Mid-Week Mini - Baby Maddie

I wanted to share with everyone a postscript from my Aloha Maddie Baby Blanket post.  My friend Carrie sent me a picture of Maddie snuggling with the baby blanket.

What a great smile that little girl has.  Thanks, Carrie for sharing!

Bowling Party

Me and three other friends from work are in a fall bowling league.  We are called the Odd Balls.  We have t-shirts, black pom-poms and friends that stop by to cheer us on. 

I figured I would write a Mid-Week Mini to chat about one of the Odd Balls and her birthday bowling party.  At bowling, we love to have fun and joke around with everyone so since her actual birthday landed on a bowling night, we threw her a mini party.

I had gone to Goodwill earlier in the week to look for some pretty glassware with a pal and I happened upon this random bowling trophy.

I guess the Most Improved Male did not like his trophy

This was marked about $3, and I thought that was a bit much for a plastic bowling trophy at Goodwill.  So, I may have embarrassed my pal when we got to the register, but I haggled with the cashier on the price and she took off $1!  Yes, I haggled at Goodwill; I have no shame!

The time between work and bowling I went to the party store and bought a few balloons and used this trophy as the balloon weight.  I had also made a new "plaque" for the trophy.

It was our table centerpiece!

We were bowling against one of our favorite teams that night.  We had some friends stop by to cheer us on.  One of our friends had brought her baby by and I think she really likes the bowling atmosphere!  We tend to bowl really well when she is there so we call her our Lucky Charm.

Lucky Charm, Ines!

Here is me and the birthday girl, Stephanie:

Yup, we wore birthday hats!

Of course, Vince, my sweetie is an Odd Ball (he is our anchor, us gals do our best).  This is us:

Odd Ball sweethearts

We won six out of eight points!  Poor Anthony and his team!  We normally have a ying and yang thing going on each week, we win some, we lose some.  We had fun, that's for sure.

Cathy even made a cake, so we served any team that wanted a piece.  It was a peanut butter cake: Yum!



We ran out of gel, so it was just Happy Birthday Stephy!


Here is our first group pic of the season:

Gooooooo Odd Balls!


We love having company, so let me know when you want stop by to cheer us on!

Camera Cozy

This is the first installment of the Mid-Week Mini.  For my small projects, I will post them mid-week as a "mini" project.  Now, don't get used to this blog-post-twice-a-week thing.  It is just for the occasional small, simple things I have on my plate. :-)

Let me start from the beginning.  For Christmas, Santa got me a new digital camera. [Insert me jumping up and down here].  This camera is hot pink and matches my personalty, for I love, love pink.  My last camera I had for about eight or nine years; I really can't complain because it has served me well.  I did drop it about a couple of months ago and a piece that held the battery door closed, chipped off.  It still closes, but one side is not secure.  So, I really hinted at my honey that a camera was at the top of my Christmas list. 

The case that my old camera came in was a zippered clamshell.  It served it's purpose and held additional batteries.  My new camera has a rechargable battery that has a special adaptor, so I don't need to carry around the extra batteries anymore.

I wanted a cute cozy for my new camera that I could easily carry in my purse, while protecting the screen.  I was originally going to knit it a "sock", with lime green sock yarn.  I had it all planned out, I just needed the time to do it.  Well, it has been three weeks since Christmas and my time to do this has not arrived.  Instead, I went to my scrap bag and dug out a piece of felted sweater.  I felted a few sweaters to repurpose, but I have not blogged about it yet, so I will not spill the beans on what my reason for felting sweaters were (some of you out there know, but, shhhh, don't say anything).

Anyway, the piece I chose to use was a section of a sleeve.  When you felt wool, you are essentially ruining the piece of knit.  But, you are intentionally ruining it.  You do this by washing pure wool in a hot water bath or washing machine on high agitation.  I will get more into it when I blog about the sweaters.  This project only used one of the discarded sleeves.

Felt will not fray when cut

I cut a portion off that was slightly longer than the camera and turned it inside-out and sewed the side seam a bit more.  I fit the camera in it so it would be snug and sewed the side seam again a little closer.  Once I was satisfied that it fit, I then sewed the bottom seam and trimmed the hem and clipped the corner.  Then I turned it right-side out.

Next, I took a regular covered hair elastic and a button I had in my button jar.

Just a few odds & ends

I left the top edge raw.  I hand-sewed the button to the front and then hand-sewed the hair elastic to the back.  This way, the hair elastic will keep the camera in place when it is stretched over the top and buttoned in the front.


Wool-aful!

Viola!  A little camera cozy.  This was a fun project that took no time to do.  I was happy to use my scraps and it is cute as well.

Hot-Pink Mamma!

Thanks honey, I love my new camera!  And I love the new cozy I made for it; it sure beats knitting a sock on a pair of toothpicks, right Kathy?  Hey blog-readers...send me some of your completed or WIPs.  I need to know I'm not the only one that has them.  C'mon!!