Owlishly

June 2008- SO not a fan of you

This month is just really taking the wind out of my sails big time.  There just seems to be one thing right after the other happening and I haven't had much time to crochet/embroider and I think it's effecting (affecting- I never remember) me.  The distressing news that I'd mentioned at the beginning of the month has just played such a large part in our lives.  The little boy that I'd mentioned, my son's friend & my sister & brother-in-law's nephew passed away last week and my little boy is coping well at times, and not so well at others, as are we.

In my Japanese craft book related news, in light of the fact that the services are going to be on the day I'd planned on listing my books, I'm changing the date that I'll be doing that.  As usual, I plan on getting some images up here soon.  I have been scanning the covers and random pages as time permits, but I've been pretty lax about buckling down and doing all of them.  I think I have at least 10 that I'll be listing.  I'm going to list them on Etsy on July 7th now.

Anyway, I just wanted to give a bit of an update, I swear the next post will be lighter fare!

Distressing

So I had grand plans to post more often than I have been lately but this whole week has been one thing after another. 

On Tuesday I was talking to my dad & he told me that his uncle (my grandma's brother), and one of my favorite uncles has been diagnosed with two types of cancer and isn't expected to make it through the month.  He's been loosing a large amount of weight in the past 6 months and we've all been pretty concerned about his health.  They'd just recently found out what was actually going on, but now he weights about 80lbs and his condition is worsening at an increasingly alarming rate.

Then today when I was on the phone with my dad he told me that my sister & brother-in-law's nephew (whose 6 of all things!) has been sent home from the hospital with orders for his parents to "make him comfortable".  He was born with a condition where anytime he'd start with a runny nose he'd end up in the hospital with pneumonia, or he'd get a scratch and it'd get infected and wouldn't heal for months.  I can't remember off the top of my head what it is, but he has almost no immune system at all.  Then late last summer he was diagnosed with leukemia because of all the medication that he was on to build up his white blood cell count.  He was in the hospital from last fall until 2 months ago.  His mama was pregnant with his little sister who was born in February and he was so happy to finally be out and with his family again.  More things kept coming up and he'd end up in the hospital for a couple of days at a time, but Tuesday he was in the hospital again with a collapsed lung.  My little boy LOVES this boy and we've know the family since before my own was born.  My heart is just breaking for what this family is going through, he's the sweetest little boy and it's devastating that he's facing this. 

I try to stay away from posting intensely personal things here but I need to ask for your prayers, good thoughts and any other comfort that you can send this way, it's been a really difficult week for our family.

Helllooooo...

So geez, I've been pretty negligent about blogging lately.  Well, we had a birthday party last weekend that just seemed to sap all energy and inspiration from me.



I know I've mentioned privacy before, and as such, I have no plans on using my little one's name, but here she is at her party, hanging out on the stairs playing with her balloon.  Of all the things that I was working on for her birthday, I didn't finish A SINGLE THING! Thankfully she won't remember if I finished them on time, or a couple of weeks late, but boy I sure feel bad about it.  I think I just had way to many things that I was trying to do, so naturally, nothing did get finished. 

Then I've just been feeling off lately.  I don't know what's up, or if it's even worth a trip to my doctor (whom I haven't seen in 4 years) but I've just been more tired than usual and have just been having a more difficult time getting through the regular stuff I need to do, let alone having any time to crochet or embroider.  Coupled with insomnia, I've been a tad zombie-ish lately.  It's getting better, but I still need to take it slowly I'm thinking.

Here's an image of some of the Wee Wonderfuls embroidery I've been working on to finish up my little one's birthday gift.  I took this before rinsing out the transfer inky stuff, so you'll notice a bunch of blue lines around the embroidery. 



Other than that, I really haven't been too ambitious, I have a pattern I'm working on for someone and I've gotten hooked on my google reader (thanks to Average Jane Crafter's fantastic review), but besides that I think I'm just going to get my feet wet slowly to get back into my crafty groove.

Cupcake recipes?

Okay, I'm soliciting- I need a tasty cupcake recipe for my little girl's birthday party.  For some reason cupcakes seem SO much more doable than an entire cake.  Our favorites have always been the carrot muffins with cream cheese frosting from Trader Joe's, but I'm looking to find a recipe that my little boy and I can make together. 

I'm very competent at baking bread, but the sweeter baking stuff & I never really hit it off.  The only thing that I can bake repeatedly with the same results are the mexican wedding cake cookies from Baking Illustrated. Or whatever they're called, I think they actually have a couple of different names. 

Anyway, I'd love suggestions for anything other than chocolate, she's not a fan and sadly, neither am I really.  So what are your favorite cupcake recipes? 

Sickies & a new little boy

Yuck, since Monday we've all been hit with varying degrees of what I'm assuming is a stomach bug. 

I'll definitely spare you the disgusting details, but suffice to say, I'm definitely getting cabin fever.  There were a ton of thing that I'd planned on doing this week, and pretty much haven't been able to get to it.  For example the grape boy pattern.  I don't know how the heck I wrote down what I did for the grape leaf, because it does not correspond at all with what actually happened.  I'm going to have to tackle it when my mind isn't so tired and fuzzy.

I did finish a little boy doll that I'd been working on though.  I decided to make just a plain little boy, and hopefully soon a little girl too.  My little boy wanted a big brother & little sister doll, since he's a big brother & has a little sister :)  I really like him, last night I was talking to my husband about it while he was kind of distracted and told him that I was thinking of naming the pattern after him, to which he replied, "whatever, that's fine".  I told him then maybe not, since I thought this little boy is super cute.  Then he decided it was a perfect name for the doll.  Geez, my husband is not nearly as humble as he should be. Really.  Anyway, here's the newest little guy-

I hope you like him too!

So dang tired

We're back home, and I'm glad.  In fact we've been home since Sunday evening, but I'm so tired that I've been trying to do the minimum possible to just get by.  I still need to go grocery shopping too.  Ugh.  Thank you everyone for your kind words while we were gone, I definitely appreciated everyone's positive thoughts. 

While we had a nice visit with my husband's family I just didn't get any sleep and was increasingly testy each day.  It was strange, I was getting around 4-5 hours of sleep each night and believe me, I need at least a couple of hours more.  Also, as we were getting into our city limits, my father-in-law called to tell us that my husband's grandma was in the hospital.  As far as we know, it's nothing really horrible, she just felt off and wanted to be monitored.  Then yesterday, my dad called to let me know that my maternal grandma was in the hospital with chest pains.  Weird.  I know my grandparents are getting older, the youngest of them was born in 1930, but it's still weird to witness signs of their aging. 

Anyway, I really overestimated the time and energy that I'd have to crochet, and embroider when we were gone on our trip, but I did get some things done, or started.  I've finished my grapes boy & octopus boy except for the pictures and finishing up the patterns, and I started on a doily while we were in Wyoming and just about finished the ball (is that what it's called?) of size 3 thread.  I wanted a bigger doily and wanted to try it out in thread, but not the teeny tiny thread. At least not yet.   

It was pretty funny because I was almost finished with a round when we stopped in Barstow, CA to take a stretching/restroom break and I put the doily, thread & pattern up on the dashboard.  When we went back to the car, I guess my opening my door and my husband opening up his door created enough of a draft to send the pattern & ball whipping across the parking lot.  It was SO windy, and for some reason I didn't even think to secure it better, so I was unable to finish the ball or the round for our last afternoon of driving.  I suppose I looked pretty silly chasing the ball of thread across the parking lot, but it got away so quickly I just cut my losses.  I was just glad that I had the doily still. 

Raquel's pattern & more from the road

Finally a quiet moment.  I'm awake a little earlier than normal because my back and our hotel bed are not cooperating and I just needed to be up.  We'll be checking out of our hotel here in South Dakota today and heading to Wyoming after one more stop at the Mammoth site before lunch. I'm really looking forward to it, and in fact, I've really enjoyed our time here in South Dakota. 

We ended up modifying our plans a bit and instead of going up to Pierre to see the state capitol, we just came a day early to the Black Hills and I'm so glad we did.  We got to go through the Badlands at sunset which was rather fascinating.  It is really strange how you're just driving along and everything is still looking like a big flat prairie and then all of a sudden you see these big gaping holes in the landscape, and then the closer you get, the bigger they get, until it's mostly craggy.

Going through it was fun too.  We were so excited to see a couple of deer nibbling the grass outside our window when we first entered the park, and then as we drove and drove and drove through even my little ones became more blasé about it and kept saying "more deer" in a very ho hum tone.

Yesterday we went to Mt. Rushmore and while my husband and I were suitably impressed, our little ones were more interested in playing in all the snow.  Which is pretty much what we'd expected.  They enjoyed running through the area with the flags, and then on the little hike around they resigned themselves to letting me take occasional pictures of them, with the concession that I would get their cooperation as long as they could play in the snow the rest of the time.

Then after our little girl's nap, we went for a drive through Custer State Park which was more interesting to our little ones than Mt. Rushmore. We saw tons of deer, wild turkeys, pronghorns & finally buffalo, or as my little boy used to say- buckazoe! The second picture is of one that had no plans for stopping, whether we were on the road or not, it was right by the side of the road that we were on and then decided that we were going to stop- not him.  It just walked out in front of us.

Now to abruptly change the subject from vacation to a little monkey, Raquel's pattern is available both through etsy & ravelry too.  I was able to finish it up, and maybe today while we drive I'll be able to get to some more crocheting :)

Dry spell

So here we are in Iowa, luckily none of us have killed each other yet.  Not that we haven't thought about it.  My husband and I are opposites in almost every way, and while I really really love him, he and I probably shouldn't spend as much time as we have together :) Our trip here was interesting since I'd never been to Oklahoma or Kansas and we drove through both of them on Sunday to get here that evening.  Unfortunately, by that time, we'd been in the car since WAY early Friday morning and weren't really in the sight seeing mood. 

Here was Arizona, probably midday and after waking up to some question, comment, giggle, growl, yell, etc. from the back seat.  We left home at 2:30am and I didn't sleep before leaving because my husband was *sure* that I'd be able to sleep in the car if I was good and tired.  It SO didn't happen.  I blame my sleep issues on the whole having kids thing, since before that, I didn't ever really have problems falling/staying asleep when I was supposed to. 

We ended up taking a bit of a detour to go to Meteor Crater in AZ just by chance.  It was the same exit as a suddenly announced bathroom break necessitated. It was rather strange to be driving along and then all of a sudden come upon a gigantic hole in the ground.  My little boy loved it, and keeps talking about it to everyone.  I took tons of photographs of it, but haven't uploaded most of them yet. 

By the way, here's an aside.  Even though I love my kids to death and am very proud of them, I've chosen to keep photographs of them off of my blog.  I feel a tiny bit hypocritical about that since I love looking at other people's kids and pictures of themselves, but I just don't feel comfortable with anyone knowing what they look like.  I know occasionally I may sneak one in because I just can't stand not to share, for the most part I'm going to try to keep them private.  I'm still up in the air about what to call them too since my husband requested my not sharing their names either.  I can't call them by an initial because my husband and my two little one's names all start with the same letter (completely unplanned too).  Anyway, I'll get back to the trip stuff now.

We stayed the night in Albuquerque, and I was so happy to get to our hotel.  I seriously had no sleep issues that night!  Next morning after finally getting to try a watermelon slushie from Sonic (yum!) we drove through the top part of Texas and into Oklahoma. 

In Texas we were trying to avoid a stormy looking sky and I tried to capture what it looked like, for some reason it still doesn't look quite the same to me.  That day, which was Saturday, I was rested enough to be able to crochet a bit.  Though when I say a bit, I really do mean it.  We spent HOURS in the car and I was so distracted that I only was able to make 2 doll heads.  I'm finding out that I'm sort of a slow crocheter, but that was slow even for me :)  We didn't get to our hotel in Oklahoma City until 9pm Central time.

Next morning happened to be Easter Sunday and we found out that next to nothing was open all day & each state along our way into Iowa.

This last one was taken in Kansas while we were zipping along. I'd anticipated our trip taking longer than we'd planned just because everything takes longer now with our little ones, but I was still surprised when it did.  I've been working on a little monkey doll for my niece and was able to make the body that day, but with all the distractions of new places and trying to keep our little ones in good spirits I really didn't get much of anything done. 

By the way, thanks again everyone for your suggestions about what to bring, I limited all the stuff we were bringing for them to a box between their car seats & so far so good.  They were entertained with new books, stickers, their travel magna & aqua doodles, and our little boy had 3 animal puppets & our little girl had her baby doll.  We listened to their music & stories that I'd downloaded to my ipod and my little guy got to watch a dvd while my little girl napped. I'm definitely glad though that that part of our trip is over, on our way back home we'll spend 5 nights on the road instead of 2 so we shouldn't be cooped up so much coming home. 

I'll try to post more crafty related things next time since yesterday we did go to Sioux City and I got to stop into Susan's Yarn Garden and get some really pretty Cascade Sierra in a lovely salmon color.  The color is no. 56, but it looks a lot closer to no. 55 to me.  I've never used it before, but I really like the wool/cotton blend and am itching to make something with it.  I also bought 2 new hooks by Inox (?) a company I've never heard of.  I think the label & description are in German, but the packaging says made in Mexico. I'll try to get some pictures of them too :)

Road trip 2008- California to Iowa & back

VACATION ALERT- From March 21, 2008 to April 6, 2008 I will be out of state. Both of my husband's grandmothers are in failing health and we are going to Iowa to spend time with them. We are driving so my internet availability will be erratic at best. I will do my best to get patterns sent within a 72 hour time frame. I anticipate being able to do better most transactions, but I want to give myself a window to err on the side of caution. I appreciate your understanding, and hopefully I'll be able to finish up some new patterns before we get back.

Is what I posted in the announcements in my Etsy shop, for those of you interested, my patterns are available through my Ravelry store for immediate download if you want to circumvent the whole etsy thing. 

I'm nervous and excited and really, really nervous about traveling so far by car with my little ones.  We used to go on road trips frequently enough when I was a girl, but now it's a whole different ball game.  Wish us luck, I'm sure we'll need it.  The car's all packed up except for my camera, the computer, my iPod & my husband's family tree research. Oh, and the kids and us adults. :) 

I hope to get a lot of new patterns finished up and photographed and ready to go by the time we get back, but we'll have to see how things go.  I also was tagged earlier this week and plan to play along, just maybe in the next couple of weeks I'll be able to get to it.  My internet connection will be spotty to say the least, hopefully I'll be able to get to my sister in law's every other day to take care of things and get my fix. 

Also, by the way, thanks so much everyone for the comments left about Dave.  They were really helpful. I decided to keep the hair but nix the freckles since with the whole crocheted aspect, the face has enough going on.  And now, as much as I don't want to, I have to get up and finish getting everything ready since my break is over!

Major Frustration

Okay, so I've taken forever it seems to actually get some doll patterns out and I feel bad because I keep mentioning them like they're imminent...and then it still doesn't happen.  I don't remember if I've shared, but I'm sick AGAIN. Blah. After my brother-in-law's visit, I came down with a horrid cough, that I'm fairly sure I caught from my little boy, but in keeping with sickies vs me, it's winning.  I can't seem to shake it, nor can I sleep much from all the coughing. 

And in keeping with the pity party going on here today, my computer is acting funky again.  I had an issue last week that with the help of Apple care, I though was resolved, but it happened again yesterday.  Luckily after being on the phone with Apple care again, we fixed the issue, but I was advised to go to the Apple store and try to have a Genius take a look since it was somewhat unusual.  I took it in last night and was there for an hour and a half, stumping 3 of the guys at the Genius bar.  That's not good.  One wants to kill my hard drive and start over again, the other one doesn't think it's software related and wants to replace the logic board, the last guy is unsure that it's either and is pushing for doing both.  I don't care what they do, as long as it's fixed.  Apparently, it's something they've never encountered, or heard of and are perplexed with why it's happening. 

I love my computer and am so frustrated that this is going on, especially since we're leaving Friday (WAY) AM and can't leave it for them to tinker with since my husband needs it for a bunch of genealogy stuff that he's working on. And I have to be able to send patterns out. And work on my new ones. Well, I'd accidentally scheduled two appointments, so I had one yesterday, and I have another one today, that I guess we'll be going to and seeing what can be done before we have to go on Friday!  Send good thoughts this way please!