Owlishly

My favorites folder 11.4.10

My favorites file is overflowing onto my computer's desktop right now, being online and clicking from one link to another is always fun in a serendipitous kind of way.  Not everything in the wish list is for me though, most of it ends up being for my kids, though I do have to add a thing or two for me regularly.

To buy:

• I think these plates would be a super fun for my little ones, I think they'd get a big kick out of eating off of their faces.

• My daughter loves rabbits, for the longest time she thought when she grows up she'd marry one.  Thankfully she's outgrown that line of thinking, but she'd love to have one- I think this might be the next best thing, though I'm wondering if 4 is still too young for a necklace of any kind.

• I don't know if I'd buy this desktop dodgeball for my kids or myself- I think either of us would spend quite some time playing with it.

• This would make my son's day and his birthday's coming up in December, but I don't know if this might be more his speed, or if he'd think that it was too babyish.  Heaven forbid a soon to be 7 year old get something a bit young, and since he broke his arm and had to go to regular appointments with his orthopedic surgeon and pass (and touch!) a full sized skeleton each time the former may indeed be the best choice.

• I on the other hand am really digging this necklace, it would eliminate my constant desire to see the longest shaving I can get whenever I sharpen pencils. 

To make:

• This doll quilt looks like it's a doable holiday project, eventually I'd like to make one for our king size bed, but I think I need to start my foray into quilting with something more manageable and work my way up. Although it might be a while, these might be too tempting!

• We've also recently adopted a dachshund named Chloe and I've been itching to make her some sweaters.  I'm still undecided, but here are some free patterns to try, even though I already bought the wurstwarmer pattern the day she came home with us.

To contemplate:

• I've been thinking about our home, and how I keep it a lot lately too- this seems to hit the nail on the head for me.

Now thankfully, I can close a bunch of open tabs and go listen to some Pride and Prejudice (via craftlit) while I was dishes, Jane Austen never ceases to lift my spirits!

This and that

I've tried to sit down and crochet a couple of times lately, but I've been getting to distracted with other things.  So I'm going to do a brain dump to purge it all out and see if that'll get me back on track with the Hula girl pattern I'm working on. 

Well. First off, I've always had fairly sensitive skin and with the hives thing the summer before last I've been super careful about what I put on my skin.  But lately I've been in the mood to find a good makeup foundation.  This seriously has been an off and on quest since I started wearing makeup as a teenager.  I don't really have complexion problems so it's never felt like a must, but I'll like to have it in my repertoire just in case :)

Before having kids I used to wear makeup a lot, never gobs of it, but it was fun to play with and I'd gotten pretty adept, but never found a good foundation.  I suck at color matching and now recently with having to be more careful about what I put on my face I was thinking about trying Bare Minerals, and did a couple of times have people at a BM store, or Sephora try it on me and the four times I did it, I had four different color recommendations.  Not really fueling my confidence in the makeup artists either :) 

Anyway, I'd have them apply it in the morning and I'd wear it through the day to see how it felt, and every single time my face itched at the slightest appearance of sweat.  I live in southern California, there's no way I could not sweat, and at first I was thinking maybe it was the brushes, but upon further research I think it's maybe a combination of the rough brushes, and the bismuth oxychloride perhaps?  So I've been looking at different mineral makeup that's bismuth oxychloride free. 

So far, I've tried Jane Iredale and it's been lovely, no problems and it's felt good all day long, but the makeup artist that tried it on me last week was having a hard time matching my face too.  I'm hispanic with light tan skin, but I think I'm a cool and have naturally rosy cheeks so while there were a lot of colors in my range, neither of us were exactly sure which to go with the two closest matches were latte and natural for those of you familiar with the range.

I was thinking about Mineral Hygienics, but have heard/read a lot of either love it or hate it about them, and then kept finding my way to the Everyday Minerals site too.  So anyway, in a roundabout way, have any of you tried and had success with any of the above-mentioned?

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Next up has been a bunch of crafting for new babies.

A friend had a preemie last week, so I've been sewing a couple blankets & knitting & crocheting a bunch of hats for him since they were completely unprepared and there were no complications up until that day.  Luckily, he was born at almost 33 weeks and was around 4.5 lbs so he'll only be in the hospital a couple of weeks.  It just seems really strange because the majority of babies that've been born lately amongst my family and friends seem to be preemies.

One of my cousins also had a baby on the 8th so I've been trying to make some stuff for her little cutie too.  I've been putting off going to see the baby because I wanted to give my cousin a chance to rest up a bit, and to get stuff made beforehand.

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Also, I've been intrigued lately with woodburning.  Too many whims I tell you! I did buy a woodburning tool at Joann's a couple of weeks ago to try out, and I've been burning a ton of little dolls for my little ones, but haven't thought until now to take any pictures.  I get a little obsessive when trying something new to find out absolutely as much as possible about whatever it is I'm obsessing about, and with the wood thing, it's been trying to find a natural finish.  I think I'm going to try a mixture of walnut oil and beeswax since no one I'd be giving the toys to has nut allergies.  I was thinking of just buying a salad bowl type of finish, but where's the fun in that- I like to making things harder for myself ;)

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Anyhoo, what's been sending you off on wild internet searches lately?

Corazoncitos, free amigurumi heart pattern (in 3 sizes!)

Here it is :) A very quick and easy amigurumi heart, crocheted in 3 sizes. 

It has it's own special page over on the right column of my blog.  If you click here, it'll take you to the page where you can click on a downloadable link to the free .pdf pattern.  Additionally, there's another little .pdf that has images of the materials used, and step by step images of how to join the tops of the hearts.

It's also available at Ravelry.

It's an excellent little amigurumi to make and give as a gift or to a loved one, and just in time for Valentine's Day.

Bamboletta dolls and a birthday crown

I'm seriously SO in love with these cuties right now. They're Bamboletta Dolls.

I ordered them a couple of months back as Christmas gifts for my own little cuties and just got them yesterday.  My husband thought I was a little bit nutty for buying them, but I've done some custom order dolls recently and that's covered them. 

Both my little ones love to sleep with something, and lately when we go check on then at night we've been finding books, duplos and some of my old Care Bears in her bed.  I'm hoping this'll be a much better and more comfortable substitute.  My little boy is always asking to sleep with one of my daughter's dolls, but I think one that resembles him is going to be a lot more fun, so I'm really hoping that these go over well.

I took pictures of them right now so that I can remember them in a clean state, of course they'll probably be very loved, but they may never look as good as they do now, so I had to document it.

Also, this is a felt crown that I probably should've taken more time on, but I wanted to make it and only had half an hour before my husband and little boy were getting back from church on Sunday so I had to be fast.  He wore this the rest of the day and made this mama even prouder of her little birthday boy.

Fiesta time!

It's done. And matted, and framed.  Now all that's left is giving it to my mom :)

I had to cut the mat myself since the frame was on the longish side and it's a bit wonky, but hopefully that's not noticed too much. It was my first time doing it, so I tried doing it first with some fiskars cutting tool thingy but that wasn't working so well.  I ended up going to Joann's to get a mat cutter, and that worked SO much better.

Last night, I'd finished the embroidery and ended up using pants hangers with the clips to stretch it by hanging it on opposite sides and letting the weight of one hanger pull out the wrinkles after I sprayed it with water. I didn't really want to cut down the fabric either, so what I ended up doing with that was pretty effective in stretching it taut also. I pulled the sides over the back of the frame and sewed it back and forth to stretch the linen across and iron it out.  Then, since that made it pretty messy I used some brown paper from a roll that we have laying around, to glue it to the back of the frame and cover up all the fabric and thread, and general messiness.

Look on for detailed shots, they're kinda dark because for one, I took them at night, and secondly, they're mounted against the dark tan of the back of the frame. Had I had it to do all over again, I would've either gotten thicker linen, or doubled up two pieces of fabric against each other because it was so sheer.

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What do you think? Now I can get back to crocheting!

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!