My Exciting Holiday Memories

This morning I was reminded of a an 'incident' that occurred when I was a kid living on Fourth Street. Oh, how I loved that rickety, old house. I was built in the late 1800's, if I remember correctly. We had to put shims underneath all of the dressers to keep everything from sliding off the top. But, when you're a kid - you don't care about that kind of stuff. What you really care about is the old ball and claw foot tub that lets you take the deepest, longest baths that a girl could ever care to take. That, and the formal dining room with a big, bay window. The window where we always put our Christmas tree each year. And the old iron grate heat registers that we would all fight over every winter. It was a race to see who was going to be able to stand on it first when the heat kicked on. The same grate that my dad dropped my sister on her head on when she was an infant. Now we know what's wrong with her! Oh, wait...that could possibly be me that everyone wonders what's wrong with. Naaah! Couldn't be me. Back to the house. It also had what we called an 'old Michigan basement'. Michigan basements were dark, dank, stone basements with lots of little rooms and compartments. Ours had cubbies in some of the walls. Not the kind that are put there intentionally, mind you - the kind that happen over time because they're so old that they start to crumble. We used to imagine that our basement was part of the underground railroad that used to come through town and that southern slaves had sought refuge from their bonds - possibly right there.

Oh, how I loved that huge, old house. Except, now when we make a trip home and drive by it (we moved from there when I was 12), it's not as huge as I remember it being. Actually, it's not that huge at all. Isn't it that way with a lot of things we remember from childhood? We remember things being much grander than they actually were simply because we were so small.

My husband had the same experience when we visited Stone Mountain Georgia a few years back. He had lived there when he was a kid and had told me about the carving that took up the whole side of the mountain. Imagine his disappointment (and mine) when this is what we saw. You'll have to look really closely at the left side of the picture right above the trees and buildings.


But, you'll have to excuse me because, I digress. We aren't talking about cool houses or mountain carvings today. We are supposed to be talking about something that happened while I was living in that cool, old house. So, let's proceed. Shall we?

It was shortly before Christmas and my mom had had a very disturbing dream. So disturbing, in fact, that she told the family about it. Her dream was that a burglar had broken into our house on Christmas Eve and had stolen all of the presents from underneath our Christmas tree. You know, the one in the big, bay window. It really rattled her. I think she took some railing over the fact that it rattled her like it did.

Christmas was fast approaching and we were counting days. The night of December 23rd we headed for bed knowing full well when we woke up it would be Christmas Eve! That meant a big family celebration that night. Little did we know that we would be having a little more excitement than we had hoped for.

To be continued...

The Sweater Bag

Saturday, me and my best gal pal, Carrie, headed out for a girl's day of shopping. We are two peas in a pod and each of us loves Goodwill just as much as the other. So, that's where we went. I was able to find a bunch of items on my wish list that day. One of the things I spotted was a really cute wool sweater from Gap. I find wool a little on the itchy side for wearing, but, no matter 'cause that's not what I was wanting it for. I wanted to make mine into a bag.

You may have seen these cute little bags flying around bloggy land. I pulled the article out of an issue Country Living quite a while back. Now I finally had a wool sweater to make one with. I, however, did not take a before (or during) picture. Bad blogger! Bad, bad blogger! *Hanging my head in shame. I will show a picture of the finished bag before trying to explain to you the extremely quick and easy process it takes to make one. Ready?
Very cute, if I do say so myself.

First you have to start with a wool sweater. Why wool - you ask? Because, if you don't use wool your sweater will unravel and make you very angry and you may say some ugly things that you wish you didn't say in the presence of you angelic, sweet children who will, in turn, correct you with shock and awe and then proceed to tell your husband, or your very own parents on you. I would like to spare you that grief. So, please, just use one of your old wool sweaters or buy one at Goodwill for 4 bucks like I did. If you're really lucky you'll find one that's 1/2 off that day. OK, now that we have that settled...

The first thing you must do is wash your sweater in hot (I used warm) water and then put it in the dryer. This will felt the wool and make it look like something that might fit your 7 year old niece.

The next thing I did was lay my sweater out flat on a cutting mat and cut the sleeves off using a rotary cutter. If you don't have a rotary cutter, feel free to use scissors. But, whatever you use - don't try to cut the sleeves off with a butter knife. That would be bad. And fruitless. I made the opening quite a bit larger than the original arm holes.

After cutting the sleeves off my little striped sweater - I cut out the opening of the neck hole. This made the sweater look somewhat like suspenders on a belly girdle. A bad belly girdle that would only fit your 7 year old niece, who more than likely doesn't need a belly girdle to begin with. This is probably much more simple than it sounds. And I promise the next time that I make one of these, and I will make more of these, I'll take before, during and after pictures.

Now to stitching up the bottom. I flipped my sweater/suspender/girdle thingie inside out and stitched the bottom closed. After many snapped threads, I realized that a zig zag stitch was the way to go here. Spare yourself some frustration and start out with a zig zag stich. Mkay? I didn't want a straight bottom on my bag, although that would be perfectly fine. I wanted one of those boxy bottoms. So, I flattened the sweater out to make the seam in the center of the fabric with ends that looked like triangles. Then I stitched a line on each side to make the triangles hold their shape. This makes the bottom of the bag boxy like this.

Once again, I'm sorry for being a bad blogger and not taking pictures. But this is what the bag looks like from the inside after I snipped those little triangles off.


The last thing I had to do was finish the straps. At this point the two straps are connected front to back. So, I cut them and then reconnected them. This time I sewed the 2 front pieces together and the 2 back pieces together. Remember to use your zig zag stitch.

Honestly, it probably only took me a total of 15 minutes to make this. It wouldn't have taken that long if I hadn't kept snapping my thread at first.

This is cute as is or I may end up embellishing it. A cluster of buttons in the corner would be cute. Actually, there would be a ton of embellishments that could work here. I could also cut out another piece of felt in a solid fabric and sew it on as a pocket. The options are really only limited to the imagination.

I thought that these would make cute, inexpensive Christmas gifts. Imagine giving one of these to a knitter or crocheter in your life filled with yarn and knitting needles. Or it would be cute to give with a coordinating hat, glove and scarf set inside. Once again, the options are endless here.

Well, I hope I didn't confuse you too badly with my instructions. Just in case, Country Living has this project on their website, too.

Happy crafting!

Pam