I've been working on these lovely cow mugs for the last month! I told you all about my brainstorming process here. It took me a few more weeks of brainstorming to come up with a suitably cute idea. 

I'm no good at drawing farm animals so this commission was a challenge for me! I went through many (poor) sketches of Moo Cows until I settled on this sketch. 

First, I cleaned my mugs with Rubbing Alcohol, then I did a few coats of solid color on the bottom stripes (letting them dry overnight), then measured out my vertical stripes so that they would match up with an even repeat of colors. Then I sketched some Moo Cow faces onto my mugs and added some flowers! 

Rubbing Alcohol is the perfect eraser for these oil based Sharpies. I'd highly recommend grabbing some if you want to take on a project like this. ​

I baked them up at 250° for two hours and Voila! This magical mug set was a commission and I have a few more in the works through April! 

I might share more about my future mugs during the brainstorming period, but for now I'll let it be a mystery! They're gonna be super cute though! I'm excited! 

I hope your Spring has been magical so far! 

Thanks for stopping by!

​-Ashley 

This month I decided to put my yarn skillz to the test and try to spin my own wool! I keep hearing about the amazing wool spinners and dyers on my knitting Podcasts and getting jealous of their mad skillz so I thought it was time to try it myself. 

I went to The Alpaca Farm Boutique on Etsy and found myself a top whorl drop spindle and some alpaca fiber. I could have started with Wool but Alpaca is my most favorite fiber of them all!

I watched this YouTube video from WEBS to get started. This gal totally knows what she's doing, plus her name is Ashley, so I trust her. 

So far I have spun two tiny balls of Alpaca in the hopes of spinning them both together into a two ply tiny ball of yarn. Maintaining a consistent yarn size was actually much more difficult than I had imagined. I kept getting very slubby/thick and thin yarn. I don't intend to make novelty yarn so I'm going to have to work on my tension to get it consistent. I also think I might be over spinning my Roving, my finished yarn has been very tight and not soft. I'm wishing I had thought to take a class instead of attempting this challenge on my own! 

I have a few more ounces of yarn to spin and once I find out if my two balls of yarn can successfully become one tiny two ply yarn I'll be better able to judge my progress as a hand spinner. 

UPDATE!

I successfully wound my cute little yarn balls into a two ply yarn! It was actually a lot more fun than spinning the single ply. 

I'm sure I'm still over spinning as everything seems a little tighter than it should be but this is my first try and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! 

I'm going to let it rest for a day or two and then block it. I know it's only a couple yards but I think I'll make myself a mug cozy with it or something small and cute. 

I need a lot more practice getting the yarn weight all the same size and figuring out the tension in my fiber spinning but I've got two more balls of Alpaca fiber to work my way through so I should be a pro by the time I'm done, right? 

Wish me luck!

Feel free to offer suggestions or advice if this is something you have experience with! I'm a super beginner so any tips are welcome! 

Thanks for stopping by!

​-Ashley

I always like to make my awesome big sister something amazing for her Birthday in March. This year I made her a magical Vintage-Look cable knit beanie. 

The pattern I used is Molly by Erin Ruth, it was a fun knit. I didn't realize how long the beanie was until I started the decreases; 11" from brim to top!? That seemed a little excessive! I ended up not including one cable increase section to make it a little bit smaller. It still turned out pretty big. Luckily my sis has lots of hair so it might turn into her "bad hair day" hat. :)

I also ended up sewing a few pick up stitches behind each large cable twist when I was done with the hat because they left little gaps in the fabric.

The yarn I used was Bernat Sheepish (70% Acrylic/30% Wool), which, as I've said before pills a lot and is tough to frog but is machine washable and nice and durable. 

​

I got a little jealous of Jeanne's hat so I decided I needed to make myself one too! 

For my Spring Cable knit hat I used the Pattern Neon Ski Bonnet by Lacy Volk. I found the Key for the pattern a little confusing because the instructions are to knit the hat band in a tube but the key gives you info for knitting it as a flat panel instead of in the round; it gives key instructions for the Right Side and Wrong Side (there is NO Wrong Side when knitting in the round!) which kind of threw me off. Once I figured out I just needed to ignore the WS instructions and keep on keeping on things were much easier. 

I also had an issue picking up the stitches for the top portion of the hat from the hat band. I made the size large and the instructions called for picking up 114 stitches then reducing to 102 stitches but that makes the cable pattern uneven! Sigh! I redid my hard work and picked up 114 then reduced to 106 stitches so the cable pattern balanced and all was right with the world!  

I used some trusty Cascade 220, 100% Wool for this cap and I think it will be perfect for the super duper rainy Portland March we've been having. 

My kitty mugs were so popular that I immediately got an order for some Moo-Cow mugs! I picked up these awesome white mugs from Amazon and have been doing some brainstorming as to how to design these guys. 

The mugs are great and much more heavy duty than the set I used for the kitties (not to mention a lot less expensive, 8 for 33$ instead of 4 for 24$!) They're bigger and heavier and I think they would even work as soup mugs. If these guys bake up as well as the Amazon reviews say, I see another batch of them in my future. 

I've been Pinteresting lots of different design ideas. These mugs are going to be for a younger cousin of mine so I want to make sure they aren't too "old school" for her. At the same time, I have no experience drawing Moo-Cows so I'm worried they might turn out a little too cartoony! I wanted to share with you guys some of the images I was able to find during my hunt. (Mind you, these are Pinterest images and I claim no credit for them, I've provided the Pinterest links.)

This first set is more traditional Moo's. These guys are more rustic and Country, not quite the style I'm looking for but I might copy some of the body styles and poses. (A.B.C.D)

These guys are more abstract Moo's. The bottom two are my favorite, I love the old fashioned Disney-esque quality of the blue cow (bottom left) and I love the head on, beach ball shaped cows on the bottom right. I'm definitely thinking of doing a repeating pattern of Cows all the way around like mug D. (A.B.C.D.)

These Moo's are super cartoony, this is most likely the style I will be going with. I like the Mug B, it reminds me of Gary Larson cartoons, though I most likely will be sticking with the plain black and white with maybe a little pink for mouths, ears and udders. Mug D is my favorite, I love his little body shape and his mouth full of grass! So cute! (A.B.C.D.)

I want these mugs to have the same style as the kitty mugs, with all the little Moo-Cows sitting side by side looking adorable, but I have a bit more brainstorming and sketching to do before I get started. 

Let me know if any of these mug styles inspire you!

I'll keep you updated on my Bovine progress!

Thanks for reading!

​-Ashley