Christmas at Home

Pretty Pony Gal waiting for Grandma to arrive so she can start

Superboy :)

These ocean animal pillows were by far their favorite things. They have taken them everywhere. So simple, yet so loved.

Superboy wanted a grey squirrel. I crocheted him one, and the crocheting looks great, but  I do not do any sort of embroidery work, so just trying to a face on the little bugger proved aggravating. You can see it is a bit odd, but he loved it, anyway. He needed a squirrel for his collection of Wild Kratt's inspired animals.

Superboy picked this sweater out at the thrift store for Pony Gal and she loved it.

Around Halloween, Superboy had asked for a cheetah costume. We don't do Halloween, but I do let the kids play with costumes all year round. I thought with it being near Halloween I could find him something, but all I found was a super cheap tiger get up. He went with it, but still wanted something cheetah (he loves cheetahs), so at JoAnn's Black Friday sale, the animals print stuff was marked down. I took the tiger mask and used it to make cheetah masks for both the kids. They are heads and "tails" (hee hee) better than the tiger ones.

The Last Week...

We got our new Sleep Number Bed:

 

 

Went to run some errands and ran into a car show:

 

 

 

Finally experienced garlic scapes (my hardneck garlic never "scaped" last year and this was my first year planting a softneck variety. YUM!):

 

Finally found a use for that extra long, extra wide hallway in the basement and a permanent, proper home for my ever growing book collection (putting in the shelves will be a several day task, though, since the home stores keep running out of materials):

 

Me at 6 months. I made this skirt using a combination of tutorials- Here for the tiered skirt formula and Here to adapt it to a maternity skirt (though the band can easily be folded down for use at non-preggo times). Fabric is a clearance buy from Hancocks and the top knit is old stuff I had kept of Grandma Vivian's:

I plan on making several more of these as they are, by far, along with a pair of gaucho pants with a similar style band I picked up at a garage sale, the most comfortable maternity items I own for the lower half. Think I'll do the A-line version today.

Dye Works

My favorite way to save much loved clothes...new life with dye.

Crocheting Behind the Scenes: Earflap Hat

I haven't been a very good craft poster or Raveler as of late. I forget to load pictures, then I forget that I have loaded the pictures, then I run out of time to post pictures, and on and on. But, I have nano seconds this morning, so I am catching up. This is Pony Gal modeling a hat I crocheting for my cousin's daughter's birthday. It is in Yarn Love wool yarn that a good friend, Sarah D. gave me recently. It came together superfast, though, the pattern had the hat coming out all wavy-too many increases-so I fixed that. It is super soft and tres cute.

Yarn share

So I originally got only a half share, but have an email out to see about adding another half for a full, because this, is love. I can't wait to start on the jumper for me. Yes, me. I am also starting socks from some gorgeous yarn I got at Charity's a week or so back. Anyway, here is the photo of the yarn, as well as the super thoughtful picture card of the ewe who "donated" the wool.

Christmas gifts

My husband always agonizes over what to get me each year. I have had no clue what I want (besides my tattoo which was shot down, birthday maybe?;)) Anyway, thanks to the great csa Blue Gate Farm drawing it to my attention, I know what I want. A neighbor of theirs recently started a yarn/roving csa. Oh. my. goodness. That's what I want. Beautiful, local yarn delivered to my door every 6-8 weeks for a year. Yup. I'm in. I am giddy at the thought. Check it out!

Crochet vs knitting

I bought a book the other day on how to teach yourself to knit. I went through, and think I pretty much was getting the hang of it. I love the way knit things look when you are done. But, as it turns out, I don't like to knit. My wrists hurt sooo bad. So, I will stick with my crocheting. I think I will probably look into a Tunisian stitch, though, as it looks a lot like knitting. I will have to track down some hooks and instructions, though. In the meantime, I love to crochet, and continue to try new things all the time. I am in the process of looking for ideas for next year's Christmas gifts. Crochet comes together a lot faster than knitting, from my experience, so far, but it still takes a while to finish some projects. And I like to collect yarn during the year. My fiber stash is starting to look like my fabric stash;)