DIY Life

Planning a road trip this summer, and want the perfect accessory? How about a map purse? Or, for you guys, a map bag. Instead of lip gloss and lotion, you can put... um... manly things in it. Spare socks? A razor?

Perhaps it should best be the "car bag" and hold things to make the trip more comfortable: tissues, a water bottle, sunglasses, chewing gum, and, a little art-comes-to-life, maybe your maps can go in the map bag.

I envision using it as storage inside the car rather than as a purse to carry around town, because I'm just not sure how sturdy it would be. Most women I know carry a load of stuff in their bag. Would a map and two layers of contact paper, no matter how well-stitched, be up to the job?

To make one, follow the instructions here at Sonya Style. If anyone makes one, feel free to report back and tell us how it holds up!

Summer is almost officially here -- at least in the Northern Hemisphere -- so it's fitting that the Summer 2008 issue of the free online knitting magazine Knitty hit the Web yesterday afternoon.

This time around, the majority of the patterns are small or lightweight things appropriate for warm-weather wear; not many of them will sit on your lap like a blanket while you work on them. Along with a few garments, there are many accessories -- even a knit lace garter for weddings.

We'll discuss a few of the best patterns and technical articles after the break.

Using a comfortable mat when doing yoga isn't really necessary, but it sure does come in handy against carpet burns, bruises from the hardwood floor, and grass stains all over your lovely white shorts. No matter how much padding you have on your tush, if you don't use a mat, you may notice all the pretty colors on your body the next day.

Your yoga mat is probably in need of a new bag, and Myam has just the thing, with a handy tutorial on how to make a yoga mat bag. To make the bag, measure the length and circumference of your yoga mat, then cut your fabric, adding two extra inches of fabric to your rectangular piece. Cut out the bottom piece. Don't forget to add two strips of fabric to make the strap.

Myam's pictures and her tutorial are perfectly easy to follow. I love the fabric she chose. It is so very energetic, and just the pick-me-up we all will need after our heart pounding yoga exercises are done and we all have to drag our butts out of the class.

via: Craft

I like to use a backpack instead of a purse. If I have to bend down unexpectedly, my purse comes crashing down off my shoulder, so not only am I trying to contain my errant toddler, I am trying to pick up all the stuff that fell out of my purse. Backpacks keep your hands free, thus making it easier to defend yourself if you need to, or if you need your hands for anything else.

To solve the problem of finding a backpack that is pretty enough to hold all the essentials that you would normally carry in a purse, you can make a backpack from oil cloth. U-handblog's tutorial tells you where to find the oilcloth and how to sew with it, how to sew the drawstring casing in the bag lining, how to sew a flat base into the bag, and how to sew an adjustable fabric strap.

The tutorial is super-easy to follow, and really does solve the problem of finding a neat backpack. You can even make one for each of your kids: I don't know one kid who doesn't like to drag their backpack through every mud puddle they can find. With an oilcloth backpack, all you will have to do is wipe it clean.

An old bicycle or automotive inner tube has a lot of life left in it after it no longer holds air.

A punctured wheelbarrow inner tube was one of the best dog toys for my black lab. She would drop it at my feet. All I had to do was kick it and it would fly through the air, roll along the ground, or skim along the wet grass. She would race to it, shake it, and drop it at my feet again. Her teeth were never damaged, I never had to bend over and pick up a slobbery toy, and it was easily hosed off.

Here's a list of 24 more reasons to keep a flat tube around.

• Make rubber bands.
• Wrap around a hose tightly, jam into the opening of a clogged pipe and turn on the water. The pressure should clear the blockage.
• Make a belt with a bike sprocket.
• Make adjustable and flexible clamps for holding glued projects together while drying.
• Make a ball that won't become soaked with dog slobber and will be easy on your pet's teeth.
• Use as a funnel or hose.
• Temporary gaskets.

17 more ideas after the jump.

Who knew not sewing could be so fun? I'm heading to SXSW (the interactive festival, not the film or music parts) and needed a secondary bag for notebooks and pens. My carry-on laptop bag is too bulky for just bumming around Austin, and I don't have the budget for a newer, sleeker bag. But I did buy some new jeans, which meant the ones with holes had to go. And since I have a hard time throwing things away, I made a nifty messenger bag out of those jeans, some duct tape and a handy shoulder strap from an Eagle Creek carry-on bag.

The bag itself will hold together without tape (see the gallery). So this would work in an emergency. While the shoulder strap is a bit of a cheat, I'm sure any strap would work, including one made of rope. The key is to make sure the legs wrap over the back and then close up in front so their weight provides enough strength to hold whatever is in your bag. Just to be safe, I decided to tape mine up. This makes it sturdier, more comfortable and stylish.

Read on for the how-to (it really is easy) and check out the gallery for close-ups of each step.

Welcome back! In yesterday's Let's get "LOST", we discussed ideas for a themed Lost party. One of the best ideas is to create faux DHARMA Initiative ration labels for party food; today, we'll look at ways to do that. We'll also take a gander at some other cool Lost crafts from around the web, including some genius home-brewed t-shirts.

Creating DHARMA food labels

Image editing programs like Adobe's Photoshop are indeed the way to go if you want to create DHARMA labels for your party food (or your office supplies and toiletries, depending on the level of your fandom). The DHARMA logo itself is a modified feng shui ba-gua.

A while back, InsanelyGreatTees offered printable DHARMA food labels for you to download, but Disney, ABC's parent company, asked them to stop. The PDF has been removed, but you can still take a look at the labels themselves, and be amused by the official-looking stamp on them: "Download removed at the request of the Hanso Foundation". This will give you a good idea of what you're trying to create.

You may also take a look at this photo taken on the set of Lost, where you can clearly see plenty of DHARMA rations; there are further photos in that series. Some good home-made rations can be seen in a photo by Flickr's Sahba, "Sheyda's Dharma Initiative food labels" (and a second, close up photo with the same title).

To go about making your own DHARMA labels, you probably don't need exact duplicates of the labels on food on the show: go for reasonable facsimiles. All labels should be black print on a white ground, with a DHARMA logo and sans-serif text. This is an easy task if you use the right fonts. The rest is just the correct label shape (like a hanging tag, with the corners clipped off the top end) and black lines and outlines (which can be done with pens and a straight edge, if you are unable to draw them in an image editor).

To use a dingbat or symbol font as clip art in an image editing program, simply use characters from the font the way you would use any other text, but change the size. A standard size for text is around 10-14; to change a font to clip art, you can start with 200 or 300, which you'll have to type into the "text size" box (it won't be on your drop-down menu, if there is one). Adjust the size from there until you're satisfied with it. (This process was also described back in my Print Gocco Holiday Card tutorial.)

It turns out that a visible number of us on the writing staff here at DIY Life are obsessed with ABC's Lost: if any posts get written on Thursday nights in the next few months, between watching the show and hanging out on spoiler sites for crumbs of information about what might happen next week, it will be entirely coincidental.

OK, I'm joking... a little. The point is that I don't know anyone who feels lukewarm about the show: it's either devoted love, a combative relationship ("They're driving me crazy! Why do they keep introducing more mysteries?!"), or complete disinterest.

It seems like this anecdotal observation also plays out in a few other places, like in the Craftster community. Please join us after the break for a look at plenty of mostly-recent Lost projects from Craftster and a few other places, with spoilers through Season Three. We have fish biscuits and DHARMA Initiative soda -- don't miss out!

Within the last year Friskies dry cat food switched from a paper bag with a plastic liner to a type of woven plastic for their big bags of product. The paper bags my cats could chew through, but these new bags are nearly impossible to tear. Without a use in mind I began to tuck them away once they were emptied.

My girlfriend suggested that we start to bring our own bags to the grocery store recently. So we started to collect the canvas totes and conference bags that we had around to keep in the car for our next trip to the store. But none were very large and the pile was bulky and quite mismatched in size and style. Then I realized that the cat food bags could work well for our trips to the store.

If you have cats and shop at warehouse stores or a store that charges for bags these giant sacks might work well for you. Of course, it may take a while to collect enough bags to hold all of your groceries. We just found out that our grocery store gives you a two cent credit for each bag of your own that you use.

Over at CRAFT a little while ago, Becky Stern posted this cool pattern for a scarf featuring the iconic O RLY? owl. I have no arguments with the pattern itself: I'd wear that scarf! It's awesome and hilarious. However, in terms of the execution, there are some technical issues worth discussing, particularly since Becky said that she wasn't completely happy with how the scarf came out.

If you want a scarf that has two good sides and the correct tension, it must have reversible stitches. The most common reversible stitch in scarf knitting is garter stitch, but there are myriad other possibilities.

It is not possible for a flat, single-layer scarf done in stranded or fair-isle knitting to have both a clear image and two good sides (you can see that the O RLY? scarf, as made, does not have a completely clear image). By definition, "stranded" means that strands of the yarn not in use on particular stitches are carried across the back of the work.

There are two "correct" ways to make the O RLY? scarf in which it will be reversible and not have visible yarn floats. A third technique is available, but would probably require redesigning the pattern significantly. All of these techniques take much more work than a flat, single-layer scarf.

Read more about it after the break, where we'll discuss various ways to use color charts in small accessories like scarves, bags, and pillow covers, and whether or not you should really worry much about doing things the "right" way.

For those of us trying to get away from using paper bags and plastic bags at the grocery store, finding the perfect bag to make can be a little difficult. You want your bag to be sturdy enough to carry numerous items, yet be stylish and pretty.

Joan at Lazy Girl Designs has a pattern for making a tote bag in one hour with one yard of fabric. Her step by step instructions are easy to follow, and if you are in a hurry for a last minute birthday gift, the bag should be a big hit for people who are trying to get away from using store bags. Joan also has a link for instructions for making a smaller tote bag.

With Valentine's Day coming up, why not make a few pink and red tote bags? Or you can get a jump start on making Christmas gifts. Yeah, I know, who wants to think about Christmas when it is only January, but seriously, as much as I procrastinate, getting started on the bags now would mean I might actually have them done by the next Holiday!

By now, you've probably pulled all your winter sweaters out of storage. Are some of them in slightly worse shape than you remember? A hole here, some pilling there? Well, here are some ideas for what to do with your sweaters when they're beyond repair.

1. Follow Craft Addiction's simple instructions for using sweater sleeves to make extra long gloves (via Craft)

2. Use Write Mama Write's tutorial for fabric mittens to sew knit or felted mittens

3. Or use this tutorial from Whip Up, or these instructions from Canadian Living to make a felted bag

4. Craftster user maize has a tutorial for a recycled sweater coin purse

5. Last winter, Knitty gave us directions for turning an old sweater into a scarf

6. Sew Green has a tutorial for house slippers that could be made from a felted sweater. (via Craft Leftovers)

7. Use this free pattern from Totally Stitchin' to sew a knit purse (via Craft Gossip)

8. Another one from Craftster: a tutorial for turning an old sweater into a hat from user tickleagangster

9. Betz White has a pattern for turning old sweaters into adorable stuffed bunnies

10. Last, but by no means least, Digs Magazine has instructions for making pillow covers from old sweaters

Heat therapy bags sooth sore muscles leaving. They are the perfect way to end a stressful day. They also make great Christmas gifts. The store bought ones are pretty bland in design and don't typically have essential oils or other special touches. Sew, Mama, Sew has a fabulous tutorial on making your own rice heat therapy bags. Here's what you'll need to make your own bag:

• Fabric scraps
• 1/4 yard of linen
• 1/4 yard of muslin
• 2lbs short or medium grain rice
• Essential oil of choice
• 4" long of 3/4" wide Velcro

Kristin's tutorial will show you how to turn those materials into a fashionable heat bag. I haven't used a heat bag with essential oils but I imagine the aromatherapy would be an added luxury in this soothing bag. She also talks about making a freezer bag. Calling it the "Boo-Boo bag", it's great for little ones when they hurt themselves. You could choose bright kid's fabric and make healing fun. Another project is the eye therapy bag. It refreshes tired eyes with flax seed. The bags have removable and washable covers which is really handy. She's thought of everything in this thorough tutorial and the super cute bags will make great stocking stuffers!

Every week, the sites Knitting Pattern Central and Crochet Pattern Central post new free patterns that they've heard of or that have been sent to them. Several dozen patterns are often posted each week, and sometimes it can be tedious to look at them all to find the good ones... so I've done it for you. Then I've categorized them, alphabetized them, and written brief descriptions for each.

These patterns were all posted to the aforementioned sites in October, 2007, though some may have made their initial appearance on the web somewhat earlier. A few may have been posted in late September or the first few days of November: they were interesting enough to include here!

If you prove to like this feature, I'll continue to do it for you every month. You'll find patterns of all kinds after the break: sweaters for men, women, and babies, handbags, scarves and shawls, hats, toys, animals, socks, mittens, you name it.

Most of us used sleeping bags throughout the summer for various camping trips and overnight adventures. Unless you're going survivor style in the snow, you've packed away your camping gear and brought out your down blankets and warm coats. How you packed away that sleeping bag will make a big difference as to how well it serves you next season.

These instructions for proper sleeping bag maintenance and storage are particularly useful. If you read through and find that you didn't clean your bag thoroughly or don't have it packed away in the best manner then you'll want to dig it out of the closet right away. Take care of those things and pack it away confident that it will be ready when you need it. Here's how your clean and dry bag should be stored: