Lady, I'd like some scales, please

If only I could figure out what I'm doing wrong with the scales. I cannot get them to be triangles. :o(

Roly Poly Fish Heads

Story time! This is entitled "Why Amy Is a Great Big Sucker". A couple of weeks before Christmas holidays, my son's school sent home a form asking for volunteers to help with the school play. (I should note here that my son is only 3, and therefore too little to be in the play.) They needed people to help build sets, make programs, sew costumes...Hey! Sew costumes? "I can sew! I'll offer to help out since I adore the school, even though my son won't be in the play," I thought to myself. I filled out the form, and handed it back in.

Never heard from them. UNTIL. Wednesday morning I get a phone call saying that they are desperate for people to help them sew costumes, and can I come by between 8:30 and 3:30 to help. I of course had to reply that I would love to help, but I work full time, so those hours were a no-go. However, I added that if they had a project for me to take home, I would be happy to. They said "Oh yes! We could definitely use your help with the eel costume. Come on by anytime today & pick it up." An eel? How hard can that be, right? No problem.

I swing by the school at lunch time to find 3 women busily toiling over costumes with fabric glue and glitter. I walk in and introduce myself & they all gasp "Ooooh! You're the Sewing Lady!!" Ummm... Here's the point in the story where I should mention that my sewing skills are novice level at best - certainly not the calibur of someone to be given the moniker "Sewing Lady"! So with these 3 grateful looking ladies gaping up at me like puppies, I walked over to where they were storing the "to-do" projects. No eel costume. Instead I get handed three of these:



"We need two the same size as Kayti's, one the same size as Sam's, and one the same size as Holly's." Then she hands me a massive bag full of fabric and sends me on my way. Let's review: novice seamstress has just been handed 3 finished products and a bag of fabric and now has to reverse engineer them. Let me also add that these fish heads were all seemingly the SAME SIZE.

I dutifully took them home and began toiling away. My first batch was an absolute disaster, complete with weepy tears. Thursday, I tried again, this time with the attitude that "this is for a little kids' play - not an oscar nomination. They'll get what they get & they'll like it!" This yielded a bit more success. Friday, I kidnapped Kathy & between us we got all 4 of them sewn.



Yesterday, when I dropped them off at the school I pointed out to them that they hadn't given me the velcro for the chin piece. They promptly asked me did I have time to sew it on now. "Nope! Gotta go to work! Glad I could help. Good luck!"

Speedy Gonzales never moved so quickly...

Apparently, this is shnoogglly

No, that is not my word. But he decided on a blanket pattern... now I need to start collecting yarn. At least it is only seven colors.

There are crazy people on the internet and they could be me

I guess I am feeling like I have too much free time or something equally deluded because I am actually thinking about this thingaday thing.

Yeah, the idea is that every single day in the month of February you make something new, any medium you want. They have a big ol' blog where everyone who signs up can participate.

See, this is where the craft thing gets me in trouble - eyes much bigger than my clock. :)

Totally a winner!

Snow Dragon

Picture this little guy in green, with blue scales and orange ears. (Dallan picked the colors.)

I LOVE him! Any bets on how long it will take me to get proficient enough to actually make him?

Here be dragons!

So Kathy & I took an outing to JoAnn's yesterday. We had my kids with us, which made it extra fun. My son always insists on having his own cart, so each of us had to push a separate cart with a kid in it. This led to lots of silly hide & seek action with shopping carts. Good fun was had by all. Then we actually did the shopping. I saw the little pig in Kathy's amigurumi book & decided that I must make it for Julia. (If you know anything about my daughter, you know that this is indeed appropriate. She eats a LOT!)

Of course, I couldn't buy stuff to make something for her without asking Dallan what he wanted also. I tried to sell him on a dog or an elephant. You know, something that was already IN the book. Would that do? Nope. "Iiiiii waaaaaaaaant....a DWAGON!" I look at Kathy as if to say "Wow, I have a mixture of pride and dread right now!" I of course have to learn to crochet so that I can make him this dragon.

So I started poking around & found what I think are some decent contenders. What do you think?

Dragon A Pretty cool looking, but not quite what I was going for. I'm thinking more along the lines of cute, more amigurumi. (From what I understand from the bit of reading I've done is that the emphasis is on "cute")

Finger Puppets Okay, this one, again not what I'm going for, but I had to share, and I might just try to make them anyway. How cool are they? The little knight & the princess?! Those are so awesome!

Dragon B This one I think with the colors I bought, could be made to look really fun. He's definitely the front runner.

Dragon COkay, so this one is another "just had to share" because it's not actually a pattern, but I LOVE him! It's breathing fire! Check it out.

Now I just have to learn to crochet & I'll be good to go.

Power tools rule

Okay, so I've heard your pleas for pictures, and I'm responding.

Here is the skeleton dresser that was the end of Day 1 of my IKEA adventure:

Things sped up a bit on Day 2 when I added my power drill to the mix, but not being able to find a regular hammer + about 75 itty bitty nails = incomplete dresser on Day 2:

Day 3, I added a NAIL GUN! WOO HOO!! Not only did I complete the evil dresser from hell, but I finished the chest of drawers too. Fear me! I have power tools!

Granny Octagon, Drat!

Four not eight! Math is NOT hard! But I think I'm making progress....

Why are granny squares so hard? There is something I am missing...

It's January, so free time is once again in my life. In case you couldn't tell...

Hey, I made magritte for my feet and it cost me less than ten bucks. (Hey if all those craftster folks can do starry night fake vans, i can do my nod to surrealism. I just wish I could use paint like everybody else.)

More projects I'm contemplating:
1. I want to make a blanket of some undecided 8-bit character out of granny squares. which means I will unravel the mystery that is the granny square. May take a while...
2. Collage some shoes! I have no idea why I want to do this. But I really do. What drives women to collage?
3. I got an amiguriumi book for Christmas, and I must make the duck. The duck is required.
4. Surly Carrot Cake!

That should keep me busy, especially the blanket. And since I tend to totally fade out interest wise in big projects, if I can finish it, go me!

Hey Rach, check with Brian on this....

I think I made this pie before....

IKEA, UKEA

So begins my latest adventure : assembling IKEA furniture. Now, this seems simple enough, right? I mean, after all, that's what these pieces are designed for is do-it-yourself assembly. Seems reasonable enough that a college graduate with a brief background in Physics would be able to figure these things out, right? Well, eventually I will, but here's the rub: for those of you who are not familiar with IKEA, I will tell you where the problem comes in. Most things that are assembled at home include instructions like our old favorite "Insert Tab A into Slot B" complete with illustrations to show you exactly where Tab A and Slot B are in relation to the rest of the disassembled pile of stuff you have sitting before you. Not IKEA. IKEA instructions have nothing BUT illustrations. That's right - no words at all, just weird looking people with no necks & smiley faces pointing to little screws that are all different, but only subtly so that it is highly challenging to determine if you are inserting Tab A into Slot B, or if what you are actually doing is sticking Post X into Hole Y. To make things even more fun, it seems that when you finally do identify the correct piece that is depicted in the illustration and perform the prescribed operation upon it, in the illustration immediately following, it is facing a completely different way. This leads you to either flipping and turning oddly shaped, partially assembled pieces awkwardly, hoping that they stay together in the process, or doing a strange tribal looking rain dance, hopping around your furniture-piece-to-be like a shaman.

I got the center piece and the sort of "skeleton" of the drawers put together last night after leaving work at 6pm, coming home to feed, bathe, and put 2 small children to bed, helping my 16-year-old niece with her homework, running to the store to gas up my car and buy a loaf of bread, getting 16-year-old to help me unload all this heavy stuff from IKEA and haul it upstairs, moving the stuff that previously occupied the spot that the new dresser would now reside, sorting through the hardware & unpacking all the pieces. By the time I began actually assembling something, it was 9:30. I was quite proud of how much of it I did get accomplished in one day.

My husband's query when I spoke to him this morning: "So did you get the dresser piece built last night?"

I may kill him when he returns from Mexico.

Loose threads, and a new year

I spent yesterday finishing my remaining knitting projects and kicking myself because I needed less time to finish them than I thought I did. I am a lazy git.

I have a few new surly things in my head, I want to learn how to do granny squares and make a ridiculously old school blanket from them, and then, for further inspiration there is this.

If that doesn't give you some ideas for stuff to do then I can't help you.

I am totally going to collage some shoes. I have modge podge and EVERYTHING.