Owlishly

Let's play catch up

It's been a while hasn't it? 2009 just hasn't been a good year for blogging for me, sorry about that. 

Well, that little Magdalena doll that I showed you last month- she's a free pattern for The Saturday Evening Post.   

 

Her pattern is a bit different than my usually patterns offered- it's a small pdf with one image of the completed doll & instruction.  She's somewhat simpler also, since there's no leg joining, and she'd be cute in so many different colors too! 

This one was made in all (mostly from my stash) Malabrigo since I was curious to see what it would feel like, and while it does feel super soft and warm and squishy, I don't think I'll continue to do more in all Malabrigo, it seems like it would pill if it was played with vigorously.  This one's for my mom though, so it's not going to be handled very much.

Other than that, there hasn't been much yarn involved crafting.  Being sick and passing it around back and forth between the kids an I just wasn't conducive to feeling like doing anything.  I had to finish up the kid's costumes, so I did spend some time at my sister's sewing my niece & daughter's ladybug costumes, and then I needed a teeny break before getting to my son's spider costume- he wanted to be a big hairy spider- completely disgusting!

I've started on a couple of things lately, but have barely progressed enough to mention it, and won't be able to spend much time doing anything yarny anytime soon either.  My youngest sister's birthday is next week, and then my niece's is the next week, with my mother-in-law and brother-in-law are coming the week of Thanksgiving. Needless to say, I'm getting to the point where I'm thinking about pulling out all my hair since I still have some portrait editing to do for my sister, and curtains and a duvet to make before my nieces birthday, and then just general visiting guests stress :)

I'm finding that I've become a technological issues magnet lately too. My camera is acting up, or at least the connection to upload images- I can't tell, so no new pictures except this one-

  

It was taken with my computer.  It's of the Girl's capped sleeved spring shirt by Shellee Floyd and of a Littlest Pet Shop Lamb that my little girl gave me, since I like wool and she remembered that wool comes from sheep and said I should take a picture of the lamb with her little sweater :)

Sick

Aaarrrggghhh!  I thought I'd be able to avoid getting sick since it's been two weeks since the kids were sick and my husband was sick last week, but unfortunately being around them and a couple of late nights wiped me out.

I have figured out the percentage/stitch ratio to make Elizabeth Zimmermann's February Baby sweater from her Knitter's Almanac for my little girl's favorite doll.  I think it's turned out pretty well so far, I just have one more sleeve to do and then sew on the buttons and I'm done with that one. 

I've been reorganizing a bit, so I'm trying to find miscellaneous half finished dolls to finish them and write up the patterns, but with being sick my mind is completely muddled so that's going to have to wait a couple more days.  Additionally, I just wanted to let you know that if you've sent an email that requires my thinking about something, I'm going to try to get to them tomorrow or the next day when I can make sense and not have to re-type everything I've written 3 or 4 times :)

Howdy

It's been a while hasn't it? I keep making resolutions to post regularly, and then weeks go by.  This kindergarten thing is fun, but I've forgotten how to manage my time it appears!

I've been practicing a lot of knitting, though it's not up to snuff just yet.  I haven't taken too many pictures of anything because my camera's been seeing a lot of action with family type stuff.  Lot's of activities, a wedding or two and now a family reunion for my dad's mom's family tomorrow.  I get to try out a 10-22mm rental lens tomorrow for the group pictures that I'm pretty excited about too.

There's been my niece's curtains that I work on occasionally, and hemming pants for my other sister, and today we made a skirt.  So dang busy, but not much crocheting has been in the mix.  I'm hoping to remedy that soon with all the yarn in my stash just figuratively collecting dust!

I did start weight training with my husband this week.  It's pretty funny because we are complete opposites, and typically prefer doing things by ourselves since we both are really opinionated and end up snipping, but this seems to be going pretty well. 

I used to have pretty good form, but definitely need to be reminded of it, and he's been actively doing it for years so he's been a great resource for me.  It's surprising both of us how well it's working out.  I'm completely out of shape too, so hopefully with the slow start I'll stay motivated.

By the way, that completely unrelated picture up there is from a trip to Disneyland the day before the boy started school a couple of weeks ago.  You'll have to bear with me while I get back into my blogging groove, but I just hate posting without a picture!

Kindergarten

Well, this kid started kindergarten last Tuesday so it's been all about him and adjusting the past week.  For him, and us not having him around all the time.  His little sister starts asking when he's going to be home around half an hour after he's dropped off. 

He's there full day, and it's a dual immersion school, so he's be spoken to in Spanish for 90% of his school day.  He's doing well, but he comes home with lot's of questions, so I'm going to have to brush up on my Spanish too.

Anyway, no crafting of any sort has been taking place since Tuesday,  I'm hoping this week I can finish up a custom doll for a friend- it's a replica of her child's Halloween costume- a little mushroom kid.

Oh, and I was thinking about changing the look of my blog around a bit, I'm getting a little tired of the way it looks :)

In a funk

Hi all, sorry about not being around here very much.  It feels like every time I get good and ready to blast out gobs of posts, something happens that saps the will out of me.  Lately it's just been because we've been so dang busy with summer time stuff, and work being done to our house.

 Also, typically I try to keep real life things to a minimum (though not always as well as I'd like), but my husband was laid off and since we're pretty much a single income family, it's had a profound impact on the way things are done around our home.  It's probably a time I should be cranking out patterns, but all inspiration and the will to crochet of late has been sucked out of me. 

I'm not too worried, my faith is pretty personal but I have confidence that God will provide, and worrying saps too much energy that's better spent elsewhere.  Or so I keep reminding myself :) 

Anyhoo, I'm assuming that's why I've been fairly silent of late, and I know I'll get back on the horse, it's just going to happen whenever it does.  I can't force it.

Also, I have my cow pattern completely finished now except the templates were a little funky so I'm going to have to rework those; and I'm hesitating on a name so I need to choose one, but it should be soon.  I feel a bit silly about saying that because I feel like I've been saying soon over and over again, but I'm trying again :)

So, hopefully the next post will include the pattern release information, otherwise, I hope you all had great Fourth of July celebrations (those of you who do celebrate it), and I'll talk to you soon!

Life is getting in the way

I can't believe how quiet I've been lately, but too many things have been going on that are just sucking up all available time and preventing me from getting anything finished craft-wise.

These are the two things that I've been able to work on in between sick kids, dentist appointments, an emergency appendectomy for my husband, t-ball, preschool and trying to cook & clean more than I like too :)

This doily is something I've been working on for quite some time now.  I like the peacock feather/fan things, or whatever they're called.  Anyway, they're always my favorite designs to look at, and the ones I'm drawn to over and over again.  I thought it'd be nice to crochet & frame for my bedroom, since I think it'll turn out fairly large.  I intended to make it bigger and am using size 3 mercerized teal thread which compliments the rest of the blues and greens in our room.

The doll had been a zebra in my mind, but when I started making it I kept having problems with the stripes.  I changed it 3 or 4 times before deciding that it was never going to be the zebra that I wanted, and it made a better cow girl. Sewing on the felt is what's taking longer than normal, but I keep thinking about working on it when it's not with me.  Or when I do have it around, I have to use the time to do something else. 

I'm hoping to have it finished soon, especially since a couple of the keys on my laptop have decided they'd rather pop off every time I type and I'm going to take my computer in to have the entire keyboard replaced. I have an appt. tomorrow for that, but I may be rescheduling.

Some more randomness to note, last weekend I'd gone to the LA and Costa Mesa Kinokuniya's looking for some Japanese crochet books, but sadly there were barely any that were interesting to me.  It may've been because there weren't very many in either section.  There were a lot of clay, sewing, quilting, jewelry making books, so I'm wondering if they just don't carry as many fiber related ones as the weather heats up, or maybe I was there after someone came and bought up all the good books. I don't know. It was just strange.

Also, my books came in that I'd ordered, or at least two of the three.  The Japanese doily one is perfectly lovely as usual.  I have to spend some time with the Spanish one to see how much I like it, but as noted before, I haven't had time for anything I find particularly interesting of late. Dang it. Soon I hope!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! Hope yours was a good day for celebration and reflection.  Things have finally calmed down around & everyone's either in bed or getting settled and preparing for tomorrow.

My little girl's still not 100%, but getting close.  I'm trying to keep from starting anything new until I've finished up the astronaut boy & maybe my little baby from last year... I think I know what I want to do to finish it the way I want it done.

Anyway, I just wanted to pop in and say hi before getting sucked into the vortex that is know as my google reader :)

It's me again :)

So we've been mostly at my parents for the past week.  They've been in Washington DC since last week and my dad's always a tad paranoid about leaving their house alone so we're here house sitting.  I've been going home during the days to work on organizing and then when we get back at night I've been so super sucked in to cable tv.  I'm so embarrassed.  Not too much though, especially since Bones has 2 new episodes tonight :)

My cousin's baby shower is coming up so I need to get cracking on that football blanket for her little guy.  I can't even find the notes that I'd taken on it when I was working on it 3-4 months ago.  I think tomorrow I'll look for it when I get home; meanwhile I've been making a ripple blanket for her too.  I have a questions about that though, is turquoise blue boy-ish enough?  I'm not sure. It's variegated, but I'd bought it for a girl project so maybe that's why I'm thinking it looks weird.

I'd been in a doll funk and just not really inspired to make any new ones lately, but I did start on a rabbit girl for my little girl.  It's actually almost done, but I'll need to take some pictures, and I'm waiting for Pages '09 to be shipped.  I have lots of ideas of what I want to add to this little blog o' mine, but am trying to figure out when I'm going to have time to do it.

These next 9 weeks are going to be tough to make time for things; my husband has class 4 nights a week, and while they aren't long, they end right after our kids bedtime so I'm usually wiped and wanting to veg as opposed to think by that time :)

Things that I'd like to be able to get to soon are, in no particular order-

• Finish my embroidery stuff
• Then figure out how to make the embroidery images look more like illustrations
• Work on getting buttons made and listed
• Get my images transferred from my old computer to the new one
• Decide on getting photoshop/illustrator or just photoshop elements
• Learn whichever one I decide on
• Maybe learn to knit, but that's always on the to do list ;)
• Also, I'm thinking that I'd like to maybe have additional pages on my blog to list to my favorite books and tools to use when I crochet, embroider, etc...
• Then, along those lines, have a page of links to tutorials that'll help some out with questions they have about some of the techniques that I use in my patterns.
• I need to remember to add my email address to the about me section too, somehow I keep forgetting to do that.

So anyway, those are some things that I'm thinking. I feel like I'm forgetting some things, but I've got to get going on making dinner.

Commissioned Mere the mermaid doll- a blond!

I finished her up yesterday, but left my camera at my grandparents, though when I went to upload the images today I decided I didn't like them, so she had another photoshoot today. 

I used malabrigo kettle dyed worsted in pollen for the hair this time. I like the variegation, it makes it look more accurate for hair.  She was also posed on my little boy's playmobil volcano :) It looks rocky right?

I finished up the green cowl and wore the heck out of it in Iowa, but still haven't finished the aqua one yet, it may end up being a birthday present for my sister in law instead of Christmas... her birthday's in January.

I know there's a huge blond population, but it still felt weird making her, my husband kept saying that it just didn't look like Mere :) I did start on a couple of other dolls when we were in Iowa, but haven't really been able to work on them too much- it's amazing how much time I don't have when my husband is on vacation!
I seriously thought I'd be so productive, and we still have another week with him home. Dang. I love him, but he needs to give me a break! 

By the way, I'm really loving the malabrigo, I wish I could use it exclusively for all the delicious squishy-ness of making things with it. Anyway, I've got to get going, I've already "neglected" my family enough today.

Iowa WIPs

So we landed here last night and the dang hives were back with a vengeance, I think it may have been due to traveling, leaving our kids to go somewhere far away from where they'd be with my parents, or something along those lines.  I've never been freaked out about traveling before, but we've never really left them behind either.  And we're pretty far away.

Well, today I woke up okay so I got to spend the day visiting and playing cards, drinking yummy hot chocolate and working on WIP's which are going to be cowls for myself and my sister in law.  Mine's the darker green.

Wish me luck, tomorrow I'll be spending the day with my mother in law, whom I am nowhere near like, and get very stressed out near.

I'm going to try to work on some new dolls too.