A Dinosaur-Themed Gift, Take Two

When my niece's two children Cauliflower and Bug were very small, I developed a gift-planning formula for their presents. For their birthdays, I gave them each a piece of handmade clothing and some little trinkets which were usually from the dollar store or thrift shop. For Christmas, they would each get a book and something to play with. It's a formula that has worked well, helping me plan gifts that were a balanced mix of fun, useful and educational things, and it has also helped me keep their gifts equitable. (Kids are very quick to notice and to mind when their siblings get more or better presents than they do.) 

I'll be using this formula for my nephew's two children as well, with the difference that they'll be getting their clothing present at Christmas and the book and toy present for their birthdays. Cauliflower and Bug have summer birthdays, and giving them their clothing, which was usually winter clothing, for their birthdays meant they would have it all ready to wear when cool weather arrived in the fall, but Sawyer and his yet-to-arrive little sister have their birthdays in February and May, so it makes more sense to give them their knitted clothing at Christmas, in order to maximize the clothing's wearing time. It would be no fun for a kid to get a warm sweater in May that she has to wait five months to wear.

This is all to say that Sawyer is therefore getting a sweater for Christmas, and this is a post about the one I made for him.

Back in 2013, I made my grandnephew Bug the sweater you see above, in a size six months, using the Diplodocus pattern, designed by Kate Oates. I just put together some odds and ends of white, kelly green, and navy worsted from my stash to make the sweater for nothing, but the colour scheme could hardly have worked better. I also bought Bug a little stuffed toy at Toys R' Us that was supposed to stand in for a dinosaur, though it was actually a Disney brand anthromorphized alligator character that was standing on its hind legs. My family was kind enough to agree that it looked very like a dinosaur.

The dinosaur sweater and dinosaur-passing toy were such a cute and well-received gift that I decided to reuse the pattern and theme for Bug's cousin Sawyer this year. I checked my stash hoping I could put together some odds and ends to make the sweater for nothing again. I wasn't quite as fortunate this time. While I had 70 grams of an unlabelled rust wool, and 50 grams of Cascade Yarns 220 Superwash in Turtle that I thought worked well together and would be usable for the contrast colours, for the main colour I had to buy a skein of Lion Brand Wool Ease in Linen for (with the use of a Michael's coupon) $6.32. But that's still pretty inexpensive.

Here's the completed sweater in the Sawyer version, in a size 2. This colour scheme is attractive too, and will suit Sawyer, who has blond hair and hazel eyes.  

This time around Toys R' Us had no dinosaur or even dinosaur-adjacent toy that was suitable for a toddler, so I ordered this one online. It will certainly do, and I think Sawyer, being older and more aware, will enjoy his dinosaur-themed gift even more than his cousin Bug did.

This project used 40 grams of the rust and 40 of the olive stash yarns, and all of the new linen yarn, so that's a stash decrease of 80 grams for this project.   

An Owl and a Tree

I recently made the first two ribbon necklaces I have ever made: one for me, one for a gift.

Last year I came across this item in a jewelry display at Value Village, although I think was actually a bookmark. Being that my mother, one of my nieces, and my grandniece are all very into owl stuff, I keep an eye out for nice owl stuff when shopping, and I automatically bought this cute little piece, even though I wasn't sure what I would do with it or whom I would give it to. On the way home I began envisioning the pendant as part of a ribbon necklace. I debated whether the necklace would be for my mother or my grandniece, but soon decided it would go to Cauliflower as part of her fourteenth birthday present, as it seemed more suitable for a young girl. Though my mother will probably threaten to steal it. Life with three owl aficionados in the same family is not without its moments of tension and drama. 

One of Cauliflower's current favourite colours is burgundy, so when I found a piece of burgundy organza ribbon in my ribbon canister (I think it originally came off a wrapped gift someone gave me), I decided it would do for her necklace. I bought metal ends for the ribbon, jump rings, and a magnetic clasp, all in silvertone. When I asked the beading supply store associate about adding a bail to the pendant, he advised against it saying it "would look silly", so I didn't buy one, but then when I was assembling the necklace, the pendant didn't sit right when threaded directly on the ribbon. I compromised by adding a jump ring to the pendant, and running the ribbon through the jump ring. The jump ring is quite unobtrusive and now the pendant sits flat against the chest as it should when worn. 

The necklace isn't very long (just under 16.75"), but it's long enough to be wearable even on me and Cauliflower is quite a bit shorter and smaller than I am, so I think it will do. A big pendant like this one does look better when it sits higher on the chest, where it is visible and well clear of one's neckline.

 The fastening. I do like a magnetic clasp -- so easy to put on and take off.

The second necklace, which is for me. I made a rare impulse purchase of this peridot chip tree of life pendant at a beading supply store on Queen street some years back. It was just a few dollars, peridot is my birthstone and suits me, and it was so pretty. The tree of life symbol has also become a meaningful one to me over the past five years or so, reminding me that I can continue to grow and be productive as I age. 

It has taken me quite some time to get around to buying the components for this necklace, but eventually I purchased a length of narrow, spring green coloured organza ribbon, metal ends for the ribbon, jump rings, and a magnetic clasp. One Sunday in April 2023 I sat down and put this necklace and Cauliflower's necklace together.

For this necklace, I did not need a jump ring for the pendant, as its built-in loop has the right orientation to sit properly on its ribbon. I used three strands of the narrow ribbon to give it a more substantial look, as well as more strength. One strand would have looked far too skimpy. This necklace is 17.5" in length -- having bought the green ribbon for this purpose, I had more to work with than I did with the burgundy one.

The back clasp, which I bought in a copper-tone metal to match the pendant. I do like coordinating the colour of the metal findings with that of the other metals on a necklace. It makes the completed necklace look more polished. 

These ribbon necklace each cost less than $10 to make, and they went together so easily and are so pretty I am definitely open to making more at some point. I can hardly wait to wear mine, or to give Cauliflower hers. 

Unplugged and Lying Down

Back in December 2006, when I bought Swan's End, a then 94-year-old house with a 1991 furnace in it, I found some of my very first purchases for the place were those which served to help keep me warm. I have never forgotten the first morning I woke up in my house because of how it felt when my bare foot touched the parquet floor beside my bed. (My unfortunate neighbours must have wondered if their new neighbour was part banshee.) Over the next month, I bought a warm bathrobe, slippers, eight pairs of wool work socks, a rug for beside my bed, and an electric blanket.  

Several years ago the electric blanket stopped working. I couldn't afford to replace it, but it didn't go on my "want" list of things I try to buy as I can because my furnace had been replaced in 2015 and I had made myself a Thinsulate quilt in 2020. I decided I could do without a new electric blanket, nice as it had been to get into a pre-warmed bed on a Canadian winter night. The electric blanket awaited its fate in my linen closet, its electrical cords and controls constantly entangling other items. Last month, when I was putting away some of my winter blankets, I took the electric blanket out of the linen closet. It was time to decide what to do with it.  

My first step was to do some internet research on whether it could be fixed. From what I gathered, while it might be possible to fix the controls, fixing the heating element within the blanket would be a much more difficult and expensive and perhaps not even viable proposition. I tested the blanket and concluded that the controls were working and the heating element was the problem, so I ruled out "fix the blanket" as an option. I hated the idea of just throwing the whole blanket in the garbage, so I began to wonder if I couldn't turn the electric blanket into an ordinary blanket, and use it that way. 

Ultimately, I did exactly that. And I thought I'd post about how I did it for anyone else who has, or who may in future have, a broken electric blanket and would appreciate a few tips on how to do the same. This project wasn't anything like as pretty or as aesthetically interesting as the kind of project I normally post about, but it is very much in the "mend and make do" spirit that is part of this blog's purpose to foster, so here goes.

I began my conversion project by unplugging the controls and setting them aside. Then I had to deal with the wiring inside the blanket. My electric blanket was composed of two layers of fleecy fabric, and there were narrow, vertical channels stitched into the interior. The electric cords ran through those channels, looping from channel to channel at the top and bottom of the blanket, much as the red lines I have drawn on the photo above do, only much less wonkily.:) Originally I expected I'd be ripping out the interior stitching to get the electrical cords out, but I soon realized there was a much easier, faster way to do it.

I opened the stitching on the bottom of the blanket to access to the blanket's interior, and cut the loops between the channels (indicated on the photo by the blue arrows at the bottom of the photo). Then I opened the stitching at the top of the blanket and pulled on each loop (indicated by the black arrows at the top of the photo) until that length of wire came out of the blanket. 

I removed the heating element too (it was near the bottom). Then, once all the electrical components were out of the blanket, I first stitched together the little slit where the heating element had been (it's visible roughly in the centre of the above photo), and then restitched the top and bottom of the blanket. I did the sewing on my sewing machine, using the various stitch options to mimic the style of the original stitching (but one could also do the sewing by hand if necessary). Had I known exactly what I was doing from the start, the entire job would have taken under an hour. Once the blanket was all stitched back together again, I ran it through the wash. 

As you can see from the  photo at the top of this post, I now have a fleecy blanket in very decent condition that will be usable for years to come, and only its former wires and controls will wind up in a landfill.