Longies good karma giveaway!

I know I should be posting a tutorial, because it's Tutorial Tuesday, but it's been a busy few days. How about a giveaway instead? I made these longies (wool diaper cover pants) for my son, but they ended up being too small for him, especially in the legs (will not fit chunky legs!), so he never wore them. PLEASE don't enter this giveaway unless your child can wear these (or grandchild, or cloth diapering friend in need). I just don't want these sold. I may never know, but karma will. The measurements are 18" waist, 19-23" rise (ribbing can be folded down), 10 1/2" hips, 12" thigh. The inseam is 15", but they can always be rolled at the bottom. These are made from blue & maroon sweaters, and are 100% lambswool. There is a thick lambswool wet zone (positioned in the boy wet zone). These are bulletproof, and perfect for even heavy night wetters. They are clean, lanolized, and ready to wear! I will be using random.org to determine the winner, so again, please measure your child to make sure these will fit before entering the giveaway! By the way... the legs are the exact same length, even though the picture makes one leg look longer.


Mandatory Entry:
* Go to my shop and let me know which sweater is your favorite.

Want an extra entry?
* Follow my blog, and if you already do just say that.
* Do something kind... Slip a sweet note in your husband's lunchbox, play that game you've played a hundred times with your kid that you hate, but your kid loves, a random act of kindness to a stranger, bring some baked goods to a neighbor (that's what got someone the winning entry in one of my past good karma giveaways!) , and let us know what you did! It will make you feel good about yourself, make the recipient of the good fortune happy, and it will get you another entry! No fair posting something you already did, or were planning to do!... it's makes it more fun this way!
* Blog about this giveaway & link to it.
* Blog about encouraging kindness, and giving. (you can blog in the same post about this giveaway & encouraging kindness, and still get 2 entries).
* Have a giveaway of your own!

Make sure to leave a separate comment for the entries you complete!

Deadline: Saturday, February 20th at midnight, Central time zone. I will use random.org to pick the winners the following morning (February 21st). **please leave an email if your blogger profile does not include it or you don't have a blog. I need a way to contact you.** Once a winner is drawn I will contact them and the winner will have 48 hours to reply back before I draw a new winner.

and the winner of the good karma giveaway is....

.... #39 (picked by Random.org)!

"stepholiveira said...

I love the striped GAP cashmere (#499)...it looks so warm and cozy. I have enjoyed your blog and all the fun ideas for wool felting projects.

Today I have made a dessert for a meal for the homeless women that seek shelter in churches around town. I hope I can dig out from the snow from the weekend to deliver it. 3 days and no sign of a plow yet."

Congratulations stepholoveira! You didn't leave a way for me to get in touch with you, so please email me at krisnstevep at netzero dot com to claim your sweater.

Coffee cup sleeves

I wanted to give Jack's teachers a little something for Valentine's Day, so I made them these coffee cuff sleeves. No, they are not uneven... it's just the picture. I wish I would have had a coffee cup to put them on when I made them. I just took a strip of wool, used pinking shears on the edges, sewed a heart onto them, then sewed a seam so they made a loop. It was a quick & easy little project.

cashmere longies

I got a lot of sewing done Wednesday morning, thanks to an earth quake waking me up at 4 am (yes, an earth quake in Illinois!). This past Sunday I found a huge cashmere sweater, but I didn't want to put it in my shop because it had tons of moth holes everywhere. My son fell in love with it, & asked me to make him some longies (or "woolly pants", as we call them) from it, so I did! I don't even use a pattern anymore & just eyeballed them, sewing the 2 sleeves together & adding a piece of the waistband of the sweater for the waistband on the pants. I was able to avoid using the moth hole ridden parts, except for a few on one leg in an isolated area. I put a stripey square over it, and I think it looks cute, if I do say so myself. Since it was such a huge sweater, the sleeves were actually too long for once, so I cut the cuffs off, intending on making new ones, but I like the looks of them without the cuffs... like karate pants. Once summer hits, i'll cut them even shorter, into board shorts. I probably didn't need an extra layer in the wet zone, because they are pretty thick, but since I had a big holey piece I couldn't use for anything else, I used it inside for a hammock style wet zone. My kid never grows wider, only taller, so I always make an adjustable rise waist from the soft ribbing of the sweater.

Rise up..................................... rise down.

A reader asked me if I could explain how I lanolize my diaper covers, so hopefully this will benefit some of you. First of all, those of you not cloth diapering are probably wondering what the heck lanolizing is. It is adding lanolin back into wool (or cashmere) to make them water resistant. Lanolin comes in different forms. They come in bars with soap, wool washes, liquid lanolin, with different amounts of lanolin in them. There are a dozen different ways to lanolize, all of them correct, but I will explain how I personally lanolize. I make my own wool wash... about 2 tbs of liquid lanolin, a squirt of shampoo (I also use Bronner's soap sometimes too), and I shake it up with about a quart of warm water in a bottle to melt the lanolin, so it mixes up well. I use about 2 ounces of this (sorry for all of the "about's", but I don't measure things out) per load of wool. When I first make a pair of longies, or it's been a long time, I take a pea sized amount of lanolin and work it into the wet zone with my hands. To wash them I rinse the diaper covers in cold water, then gently swirl them in a bucket of tepid water and about 2 ounces of the wool wash. I leave them in there for an hour or 2, then gently squeeze the water out (not wring!), and roll them in a towel to remove the excess water and lay them flat to dry. I know it sounds complicated, but it really isn't, and you don't have to do it often. I am continuously amazed at how many times wool can be peed on, and smell fresh as a daisy a few hours later, without being washed. Lanolin is bacteriostatic, meaning that it inhibits the growth of bacteria, which is what causes odors.

Off Topic Thursday - Valentines for kids!

I found this super cute idea on a great blog i've been following, 24-7-365. This was so easy to do & looks so cute! If you don't have a photo program that adds text, you can do it on Photobucket for free, and you can even order your prints for pickup from CVS or Target through them (what I did because I waited until the last minute). I just cut little slits above & below his fist & slid the lollipops in! I used Yummy Earth organic lollipops because they taste awesome, are organic (no corn syrup, no dyes), and are pretty much allergen free (there are allergies at my son's school). So even with my son's head looking alien-ish, the weird yellow/green tint, and Jack's tousled hair, they turned out pretty good!

p.s. Sorry to those I told I would be blogging about cashmere longies today. I will blog about them tomorrow. Promise!

Super easy slippers part 2

I made more slippers, and wanted to show some variations. I decided to see what would happen if I felted a pair of slippers more after they were sewn. Here they are before I gave them another hot bath (FYI, you can click on the pictures to see them larger):


Here they are after:


They are a smidge smaller, as expected, but I love the way the seams came out... kinda fuzzy and undefined. Of course I had to mess with them more, and added cuffs.... I really like the addition of the cuffs. I like the look of the sweaters cuffs better, but they felted too small on this particular sweater, so I just used a scrap piece & folded it over to create the cuff. It takes such a short amount of time & they look better to me with cuffs. What do you think? Cuffs or no cuffs?


I then decided to make a pair of child sized ones. I used the size women's 5 template, since that was the smallest one provided on the tutorial. I used this funky patterned wool blend, but because of the odd texture, I added a layer of soft lambswool on the insole for added comfort. I again added cuffs. I tried these on my son for a size reference, and while they were too big, they weren't grossly oversized on him. He wears a size 10 toddler for reference. Another reason I like the cuffs is that they help them stay on... especially for children's slippers that may start out a bit big to grow into.

Tutorial Tuesday - super easy slippers!

You know those sweaters that felted just a bit more than what you wanted for your project? This is the perfect project for them! I got this tutorial from the Martha Stewart website, and it's a good thing! These are super easy, and take a short time to make. Here's the original tutorial, with my slippers below it:

" Homemade slippers of thick wool felt make a heartwarming (and foot-warming) gift. Felt is the ideal fabric to work with, since it won't unravel when cut.

Felt Slippers How-To
1. Use our templates. Trace onto 1/8-inch-thick wool felt, and cut out (you will need 2 sole pieces and 2 upper pieces per slipper; remember to flip the soles over for the opposite foot). Stack the sole pieces.

2. Place the upper pieces together, then sew the heel and the instep with a straight stitch, 3/16 inch from edge. Open, and pin to the sole pieces, first at the heel and toe, then along the sides. Sew all the way around, through all layers, 3/16 inch from the edge.

3. Add a decorative stitch with embroidery floss, like the X pictured on the big red slipper opposite. To add custom fabric name tags, print them on iron-on tape using a label maker, and apply to top layer of sole before sewing slipper."

I made 2 pairs. I would have made many more, but I ran out of thread in colors that match what I have, so I have to get more thread today before we are snowed in. I made one pair for myself, and added cuffs (I can't seem to just make anything without tweaking it!). They were just the cuffs of the sweater that I just sewed on. It only adds 5 minutes to the slippers. For those slippers I used a thick felted blend I had on hand. It is 60% wool/40% nylon. People are always asking me, "Does it have to be 100% wool to felt?". As you can see, the answer is "nope!".


These I made for a friend who is getting over pneumonia (oh my gosh, I spelled it right on the first try!). She says she is feeling much better. I'm pretty sure it's because of my slippers ;). Anyway, I made them without tweaking them, but I modeled them in the picture inside out to show that you that you can wear them seams in too (unless they are really really felted) for a more "finished" look, if you prefer. I like them seams out.


FYI: I was not able to print the patterns from the MS website, and heard others had the same problem, so I just held a piece of paper up to my computer screen and traced it.