Simple Scarves

The lack of posting is due to school keeping me a lot busier this semester than expected.  I'm sure there will be a few huge breaks in time between posts.  Apologies in advance.

This post has a great scarf pattern at the bottom to show how sorry I am :)

Anyway, I realized that I needed to get something for my boyfriend's family for Christmas.  This was a lot closer to the holidays than I'm willing to admit.  I'm pretty proud of what I gave his brother's family: A Where's-Waldo-esque book but with the Characters from the Cars movies for his nephew, booties and a little headband I crocheted for his niece (I wish I had taken pictures, I was so proud of how they came out...and that they fit her), and for his brother and sister-in-law a precious moments figure of a little blonde boy next to a box of tools screwdriver in hand working on a snowman with a John Deere hat on - it was such a spitting image of their son that I couldn't resist.

I made the reindeer ornament in another post for his aunt...then realized I had nothing for his sister and brother-in-law!  I didn't find anything in stores and time was running out.  Then I thought, "duh, you taught yourself to crochet.  Use that craft little brain of yours!"

So I did.  I made 2 scarves using the same stitching pattern.  They came out (thankfully) looking pretty different though.

Pictures and pattern below:

Laid out next to each other.  I made them pretty long since nobody in his family is short I knew I could.

Easy Ornaments 1: Reindeer

Christmas is right around the corner.  Actually, at my parent's house, it's tomorrow.  We follow a lot of German traditions for holidays (as does most of America actually without even realizing it), including going to church in the evening, opening presents, and having our main Christmas celebrations all on Christmas Eve.  I've got a lot of last minute shopping to get done today, so I'll save all the German Christmas tradition stories until later when I have time.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share a rather simple craft that pretty much anyone can make for a small amount of money and a little bit of effort: Reindeer ornaments.  The great thing about these is that they come out looking a lot more "effortful" than would be expected considering their cost and simplicity.  They're made of clothespins and embroidery floss!  I came across the pattern on one of those free leaflets at Michael's crafts years ago and loved it. (I tried finding it on their website, but it's not there).  So, what follows is my pattern from memory, inspired from that leaflet.

*Feel free to make this as a gift, for yourself, or to sell, but please do not sell my pattern or copy it without linking here*

Snow-crastination

I really should be studying hard for finals right now (and I am!), but after a few hours it gets overwhelming. Sometime last week I decided to take a break from trying to absorb impossible Federal Income Tax material and made some paper snowflakes! I was inspired by a friend's facebook post about star wars snowflakes. I ended up with 4 that are now in my window.

The Star Wars (Darth Vader) one*:

Vader's head looks a little fat...

The Yankees one**:

I'm Spartacus!

Actually, I'm not Spartacus, I'm Elise.  This is Spartacus:

He's pretty much the coolest cat ever.  There might be a lot of him in this blog.  There he is on my bookshelf, nestled between my casebooks for school.  That's actually a pretty accurate depiction of my life right there.

So, it says a little in the "about me" section, but I thought I'd try to introduce my vision for this blog in the first post.  I'm a law student who does some crafts in my free time (of which there is little).  I'm hoping to expend a little energy in a blog to show off what I'm working on so I can bother some people other than my boyfriend (who's sweet about it but probably doesn't really care about the crafts much).  I'll also put some other things going on from time to time, but try to keep the focus on crafts and some German/Germany related things.

I'd better get back to studying, but I'll try to get some posts up soon!