Nest Ironing board

Today I finally got my act together and made myself an ironing board. I rarely iron clothes or anything that requires a traditionally shaped ironing board so the narrow end is more of a nuisance than a help. You can buy ironing board extenders but they are ridiculously more expensive, so I have made myself something much more suitable. The idea for this comes from my mom and my aunt, however, they have theirs rigged to go on top of a traditional ironing board. Since I do not have room to put an ironing board anywhere near an outlet I have mine resting on top of the kids dresser. The upside is that it is nice and sturdy so I have no concerns about Clara or Layden knocking it down on top of themselves. I can also store the cord behind the dresser so little hands can't pull an iron down on their head.

I took a 2'x4' piece of plywood. I believe you can buy plywood in this size at the lumber yard but we have tons of plywood left overs sitting around our shop and I got lucky and found one that was already 2'x4'. It looks to be 3/4" thick, which is maybe a bit thicker than it needs to be. Then I covered it with a piece of felt and then a piece of poly batting, heat resistant batting like you can buy for pot holders would probably be more appropriate but I didn't have any of that laying about. So far the felt/batting seems to work just fine. Then I covered it with some quilting cotton, folded the fabric around the back with the raw edges folded under, stretched and stapled. Voila! This is a great use for the yard of Nest fabric that I got but have not been able to use because it is just too big of a print for quilting. Now I can iron a whole fat quarter at once and the board is wider than a standard 44" piece of fabric, this is so exciting!

First Knitting Class

This evening I teach my first knitting class at our local library, so, of course, I put off getting ready until today. This morning I turned 26 dowels and polymer clay into 13 pairs of knitting needles for my students to use if they do not have their own. First I used a pencil sharpener to make the tips. Then I sanded them so they were nice and smooth (but I am bringing sand paper with me in case I missed a spot). The sanding down goes much quicker if you put the dowels into a drill press but be sure to put them in straight or they wobble like crazy, then break apart and send dowels flying through the air (not that that happened to me...). Also, wear goggles. Then I used epoxy to glue on the little pieces of polymer clay and I had shaped and baked. Total cost for 13 sets was $8, less than a $1 a pair.  You can use just about anything on the end of the needle that you can glue down. Buttons, little pieces of wood you can get next to dowels in the craft store, beads, etc. So if you are interested in learning to knit but don't want to spend a lot of money right away making your own needles is the way to go. A 1/4" dowel is about a size 10 or 10.5 US and a 3/16" dowel is about a size 8 US. I have also heard of making circular needles using dowels and weed eater cable but I have yet to try it. I did not put any finish on these but a penetrating oil finish like tung oil is a good choice. Also these were made with softwood dowels, a hardwood dowel with give you a better product, our craft store did not have hardwood dowels so mine are softwood.

The word at the library is that there could be quite a few people there. Wish me luck.

PS the the jar is sitting on top of one of three baby quilts I will hopefully get finished in time to put up for sale at a quilt show my mom is organizing at her church