Christmas is coming.

Normally I hate doing Christmassy things before Thanksgiving. I hate the stores already playing Christmas music and the pre-pre-pre-Black Friday sales. I hate Thanksgiving getting the bums’ rush and the consumerist greed masking the thankfulness and gratefulness of the holiday season. Where’s the love, baby?

That said, I made this:

I wasn’t sure I’d have the time in a few weeks to get this done before the holidays started and I wanted to make sure the pattern made sense to me. I found these cute beads at Hobby Lobby and thought they were perfect for “ornaments.” The pattern is a new one by Planet June. I’m going to try it again with different beads and this cotton yarn that’s apparently Norwegian.

What can I say? I’d be ashamed of myself if it hadn’t turned out so cute.

I have an excuse.

I haven’t updated since July? Sorry. I have a good excuse though- it seems that I had a baby. Okay, so it was nearly nine weeks ago, but if you know anything about babies, they kinda like your attention. Pretty much all of the time. Oh, and I have a two-year-old who also likes attention pretty much all of the time. When I’m not taking care of one or chasing after the other, I’m reading or cleaning or trying not to lose my sanity. In the meantime (Ha! Hahaha!) I craft.

So, did you get your alphabet blocks done?

Why are you so mean? No, I didn’t. But thank you for pointing my failure out to me. I did, however, make these a little while ago: 

I think Colin Nissan said it best: Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash. The pattern can be found here. I doubled the pattern for the large one, improv-ed the vine and leaf and threw it all together.

The bottom of the large one didn’t come together very tightly despite a lot of tugging and swearing, so I dug through my button collection and came up with this simple wooden one to cover the hole. This way the stuffing won’t come out and it adds a nice little detail to the pumpkin. I like the large one much more than the small one- even though I followed the pattern to the letter, the stem came out a little awkward and tall.

In other news, I reopened my Etsy shop for the season. Go buy my stuff to help feed my kids!

Even dozen.

The blocks and I made up.

After a three day hiatus, I got back on the plastic canvas horse, remade the broken kitty (with whiskers, as I forgot them on one square last time, but it broke anyway so who the hell cares) and finished the C block. Then in quick succession I finish I for ice cream and ice cube, D for duck and drum, and A for apple and airplane.

I must confess: I’m a little sick of these blocks and I’m not even halfway done. Oh, and the baby will be here in 6 1/2 weeks. I’m so screwed.

Meanwhile, I’m still trucking along on the plain letter sides and I think I’ve figured out more on what I’d like to do with the number blocks. However, I’m getting into the letters that are more difficult to design. I started to sketch out X for x-ray but it made my brain hurt and I stopped. I pulled out other letters, but O for owl, L for lion and H for house have all fizzled out. I think I need another break to regroup.

It may be time to break out the baby blanket yarn and take a craft vacation.

Derailed.

Things were going great. I got another block designed and done, had a few more sketched out and was moving right along. I settled on “g for guitar” instead of grapes because 1) trying to do rounds on a square is a little difficult and 2) because I don’t have enough shades of purple to make it look right. I think the guitar turned out okay, although if I were to do it again I would shake the colors up a bit more than I did.

Then. Oh, and then. It makes me so furious, I nearly hurled the whole box of yarn and needles across the room. For “c” I designed a cat that looks a little like our kitty, Dinah. My son loves to play with her and I thought he would get a kick out of a block with her likeness on it. It wasn’t the best thing I’ve made so far, but he recognized it as a cat and was happy, so I left it.

Then this happened:

The plastic I was using for most of this project were squares my mom had cut out when I was 4 years old. It was much heavier and sturdier than this other plastic she dug out of her stash. I don’t know if it’s due to age or was just crappy to begin with, but as soon as I started to assemble the block, the edges started to crack and pull away. I thought I could get away with it for a bit, but after I finished stitching up the side I had about five or six broken squares and the entire side ripped away with little effort.

For now, the blocks are in time out. In the meantime, I’m trying to heal with chocolate and marathon sessions of Rollercoaster Tycoon. I realize Baby Girl will be here eight weeks from today, but I’m trying to remain positive that I will get this done and I will finish a blanket for her too. In the meantime, a park is demanding to be expanded.

7 down, 29 to go.

Baby Girl will be here in 10 weeks. I’m afraid I’m running out of time. However, I’ve been steadily plugging away at these blocks, stitching as fast as I can until my fingers cramp and the metallic needle smell won’t wash off.

I’m skipping around the alphabet as I assemble the pieces. Designing the sides with the upper and lowercase letters, as well as the sides with my own original designs is taking longer than I like. It’s all trial and error, but I’ve had some success the first time out of the box:

B is for ball (I freehanded the stitching), E is for egg, K is for key (which is modeled after the key in Cinderella, my son’s current favorite flick), M is for mittens, N is for needle, P is for pig (whom I happen to think is pretty damn cute) and S is for sun. I’m almost finished with G (for grapes or guitar, not sure which yet) and A (for what, I don’t know yet). I’ve got a pretty good idea of how I’d like the coordinating number blocks to look, but haven’t sketched them out yet. So far my son loves the blocks I’ve finished- he hurls them around the room and shakes them to hear the jingle bells I’ve suspended inside. I hope my baby girl loves them as much as he does.

I’ve been busy.

I haven’t just been laying on the couch, eating bon bons and watching my stories. I’ve been laying on the couch, eating Zingers and watching old CSI episodes on the laptop with yarn in my hands. Behold:

I’ve got duplicates of all the letters but V (I ran out of purple yarn) and I’ve started to design my own letter blocks.

I designed the baseball myself! (Yes, I am a little proud it turned out so nice.) I have no idea where the original pattern came from, but my mom had started some of these letters when I was about 4. She never finished the blocks, but kept all the pieces and the patterns. I’m hoping to finish these for my little girl before she gets here, but with six sides per block, plus original designs, plus my insane desire to design 10 number blocks as well, she’ll probably get them either by the time she’s 30 or she takes over and works on them for her own little girl. I hope not, but I’ve got less than 12 weeks until her arrival and I haven’t finished her baby blanket either.

On a related note, being 7+ months preggo in the summer sucks ass, especially when you’re fondling yarn. Thank God we have the a/c up and running. I think this project is going to require more Zingers.

My greatest foe.

Hello, purl.

In an effort to work towards my goal of learning to knit, I picked up some wool and needles at the local craft store. After a few hours, lots of swearing and two cramped wrists, I had something that looked akin to cat puke. Right now that “project” is in time-out. Then I dug out some of my old yarn and bigger needles with the hopes that I might actually see what the hell it was I’m supposed to be doing. After a few failed attempts and one dropped stitch that ended up with me ripping the whole damn thing back (and more swearing and lots of stabbing motions), I’ve so far made this:

Which really doesn’t look like much. It could be a skinny scarf, I suppose, but right now it’s just something to keep my hands busy while I watch TV. Who knows- it might turn out to be something when I get done. Right now it’s just practice. I also managed to complete one plastic canvas square for a set of alphabet blocks I’d like to make for New Baby. Somehow it took much long than I thought it would (about an hour and a half longer) and now I’m contemplating the other kajillion sides that are left to be stitched. I have 20 more weeks… That’s plenty of time, right?

I also played hookey from being a mom yesterday (which is pretty hard when you’re gestating, but I managed) and ran around KC with my mom getting into all sorts of trouble. After French apple pie and coffee at The Uppercrust, we ran around Pryde’s like two kitchen gadget-mad idiots and tried not to max out the credit cards. Then it was off to The Studio, where the very kind lady working tried to enable my fiber habit and failed when I told her that I would only buy more once I learned how to knit a sock and with the way things are going so far, it wasn’t looking very good for her store. She helped me pick out some lovely sage yarn and dpns to help me along. Now I just have to sit down with my friend who promised sock lessons and DO IT.

Maybe the magic sock knitting faerie will visit me and install the magic that it takes into my hands so that they communicate to each other and stop trying to attack the yarn like I’m hooking it instead?

Wish me luck.

Sometimes I make stuff.

You know, instead of just insisting that I do and then making excuses as to why I haven’t. Behold:

A really phallic carrot! I don’t know how the creator of the pattern crocheted hers so tightly, but mine came out twice the projected height despite using a hook one size smaller. I don’t get it, but I think it still turned out cute.

Bunny! I made this set for my niece for Easter. She’s only four months old, but I hope some day she’ll appreciate all the time, effort and swearing I put into each stitch.

Happy Easter, everyone.

Excuses.

So, it’s April. Shit. I promised myself everyday for the last week I was going to post something before March was up. Argh.

In my defense, I’m still growing a person. That takes a lot of energy and time and my other kid doesn’t seem to understand that Mommy just wants to sleep on the couch all day and wake up in September. Also, beyond all reasonable sanity, we adopted two puppies. TWO. I didn’t even want one dog, and yet a few weeks ago I woke up, visited a friend and ended up taking TWO dogs home.

Meet Ruby and Apollo. Could you say no to a face like Ruby’s? Or look deep into Apollo’s clear blue eyes and not feel a little tug at your heart? I swear, between the raging preggo hormones and my love of baby animals, I had no chance. Good thing my husband likes to humor me and agreed that we could adopt both. I’m also grateful he talked me out of adopting the third sibling since that would have been TOO MUCH but my god, she was a cutie too.

Between running after my one fur-less child and two new furballs, I’ve been itching to craft. Easter is coming up shortly (too shortly, I might add) and I need to make something for my new niece. I ordered this pattern, so hopefully I can get it done before we go out of town for the holiday. That, and I’m out of the plastic eyes for my amigurumi projects (which irks me to no end) and Hobby Lobby no longer carries them. I ordered some online, but am worried they won’t get here quick enough, so I might have to do a craft search at Michaels or possibly JoAnns. Feh. I haven’t had too much luck in past craft pursuits and don’t really have the energy to run all over town just for some damn plastic eyes.

It just dawned on me that my life used to be much cooler.

I’m still working on the blanket for New Baby. And by “working on” I mean I occasionally think about digging it out of the bag but read a book or go to sleep instead. I also received another excellent tin of buttons from my mom as well as a bunch of rug yarn and plastic canvas from about 20 years ago. While most people sneer at the thought of using plastic canvas, I’m super excited to make alphabet building blocks for New Baby. Mom already has a pattern for them and completed quite a few sides, but I’m thinking of designing my own. Again, this takes energy, but I’m hopeful the second trimester energy spike will arrive any day now.

Pictures soon, hopefully once the battery recharges and my Nikon stops acting like a spoiled brat.

The world’s best apple pie.

Behold.

I’ve made this pie several times before, but whatever magic I baked into it this time made it taste even better. Two days and several heavenly sighes later, it was gone. Recipe can be found here.