Don’t you love having fans?  My biggest fan is my 4 year old daughter.

Kid's Fingerless Mitts

Every time she sees me making something or working on a new project, regardless of what it is, she exclaims with genuine enthusiasm “Oh, that’s so pretty! I love that! Is it for me?”  There’s always a brief moment of disappointment if I have to explain that no, its for someone else or for sale.  More often than not, I end up making a smaller, child’s version of whatever it is I’m making.  In fact, her only criticism of my work is that I don’t make nearly enough things in pink.  In her eyes, the pinker, the better!

Last week, she caught me working on a pair of Happy Hands fingerless mittens.

Making Pancakes in Her New Mitts!

She liked them so much, I ended up chasing her around the house to get my prototype pair back. So, of course, I ended up making a pair for her, too.  She couldn’t decide if she wanted hearts or flowers on them, so we went for one of each.  I think they turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself!

The mitts are actually pretty fun to make.  I bought a bunch of second hand wool sweaters for another felting project I’m working on (another post on that, another time!) and realized the bottom part of the sleeve would fit perfectly as a fingerless mitten.  I sewed an opening for a thumb and used wool yarn to embroider around the raw edges and then added an applique from a another wool sweater in a contrasting color.  Voila!  Thick, warm, felted mitts!  If you like the kids version, check out my adult version in my Etsy shop.

I’ve been a fan of Debbie Stoller’s Stitch and Bitch books for years.  Stitch and Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker was the very first crochet book that I bought when I first started crocheting about 8 years ago.

Felted Pansy and Fingerless Mitten

The patterns were fun & funky and the instructions were straightforward.  When I started knitting last year, I ran out and bought Stitch and Bitch: A Knitters Handbook.  So, of course, when I heard Debbie Stoller was coming out with a line of yarn, I couldn’t wait to test drive some myself.  Earlier this week, I grabbed a few of my Joann’s coupons and bought 4 skeins of the new Debbie Stoller Stitch Nation Yarn.   The new line features 3 kinds of yarn — Full o’Sheep, which is 100% wool, Bamboo Ewe which is a bamboo/wool blend, and Alpaca Love which is a wool/alpaca blend.  I started off with Full o’Sheep in Passionfruit, Plummy, Honeycomb and Thyme.

My take on the new yarn?  At $4.99 for 159 yards, it is a pretty good buy, especially if you use the ever forthcoming Joann’s coupons.   The colors are wonderful!  They are vibrant and super-saturated without coming off as brassy or ‘fakey’.  I love the colors!  The yarn is single-ply, which I’m not used to, but it has a nice feel to it, so I think I’ll like using it.  For my first quick project, I made a felted pansy, which you can see in the photo.  I only ran the flower through the wash once for felting.  The colors look great, but I think if I were making a bag or something bigger, I would run it through the wash once more for tighter felting.  I also used some of Honeycomb and Thyme to embroider details and trim on the fingerless mitten that’s in the picture.  (The base of the mitten is actually a recycled sweater).

Bottom line – this yarn is a big hit, and I can’t wait to try the alpaca and bamboo blends.  Now, if I can just find where I put the rest of those coupons that I printed out…

These cute toys are fun to make, fun to play with and require a minimal amount of skill.

Felt Paper Dolls

Basically, the dolls are cardboard cutouts covered with felt. The best part is that since felt tends to stick to itself, you don’t need tape, tabs or glue to make the clothes stay on, so its easy for the kids to change outfits on their dolls.

To make them, you will need the following materials:

1. Cardboard (we used a recycled diaper box)

2. Different colored felt

3. Glue

4. Scissors

5. Googly eyes (optional)

6. Marker

Start by drawing a body shaped outline on your cardboard.  I did mine freehand, but you can also use a gingerbread man cookie cutter for a pattern.  Choose a piece of felt for your skin tone.  Trace and cut out the body shape from the skin tone felt.

Felt Doll Body

Felt Doll Template

Let the kids glue the “skin” onto the cardboard template.

Cut out hair for your doll.  Let the kids glue on the hair, googly eyes and draw a mouth on their doll.  Finally, cut out clothes out of different colored felts.  The kids can use markers to add details to the clothing.

Its super easy to accessorize these dolls.  We made hair bows, belts, shoes and jewelry.  The clothes should stay on the felt body kind of like velcro.  Cute, aren’t they?

For months, I had been coveting a wonderful crochet book of my sister-in-law called Crochet  Inspiration by Sasha Kagan.   Lucky for me, my mother-in-law gave me my very own copy for Christmas.

Trio of Crocheted Roses

The book has great photos showing different fibers and weights of yarns.  In particular, it has a chapter on making gorgeous and unique crochet flowers.   This motivated me to start a new line of flower-inspired items for iceblueberries, such as big, funky, floral hair clips.   Next, I’m planning on adding some felted flowers with genuine gemstone finishing touches.

In line with the flower theme, I’ve started some spring cleaning at my shop.  I’ve updated my avatar, and I’m working on a new banner.  For those of you who follow, you may have noticed I’ve taken most of my jewelry and sewn items.  I did this to create a more consistent shop identify focused on crochet and knit items.

If things go well, I might open up a second shop this summer for the jewelry.

In the meantime, stop and smell the roses!

Crocheted Garden

Eggy Babies

What is an eggy baby?  An eggy baby is a simple felted doll that I made with my kids, (Deirdre – 4, Jonah – 2). Basically, we felted one of Jon’s old wool sweaters, cut it into ovals and made it into dolls.  I did the sewing and the cutting, and the kids drew on faces with markers and stuffed them full of cotton batting.  I figured, if Build-a-Bear can build an empire on letting kids stuff their own toys, why can’t we have some of that fun at home?  The kids enjoyed it so much, they made extras to give to some of their friends at school.  I hear that one of Deirdre’s friends loved his eggy baby so much, he sleeps with it at night!

Eggy Baby Template

If you’d like to make your own, here is the template and basic instructions.  You can do the sewing by hand or machine — we did both.

• Felt a wool sweater by putting it through a hot water wash cycle
• Draw your pattern — a basic egg shape 6 1/2 by 5 inches
• Cut out 2 pattern templates.  On one of the templates, draw a head and cut it out so that you now have 3 pattern pieces
• Cut out the 2 larger pieces from your felted sweater
• Cut out the smallest piece from linen, muslin or whatever you want to use for the face
• Pin right sides together of face and body front.  Stitch together
• If you want to add a decorations (we used felt hearts and bows), sew it on at this point
• Pin right sides of front and back together.  Stitch around the outside, leaving a 1″ opening at the bottom
• Turn rightside out
• Let the kids draw on a face and stuff their eggy baby with stuffing
• Whip stitch closed the opening at the bottom
  

If you are using felted sweaters for another project save the scraps and use for eggy babies.  You can use different colors for the front and back.  I think we will try to add hair for our next batch.  Have fun!

On January 1, 2009, I made a New Year’s resolution to start a blog.  I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted it to be about, but I was pretty sure that I wanted to write one.  Well, 2009 came and went, and I never seemed to have the initiative to get things going.   Fast forward to to January 2010, and I’ve finally decided to take the plunge.

Crochet and Knit Felted Bag with Flowers

I don’t know if its those new vitamins that I’ve been taking, or the fact that the kids are now sleeping through the night, but I seem to have a burst of renewed energy.  So,  drumroll, please….Welcome to iceblueberries!  This blog is dedicated to the  creative side of just about everything.   The name ‘iceblueberries’ comes from one of my daughter Deirdre’s favorite foods as a toddler – frozen blueberries.  For some reason, it seemed to fit.  It is also the name of my etsy shop.  If you like what you see on this blog, please check out my shop iceblueberries.com.

Follow my blog, and you’ll get to read about the fun things I’ve been working on, creative projects that I do with my kids, as well as, the cool things other people are doing.  That’s right, I’ll toot my own horn, but I’ll toot yours, too!  I plan to feature other artists, designers, and creative individuals as much as possible, so if you would like to be featured, give me a shout.