Knitting and a Movie

I can never resist sock yarn on sale. So today I picked up some Patons Kroy Sock yarn in flax and summer moss jacquard originally to be a part of the hexipuff project, however, after noticing how wonderfully well they go together I decided to make a wee baby sweater instead and cast on a Little Baby Sweater from the Purl Bee. It’s a wonderful, quick knit inspired by the mighty Elizabeth Zimmerman and made supremely modern with its stripes. It’s always surprising what colour combinations can do.

I never actually used to like knitting baby things. I have no kids of my own and after watching my friend’s babies grow a lot more quickly than I can knit, I always figured what’s the point? The point, I soon learned, is that knits for babies are quick and absolutely adorable. They make you stop every so often just to coo over the little bundle that will soon be inhabiting the yarny softness soon [hopefully while they still fit].

And so to go along with this knitting project I decided to watch Rosemary’s Baby. I hadn’t watched it since maybe high school and I can tell you, I never truly understood it.

The second time around, while it still didn’t become a favourite movie of mine, my attention was truly caught by Mia Farrow.

The only other movies I’ve really seen her in have been The Great Gatsby and Hannah and Her Sisters.  Both are awesome movies by the way; I highly recommend them.

In The Great Gatsby Mia plays Daisy, who is essentially an ethereal balloon in  woman form. She’s a great character, no doubt about it, but as Rosemary she becomes Daisy with real soul-filled flesh. Sure, she’s portrayed as a typical housewife as a profession type [why anyone would choose to be a housewife when you’re husband is a not-so-famous actor, I don’t know – this was my biggest conflict with the movie] but she still is able to show Rosemary as a strong woman character. The ending alone is enough to prove that [Nope, no spoilers here].

Also she is so very pretty and has a great maternity wardrobe. She makes me want to go out and get a pixie cut then apply a ton of mascara.

Thus I am nicknaming this baby sweater Rosemary’s baby sweater as I think even the child of Satan would totally wear it.

I also watched two James Stewart movies: Harvey and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. While I ache to discuss Jimmy’s brilliance, that will be saved for another blogging day.

And Now for Something Completely Different

My lovely friend and bridesmaid just uploaded all her wedding photos and on there was this photo which stole my heart.

Just FYI, that me and Kyleman front and kinda-center-but-more-to-the-left. I have made a personal cropped version of this picture and have decided that I need it printed and framed, like, NOW.

I love photos like this in general: the ones that seem to capture moments perfectly without anybody really knowing at the time of the click. Posed photos will always be lovely but they never seem to capture my heart as much as those stolen moments captured on film.

Picture perfect.

Knitmonia and Hexipuffs

I have been slightly out of commission the past week. Between working shift after shift and fighting off the flu [which has somewhat inconveniently caught up with me yesterday and today] I have had little to no time just to sit and breathe let alone blog. Luckily after giving up the fight last night after a work shift, it seemed that being sick helped raised my hexipuff count. In the last twenty-four hours I’ve made 8 and 1/4 hexipuffs in Patons Kroy Socks FX  which has quite delightful colourways and is quite possible the reason why I’ve knit so many. One of the colours was leftover from this sock project of mine and the other from this pair of gloves and during each I couldn’t stop knitting because the colours were always shifting and changing. It’s wonderful. You know you’re in love with colour when you find yourself drooling while knitting with self-striping yarn.

Yum.

 

Feather Bouquet D.I.Y

I love flowers. Adore them. I have no green thumb to speak of unless I paint it green myself so when the thought of flowers and weddings came into my head, I balked a little bit. Yes, I realize that most people go through a florist who then delivers or has them ready to be picked up the day of the wedding so you do nothing but carry them….but flowers are expensive. And plastic flowers are either lovely but expensive or cheap and a meh price.

So I took matters into my own hands. I fell in love with this idea from Etsy but I didn’t know if I wanted it for myself or just my girls. I decided to go along with it for at least the girls and while picking out the ornaments, my mum picks up this fluffy white ornament and goes, “Isn’t this lovely? What if you had a few more of them and put them together?”

Now normally I am not a feathery person. I enjoy anything animal-esque to be in a print rather than having an actual texture to it. And 3D feathers just never scream at me. However, once my mum grabbed about 5 of them and gathered them up, all I heard was screaming.

Needless to say, I bought six of them and have since made my own fluffy bouquet. It surprisingly works especially well for a winter wedding. The feather balls almost look like a puff of snow or fluffy hydrangeas – which is perfect for combining my love of flowers and my hate of accidentally killing them.

So here is my tutorial on how to make a feather ball bouquet.

What you need:

• Feather balls: essentially these are just Styrofoam balls covered in feathers. I’m sure it would be ridiculously easy to make your own, otherwise check Bouclairs Home or another place that sells decorations like that.
• Floral wire: preferably the sticks. One half of one long wire is enough for each
• Wire cutters: because when there’s wire, scissors will do you no good
• Floral tape
  
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Any extra foliage or decorations for depth: I used red cranberry sprigs/sticks for mine because I wanted a colour contrast and I was dead-set on having cranberries in my bouquet.

Step One:

Cut off any tags for the ornaments if they are store-bought and any ribbons or loops. They are unnecessary and will just get in your way. Heat up your glue gun and when it’s ready, put a wee bit along each side of about half an inch of the wire end. Quickly while the glue is still liquid [and hot!], push the gluey end of the wire into the bottom of the ball, as close to the center as possible. Don’t push too hard though; you don’t need a feather-ka-bob. The glue you put on the end of the wire has probably balled up around the outside of the puncture wound creating a gluey donut – put some extra glue on top of that [I tried spiraling it around the wire] for safety’s sake. Once it’s dry enough that the glue isn’t liable to droop over on you, put to the side and move on.

Glue each of your feathalls [that is my new word combining feather balls together. Think of it as the DIY version of Brangelina]

Step Two

Once you’ve glued all your feathalls, I started by making smaller bunches. Because I had six, I did three and three, and arranging them so I had one that would sit mainly in the center and five around it. I’m a fool for imperfect symmetry. Once you have your small bunches the way you want them, take a length of floral tape and wrap’er up.

It was my first time using floral tape and I found it take a little practice to get it right. A) It won’t stick to you, only itself, except when it doesn’t want to stick to itself like when you’re first starting to wrap it or end it. This is where a little dab of hot glue will put that tape in its place. B) Even though it doesn’t stick to you, eventually your fingers will get oddly sticky. And then sparkles will stick to you and never come off. True story.

Step Three

I found it was easier to add in the cranberry sprigs after I already made the small bunches. Just use your mad floral taping skills and tape the sprigs over-top where you’ve already taped. You almost need to get into the mindset that each small bunch is its own bouquet. Somehow once you put them all together, it just ends up working.

You might notice that sparkly red ball in the lower corner. I also experimented with having some of the decorations into my bouquet….it didn’t really suit my fancy. Too many round things, not enough height!

Step Four

Tape together the small bunches into one big bunch and voila! A feather bouquet! I plan on adding some white tulle or fabric underneath to act like a stem covering and then I have some awesome red ribbon to wrap over top of that.

I’m pretty in love with it. I might be a little bit biased though.