Tunisian crochet potholders

In February I stumbled upon a fantastic pattern for potholders.  The pattern is free on Ravelry and can be found here.  I've been playing a bit with Tunisian crochet, but never really made anything with it.  Just sort of played around trying to learn the stitches.  These potholders were a great way to practice Tunisian simple stitch (TSS).  The only downside is that the pattern doesn't tell you how to do TSS, so I had to do some googling to get the instructions down pat.

However, the finished product is amazing!  It is thick and double sided.  You construct a rectangle and then fold it over and add the border through both pieces--so cool!  It really is good for handing hot lids and handles while cooking.  If you're looking to try Tunisian crochet I suggest starting here (and with some YouTube)..the result is great!

I made an orange one for myself (not pictured) and these two for my mom.  They were her Valentine's Day gift, so I cross stitched a little heart on each of them.  (That might be one of my favorite things about TSS--it's perfect for cross stitching on!)

Presenting Dr. Jessica

So remember that time when I used to update my blog somewhat regularly and then I just sort of...stopped?  Well that is soon to be a thing of the past!  I'm back!! AND...guess what?!?!  I got my PhD!  I'm officially a Dr!

Last Sunday (5/19) was my PhD Convocation and then last Wednesday (5/22) was the university Commencement and then my hooding ceremony.  I am elated that I was able to achieve my dream of earning my PhD.  I just wanted to share a few pictures from last week's festivities. 

My mom, Sean (bf), Matt (best friend), Uncle Dan, and Aunt Cathy accompanied me last Wednesday to Commencement and hooding.  I know that they were so very proud of me--maybe as proud or prouder than I was!

Here I am leaving the hooding ceremony.  If you have never been to a hooding ceremony it is the time that we are officially presented our doctoral hoods that show the color of our degree (royal blue for me indicating PhD) as well as our school colors on the inside (although you can't see it in the picture, the inside of my hood is light blue and white for Columbia).  Technically we aren't supposed to wear our hoods before being hooded, but we all did--call us rebels!  Commencement took place prior to hooding and it just felt good to wear the hood to Commencement!

I actually have a funny story about the hood I received.  We had the choice of either buying or renting both the hood and the gown for graduation.  We all had to buy the tam.  Well, after pricing out the outfit I decided that it would be best to rent the gown (it was over $600 to own) and buy the hood as a memento.  If I was to buy the entire thing it would cost about $1,000 which is a bit too much for me right now for something I might not wear again.  Anywho, back to my hood story.  I had the bookstore ship my regalia to my house since I'm very rarely at school any longer.  (Side note: I got a job much closer to home so I no longer have to go to the city every day!)  So when my regalia arrived I was so excited to try it on!  When I put the hood on I realized that it was red and royal blue inside, but didn't think more of it.  When I got to school on Sunday for my Convocation my mom and I decided to visit the bookstore to purchase a few items.  The bookstore has PhD gowns on display and I realized that the inside of the hood was school colors--Columbia blue and white.  I checked with the bookstore staff and the assured me that as long as the velvet part of my hood was royal blue, the hood was correct.  When I asked about the red inside the bookstore staff, Convocation staff, and even a Dean did not have an answer.  So after my Convocation I was sure that I was sent the wrong hood in the mail--EVERYONE else had Columbia colors on the inside of their hood.  Luckily the bookstore lent me a rental for the other ceremonies!  At least my mom was able to spot me easily at Convocation!!

Ok, back to pictures.  Here are a bunch of people from the Human Development department.  HUD (as we call it) houses my program as well as other psychology programs.  We were waiting to go into the hooding ceremony--notice that no one is wearing the hood :).  I think someone commented that without the hood we look like a chef choir.  Haha!

Here I am post Commencement posing with the "Columbia University--Congratulations to the Class of 2013" banner!  I think I have a similar one from when I graduated in 2008 with one of my masters degrees.

Here I am with Sean and My mom after my Commencement.  If you look to the left of the picture ALLL the way in the background you'll see a "sea of blue"--that's where I was sitting for the ceremony!  Needless to say it was tricky to get to my family afterwards to take some photos!  Luckily we got some nice ones :).  There were over 30,000 people said to be at this years graduation.

Here I am with Uncle Dan (who is also my godfather) and Aunt Cathy!  I know they had such a nice time at the ceremony.  I'm so glad they came!

I do like that we got Low Library (which isn't a library) in the background of these photos.  I do love the campus!  Here I am with Matt and my mom.  :)

And last, but certainly not least is a photo with my advisor.  Dr. Johnson was a wonderful mentor for my dissertation and I'm very proud to have been able to work with him!

So that is it for now.  Definitely expect some project posts coming soon!  I've done a bit of knitting and crocheting during my blogging hiatus and would love to share the projects with you!  Until then, happy yarn time! :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone celebrating today! I have so very much to be thankful for this year, as always.  My wonderful Mom, my family, my friends, my amazing boyfriend Sean, my health, my success thus far in school, my angels in Heaven, and so much more.  Even if you don't celebrate Thanksgiving today, take a moment or two to remember all that you are thankful for!

And if you feel like baking...why not make some turkey cupcakes?

I spent some time yesterday searching online for easy and cute Turkey cupcakes.  I got a few ideas and headed to the store.  I first thought maybe I'd use candy corn for feathers (like I saw online), but I couldn't find candy corn...then I thought maybe use Nutter Butter cookies for the face...but I couldn't find those either! So, I came up with my own idea.

Here's what you need:

-Your favorite cupcakes (made from scratch or from a box or even store bought!)

-Icing (if your cupcakes aren't iced)

-Vanilla wafers (I used the WhoNu vanilla wafers)

-Pretzel sticks

-M&Ms of some sort (I used pretzel ones)

-Two colors of gel to write on the vanilla wafers (I used red for the beak and purple for the eyes)

What you need to do is:

1) Make two eyes and a beak on the vanilla wafer.  Put these aside to dry (or in the fridge) so that the features harden a little and don't run....(yeah...I wound up with a "crying" turkey at first ha!)

2) Prepare your pretzels.  For each cupcake you'll need 5 sticks.  Break 2 in half.  Starting in the back middle of a cupcake, place in 1 whole pretzel.  Then put two whole pretzels on either side of that one, but push them in a little further so that they are shorter.  Then place a half pretzel on each side of the growing pretzel-feathers.  And finally place the last half on the side, pushing it in a little more.  You want the "feathers" in the middle to be tallest and the ones on the side to be shortest.

3) I separated out the fall colored M&Ms (red, orange, yellow, brown).

4) Place a vanilla wafer at the front of the cupcake--sort of in the cupcake a bit and sort of resting on the icing a little.

5) Place the M&Ms you sorted between the face and the tail to ad some color to the body.

And you're done! :)

Enjoy!!

Dish towels!

In an attempt to decrease the amount of yarn that I have stashed (aka "destash") I'm trying to find little projects to knit and crochet (quickly) that will be useful and help me use up my yarn. (So I can ultimately get more..shhhh).  Well, I found a wonderful pattern to make dish towels!  At my mom's house we always had a towel hanging on the fridge.  Sort of a "clean hands only" towel to use rather than always drying your hands with a paper towel.  Usually these were an actual towel that had a crocheted top section to allow it to be buttoned around the fridge handle.  I've tried knitting a towel like this before, but the pattern I picked was mostly stockinette stitch which ended up curling when it was on the fridge and it didn't seem absorbent or soft etc.  So recently I came across this pattern.  Funny enough, my mom noticed the first (curling) towel I had knit and fell in love with the idea of it.  So, I decided to knit her one using the new pattern that I found.

This is the result:

I used some cream colored yarn that I had and a sage green colored yarn to accent it with (it looks a bit darker in the picture than it is in person).  My mom's kitchen has both colors in it, so I figured it would go nicely and if she really hated it, it also matches my kitchen.  Well, she loved it!  It is very soft, does not roll, and is absorbent!  Sooooo, I decided to knit one for myself as well :).

There are definitely more of these planned in my future! I think a set of these would make a nice addition to a house warming gift!

Happy Valentine's Day!

This cute Matryoshka doll was part of my Valentine's Day gift to my mom :). She absolutely went crazy for her!! Maybe I need to make the rest of her "sisters" :-D! Happy Valentine's Day!!

Happy Mother's Day!

Today was Mother's Day :).  I took my mom to the Montclair State University Harry Partch Ensemble's Open Studio today.  It was a lot of fun!  After, Christopher, Mommy, and I went to visit the Presby Iris Gardens in Montclair.  Even though it was quite chilly and windy, we had a lovely time.  I of course took lots and lots of photos!  I definitely plan on going back sometime this week.  The director said that she expects all of the Iris's to be in full bloom in about 10 days.  I really can't wait!

I think this was my favorite iris of all!

To check out the rest of my pictures, take a look at my flickr page by clicking here! :)

Sunny skies are ahead!