Owlishly

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?

Back so soon?

Why yes, yes I am :)

I know, I'm horrible at blogging this year.  I blame it on a multitude of things that have happened since this summer that I have no control over and realizing how horribly I deal with them.

I did have a good reason for not coming back as soon as I wanted.  I was sicker than a dog last week.  I wrote that post and then the next day couldn't get out of bed.  And then didn't get out of bed for 2 additional days after that.  The flu really kicked my butt this year, and it's so nice that it happened when I have a million things to do.

Seriously, so many of you are better people than I am.  I don't know how you manage to run households, make gifts, get ready for guests, and just keep up with life in general! I was not even close to thinking straight last week, and I'm am so embarrassingly far behind on emails, but I'm trying very hard to make sure that pattern purchases get sent within the 24 hour window I've given myself. 

I have two dolls that I'm almost finished with, but I have no idea when I'm going to be able to type up/design the pattern- one is a panda girl and the other one is a winter themed girl.

So instead of dwelling on that and the other 32 million things I need to do, I'll share the two little knitting projects that I finished last month for my daughter's dolls- a sweater for the girl and a sweater vest for the boy.

Eventually I'll work my way up to knitting for bigger bodies, but it's nice to start small. (more details are at flickr & I'll add them to Ravelry soon)

I should probably start cataloging my accomplishments more often than talking about what I haven't done/need to do.  So I will share that I've finally saved my computer's guts to an external hard drive that I bought months ago, but never took out of the package.  I've also organized my desktop, deleted a bunch of useless photographs cluttering iphoto, reorganized my music on itunes and caught up on all the software updates I needed to get to. 

I also cleaned out the cupboard underneath the kitchen sink- I'm super sensitive to chemicals and when we moved 6 years ago the woman who came and cleaned the house for us left a box under there for me that I never opened... until 2 nights ago.  Got rid of that sucker, and breathed a big sigh of relief!

My brother-in-law and mother-in-law will be flying in for a visit this Saturday and will be here until Tuesday so I don't know how soon I'll be back before their visit.  Since this month is my birthday month though, I was going to have another pattern sale- it'll probably only run for a week, maybe like next week because we're going to be gone on my actual birthday.  We're stopping in at Disneyland on the 29th for a couple of woo-hoo-it's-my-birthday rides before heading down to the beach to camp for the week.  I love camping at the beach around my birthday- it's my absolute favorite type of beach weather :)

Well, that post was all over the place, but I always seem to be needing to play catch-up when I post lately :)

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 :)

Nostalgia colorways

I think I'm fairly consistent in professing my love for Malabrigo, so I won't go on and on, but I did make the Noble Cowl in Malabrigo Nostalgia. Some of my favorite colors make up this colorways, and I figured that it'd be a good one to use for my first foray into knitting a lace pattern.

I'll probably take even more pictures of it when it's been steamed and blocked- I love these colors so much!

Also, I'm trying a new frame around my pictures, I was getting tired of the rounded edges.  I think I like the way it looks. But I'm not sure. What do you think?

Practice, practice, practice

And I'm so wishy washy that every couple of days I keep casting on new projects without finishing the ones I've already started. 

The apple green malabrigo worsted weight cowl is finished, it's my sister's "she already knows about it, and has tried it on" Christmas present.

This malabrigo sock yarn cowl is so not done. This one's mine though, the colorway is solis, and I love how soft and squishy it is.

This little hat is my niece's, and it's in Cascade 220 Quatro, I can't remember the color though, the number is 9438.  I just have to finish it up a bit with the weaving in the ends, and I'm going to have to shorten the ties, my sister would prefer them above the baby's waist ;)

This last picture is a practice piece/doll blanket for my little girl's doll crib.  As with everything for her, she wants it in "pink, please!", so it's Lily Sugar'n Cream in Hot Pink.  I started it on our drive up to Lake Arrowhead this afternoon. 

When I was little I had absolutely no problem being in the car while we went up the mountain, but now that I have kids, I'm super nervous, but I'm glad to say that knitting keeps me distracted while not making me naseaous. I know you wanted to know that little gem.

The nice thing is that I haven't bought any new yarn, all of it is yarn that I've had on hand because I was just taken with it, as in the case with the malabrigo, or because I had plans for something else that fell through like the other two.

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!

Knitting- Check!

Finally :)

I'd decided it was finally time to learn, so last week I ordered the Learn the Continental Style of Knitting dvd from Knitting Korner and it came today in the mail.  I popped it in while the little ones were playing with their playmobil toys and somehow it just clicked. 

I'm so surprised, pleasantly, but still very surprised.  Especially since the other couple of times I attempted it was a bust and I just had a hard time wrapping my head around what I was trying to do. I obviously haven't done very much, but it makes complete sense today.

Neat.