Christmas gifts - last year's top secret

For my first Christmas gift reveal, I'll finally show off the top secret gift that I alluded to much of last year. I actually started this gift with the intention of giving it for Christmas 2010, but I multitasked so much and it took a backseat to so many other projects that it wasn't done. So I kept working and finished it in July.
The idea began a couple years ago when my Mother-in-law and I were shopping the craft section together, and she noticed a booklet of afghan designs. She commented that the one on the cover was pretty, but we both left the booklet at the store. A few weeks later, my husband and I were out shopping, and I saw the same booklet, clearance priced no less! So I picked it up and planned to make the cover afghan for my MIL. I had some trouble with the individual squares curling as I finished them, but once I worked the yellow border and joined them, everything straightened right out. I was very happy with the results, even though I was ready for it to be done after a little over a year.  It was received very  well!

Items for sale - hackey sacks

This is my final Items for sale post! As a fun, relatively inexpensive toy to have on my table, I crocheted some hackey sacks. They are actually regulation weight according to the pattern I followed, but for anyone not a serious hackey sacker, they make great squish balls or just balls to play with.



They are sitting on the felted plate that I made up a while back. The plate was supposed to be a bowl, and didn't turn out quite like I wanted, but that was just because I didn't have as much yarn as I needed to make what I wanted. In the future, I can have a better plan!



I've been busy with house stuff this week, and haven't even picked up yarn or fabric all week! I'm going through crafting withdrawal. Especially after spending every spare second working on something for Christmas, up until the 27th! We had our own family Christmas that day, after being out of town for extended family celebrations, so I was still finishing up my gift for my Little Man the day of. Christmas gifts will be the next series of posts :)

Items for sale - Bibs and more blankets

Along with the ribbon lovies that I posted about the other day, I had a few other options for baby stuff. The first was a large pile of the receiving blankets I make as baby gifts, figuring others may like to give them as well. I tried to select a wide variety of prints, including gender-neutral as well a a couple girly and a couple boy prints. Altogether I had 28 of them to sell!

My newest creation, and my best seller were the bibs that I made. I had small pieces of material left over from cutting the blankets and ribbon lovies, so I made a pattern from one of our favorite bibs. It's one that my kids can still wear, with decent coverage, so I knew it would make a nice bib to try to sell. I ordered a bunch of snaps to go with the fabrics, and got to work.

These are the bibs that were left after the sale. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of everything beforehand. In addition to those pictured above, I had one other monkey print, that sold out! Both monkey prints have brown snaps with engraved monkeys, the star print has a star shaped blue snap,the duckie print has a yellow snap with an engraved duck, and the others have plain white snaps. The bibs pictured here are available at the Casually Crafty facebook page. Check it out!

Items for sale -- market bags

With the growing "green" trend and reusable market bags becoming more popular, I decided to try my hand at crocheting some of these. I started with a couple of attempts at different designs, that turned out well, but not exactly what I wanted.

early attempts

Then I found two designs I really liked and was able to work up quickly.

These bags are made of 100% cotton, so they are super sturdy and washable. They will expand to hold quite a bit, especially those in the bottom picture. They work great for shopping bags, beach bags, or just to carry along anything you might need!



Items for sale -- crayon rolls

Every child needs some crayons and a coloring book, right? Definitely a great take-along to help occupy a kid. I've toted crayons in everything from the original box to a ziploc baggie, none of which are terribly convenient. Figuring others might feel the same,  I made up some crayon rolls for the craft bazaar.

I love the fabrics I found -- they feature crayons, scribbles, crayon drawings and fun bright dots. Each roll holds 12 crayons, and then rolls up and ties shut to tuck in anywhere to carry along.



Items for sale -- texture lovies

In preparation for the craft bazaar, I tried to figure out what would sell well or be in demand. I figured there would likely be people looking for Christmas gifts for baby or even upcoming baby showers. One of my little ones' favorite baby item was a Taggie blanket. The concept is simple: a small blanket with ribbon loops around the edges to provide different textures for baby to play with. The name, however was a little more difficult. Since Taggie is already a brand name, I had to come up with something different...and texture lovie it was! My lovies were 12" squares, with varying fabrics for the body of the blanket. I tried to vary color and texture of the ribbons around the outside as much as possible, to provide the most opportunity for baby's stimulation.

As I began making the lovies, I started with 2 layers of fleece. And quickly decided that it would be both easier for me and a more interesting finished product if I used flannel prints for one side of the blanket. So I found some remnants and got some cute fabrics to make the blankets from. And made a bunch!

After a pile of those, I found some really cute patchwork fabrics, and had the thought to do some lovies out of "premium" fabrics. I bought the patchwork and some minky - super soft with raised dots, and used those as one side of some more blankets.

And speaking of items for sale -- Now that the craft fair and Christmas are over, I'm starting up a Facebook page where I will be listing all of my leftovers from the bazaar (and there are plenty! Traffic was a little slow) and taking custom orders! The page can be found by searching "Casually Crafty" in your Facebook search bar. It's bare-bones right now, but I hope to have it up and running soon!



More felting

As mentioned in my 'about me' section, my daughter is special needs. This encompasses a lot of things, one of which is a speech delay. As an effort to help her communicate with us, we purchased an ipad2 so she could use it as a choice making device/communication device. She has been working hard with it and is making steady progress. However, we are pretty hard on it in carrying it with us back and forth to therapy and all over, so I felt a cover would be a great idea. I found a pattern for a felted ipad case, and decided she needed one!