Tag: hockey

craftmas, Cross-stitch and Embroidery

On the second day of Craftmas…

wittychild

…my true love gave to me a hoop that says “Vive le hockey!”

What do you give the guy who has, on different occasions, had this cake and this scarf?  A little hoop-framed Habs logo!  Honestly, I have let many Father’s Days/birthdays/Christmases pass without doing this – why didn’t I do it sooner?

And also, why didn’t I do it sooner?  Thursday and Friday found me stitching at work on my breaks.  This was not the first time, and will likely not be the last, but whyyyyy?!  (Also, for anyone keeping score, the lighting at this desk is not quite as good as it was at the last desk when I last tried this two years ago.  White thread on white fabric hates wonky lighting.  However, if this is the only downside to the job, I honestly can’t complain.)

I found the pattern on Etsy – the download included four different sizes, but I chose the smallest which I was able to fit into a four-inch hoop, painted by a kind soul who took pity on my last-minute frenzy and pitched in.

Habs-1

Just one more present to go now – the race is on!

Thanks for looking! 🙂

General Sewing

And you thought Rudolph Valentino was the Sheik….

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.)

Habs Scarf 1

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

Habs Scarf 2

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

Habs Socks

(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.  🙂

baking

I “Hab” nothing else to say/Je n’ai rien d’autre à dire

wittychild

Note pour mes amis francophonies: Le <<bon mot>> par-dessus ne traduit pas à la français avec des bons résultats.  Mais cliquez-ici pour quelque chose bien amusant.

I’d like to point out right now that I don’t follow hockey, although I am certainly not above yanking on my dad’s Jean Beliveau jersey and snapping a picture to taunt one of my friends who’s a die-hard Boston fan.  (Although I suppose he had the last laugh this year.)  Truthfully, the only time I pay any attention is when Chicago is playing at home, but that’s only because I enjoy hearing Jim Cornelison sing the American national anthem.

But…oh…the things we do for love – and Father’s Day!

The cake was my mother’s idea.  “Hey, what if you did the cake to look like a hockey rink, with the Canadiens logo at centre ice?”  Right.  Because I can totally draw the Habs’ logo, and I totally know what a regulation hockey rink looks like.  Thank heavens for Google.  In the end, I came up with this:

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The nets were part of a soccer-themed cake-topper set, and are slightly disproportionate for a 9″ x 13″ rink, but I take what I can get.  I used a toothpick to trace the shape of the “C” in before filling it in with red icing, then adding the blue outline.

But wait!  There’s more!  Once I had decided how I was going to decorate it, I wanted something a little different for the cake part.  Don’t get me wrong – we all like chocolate, but it’s been done.

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I used a cherry chip cake mix, made with a can of ginger ale instead of the standard water/oil/eggs to keep things vegan, and then stirred in a few Wilton baking bits in blue.  Without the icing job, it would make a nifty 4th of July cake, but here it carries the theme through.

Rather than try to cover and hide it in the already-crowded fridge until today, we cut into it last night – my dad was absolutely tickled with his special dessert.

Happy Father’s Day!