I haven't blogged for a while, because for a while there I didn't have any exciting projects going on. Now, I have several awesome projects going on all at the same time but no time to write an entertaining, well-written post about them. Plus, several of them are surprises for Christmas, so I don't want to spoil the surprise in case the intended recipients read this blog. So, I'll recap later.
On top of Christmas gifts, I've finally made a few sales on my Etsy shop (YAY!!!), so I am busy filling those orders. Also, my son has just learned how to pull himself to standing, so I can't get much crafting done during the day- I have to keep an even sharper eye on Jay now that he's capable of getting into even more things he's not supposed to, and can also now fall down and potentially hurt himself. ALSO- we could be moving within days (*crosses fingers*), so I've got packing and such to do as well.
In short, I am one busy redhead! But I'm having lots of fun- which is the point of it all.
So, in case I don't post again before then- MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!! :D
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
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!
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!
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Halloween 2011, with fur and pointy helmets!
The story of my family's Halloween is a long and epic tale, full of alpaca yarn, furry throw blankets, Snickers bars, pink ruffly aprons, Angry Birds gummies, and lots of squash-stained spit-up. And it all began with a picture of a baby wearing a knitted Viking helmet hat I saw online a month or two ago. Stick around, boys and girls; it could be a pretty entertaining read. :)
So, a while back while browsing Pinterest I saw a picture of a baby wearing a knitted Viking helmet hat, the kind with horns. He was holding a mini axe and it was awesome. I pinned it to my account on my "For the cutest baby in the world!" board, because I totally wanted to try to make such a hat for my son, Jay.
Fast forward a bit to early October, and planning for my first Halloween as a mommy. At 5 months, my son wasn't going to be Trick-or-Treating, but I LOVE costumes and didn't want to miss the opportunity to dress up in costume. We don't have a lot of money to spend on non-essentials, so I was trying to think of cute, inexpensive costume ideas.
I was planning to go as a geisha, since I have a kimono I bought in Japan several years ago, a paper umbrella, and some fabric I could sew into an obi. My husband Caleb was trying to think of a clever costume involving word play (such as pinning tons of Smarties to his pants and going as "Smarty Pants", etc.- *cue groans*) I wanted to make sure Jay got to dress up in something ADORABLE. He's my first baby and I wanted to make his first Halloween count. I was thinking he'd make a cute garden gnome, and I could fashion a pointy hat for him out of felt or something. But then I realized that he'd need a beard to make it really work, and it would end up all nasty and drooly because he'd be chewing on it all night. I started looking around online for baby costume ideas, when I saw a tutorial on how to make an easy, inexpensive Viking costume.
*DING!!* The light bulb flashed on. I remembered the knitted Viking helmet hat, and realized this was my chance. I had grey and white yarns. Jay had a cute pair of felt cowboy boots I could doctor to look more Nordic. All I'd need to get would be some fake fur to make a fur tunic. I looked around for a free online Viking hat knitting pattern, found one that would be perfect, and got started.
The yarn I used to make the hats was nice soft alpaca. My dad had brought it back for me from a trip to Peru. Unfortunately, the label said nothing about weight on it other than 50 grams- and that told me nothing about gauge. It looked like it was sport weight, but I couldn't be sure. I've been knitting for years, but until recently I've pretty much ignored gauge and simply guesstimated with projects. I'd follow the yarn weight and needle size requirements for a pattern and have at it. Since I mostly made flat items like blankets and scarves, it always worked just fine. But for something fitted like hats, which I wanted to make now that I had a baby who could wear them, I knew I needed to educate myself on gauge.
So, this mystery yarn looked thinner than worsted weight, which is what the pattern called for. I picked out some needles that looked as if they would adjust the gauge to work with the pattern and knitted a test swatch. And it matched up with the pattern! I swear! So I have no idea how the first hat I made ended up big enough to fit my husband, who happens to have a rather large and manly head. I knew I had issues if the baby hat I made was man-sized. So I had to alter the pattern by cutting out a big chunk of the stitches, and the second hat I made ended up fitting my son perfectly. Yay! My first successful experiment with knitting-pattern-altering-gauge-adjustment!!
Jay's Viking hat, version 1.2-- I decided the horns were too big and tweaked the pattern a bit:
The hat looked MUCH better with baby-sized horns. To complete the costume I crocheted several strands of brown and tan yarn to make a "rope" belt.
Let's back up and give some more Halloween details. While starting on the hat (the first one, the one that ended up man-sized, I mean), I had a great idea for a costume for my husband, who was still trying to figure something out. Remember the Snickers commercials with the motley crew of random characters on a road trip? There was a viking, a Roman, King Henry the VIII, a Polynesian guy and maybe a couple of other equally random people. I mean, how did they even think of this stuff? I have no idea, but I do know that it was FREAKING AWESOME. I LOVED those commercials and was really sad when they went away. They were one of those little things in every day life that just made me smile, you know?
Anyway, "Sound the feasting horn!!" has been a long-running inside joke with me and my husband for years now. Since Jay was going to be a Viking, I thought Caleb could go as a Roman and carry a Snickers bar. It would be epic! (At least within my own mind, anyway). Unfortunately, Caleb wasn't feeling the whole Roman thing. Plus, he guessed no one but us remembered those commercials anyway and so it wouldn't be as funny as we would think it was. But my accident in knitting gauge gave birth to some truly beautiful inspiration: when trying on the hat to see how huge it really was (and, as I've mentioned, it ended up being man-sized), he decided then and there that he would also go as a viking. Since we were already thinking of funny commercials, and vikings, he naturally thought of the more recent Capital One viking commercials....
There it was. We would go as the Capital One Vikings. Caleb saw my pink frilly black polka-dotted apron, tied it on, and declared that he had gone to culinary school with his Capital One rewards points. The "T" embroidered on the pocket stood for "Chef Terrible", and not Taylee. Duh. ;P
We were pretty excited about our costume idea. If only we could put a beard on Jay- but we would have run into the same problems that prevented the garden gnome costume from coming into being. While describing our costume idea to my mom, Caleb imitated a manly Viking sort of growl, which startled Jay and made him cry. Caleb immediately turned to him and apologized and promised he wasn't REALLY about to go pillage and burn stuff. Jay then smiled and cooed, relieved. Luckily, his costume didn't end up scaring him. And neither did his daddy's, even if it DID include a real sword and a frilly pink apron. I wore my black corset and white furry boots (I'd worn those boots with my wedding dress, by the way, since we were married in December). Caleb and I pinned furry blankets around our shoulders for cloaks, and Jay's fur tunic turned out perfectly. Caleb and I took some cheesy mug shots of us wearing our "helmets" (Somehow the second man-sized hat I knitted following the original pattern for a baby hat ended up woman-sized, instead. I guess my gauge tightened up once I'd gotten used to the pattern?). He then did a bit of photoshop to make them look like Capital One credit cards, got prints of them, and I glued them to cardboard and cut them out with a craft knife. We now knew exactly what was in our Nordic wallets. We were ready to pillage some candy.
Our costumes were a big hit at the Trunk-or-Treat held by our church Friday night. In fact, Jay won Best Costume for the 0-3 year-olds category, and Caleb won Best Costume for the adults category. Caleb then wore his costume to work yesterday and won 2nd place and a $30 gift card in the costume contest they had there.
We didn't try to use Jay as a prop to get ourselves candy last night- (we might be able to get away with that next year though ;P ). We relaxed at home, handed out candy, and played with our sweet baby boy. He had eaten squash for dinner, and unfortunately kept spitting up and got a few festive orange stains on his "My First Halloween" onesie. At least he was in the spirit, right?
All in all, it was a fantastic Halloween. I've missed really celebrating Halloween ever since I got too old to go Trick-or-Treating. I'm so excited that now we can begin to get into it again with our children. :)
In any case, the viking hats were HUGE successes, and I am definitely adding them to my Etsy shop!! Sound the feasting horn!!!!!!!!!! :D
So, a while back while browsing Pinterest I saw a picture of a baby wearing a knitted Viking helmet hat, the kind with horns. He was holding a mini axe and it was awesome. I pinned it to my account on my "For the cutest baby in the world!" board, because I totally wanted to try to make such a hat for my son, Jay.
Fast forward a bit to early October, and planning for my first Halloween as a mommy. At 5 months, my son wasn't going to be Trick-or-Treating, but I LOVE costumes and didn't want to miss the opportunity to dress up in costume. We don't have a lot of money to spend on non-essentials, so I was trying to think of cute, inexpensive costume ideas.
I was planning to go as a geisha, since I have a kimono I bought in Japan several years ago, a paper umbrella, and some fabric I could sew into an obi. My husband Caleb was trying to think of a clever costume involving word play (such as pinning tons of Smarties to his pants and going as "Smarty Pants", etc.- *cue groans*) I wanted to make sure Jay got to dress up in something ADORABLE. He's my first baby and I wanted to make his first Halloween count. I was thinking he'd make a cute garden gnome, and I could fashion a pointy hat for him out of felt or something. But then I realized that he'd need a beard to make it really work, and it would end up all nasty and drooly because he'd be chewing on it all night. I started looking around online for baby costume ideas, when I saw a tutorial on how to make an easy, inexpensive Viking costume.
The yarn I used to make the hats was nice soft alpaca. My dad had brought it back for me from a trip to Peru. Unfortunately, the label said nothing about weight on it other than 50 grams- and that told me nothing about gauge. It looked like it was sport weight, but I couldn't be sure. I've been knitting for years, but until recently I've pretty much ignored gauge and simply guesstimated with projects. I'd follow the yarn weight and needle size requirements for a pattern and have at it. Since I mostly made flat items like blankets and scarves, it always worked just fine. But for something fitted like hats, which I wanted to make now that I had a baby who could wear them, I knew I needed to educate myself on gauge.
So, this mystery yarn looked thinner than worsted weight, which is what the pattern called for. I picked out some needles that looked as if they would adjust the gauge to work with the pattern and knitted a test swatch. And it matched up with the pattern! I swear! So I have no idea how the first hat I made ended up big enough to fit my husband, who happens to have a rather large and manly head. I knew I had issues if the baby hat I made was man-sized. So I had to alter the pattern by cutting out a big chunk of the stitches, and the second hat I made ended up fitting my son perfectly. Yay! My first successful experiment with knitting-pattern-altering-gauge-adjustment!!
Ta-da!!! Viking cuteness!! (Jay, I mean, not the red-haired nerd behind him ;P)
Let's back up and give some more Halloween details. While starting on the hat (the first one, the one that ended up man-sized, I mean), I had a great idea for a costume for my husband, who was still trying to figure something out. Remember the Snickers commercials with the motley crew of random characters on a road trip? There was a viking, a Roman, King Henry the VIII, a Polynesian guy and maybe a couple of other equally random people. I mean, how did they even think of this stuff? I have no idea, but I do know that it was FREAKING AWESOME. I LOVED those commercials and was really sad when they went away. They were one of those little things in every day life that just made me smile, you know?
Anyway, "Sound the feasting horn!!" has been a long-running inside joke with me and my husband for years now. Since Jay was going to be a Viking, I thought Caleb could go as a Roman and carry a Snickers bar. It would be epic! (At least within my own mind, anyway). Unfortunately, Caleb wasn't feeling the whole Roman thing. Plus, he guessed no one but us remembered those commercials anyway and so it wouldn't be as funny as we would think it was. But my accident in knitting gauge gave birth to some truly beautiful inspiration: when trying on the hat to see how huge it really was (and, as I've mentioned, it ended up being man-sized), he decided then and there that he would also go as a viking. Since we were already thinking of funny commercials, and vikings, he naturally thought of the more recent Capital One viking commercials....
There it was. We would go as the Capital One Vikings. Caleb saw my pink frilly black polka-dotted apron, tied it on, and declared that he had gone to culinary school with his Capital One rewards points. The "T" embroidered on the pocket stood for "Chef Terrible", and not Taylee. Duh. ;P
We were pretty excited about our costume idea. If only we could put a beard on Jay- but we would have run into the same problems that prevented the garden gnome costume from coming into being. While describing our costume idea to my mom, Caleb imitated a manly Viking sort of growl, which startled Jay and made him cry. Caleb immediately turned to him and apologized and promised he wasn't REALLY about to go pillage and burn stuff. Jay then smiled and cooed, relieved. Luckily, his costume didn't end up scaring him. And neither did his daddy's, even if it DID include a real sword and a frilly pink apron. I wore my black corset and white furry boots (I'd worn those boots with my wedding dress, by the way, since we were married in December). Caleb and I pinned furry blankets around our shoulders for cloaks, and Jay's fur tunic turned out perfectly. Caleb and I took some cheesy mug shots of us wearing our "helmets" (Somehow the second man-sized hat I knitted following the original pattern for a baby hat ended up woman-sized, instead. I guess my gauge tightened up once I'd gotten used to the pattern?). He then did a bit of photoshop to make them look like Capital One credit cards, got prints of them, and I glued them to cardboard and cut them out with a craft knife. We now knew exactly what was in our Nordic wallets. We were ready to pillage some candy.
Our costumes were a big hit at the Trunk-or-Treat held by our church Friday night. In fact, Jay won Best Costume for the 0-3 year-olds category, and Caleb won Best Costume for the adults category. Caleb then wore his costume to work yesterday and won 2nd place and a $30 gift card in the costume contest they had there.
"What's in YOUR wallet?!"
He kept kicking off his boots... Silly baby :P
"With my Capital One Rewards Points I went to culinary school. Now they call me Chef Terrible! I slice! I dice! I even fry mice!"
We didn't try to use Jay as a prop to get ourselves candy last night- (we might be able to get away with that next year though ;P ). We relaxed at home, handed out candy, and played with our sweet baby boy. He had eaten squash for dinner, and unfortunately kept spitting up and got a few festive orange stains on his "My First Halloween" onesie. At least he was in the spirit, right?
All in all, it was a fantastic Halloween. I've missed really celebrating Halloween ever since I got too old to go Trick-or-Treating. I'm so excited that now we can begin to get into it again with our children. :)
In any case, the viking hats were HUGE successes, and I am definitely adding them to my Etsy shop!! Sound the feasting horn!!!!!!!!!! :D
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Here goes nothing!
Hello- welcome to my blog. Let me start out with a disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I never even thought I'd ever start a blog. Hopefully before long I'll figure things out. I usually learn best by diving in and trying something, learning as I go. So, here goes nothing.
I love to craft and create and make things. I also love learning new skills. Over the years I've added drawing, knitting, crocheting, scrapbooking, baking, cooking, and other skills to my repertoire. I hope to add sewing, photography, and who knows what else. In any case, I love my hobbies! Unfortunately, they also tend to cost money, and things are tight. I'm trying to start up a bit of a business selling my crafts so that I can at least pay for my hobby. Add entrepreneurship to my list of skills I'd like to learn. I know nothing about marketing or business! But I'm diving in anyway, and we'll see what happens. This blog is an attempt to market my crafts, and I think it could turn into a fun hobby in itself, too. :)
Other things about me: I'm married to the greatest guy ever (sorry ladies, I got him first ;P). I'm mother to an adorable baby boy, and being a mommy is my job. I love my boys!!!! I'm also "mommy" to a very silly cockatiel- I LOVE birds (as evidenced by the title of this blog). I hope to get into breeding and raising baby birds someday. I love all kinds of animals, but birds and cats are my favorites. I also love reading.
In any case, I suppose this is a good enough intro to me and my blog. As with anything else I've done so far, I'll get better at it as I go along.
I love to craft and create and make things. I also love learning new skills. Over the years I've added drawing, knitting, crocheting, scrapbooking, baking, cooking, and other skills to my repertoire. I hope to add sewing, photography, and who knows what else. In any case, I love my hobbies! Unfortunately, they also tend to cost money, and things are tight. I'm trying to start up a bit of a business selling my crafts so that I can at least pay for my hobby. Add entrepreneurship to my list of skills I'd like to learn. I know nothing about marketing or business! But I'm diving in anyway, and we'll see what happens. This blog is an attempt to market my crafts, and I think it could turn into a fun hobby in itself, too. :)
Other things about me: I'm married to the greatest guy ever (sorry ladies, I got him first ;P). I'm mother to an adorable baby boy, and being a mommy is my job. I love my boys!!!! I'm also "mommy" to a very silly cockatiel- I LOVE birds (as evidenced by the title of this blog). I hope to get into breeding and raising baby birds someday. I love all kinds of animals, but birds and cats are my favorites. I also love reading.
In any case, I suppose this is a good enough intro to me and my blog. As with anything else I've done so far, I'll get better at it as I go along.
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