The Witty Child

Waaayyyy back in March, I finished sewing a pair of emerald-green pajamas for my mom in time for St. Patrick’s Day. Even further back, in January, I had bought the necessary green cuddle satin along with enough purple to make another pair – and promptly dragged my heels until there were ruts in every room of the house

The pattern I used was McCall’s M4244, as always, and I don’t even want to look at the envelope right now. I can more or less construct a pair of pajamas from that pattern without the instructions, at this point.

There’s no denying, however, that the purple set is delightfully regal-looking, and make the perfect nightwear as we transition from steamy summer nights into the crisp air of almost-autumn.

They aren’t nearly as bulky and lumpy as they appear in the photo: when I presented the finished product to her, she couldn’t be bothered with actually getting changed and instead pulled them on over her tank top and cargo shorts. I choose to interpret that eagerness as a compliment.

A close-up of the buttons I used, along with a better idea of the fabric’s real colour.

I’d like to think my pajama-sewing days are behind me for a while, but I’d best not speak too soon. One of my friends saw these and thought a pair of satiny pajama pants “would be all right”. Maybe for Christmas…

Thanks for looking!

Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Summertime and the living is easy

July 19, 2015July 28, 2018 wittychild

Sorry for the clickbait: this isn’t a summery post per se, but bear with me, because there is a connection.

But first, a brief discourse on why you ought to Support Your Local ~~Sheriff~~ ~~Gunfighter~~ Stitching Shop.

A few years ago, I was out Christmas shopping with my dad, and we stopped into my favourite stitch shop for a quick purchase. Naturally, I couldn’t leave without browsing at least a little bit, and that was when I saw The Kit. It was a gorgeous picture of a calico cat resting on a piano and surrounded by oodles of music paraphernalia. (I’ve always had a soft spot for calicos.)

“Oooh,” I breathed, picking it up to examine it more closely. “Look at it, it….oh, wait, it’s not cross-stitch; it’s needlepoint. Rats.”

“You’ve been stitching for a long time. So what if this is a slightly different technique? I’m sure you’d be able to figure it out.”

I squinted at the cover picture. “Well, it does kind of look like half cross-stitch. [Note: It’s actually called Continental Stitch.] But I’ll leave it for today. I’m not here to shop for myself.” I set it back, planning to return sometime after the holidays.

My dad, in a rare moment of Acute Human Observation, promptly sent my mom to the shop the following week to buy it for me for Christmas. She’s not a stitcher, but he gave her a description of the picture, and where in the store to find it. She managed to locate the kit, and in the course of paying for it, struck up a conversation with the shop owner who quickly figured out who she was, and who the kit was for. And actually tried to stop her.

“This is needlepoint. The Witty Child doesn’t do needlepoint; she cross-stitches.”

My mom had to explain that all involved parties were aware of the technique used, and that I’d be willing and able to cut my teeth on something new. And she left with the kit, which I unwrapped a week or so later.

But can you believe that? The small business owner would rather have lost a sale than saddle a customer with an unsuitable item. Does Michael’s, or Wal-Mart, or the discount crafty website do that, or offer that level of personalized service? Support Your Local Stitching Shop! I can’t stress that enough.

The kit (called “Gershwin”…and there’s your connection!) took me a few years of needling away at it. I rarely stitch for myself, so my progress was forever being interrupted by birthday cards, birth announcements, Christmas ornaments…

I managed to finish it a couple of months back, and of course I had to return to my local shop to have it framed:

Didn’t she do a fantastic job?! There’s no way I could have framed it half as nicely. The framing complements the picture without detracting from it, and makes it look like a painting from a distance.

Support Your Local Stitching Shop.

baking

Cookies for Cats!

June 13, 2015July 28, 2018 wittychild

Well…you might not want to actually feed these to your feline friends, but….

One of the local no-kill shelters had an open house and bake sale last weekend to raise some much-needed funds. (They do this twice a year – last year, I baked Tiger Blondies for them.) I knew I wanted to make something to help out again this year, and even booked a day off work to do so, but it took me a while to decide on a recipe. As luck would have it, my mom had made these wicked monster cookies a couple of weeks before that yielded the perfect oversized-but-chewy snack, and she was willing to contribute to the cause the half-bags of mini M&Ms and mini Reese’s Pieces she had left over. Sold!

I packaged them in some cupcake boxes I had had laying around for ages, and did up snappy labels in Word. Some co-ordinating Hello Kitty stickers sealed the deal (so to speak), and voila: a sextet of fund-raising yumminess.

Thanks for looking!

Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Another Mother’s Day, another hedgehog…

May 19, 2015July 28, 2018 wittychild

When I first saw the issue of The World of Cross Stitching with a free Margaret Sherry card kit attached – featuring a hedgehog, no less! – there was really no doubt as to whether I’d buy it. I try to cross stitch a card for Mother’s Day every year, and the hedgehog factor was just the icing on the cake. (Since hedgehogs aren’t indigenous to the region, their likeness can be difficult to find in stores.)

Despite a slow start, this came together much more quickly than I expected. And the backstitch really makes his prickles stand out! It made a cute addition to my mom’s gift.

Thanks for looking! 🙂

baking

Cake and Ice Cream – Together at Last!

May 5, 2015July 28, 2018 wittychild

I’m still alive – and still baking – but really, there are only so many times one can photograph and blog about chocolate cupcakes (which get made more often than not, as they appear to be a perennial favourite). I needed to break out of my routine!

When I first saw the recipe for Spumoni Cake in Kris Holechek’s Have Your Cake and Vegan, Too!, I was immediately drawn to it. Spumoni is one of those things…just mmmm…I don’t crave it that often, but there is nothing quite like it, and substitutes (such as plain chocolate) will not be accepted. I had dragged my heels in making it, though, because although I don’t mind making full-blown cakes for birthdays and other occasions, I find that cakes beget terrible portion control. Say what?

See, anyone who’s baked a cake or even whipped up a Duncan Hines mix knows that a standard two 8-inch layer cake uses 24 cupcakes’ worth of batter. Not a problem, except truthfully, when’s the last time you got 24 servings out of a cake like that? Unless you’re feeding the masses or are hyper-heath conscious, no one cuts slices that thin.

The really obvious solution was to halve the recipe and turn it into cupcakes. Tah-dah!

The original recipe makes a 9-by-13 sheet cake, and instructs the baker to randomly drop blobs of all three batters, then marble. Because I was working small-scale, I contented myself with layering a spoonful of each in the cup, knowing full well that they’ll heave and bake up in random patterns. See?

I did alter the recipe a bit: instead of puréeing cherries for the pink batter, I diced up a few maraschino cherries, and added a bit of raspberry-flavoured Torani syrup for flavour and colour. I added the syrup to the frosting, too, for a chocolate-raspberry topper that helps bring out flavours in the cake.

When I fed these to my test group, I was told the flavours “kind of play together – it’s hard to pick out each individual flavour without tasting each part separately”. Hmmm…just like the ice cream!

Thanks for looking!

Cross-stitch and Embroidery

Urban Wildlife

April 5, 2015July 28, 2018 wittychild

I rarely stitch for myself, but when Cross Stitcher included cover kits of a fox and a raccoon a couple of years back, I held onto them, planning to do them “someday”. These were bold, simple patterns that used only a handful of colours, meaning they’d be the perfect intermission stitch when large projects were making me crazy. And – and this may be what promoted them from “maybe” to “yes!” – they came with a precut felt frame right in the kit, making the whole affair rather self-contained and all the more appealing. All I’d have to do is add a hanger of some sort, and heaven knows I have enough different ribbons in my stash.

And so, eventually…in between large projects, Christmas gifts, quick cards…they somehow got finished. The completed stitching was tucked away along with the frame inside the original packaging until I had a reason to assemble them. Wonder of wonders, my cubicle wall (fun fact: the proper term for “cubicle wall” is “baffle”. Who knew?) was painfully bare and in desperate need of a little brightening up!

To add some interest to the frames, I added a bit of decorative running stitch with my sewing machine. This wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had; felt does not pivot as nicely as normal fabric does to ensure a smooth curve, and I had to keep stopping to defuzz my needle and bobbin area. But they’re done, and give my cube a much-needed splash of colour.

Happy Easter!

General Sewing

Kiss me; my pajamas are Irish…

March 17, 2015July 28, 2018 wittychild

…and conveniently leprechaun-sized, too!

A few years back, I made the grievous error of (gasp) sewing my mother a pair of pajamas. Several years before that, she had received as a gift a pair made of this material that was satiny on the outside so as not to cling to the sheets when turning in bed, but cottony-soft on the inside, and she continued to obsess over them long after they had worn beyond use. Naturally, when I found cuddle satin – satiny yet snuggly! – at my local Fabricland, I had to replicate them for her.

This was a mistake, as it led to the construction of several more pairs of both the full-length and short-everything variety. I’m almost surprised I can’t sew McCall’s M4244 from memory. And so a few months ago, when she started in with, “I could almost use another pair of those satin pajamas…”, I did what I do best, which is to say, I pretended I was immersed in a book and didn’t hear her. But then Fabricland had a 50% off sale at New Year’s, and my conscience got the better of me, and I took her shopping for fabric. Six metres for the price of three (in two fabulous colours) was too good a deal to pass up.

But ah, there was a caveat. She didn’t want a shorts set, but also didn’t want the sleeves, legs, or top to be as long as in the full version. So, a capri? “Well, maybe a bit longer than that…” This was not the kind of thing that the “lengthen or shorten along this line” could handle – I was going to have to eliminate vast-ish swaths of fabric. Aargh! After holding the pattern pieces up to her, we more or less agreed on proper lengths for everything. It was a tight fit on the fabric, too; had they been too short, her only option would have been to shrink. In the end, though, we seem to have found the perfect balance.

She won’t be tripping over the hems or setting her sleeves alight if by some odd chance she finds herself cooking over an open flame. Sounds like an excuse for indoor s’mores to me!

Aren’t those buttons something else? I think the opportunity to use green glittery buttons was my primary motivation to make yet another pair of these things. And this is actually a far more accurate representation of the colour.

There are still three metres of royal purple satin patiently waiting their turn, but that’s a project for another day.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Other Crafts

That’s it! Back to Winnipeg!

March 4, 2015July 28, 2018 wittychild

Hello, dear readers and crafters, and let me be the first (probably) to wish you a very Happy Grammar Day!

Having a fairly relaxed dress code, I wanted to do something wearable to mark the big day this year. I saw a t-shirt eerily similar (ahem) to the one below on a website, and knew it was perfect. They had a little blurb asking customers to contact them regarding international shipping rates, so I sent a very polite message doing just that…and never heard back. (Still haven’t.) Either they’re extremely skittish about shipping to Canada (“But the dollar is so low! How will she afford it? How will she afford it?”), or they’re now completely defunct. In either case, when it became readily apparent I wasn’t going to be finding a parcel in my mailbox in time for March 4, I took matters into my own hands. I’m crafty like that.

Yes! Something to combine my love of The Simpsons (as it used to be, anyway) with my inherent grammar geekiness! The shirt is just a standard men’s crewneck from Old Navy, and I used Tulip soft fabric paint for the logo. I would love to learn how to screen print to get cleaner lines, but overall, I’m pretty happy with how this turned out.

Fun fact: although the purely fictitious National Grammar Rodeo from the episode “Bart on the Road” was to be held at the Sheraton Hotel in Toronto, the original artist apparently decided this needed more of a Calgary vibe.

And because I know you’re all dying to know: yes, Andy Williams was on ~~heavy~~ constant rotation while I painted this. 🙂

baking, Cross-stitch and Embroidery, Other Crafts

Pink cake and orange cat

February 15, 2015July 28, 2018 wittychild

Hello there!

My mom had her birthday at the end of January, but due to work scheduling, I wound up having to make her cake the weekend before. I saw the basic idea in an old issue of Woman’s World, which is a magazine that I would generally never, ever buy – except that this issue had featured adorable Hello Kitty cupcakes on the front cover, and I had been unable to resist it. They also had a layer-cake version of the cupcakes inside, but their recipe used something like four egg whites in the batter and another two in the icing, with no mention of what to do with the yolks, so I quickly dispensed with that idea and instead used my trusty vanilla cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World as well as the fluffy buttercream icing from the same. I also thought I might leave the kawaii characters off the cake, and maybe give it a more mature vibe. Because nothing says “mature” like pink cake, right?

I, of course, did not think to get a picture of it while it was intact and free from candle holes.

Holy ombre, Batman! I used varying ratios of gel food colours to get the different shades, and they worked like a charm.

That’s a chocolate-cream cheese filling between layers. Since the cake itself is just vanilla and not overly sweet, it provided a nice balance and helped keep it moist for the next few days until we could get it all eaten.

She had to wait a couple more days to get the rest of her birthday goodies. I always try to make a handmade card of some sort:

And when I first saw this design on Urban Threads, I knew it had to be made into a t-shirt:

I did him in orange to look like her big ol’ furbaby. He’s painted on – not embroidered – and I think the blue really makes him pop!

Thanks for looking – have a wonderful weekend!

General Sewing

And you thought Rudolph Valentino was the Sheik….

January 28, 2015July 28, 2018 wittychild

Qu’est-ce que c’est bleu-blanc-rouge, et très chaud? – Un foulard Habs super!

Shortly before Christmas, I was browsing Craftster and I saw this cool project. (If I had a dollar for every time I’ve started a conversation with, “Ohmygosh, someone on Craftster just…”, I could retire.) These Harry Potter scarves were the perfect, inexpensive, last-minute Christmas gift, and my reaction was both swift and dual: “Those are so great!…But I don’t know any Harry Potter fans.” I think my cousin had read the books, but I have no idea if she’s still into that stuff, and certainly wouldn’t know what her favourite Quiddich team was. Is one house inherently better than the others? (My senior accountant later told me no, that one would simply identify with a house whose values/characteristics/etc. reflected one’s own, but I was done my Christmas shopping by then anyway, so it became a moot point.)

I couldn’t get those scarves out of my head, though. “I bet you could do that with CFL team colours,” I mused, “or any team, really.” And so it was decided that my dad, who normally eschews those crazy pieces of winter gear designed to keep one warm, needed a scarf in Montreal Canadiens colours. (Er, couleurs.)

It’s long enough to be wrapped around and cover nose/mouth/neck/entire head (probably)….

….but has groovy fringed ends for a jaunty look.

(As you can see, he took his modelling job very seriously, with his Béliveau jersey and matching socks.)

A rotary cutter made cutting the oodles and oodles of fleece rectangles a fairly quick job. Sewing them all together and tying off about a million thread ends (whyyyy does he like a team with more than two colours?) was…not as quick, but the end result is absolutely worth it. This thing is warm, and darned eye-catching, if I say so myself.

His jersey might have a 4 on it, but when I first set about making this, I had nicknamed it the Subban scarf: the original instructions, before taking seam allowances into account, used 76 inches of fleece. 🙂