 5.5 mm short needles. I hade long ones, but I wanted to knit on the go so short needles are better. Anyhow, i dug in my purse and found a pair of chopsticks. For some reason, I remembered reading a blog a long time ago (or maybe in a knitting book) that anything could be turned into knitting needles: pencils, dowels, and yes, chopsticks.

Wouldn't you know it, these particular short chopsticks are a perfect 5.5 mm in the needle gauge! A little tacky glue, a pair of buttons from the kids button jar and a quick run of the nail file on the tips and voila:

 

What did I knit with them? A quick short key-hole scarf that is going in a box and hitting the postal system before the end of the week. I'll say no more for now, so that the recipient stays surprised....

Earlier this week, I also attempted something I've had on my mind for a long time.... I spotted this Draft Dodger a while back, but the seller doesn't sell the pattern, only the finished product. I took a stab at it and here is what another gift recipient is going to get:

Crafty Season

Since I'm not spending my time writing about the nonesense in my life, I've actually found time to be crafty again.

It all started with the knitting gift exchange, which had to be home-made, but not necessarily knitting. I found the napkin ring tutorial from my old friends Sublime Stitching, and figured it was the perfect project for my friend R.

I used a bird design from my Doodle Embroidery book, and after I started, I decided to make 6 birds and 6 coordinating flowers.

   

Believe it or not, I forgot to take a picture of the finished ones! I did tweek the pattern a bit: I made mine on a vintage pillow case and embroidered them all on the one piece before cutting them out. Then I decided against using the toilet paper roll, instead I used fusible interfacing to make it extra stiff.

And since we've been spending time at the country house, I used to felted sweaters (aka shrunken by accident) to make a few owls, who are going to be dropped next weekend as part of the Toy Society Christmas drop. More on that next week when I actually drop my little owls. Look how cute they are, one even has a scarf and is ready for the snow!