Vintage Inspiration: Button-Embellished Cardi

I was thrilled to find this button-embellished cardigan at an Albuquerque estate sale!

Sad to say, I don't know who the original maker was, or when it was made.

It’s a commercially-knit cotton cardigan in luscious grape purple, with dozens and dozens and dozens of purple, black and deep blue buttons hand-sewn up and down both button bands, and all around the collar and cuffs.

In the close-up photo, you can see that the seamstress simply attached each button through the fabric of the sweater with a long running stitch.

Then she used heavy-duty snaps for the actual closure of the cardi.

(Had it been me, I might have used a heavier thread, and tried to bury the long floats inside the button band.)

As it is, a little minor repair work is in order. A few buttons are missing, but easily replaced from my own vintage button collection.

This would be a great project

for vintage button-collectors to re-create!

Buttons, Buttons ...

Have You Got Some Buttons?

Do you have a wondrous box of vintage buttons stashed away in your sewing room or studio? Then you'll want a copy of Susan Beal's inspiring new project book, Button It Up: 80 Amazing Vintage Button Projects for Necklaces, Bracelets, Embellishments, Housewares & More. 

Dive into your treasured button collection and come up with one of her 80 crafty projects for vintage-button-embellished clothing, handbags, hairclips, jewelry or home decor!

You can get Susan's book right now on Amazon: 

Button It Up: 80 Amazing Vintage Button Projects for Necklaces, Bracelets, Embellishments, Housewares & More

or thriftier still, enter the contest to win a FREE copy from the Dollar Store Crafts website. 

Hurry, the Dollar Store Crafts contest ends Sunday, March 15th, 2009, at 5pm Pacific time!

Good luck,

--MaggieBelize

Designer, kNotes for kNitters

Website, www.LocalGringos.com

Sandia Park, NM

Follow-worthy: Indie Art Blog from Down Under

Woke up this morning to two great surprises: (1) it's snowing, and (2) I've been featured in an Aussie art blog! Woohoo!

Chrisy from Brisbane writes the Sophism Press blog, featuring independent artists & writers. She picks gorgeous stuff to showcase - and no, I'm not just saying that because she picked my stuff. Go take a look, you'll see what I mean.

For her art postcard post, she chose my Hands Knit #1 postcard design, along with an intimidatingly beautiful selection of other Etsy artists' cards ... a quilted one ... a wooden one ... 

Here I was worried no one liked postcards anymore! 

And she's woven a clever "Postcard from Dulcie" text throughout her mini-gallery.

Thanks, Chrisy! Nice little art break on a snowy morning.

--MaggieBelize

Designer, kNotes for kNitters

Website, www.LocalGringos.com

Sandia Park, NM

What's for Dinner? Lemon-Garlic Roast Salmon

We don't eat out often. Partly out of frugality, partly from lack of choices in our rural area. So I cook dinner just about every night ... which means every afternoon about 3:30 I start wondering what the heck I'm gonna fix!

Part of my goal in writing this blog is to create my own cooking journal, documenting recipes I liked (or didn't like), strategies and sources. 

And, I'd like to share them with those of you who might also be wondering what the heck you're gonna fix tonight?

Last night's solution: Lemon-Garlic Roast Salmon

Salmon is one of the few reliable seafoods we can get up here in the high-mountain desert (I have no idea why), so I'm always on the lookout for new ways to cook it. 

I found this recipe in Lynne Rossetto Kasper's emailed newsletter, "Weeknight Kitchen". I subscribe to her newsletter, and also recommend her radio show and/or podcast, The Splendid Table.

This is a loosely-Greek-inspired marinade of olive oil, fresh lemon juice, garlic, comino and chile powder (or paprika) that I used for salmon, but Lynne says works well with other fresh fish. 

I liked the chile powder with the salmon, but if you've substituted a more delicately flavored fish, paprika might be a better choice. Especially Spanish smoked paprika, mmm ...

Anyway, it's a short (20 to 30 minute) marinade, then quickly oven-roast the fish with its marinade, less than 15 minutes.

I skipped the potatoes from her recipe -- didn't have time, and I wanted something lighter. Instead I made buttered orzo with freshly grated Parmesan, and steamed broccoli.

Quick, tasty, and a keeper for our dinner rotation!

--MaggieBelize

Designer, kNotes for kNitters

Website, www.LocalGringos.com

Sandia Park, NM

Favorite Foods from Fiery Foods Fiesta

We went to the Fiery Foods show in Albuquerque last weekend, and really enjoyed tasting all the hot stuff. We were a tad bummed out by the $15 p/p entrance fee, which I thought was a bit much, but other than that, a great day.

I loved more of the incendiary concoctions on display than I could ever list, but here's what I actually brought home in my shopping bag:

AlbuqCookies

As the name suggests, these sweet little tidbits are cooked up locally (by East Coast transplantees). 

My favorite, a biscotti-type treat made of chocolate and red pepper, isn't listed on their website yet. (Dudes, update your site!)  The photo here is the Chocolate-Pinon version.

In ABQ, AlbuqCookies allegedly can be found at La Montanita Co-op, Kellers Farmers Market, and Model Pharmacy, but I haven't verified this yet.

Sauce Goddess

What first caught my eye was the great logo of this San-Diego based company - then I fell in love with their self-described "obscenely delicious", non-smoky grill glazes & rubs. 

Wish I could have gotten them all, but finally narrowed it down to two: "Moroccan Twist Rub Rub" and "Sweet & Spicy Grill Glaze".

You can buy Sauce Goddess online, or at many retail outlets in California - none yet in New Mexico, more's the pity.

Los Cuates Salsa

Los Cuates is a local ABQ restaurant dishing up darn good New Mexican cuisine in general, and a truly stellar cooked salsa in particular. 

Their salsa is deep, dark red, gravy-like, with a smoky whiff reminiscent of chipotles - I love it so much I could drink it. 

So I was thrilled to find them at the show, offering 16-oz jars for $4, cash & carry! I didn't know you could buy the stuff outside their restaurants, and haven't seen it on local grocery shelves - but I'll look again, just as soon as this jar's empty.

Mmm, mmh! Hot stuff.

--MaggieBelize

Designer, kNotes for kNitters

Website,www.LocalGringos.com

Sandia Park, NM

The Yellow Pages Project - Free Paper, Going Fast!

Yesterday at my local post office I saw a huge bin of new phone books for distribution to our neighborhood. On the bin was a sign reading "Please Do Not Dump Old Books Here."  I guess that means all of last year's phone books are headed for the landfill.

The "Dex" yellow pages volume for the greater Albuquerque area has close to 2,000 pages, plus another 700 pages or so for the white pages volume. Multiply that by the 217,346 households in Albuquerque - yep, I looked it up - and you get a minimum of 586,834,200 pieces of paper dumped in the landfills every year. (Of course, that's assuming that every household has only one set of phone books, I'm sure many have two or more.)

That's at least 600 million pages of free paper going to waste, every year.

I came home with my new phone books, but took our old books - we have one set - to my craft room. This is the beginning of my "Yellow Pages Project": I want to make something with my nearly 3,000 pages of annual free paper!

Here's my first Yellow Pages Project: making paper beads.

I found basic instructions for making paper beads on WikiHow and Paper University. Over at A Storybook Life, she's making them from newspaper; Natasha Fialkov is using origami paper. There are loads more examples, just Google.

Here's a photo of today's Yellow Pages beads, drying now. I wrapped them on recycled cocktail straws, and used a strawberry box for a drying rack.

Tomorrow I'll play with inks & glaze to finish them.

Next up, I'm thinking about papier-mache masks - mADmen? - and maybe bracelets.

Please share your crafty ideas for the Yellow Pages Project by adding your comments & links below. 

Let's keep some of those 600 million pages in useful circulation!

--MaggieBelize

Designer, kNotes for kNitters

Website, www.LocalGringos.com

Sandia Park, NM

FREE GUIDEBOOK to New Mexico Fiber Arts Trail

I just found the most wonderful FREE guidebook at my local yarn store: the guide to New Mexico Fiber Arts Trails.

It covers over 200 local fiber artists and 71 different destinations, organized by region. You can visit artists who weave, spin, make rugs, dye fibers, run fiber farms, galleries, "trading posts" and fiber studios, many offering classes.

How cool! And, I repeat, it's free!

Frugal Tip: You can get your own free copy, immediately! Visit http://nmfiberarts.org to download it.

Or you can request a copy through the website to be delivered by mail. If you're not in a hurry, that's your best bet, because the booklet is beautifully photographed and printed.

Or, get it the old fashioned way: call or write New Mexico Arts, P. O. Box 1450, Santa Fe, NM 87504, 800-879-4278 or (in-state) 505-827-6490.

There are several destinations right here in the East Mountains area, including my local Edgewood yarn store (Good Fibrations) and my neighbor Connie's Shooting Star Farm.

In addition to her alpacas, llamas, angora goats and rabbits, and of course Itty Bitty the donkey, Connie raises Navajo Churro sheep, a heritage breed that was teetering on the brink of extinction ... and is still designated as a "rare breed".

You can read a fascinating account of how Navajo lives and philosophy intertwined with those of these special sheep at Sheep Is Life (Dibe - Dine bi' iina).

All of the artists listed on the Fiber Arts Trails applied to the New Mexico Arts organization to be included in the Trail guide, so you can be sure that they really do welcome visitors. Connie says she's already had visitors from Michigan, Kansas and Wyoming!

However, the booklet recommends that you confirm visiting hours and such before you go. Also bear in mind that sometime this year or next, New Mexico will get its second area code (woohoo!), and some of the telephone numbers listed in the Guide will no longer be area code 505.

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Website,www.LocalGringos.com
Sandia Park, NM

Knitting a Nano-Sock

Just a quick note before the dinner timer goes off ... I finished my sock-with-lanyard for the iPod! <Taa-daa!>

This project involved two firsts for me: I had never designed my own pattern for anything, and I'd not made an I-cord before.

Yeah, there are a gazillion patterns already out there for iPod socks, but I had very specific features in mind:

• For starters, I wasn't gonna use dpns, or two circular needles, or anything kinky like that.
• I wanted it done, like, right now, so that ruled out felting.
• I wanted it to be sturdy, since I wear it every day.
• And, I had to be able to hit the iPod Pause button quickly ... when my dear library patrons ask me questions, they don't give me a lot of time to get "unplugged" to hear them.

So here's what I came up with.

This first picture shows the Nano Sock "open", with its flap up.

And here's the Nano Sock closed, with its flap down and the earbud connector just pushed through the fabric. Very convenient!

I wanted to end up with a sturdy knitted fabric for the project -- without felting -- so I chose a light sport weight acrylic-rayon chenille, very little stretch, that I got cheap-cheap from "Susan's Yarn Barn" on eBay.

(She's a great source of inexpensive chenille, BTW, and a darned fast shipper. But she's moving to a bricks-and-mortar store this month, so her shelves are empty now, till the move is done.)

I downsized my needles to a US 3 to get a tighter fabric. I cast on 20 stitches, wider than the Nano but I wanted the flap wide enough to wrap around the edges; then I decreased down to 14 stitches. (This sock fits over the Nano's skin, by the way.)

Then every so often I carried along a sassy strand of flame-red eyelash yarn for a couple of rows.

The end result was roughly a rectangle measuring 6 inches from cast on, down the back to the Nano's little bottom, then 3 inches up the front.

I keep the Nano in there upside-down, so the earbuds attach through the top flap, and I can easily get to the Pause button. The sock is 2-3/4 inches wide, but 3-1/2 inches wide at the end of the flap.

Finally, I knitted a 4-stitch I-cord -- again, looking for stability -- to make the hanging lanyard.

I wanted it to attach securely, without pulling up the edges of the sock, so I had the brilliant idea of incorporating the I-cord the whole length of the sides.

Stitching the cord in between the front and the back, as a sort of gusset, turned out to be tricksier than I'd imagined, so I think next time I'll stitch the front and back together first, then attach the I-cord.

And I learned that making a 40-inch, 4-stitch I-cord (yikes, enuf hyphens for ya?) is not the most interesting thing I've ever done.

In fact, it sent me screaming out the door to Hobby Lobby, where I purchased a Clover Wonder Knitter.

This is the gizmo I used to call a "Knitting Nancy" only much cooler: imagine if ole Knitting Nancy's head spun around like The Exorcist.

It comes with two wheels to make small or large diameter I-cords, using from 2 to 6 pegs.

What a great little toy! I even -- oooooh so casually -- handed it to my husband, who cranked out about 200 yards of I-cord while watching TV.

Hah! Brilliant! Maybe it should be called the “Tom Sawyer” Knitter.

Now I'll just go bask in the warm glow of a finished project.

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Website, www.LocalGringos.com
Sandia Park, NM