Needles and a Pen » Knitting, Sewing, and Nursing School

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  • Welcome to my blog!

    Hi! I'm Traci. I'm a Registered Nurse who loves quilting, knitting, cross stitch, and the great outdoors. In my pre-scrubs life, I owned Real Photography, and you can still see my old wedding and portrait photography site here .

    I've created a map that shows links to our camping/hiking/general family fun review posts that you can find here. It's pretty much the coolest thing on this site. Thanks, Google!

    I great big puffy heart *love* comments, so please let me know you visited! I try to always reply!

Central Park Baby Quilt

Tuesday, May 24, 2016 Posted in babies, kids, quilts

This quilt has been a long time coming.  I had the patchwork strips sitting in a basket just waiting to be finished, but when I went to make them up into a quilt for my nieces, I felt like they needed something more.

central park moda quilt

I added the border and then remembered the quilt that I was completely in love with when I first started quilting as a 13 year old.  It was a quilt that was my dream quilt to make for the next 5 years, but I just never got around to it.  It was a simple patchwork quilt with a border that had flowers and vines in the top left and bottom right corners.  So, 20 years after first seeing that quilt, I finally copied it!  For my flowers I used the exact shape that is featured in one of the prints.  I found it in an old Moda catalog, took a screen shot, and then enlarged in photoshop.  I printed it in several sizes and used those flowers as a template.

For the actual construction, I appliqued the flowers during the quilting stage–I used fusible web to adhere them to the quilt top and then sewed them on with the long arm quilting machine my friend Melissa so generously allows me to us!

quilt moda central park

This quilt was supposed to be an Easter present (I’ve titled it All Things Great and Small in my head), but nursing school got in the way and I only had one side of the quilt bound when they arrived for our belated Easter celebrating (hand binding is my favorite, but it is time consuming).  Luckily they are very understanding (as 10 month olds tend to be) and so it’s a little late, but I don’t think they care.  😛

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Diane Dikeman - I fell in love with this quilt. I love that both sides are quilts,and either side would have a great story!

geranium dress pattern review | out to sea sarah jane dress

Monday, May 23, 2016 Posted in clothing, kids, kids, summer

I have a new favorite summer pattern for Ellie! The Geranium dress by Made by Rae is so cute and easy I already have a shorter top version for her in the works.  The fabrics are both Out to Sea from Sarah Jane since I am on an Out to Sea roll this month.  (I feel like once I start cutting into a hoarded fabric line it gets a lot easier!)

geranium dress pattern made by rae

We had a very quick photo session on the way out the door to church this morning (apparently with all of the Saturday nights I worked and Sunday mornings they were going to Mass without me they came up with a new term for being almost late to church:  “Mommy Church”).  So the pictures don’t do the dress justice, but I love the way it came together!

out to sea sarah jane dress

Flannel nightgowns

Sunday, May 22, 2016 Posted in clothing, kids

kids nightgown

I love the $2 flannel sales at Joann’s.  They are impossible to resist with all the cute prints, and I always have the perfect use for them–with a yard and a half Ellie can have a nightgown!

kids nightgown

One of the patterns I have absolutely gotten my money’s worth from is the Sweet Little Dress pattern–I have been making these nightgowns for Ellie since she was bitty, and now that she’s sized out the pattern I just give it a little more length!

sweet_little_dress_patternI learned from her Dumbo flannel nightgown that while serged rolled hems work great for the sleeves and hem on quilting cotton nightgowns, it doesn’t stay on the flannel.  I properly hemmed the sleeves and hem on these.

REI Anniversary Sale Favorite Things

Friday, May 20, 2016 Posted in camping & hiking

REI_favorites

(This post contains affiliate links.  If you purchase something based on my recommendation, I would love it if you used these links–thanks!)

Hurray!  It’s time for my second favorite sale of all!  (Favorite sale of all: the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale, which conveniently coincides with my birthday.)

As I debate how to use our 20% coupons and which sale items to stock up on, here are a few things that we LOVE that I noticed on sale and would wholeheartedly recommend to other hiking/camping families.

Eno doublenest hammocks.  We love this hammock so much we have two.

Jetboil stove.  We couldn’t backpack without this stove, and now we love it for car camping too–it’s awesome to make a quick pot of water for coffee in the morning!

Campbed 3.5 sleeping pad.  I am obsessed with this thing.  I’m even willing to take the weight hit and carry it when we backpack.  It is beyond belief comfortable and helps me stay warmer at night.

Patagonia briefs.  These are fantastic.  And are one of the very few underwear options in the whole wide world that don’t show your panty line when you’re wearing see-through white scrub pants.

Kingdom 6 tent.  We got ours at the REI sale four year ago and we love it!  It’s fantastic to be able to stand up inside the tent and we have been able to host camping trips with visitors because of the extra space.

Kids Camelbacks.  Will and Ellie have MiniMules that have been fantastic for all of our hiking adventures.  I’m planning on getting Ellie the Scout during this sale for our backpacking trips so she can carry just a little bit more when we backpack.

Here’s what I’m drooling over:

Kelty tru.comfort sleeping bag.  THIS IS THE COOLEST SLEEPING BAG I’VE EVER SEEN.  I want it for car camping.  Except I also want a lighter but warmer sleeping bag for backpacking.  Will needs to hurry up and outgrow his kid sleeping bag so I can pass on my current one and go sleeping bag shopping!  I am a tummy/side sleeper and therefore Mummy Bags are torture for me.  But I probably am going to be spending all of my clams buying up those white-scrub-friendly Patagonia briefs, so alas, I will covet this from afar.

A new backpack for Nic.  Nic is still rocking his external frame pack, which causes problems in some areas (like getting a rain cover to fit it).  He has admired Will’s REI brand pack so I might be able to convince him to invest in a new pack so I can stop feeling quite so guilty about always buying all the things while he makes do and mends like a WWII housewife.

Asolo Hiking boots for me.  I have nice sturdy hiking boots that are awesome (and look very cool–which is important because the best part of any outdoor adventure is usually the sweet gear)…but they are heavy.  And sometimes I think it would be really nice to have a lighter hiking boot for those hikes when I know we’re not going to be crossing little streams or wading around in a lot of muck.

United by Blue shirt.  Will picked one out for me for Mother’s Day last year and he created a small problem.  It is so soft and wonderful I want another one.  It would be very worthy of my 20% off coupon.

A Cold and Broken Hallelujah / Nursing School Halfway Mark

Monday, May 16, 2016 Posted in nursing school

We sat down to take the final, a little dejected, a little bitter.  This was it, our last test of the first year of nursing school, the big halfway mark.  There should have been more excitement, more oomph in the air.  Instead, it was a giant cloud of meh.  I leaned over to my nursing school BFF.  “You know that Jeff Buckley song Hallelujah?” I asked her.  “I feel like he really gets nursing school.”

Nursing school is not a victory march.

I have been struggling to write my “I survived this bimester post,” and thought about just skipping it this time, because I don’t want to be overly negative or rant-y, and every time I tried writing it, Nic would turn around in his chair and ask “What are you angry typing about?”  And I would say “I’m NOT angry typing!” And he would raise his eye and I would reread my words…HOW DOES HE ALWAYS KNOW WHEN I’M ANGRY TYPING?!  HE CAN’T EVEN SEE ME!

I am really excited to be a nurse next year.  (NEXT YEAR!!!!!  Now that we’ve been out of school for a few days that seems like a real attainable thing again.)  And I love learning about nursing and medical processes.  So I felt like maybe just leaving it alone was the right answer.  But then I remembered that when I tried to read about people’s nursing school experiences time and time again the blogger just stopped saying anything about school after the first few months.  So I want to check in on this halfway point nursing school truck stop.  I’m still working part time.  I kept my 4.0.  I only lost my sense of humor once.  (Side note: People should really be able to carry around benzo pens.  If someone is going into anaphylaxis and you stab them with an epi pen, you’re a hero.  You should definitely be able to see someone starting to spiral out in nursing school and pop them in the thigh with some lorazepam.  I feel strongly that this should be a thing.  I might make it my life’s work.)  For a few days there a lot of us felt so beaten down that it was hard to remember what it was all for or that becoming an RN is an actual attainable not-so-far-in-the-future thing.  So anyway, this is me saying that the check in at the end of Peds/OB sounds like this:

Hallelujah.  The cold and broken kind.

Great Sand Dunes Visit 2016

Sunday, May 15, 2016 Posted in camping & hiking

(For my full review of the Great Sand Dunes National Monument, see this link.)

On our annual trip to the Sand Dunes we saw worse weather than we have before (Saturday’s winds kept us from getting to the top of the High Dune), but Nic and I both noticed that the campground just gets more popular each year.  It’s still possible to get a spot late Friday afternoon, and many people still treat the campground as a one night destination (meaning spots can be found Saturday morning as people leave), but their numbers are smaller.  In 2016 the campsites are $20, and the facilities include water, heated bathrooms (no showers), but unfortunately they have permanently closed all of the dishwashing stations.  They ask you not to wash dishes in the bathroom, not at the water spigots, and have boarded up the dishwashing stations.  This is a campground to bring paper plates to!

The weather was on the cooler side Friday, but still enjoyable for the kids to play in the water.  With the weekday and the temps, we once again had the dunes to ourselves.   With the forecast for strong wind, we stayed in the interior of the campground loop for the first time.  The kids loved the great trees for climbing on our site, and we loved being able to hang up our two hammocks.  Hopefully next year will bring better weather, but if not it’s still a beautiful location for a low key camping weekend!

sand_dunes_national_monument_campground