Bird watching

I've got no new crafts or creations to blog about, though I've got a couple of projects in the works. One of them is a shoji screen, or folding screen, my dad built for me like a year and a half ago. It's taken me this long to figure out how I want to decorate it and it's taking me a couple of weeks to do so. Hopefully I'll be able to have that finished soon, and I hope it turns out as nice in real life as it has in my head!

Anyway, Caleb told me I ought to go back and write about some of my past projects. So here's one of 'em!

The other day he put together a bit of an ad for my Facebook page featuring a mobile I made for our son:

Jay really loves to watch those birds spinning overhead! I should have found some sort of a motor to keep it spinning. He still loves to see it, but now that he's rolling over and trying to crawl and getting into everything (usually trying to get ahold of something he shouldn't be playing with), he's usually too busy to stop and watch it. :P When we move into our new house (which should happen in a month or less!), I plan to hang the mobile somewhere in his room other than over his crib. Before long Jay will be able to stand up, and the first thing he'd do would be to pull the mobile down!

Anyway, I worked on the mobile during the last trimester of my pregnancy, bit by bit. I used a pattern from Ana Paula Rimoli's "Amigurumi Two!" book.

I'd seen it months before I even got pregnant while flipping through the book at the store, and immediately decided I wanted to make one for my future baby! I LOVE birds and the mobile in the picture looked so cute. My mother-in-law bought the book and a gift card for yarn for me for Christmas while I was pregnant. Yay!

The mobile was a lot of fun to put together, especially crocheting the vines. It was neat that such a simple pattern turned out leafy vines! The whole thing did take a bit of time, however, since there were so many small pieces to make and sew together. It was well worth the effort, though.

When I heard my sister-in-law was pregnant, I decided to make a mobile for her baby, too. I'd knitted a blanket for her last baby, and had thought I'd do so for all of my nephews and nieces. However, my own pregnancy earned me more blankets than Jay will ever need before he turns 18... so I decided maybe my sister-in-law would appreciate something different. She's already had two kids, so I assumed she probably already had at least twice as many blankets as I had received, and would likely be receiving more for this next baby. Once I learned she was having a boy, I decided to make monkeys to put on his mobile instead of birds- monkeys seemed more to her taste.

The monkeys turned out absolutely adorable!! I figure I can make this mobile countless different ways by changing up the animals and colors. It's so much fun!