Mission Accomplished?

You be the judge. I of course couldn't get them to stand still long enough to take good pictures. The other little boy in the jacket over a Spiderman costume is Dallan's friend, Lawrence.

The Aang collar does have the little pie-piece cut out of the front, but she kept turning it sideways.

I even made little webbed feet things to put over Dallan's shoes. You can't see them very well b/c of the bag, but they were velcroed (is that a word?) around his shoes.

The Quest for the Costumes

It's that time of year again. This year is proving to be stranger than any previous. Recently, we started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender with the kids. Since then, my little girl (yep, the girl) decided she wanted to be Aang for Halloween:

Then there's the boy. At first he said he wanted to be a Chomper. Thankfully, he changed his mind and decided he would rather be Perry the Platypus:

The helicopter is optional.

Successful hat attempt!

I tried making this hat for the Nuggie once before, but it came out way too big. Truth be told, it was actually too big for me as well.

This one came out nicely, though:

Busy, busy, busy

I have done quite a few projects over the holidays. I made 4 scarves for the Moms (i.e. my Mom, Stepmom, Mother-in-law, and Sister). They were inspired by "Mommy" necklaces that have little people as charms. There is one for each child, and the girls have little triangle dresses, while the boys have rectangle or oval shaped bodies. I made the scarves with a Knifty Knitter, and crocheted the tassle children.

The ones for my Mom and Stepmom were the most time-consuming because they have 7 grandchildren - 6 girls and 1 boy each. Lots of little pink triangles. My sister's and MIL's didn't take quite as long as Nique' has 3 kids, and my MIL has 4 grandchildren. Like an idiot, I forgot to take pictures of my Mom's and my MIL's. Here are the ones of my Stepmom's and my sister's, though.

Then, scarves done I decided to knit a present for Adoxograph. I'm not posting a picture here, because I'll let her do that when it arrives. :)

I also made a few letters for little girls' bedroom doors as presents. Once again, the idiot factor kicked in and I forgot to take pictures before I gave the presents. I have the H still, so here is that:



Last,but not least, my little boy spotted me working on a hat, and asked me to make him one as well. I did that yesterday:

Halloween Costumes!!

Okay, so I know this post is a little late, but I thought you might like to see the dinosaur costumes I made the kids for Halloween. Dallan's tail came out really nice, if a bit long.

If I had an accent...

...I'd have been doing those Geico commercials.

Oh well, even platyhippos need love:

Months have passed...

Months have passed with the baking on the increase...at least for me. Fortunately the holidays enabled me to do my requisite gift giving of baked goods and candies, to great acclaim. Photos of some of them will follow, per request of Adoxograph.

Now that my little girl is enjoying manipulating things with her hands, I'm trying to bake something at least once a week with her. This one, from a few months ago and recently repeated, Sourdough Italian, made with mostly wheat flour. Since we all like to eat it too, it's a win win.

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...

Yeah I finished something

Close up of the pattern




All right gals look and behold I finished a quilt! Woo Hoo for me. Granted it is only a baby sized quilt for my older brother's first child, but I am excited I have been able to finish one project completely since the birth of my little one. It took me a week to complete it with most of the work taking place over this past weekend. Why the rush now you may be thinking, well the baby had decided to come early so I had to finish this sooner than later. Hubby watched the little one while I was in my sweat shop for the weekend.

My younger brother wife is pregnant with their 1st and that baby is due in May...I think I will start that quilt now just in case :)

PS I have even crochet a little more of my blanket...sigh one day it will be done.

Halloween fun abounding!

Okay, so this is going to be a somewhat lengthy post. Let's start with the costume parade. The good news is that I managed to finish both kids' costumes in plenty of time for the Halloween Carnival in my neighborhood. The bad news is that my son up & decided that he did not want to be Diego anymore & has decided that he hates his costume. *sigh* Oh well. The better-than-the-good news is that there were Moms coming up to me left and right at the Carnival complimenting me on Julia's costume! *huge grin* That almost made up for it. I'm just disappointed that the boy didn't like his. I thought he'd be excited about Rescue Pack at least, but he flatly refused to wear it. :( Without further ado, here they are:



Just to shamelessly brag on my cutie pie a little bit, here are a couple of extra shots of her & her sweet face:




Okay, so costumes done, I decided it was High (pun intended) time to actually carve a real pumpkin. There is a contest on the KOL forums for pumpkin carving, so Kathy and I got together & created the Lihc & the Gargantulihc from the game. Like so:



After snapping the photos necessary to enter the Pumpkin carving contest, we were not content to leave the pumpkin as-is, so we doctored him a bit, then a bit more, and a bit more...More. MORE! Until finally we ended up with this creation:



I'll try and snap some more pics of him at home in the evening, when maybe you can actually see him lit up. I'm woefully bad at that, so I will try.

Happy Halloween everyone!

I've been working! I have proof!

Okay, so I recognize that I've been woefully neglectful of this blog of late, but I have actually been working. In fact, I would have posted sooner, but I just kept forgetting to have my camera & a computer occupying the same space at the same time. Without further ado, here are some shots of the costume I've been working on. You might remember me mentioning that I was going to make a little fairy costume for my daughter and her very Elven ears. I'm still working on it, but it's nearly complete. I have a few layers of leaves left to put on & I'd still like to do a little headpiece.

Now, some explanation for why this costume has taken me so painfully long. I was under the delusion that if I sewed the flowers onto the bodice that they would be less likely to fall off, and it would generally look nicer. After about 3 weeks of getting 3 or 4 flowers sewn a night, I said "Screw this" and took out my hot glue gun. Can I just tell you - I LOVE my hot glue gun. It is an absolute boon for projects such as these.

Here's where I was a couple of weeks ago(pre-glue gun):

And here is where I am now. I thought it would be best to try it on her to make sure that it would still fit (thank goodness it does - albeit it's a little short when she stands up or crawls, so I'll be buying a pair of green tights for her to wear...maybe I'll tack a few blossoms or leaves onto them just for fun if I get the boy's costume done in time!)

Here she is modeling it:

Once this is done, I have to move on to Dallan's costume. He is going as Diego from "Go, Diego, Go!" I chose this for several reasons: 1) He is still too little to really "get" the Halloween concept, so I can still choose for him. Next year I won't be so lucky. 2) This is what Diego looks like:



Easiest. Costume. Ever. I have purchased a Diego lunch bag that has the little badge that's on the vest, which I can then cut off, and, you guessed it, HOT GLUE to the vest. I bought the vest from LLBean & we have cargo shorts & hiking boots already. All I have to sew is the Rescue Pack. Hopefully that will only take me a couple of hours. (Famous last words)

I blame JK Rowling

Okay, so since I finished the quilt, I've literally done nothing but read Harry Potter. I reread books 5 & 6 & just finished reading Book 7 last night. I've been close to 3 weeks, and over 2000 pages entrenched in nothing but Harry Potter. Now, I'm done, so back to work!

So I think my first order of business will be to start the bath mat that I mentioned earlier, although I think I've changed my mind about what to put on it. Sadly, my kids are not so into Sesame Street as I was. My son loves Blue's Clues, and there is a character on Blue's Clues called "Slippery Soap" who is, you guessed it, a bar of soap. I think I'll try & find something with him & make that into the bath mat.

I have the canvas, the yarn (or at least some of it), and the latch hook. Now I just need to make a pattern & go.

Drumroll, please...

I finished the Puzzle Quilt!




I didn't meet my goal of having the horizontal ditches sewn before my trip to Texas, but I managed to knock all but 3 of them out the day I was leaving. I finished it up today. I got on a roll working on it last night & it became like a book that I was close to finishing...I just had to see how it was going to turn out! Also similar to finishing a book, I now feel an empty space as though I don't know what to do with myself...Fairy costume, here I come!

Here are a couple of closer up shots so you can see the border stitching & the individual pieces:

And here is the back with a close-up of the outlines of the puzzle piece stitching:

What do you guys think? I think it looks pretty nice for a first "solo" effort!

As if I didn't have enough irons in the fire...

Okay, so for about 3 years now I've had this software collecting dust in my basement that will convert a digital picture to a cross stitch pattern. (It also has a sweater designer, and a personal pattern maker for children, btw). So I got the idea that I would use it to make a pattern for a latch hook rug for the kids' bathroom with Ernie from Sesame Street & his Rubber Duckie.

Like so:


Now, the trick will be in the fact that the software doesn't really do latch hook patterns, but it does let you specify the type of canvas you're working on, the number of stitches per inch/centimeter, and the dimensions of the project (in # of stitches.) So I think I can do it. I'll just have to muddle through getting the right colors of yarn. I'll also have to figure out the appropriate length for the strands of yarn & then cut it. *sigh*