Marie Kondo Method: Time to Tidy Up

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. I feel like Spring is in the air today in Toronto and with that I have been in the mood for doing some Spring cleaning of our apartment. I was watching Marie Kondo's show on Netflix today and watched two episodes and then felt inspired to clean up my apartment. Liam and I have also been talking about moving in the near future, so it would be great to go through our stuff and give away what we don't need before we start planning to move to a house with even more space to stash our things.I absolutely love her method as she tackles each area: clothes, books, miscellaneous or as Kondo calls them "Komono", and sentimental belongs in groups of items so you go through groups of things in categories at the same time and bring them all into the same space to go through them. I think this method works best for me and a lot of people because it brings all the same items together to look through instead of going room by room and having a bit of each group of items to go through multiple times. The method also encourages you to keep like items together once you organize them and decide what to keep.

Today I started tackling my clothes and I folded my clothes using her method and stored the clothes neatly in the drawer. I hung up dresses and blouses in the closet and had so much less when I was done. I can also see my clothes when I look in the drawers instead of trying to find them in the jumble of clothes. It also made me more aware of what clothes I actually like or what"sparks joy"which is her expression, and how easy it was to throw some clothes in the giveaway that I had been passively wearing just because it was there and not because I liked wearing it.

I suggest you pick up a copy of her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. Her method is explained each step very thoroughly with tips on how to give away items in each category. I remember her section on books and it has resonated with me ever since and I think of only keeping books that I love or I know I will read again. I will start this more seriously once I go through the books and end up with only books I will re-read or love.I am looking forward to working on my books next. Last year when I started this method I got through my clothes and made it halfway through the book process because I got stuck on giving them away. This time I will be more tough on myself to ask myself if I will read them again and if not then I should give them away so someone else can enjoy them.

Have you tried the Marie Kondo method to tidying up? if yes, did it work for you?

Thank you for visiting my blog today. I will be back soon with some knitting related content and hope you enjoyed this post. I will be sharing a post each week for the next few weeks with progress on using this tidying/organizing method, and how it works for me. I plan to be done this process by May 11th, 2019 and will share my final results with you.

Happy Easter! and Some Updates

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. I had a wonderful weekend going to lunch on Saturday with Liam's family and going to my parent's place for dinner last night. I gave his mom the knitted bunny topper and she loved it which made me so happy. I also gave my parents the bunny topper yesterday and they liked it. I really love Easter with all the bunnies and pastel colors and this can make really cute projects for knitting. I have been looking on Instagram the past couple weeks at all of the adorable knitted bunnies and eggs and was just thinking how much I love holiday knitted pieces, they are usually the cutest and make me feel so happy because of the holiday memories we associate with seeing bunnies at this time of year or knitted pumpkins at Halloween.

I got this felt board  pictured above about a month ago when I was shopping with my friend at Marshall's. I love creating messages on it and the last quote I made was "work hard be kind stay humble". I think it will come in handy for creating messages for Instagram and here and also for my bridal shower and wedding next year.

I am still reading Quiet by Susan Cain and Spark of Light by Jodi Picoult. They are both such interesting reads. I think Quiet is such a good book there is research stories of famous introverts such as Warren Buffet and examples from the author's own experiences. I am trying to pick up my pace in reading these as I am enjoying them but haven't been reading a lot lately due to prioritizing other things to be done.

In knitting, I would really love to find a shawl pattern soon to begin a shawl and will be looking on Ravelry for some fun patterns.

Wedding plans are coming along. We have the venue and are now contacting venders to set up appointments. As my sister says, it is busy at the one year mark in planning the wedding, then once you have all of the vendors and venue then there is a long period of time you don't have to do much in the way of planning. So I am hoping to get all my ducks in a row with the vendors soon, so I can relax for awhile. I am getting excited for the big day!

Thank you so much for visiting my blog today and if you are also celebrating Easter I hope you have been enjoying your weekend celebrating with family and friends.

Knitted Bunny Wine Bottle Topper Pattern

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. I decided to knit bunny wine bottle toppers for Easter and will be giving them as gifts to my soon to be mother-in-law and my parents for Easter.I originally saw some bunny wine bottle toppers while shopping at Pottery Barn years ago and was inspired to make my own. I have shared a pattern I made with you down below if you want to make your own bunny wine bottle topper for Easter or the Spring season.

Bunny wine bottle topper

Pattern

Notes:

• The finished topper bunny's face stretches over the bottle so create your bunny face how you would like it to look when placed on the bottle. 
• You can adjust the needle size and yarn size according to how big or small you want your bunny to be. The bunny I made fits tightly to the bottle, as some extra stitches if you would like it to be a looser fit. 
• Pattern made to fit a wine bottle about 1" in diameter and a neck of the bottle that is 3.5" in length.

Materials needed:

• Circular needles or double pointed needles (I used size US 4 3.5 mm circular needles)
• White yarn or color of your choice (I used Aran (8 wpi) weight wool)
• Darning needle
• Black, white, and pink thread
• Sewing Needle

Body
Cast on 20 stitches
Knit in the round until piece is the length you desire I knitted until the piece measured 3" inches long
Start decreasing (k2tog), choose your rate of decrease. I had 20 stitches and chose to k2tog every 3 stitches so I decreased 4 stitches 1st round, then knit one round, then decreased every two stitches, then 1 stitch until I had 8 stitches left then cut off and threaded yarn through darning needle and then closed the top of the bunny's head.
Final piece measures 3.5" and about 1.5" wide.


Ears (knit in stockinette, knitted right side for outside of bunny's ear and purl inside for wrong side)
Cast on 1 stitch
Knit the first stitch and knit into back to create one more stitch
Purl the next row
Repeat row 2 and 3 until there are 7 stitches and stop increase
Knit right side and purl wrong side of ear until it measures 7".
Decrease 1 stitch (k2tog) every other row and continue purling the other side, until 4 stitches remain and bind off. Sew the ears onto the top of the head by the end where you bound off.
Ears measure 8" when finished.

Face
One one side of bunny, create a face for your bunny.
Sew the eyes as desired. I sewed them as small circles
Sew the nose as desired. I sewed the nose as an upside down triangle below the eyes
Mouth: sew as desired. I sewed the mouth as a short line below the nose then two other short lines in an upside down V below.

Your bunny is finished! Enjoy giving the bunny as a gift to your host on top of a bottle of wine or enjoy decorating your own wine bottles with them to celebrate the Easter holiday or Spring season.

Joining along with Ginny and others for Yarn Along and Frontier Dreams for Crafting On.

Thank you for visiting my blog and I hope that you enjoy making your very own bunny wine bottle topper. Please let me know if you try it out, I would love to see your projects on Ravelry, your blog, or Instagram!