Another Flashback…

So like many of my posts on my old blog, this is a flashback on my backlog of craftiness.


Last winter (late winter - January/February 2005), I taught myself to embroider. Well, I guess Jenny Hart and her awesome Stitch It Kit taught me…but I'll take full credit. ;)

My first two projects (besides my cute little strawberry sampler - which can be seen in my flicker button) were 2 pillowcases for my sister and a office chair cover for my mom. Their birthdays are less than a week apart, I was poor and basically jobless last year, but I needed birthday gifts.

What's better than a homemade gift, filled with love, sweat and tears?

NOTHING! That's right!

Sadly I don't have picture of the pillowcases I did for my sister. I finished them during her newborn baby boy's naptimes. That's the nice thing about newborns…they sleep alot. That and they're cute. Besides that they are a ton of work, especially if you're not their parent.

Sorry about the tangent.

Luckily my mom was on vacation in Hawaii during her birthday, so I had some extra time to finish her gift last year. Since mom had started her new job, she was complaining on how dirty the place was (she works customer service for trucking company and to begin with she was in a small terminal working in the same small space that the truckers took rests in). So I decided that the perfect gift would be an office chair cover. I whipped up this seat and back rest covers, based on what my mom had told me about her chair, out of some old 70s sheets.

They needed more…though isn't that always the Craftsters case. Whatever you do always needs something more, right?

I added a delicate detail to both pieces, a little feminine touch for the Trucker's Building.

All was good, mom loved the gift.

But then she took it to work…and her chair was way bigger than she had estimated. And my poor little chair cover was then banished to my dad's basement office (granted, mom does have part of the office set up for her scrapbooking).

Why does it feel like every time I hand make a gift, it kind of backfires? This is not the only example. The most memorable (I promise I will share pictures of it soon) are a set of birthday and Christmas gifts I did for my best friend. We live in Illinois. Cold, snowy, freezing winters are common. She then moved to Wisconsin, which may have even colder winter - but not by much. What is the problem you ask? Well on January 1, she moved to Hawaii! Now, I've never been to Hawaii, but I'm pretty sure winter DOES NOT EXIST there. WTF, mate? Fortunately, she's a grad student, so at least part of her winter months will be spent here in the great frozen Midwest.

You're curious now, aren't you? Thinking what could she have made that she'd be so traumatized by…

you'll just have to stick with and keep reading to find out. Mwa-ha-haha!