Owlishly

New-ish dolls

I'm working on some right now.  In fact, I'd planned on working on one of them tonight, but I think I left them in the car since I can't find them anywhere in the house.  My bag may be in my bedroom, but there are two little maniacs in bed with my husband who went to bed too late and I don't want to wake them up going to look.

My little boy is very interested in an octopus and he requested a little boy in purple so I'm almost done with that one, and then I'm making a little boy dressed up like grapes too.  That one's for my cousin's birthday whose a bit of a wine drinker, and since she only has 1 son I'm making it a little boy. 

I suppose I should finish up my turkey boy and the big head baby and the other doll wearing the blue dress.  Good gracious, okay, I need to write out the patterns.  I keep starting to feel better, and then feel absolutely wiped out.  Too many things are going on that are getting in my way, dang it!   Even now, I'm a little distracted while I'm trying to write.

You know what else, I'm super embarrassed about something too.  I totally, totally, appreciate everyone who buys my patterns but it was getting to the point where I had to start sending emails to new buyers to make sure that people know they're getting patterns.  I'm frustrated and somewhat annoyed by people who don't read the listings, especially when I try to make sure I do everything that I can to make sure you know that you're getting a pattern.  Aaannnnyyyway,  getting back to the point, I had over 350 feedbacks to leave for pattern purchases.  *hangs head* I'm so sorry about that. 

The reason being, I hadn't left feedback because I hadn't completely finished up canceling transactions.  I got tired of having transactions from the end of November that I hadn't left feedback for, so I ended up leaving the same positive feedback for everyone.  It ended up taking around an hour and a half to finish it up yesterday and I'm sorry to those who come back again and again and are so sweet leaving comments and then I've just left funky, generic feedback.  I really do appreciate your purchases and support and I plan on trying to leave more personalized feedback in the future!

Slow going...

Let's just say this project is going to take a while... a LONG while.  I think due in part to my being so wishy washy about choosing what border to crochet, and then trying to decide on what transfer to use.  So far, I'm almost finished with the first of 5 parts of the design.

I hadn't really embroidered anything in a while, so I'm still getting my feel for it, and I liked this one the least, so I started with him :)  I'm almost done with him, but I did notice a couple of spots in the photo where the transfer was too light for me to follow the pattern so I'm going to have to go back and try to fix it a tad.   I'm enjoying it, but it is taking a lot longer than I'd anticipated, it is good that I am only using 1 color, because otherwise I'd never finish it!  I'd bought this pattern from PatternBee, it's a reproduction of a design found in a newspaper mail order according to her provenance that she's shared.  I think it's cute, and hopefully my mom will like it, and not look at it too closely so that she doesn't notice the inconsistencies. 

I do hope to get back to more of my own patterns soon, I just really want to get this done before we leave late March, I can crochet in the car, but I've tried to embroider and it just so doesn't work for me!

My patterns for sale at Ravelry

I just wanted to let you all know- my patterns are almost all for sale over at Ravelry, if you go to my Pattern Store you should be able to purchase directly from there.  If you a member then the pattern will go to your pattern library, and you'll get a downloadable link that lasts for 30 mintues, or if you're not a member, you should still be able to buy patterns from there and get the downloadable links sent to you via email.  I'm not sure if you can go to my pattern store if you're not a member yet, I may need to create a separate page here on my blog to have the direct buy link by an image of each pattern.  Let me know if you can!  The pattern stores are still in beta, but I'm a tester for it thanks to Casey!  So if you're all about instant gratification, definitely thank him!

Redwork, I'm thinking

So, my mom's birthday is on Saturday and as usual, I've sort of waited until the last minute to decide on a gift.  Luckily, no one in my family reads this so I have absolutely no qualms about writing about it before the day. 

I'd been contemplating an embroidered panel of the vintage transfer patterns that I'd bought from PatternBee, a while back.  It's between this one,

or this one,

or this one,

I'm leaning towards the latter, since I like the little boy eating the banana, but I don't like the face of the smallest girl.  I did spill the beans a bit to my mom since I don't even want to bother beginning work on it if she's not going to be interested in it at all.  Her only request was to have boys and girls in it.  Fine by me. 

And now, because I'm lazy and still not quite over being sick, I'm hoping turning it into redwork will be a little easier for me, for a variety of reasons.  First, I don't want to have to think about colors, and not changing color will save some time right?  Second, I think it's an interesting technique and I've been wanting to try it, so why not give it a whirl now.  Third, she likes red; it's the color of all her small appliances & most of her clothes.  Fourth, my sister's baby shower is going to happen the week after we get back from Iowa and they're going to have a fiesta theme (totally stealing my wedding reception idea, but that's something else completely), and that way, since it'll be at my parents house- hey, they'll have even more themed decoration!

I'm also thinking about making a crocheted lace border to fill up white space in the 12x36 in frame that I bought for this purpose.  We'll see, I just really like that thread and want to spend more time crocheting with it, and if I can use it in the gift, all the more reason.

By the way, since I'm totally horrible about bookmarking sites of interest, I'm adding redwork and embroidery ones here for future reference-

Needle'nThread has a video library of stitches & interesting tidbits (lots of ads though, not really my thing).

J.F.Ingalls has a catalog of 1886 embroidery stamping patterns with gobs of scans.

There a Redwork Embroidery Primer over at pretty impressive stuff with tons of links and information, that is indeed pretty impressive.

Anyway, since this is one post I'm writing while the kids are awake, I've got to go!

Sicko

Everyone around me has been getting sick and I hadn't. Until Friday. Then it was BAD.  I hadn't gotten the flu that bad for years, but luckily my husband was home on Friday for President's Day weekend so I stayed in bed the entire day while he took care of our little ones.

I did have staying in bed stuff to do in between dozing off and on all day. 

1. I frogged my silk'n wool scarf and chose a different stitch pattern and got through 1 skein.  (Though I did frog it again because I didn't like how wide it was. And then I resized it and have almost gotten through 3 skeins.)

2.  I started planning in earnest our spring break trip.

I don't know if I'd mentioned before, but we're going to Iowa for 16-ish days towards the end of March and the beginning of April.  We were going to fly, but since we just bought the car, we're going to drive it.  It should be interesting with our 2 little ones, but I think if we try to stay positive and make the best of it, it should be fun, or at least interesting.  Famous last words, huh.  The good thing is, both of them are pretty used to 2-3 hour car trips so with frequent stops I hope the don't get too weary.

We're going to take Route 66 to Oklahoma City and then shoot up through Kansas and then a bit of Nebraska up to the western part of Iowa where my husband's family lives.  We've got that part of the trip decided upon, but now we're sort of stuck on the coming back part.  We're coming back through South Dakota and then Wyoming, down through Utah, Nevada and then back to California, but I've been trying to figure out how long we'll be in South Dakota since there's a lot of sights I want to see, and then where we'll be spending the night the rest of the trip back. 

3. I started planning my mom's birthday gift.  I think I'm going to embroider some of the Vogart Mexican transfers that I'd bought a while back onto something and then frame it. Hopefully she'll like it, and if not, it'll at least work with the theme of my sister's baby shower when we get back in April and they can use it as decoration.

4. I also spent some time working on some other little dolls, but haven't been too inspired to make it a top priority.  I need to get at least the one done that my little boy keeps asking for, hopefully sometime this week I'll be able to finish that.

Okay, this ended up being longer than I intended, but I needed to update, so hopefully next time I write, I'll be all better. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you all have a lovely Valentine's Day, and to show my love, if you're on Ravelry my Sarita pattern in free from today through the rest of the month!  (If I can get it to work the way it's supposed to).

XO-
Mia

Some vintage patterns

Here are some of the patterns I was so excited to get, I don't know when I'm going to be able to get started on them, but I was oh, so excited about getting them.

The apron I want to make is in the one above, woo hoo!

Then I just bought the baby books because I've been looking for the thread crochet dress pattern, that I still haven't been able to find.  They weren't in these books, but there were some cute patterns, I'm not sure if I'll ever make anything from either, but I just got them today so I'll have to take a better look later.

*Squeal!* we just got a new car!

Okay, so this isn't craft related, but it's soo exciting.  We got a Prius this evening!  We were going to wait until the end of the month but they had the color and package that I wanted and they were giving us the deal that we wanted, so we went ahead an bought it.  It'll be primarily my/family car but I'm sure my husband'll be putting in a lot of time behind the wheel too.

We'll be going to Iowa in March through the beginning of April and had been planning on flying, but I think we're probably going to be driving now, especially since I've always wanted to go to Wyoming, and then see Mt Rushmore in SD.  It'll be interesting to see how it goes with a 4 year old and a 22 month old, we will take out time and I'm assuming stop plenty along the way. 

Okay, so now here's some crochet related stuff.  I don't know if I'm going to finish the sweater, I may take it apart since it's looking a little funky now.  I do like *how* it's coming along, but I don't like how the colors are looking together, and then on my daughter.  Maybe they're just in the wrong order, or I don't know.  I like all the yarn that I used, maybe I'll make a scarf for myself instead, since that other one turned out so well.  Actually, it hasn't turned out. At all. I'm going to have to frog that one too and start over since I'd need at least 5 more skeins to get the length I want, and I'm not spending that much on a scarf for me, especially since I already have 3 additional skeins just hanging around waiting for me to use them.

Joining the ripple wagon

I've jumped on the bandwagon, at least for a very short while. 

By the way, here's a little back story first- My grandma Lucy, the one who initially taught me how to crochet when I was little, was a ripple maniac when I was a little girl.  When I was a child we lived 5 minutes away from both sets of grandparents (and I still do for that matter since we rent my childhood home from my parents) but while my grandma Lucy only has 6 grandkids, my grandma Sarah  has 24.  So needless to say, I got a lot more personal attention from my grandma Lucy and I was able to spend the night over there a lot more than with my other grandma.  So those nights that I spent the night, my grandma, grandpa and I would watch TV (ALWAYS Wheel of Fortune & Jeopardy) and she'd always be crocheting.  Almost all of the time it was a ripple afghan too, otherwise it was a baby blanket that looked like a huge granny square.  Those accounted for probably 95% of her crochet projects with the other 5% being vests or capes or ponchos usually for me :)

So needless to say, I already have a bunch of ripple blankets in various colors, usually though each blanket was only done in 2 different colors.  And while I like the idea of making a ripple blanket, I don't have the patience to make one at this point in my life.  So I'm doing the next best thing, a small ripple sweater for my daughter.  I'd found the random stripe generator via Alicia Paulson though now I can't find exactly where, but luckily I still have the direct link to the Random Stripe Generator if anyone's interested.  So I chose a couple of colors that I'd liked on a poncho I'd seen somewhere, and entered them in and the color pattern that I used was spit out.

Super dooper big head baby girl

I've had difficulty motivating myself to finish up all of my dolls that I loose interest in, and this is another one that barely had anything left to do, but still sat in my wip bag untouched for months.

I'd started work on her last summer, before we went to Iowa for my uncle-in-law's funeral in July.  I'd pretty much finished her with her body, dress and wig cap complete before returning home, but once we got here I put her away since I was kind of annoyed with how far apart her eyes are.  I'd intended on re-doing my own version of the pink dressed Selah doll since looking back, she's kinda funky looking.  I ended up pretty much creating a new doll instead of just making the same one in blue. 

My daughter had gotten into my wip bag on Saturday and pulled her out and was walking around the house with her, hugging her, patting her back, and pretending to nurse her.  One thing was bugging her though, she kept pointing to the dolls head and asking "hair?"  So, I got out her wig cap and then used 4 strands of yarn in 2 different colors to embroider the hair on the head.  I wasn't feeling too ambitious, so that's why she has a bob, and besides it was my youngest sister's hairstyle for the majority of her preschool- elementary school days.  Maybe someday I'll feel like spending gobs of time making lot's of hair on a doll, but for now my daughter's satisfied with her hair this way. 

She's a good sized doll too, probably around 10 inches tall.  She looks a bit distorted though, since she's SO top heavy, she doesn't stand up against anything, I spent a couple of minutes trying to get her up, but her poor legs just don't withstand that much weight up top.  Besides, she's not made the typical way I make the rest of my dolls so her legs are just sewn on instead of crocheted along with the body.