The Owl Hat

So it seems like owls are huge right now, owl fabric, owl hats... and for whatever reason I really like them. Owls and cuckoo clocks and russian nesting dolls. =) That's another blog post though. So after seeing a bajillion owl hats, I finally decided Kate needed one too.



I got her to model it by playing a game of peekaboo. =)





For anyone who's interested, I knit this on size 11 circular needles so it was super fast, then just whipstitched the top shut. The eyes are just crocheted circles, the green is the same bulky yarn so that's a two round circle, the white is the soft Caron yarn and that's a three round circle, and the black is some kind of thick embroidery floss and it's two rounds, too. I would have just used Caron black but I didn't have any. =) The beak is out of Caron bright and just embroidered on there. The hardest part was sewing on the eyes, next time I'll do that before I whipstitch it shut. It was hard to get my hands up in there.

Tate Farms 2010

So we went to Tate Farms on Columbus day and I FORGOT MY CAMERA. I had it around my neck, decided to change shirts and took it off placing it on the bed, and thought "I'm going to forget that right there." And sure enough, I did. GRRR. So the only way I was even SLIGHTLY ok while we were there is I promised myself we would come back, camera in tow. And I'd even order new shirts for the kids so the pictures would be particularly cute. Ha, ha.

We went with friends of ours both times, and miraculously the first time our friend had her own camera. Some of the best pictures were from the first time.

They have a firetruck all fixed up, and both kids loved it.



Kate apparently likes anything she can drive. =)



Dash was just a little too cool for his own good. =)



In the house of pumpkins...





Buried in corn...





Playing on the rides...



After the corn bin, Dash went through a hay maze, and at the end of it he said "I have corn in my shoe." So John took off his shoe...



I'll say.

Tackling the giant tire pile...



This slide is two stories tall. Dash is fearless. At least towards giant slides. He's terrified of baths. =)



I could not get Kate to stand still to save me life. Here she is taking off. =)



This one's better, it's from the first trip...



Driving the tractor...



We all had so much fun. I love what they do out there. TONS for the kids to do, 10 bucks to get in, pumpkins are cheap... Just a great time for what you pay.

Hope you all have a Happy Halloween!

Yarnigans

So every once in a while I get on a knitting or crochet kick. A good friend of mine had a baby and I took some pictures for her, and decided to make a few wonky hats to use for the pictures. And one thing led to another and almost our whole family has new hats now (sorry John, I'm working on it), Kate has a new ballerina, Dash has a new fish and I came across a toy I made him a while ago and decided more of the same needed to be made of those too. =)

While we were in North Carolina, we met up with some friends and she reminded me that Amigurumi is awesome and I know how to do it. =) I haven't done it in a while but Dash has an obsession with fish lately and I thought I might as well make him a fish toy. Amigurumi just means crocheted toy in Japanese and you can find a bajillion patterns all over the web. So if you hate yarny stuff, just skip on over this post. =)

First up is Dash's fish hat. I found this pattern on knitty - here



Oh and I have a horrible tendency to not quite finish things. Sorry. =) This guy still needs pupils. =)

It's WAY long, and the mouth is what goes over Dash's head... and you can pull it down and suddenly it looks like a fish ate your head. Dash digs it.

Here's another shot where you can see his gigantic mouth. I thought there was no way this was going to fit when I started knitting it, but it does. =)



This little guy is one of my favorites, I think Dash thinks the "curly" tail makes it too girly. I don't care, she's cute. =)



That pattern is here.

This guy is wicked cool, I made him from the Itty Bitty Toys book by Susan B. Anderson. She rocks. She has a new series in a knitting magazine coming out with these reversible toys, I can't wait to make the hedgehog/squirrel.

This guy starts out as an egg...



and turns into a bird. =) Albeit a bird with a missing beak. It's coming, I promise.



Her blog is here.

Next is Brisa the ballerina. She's gorgeous, at least when the designer made her she was gorgeous. Mine looks a little psychotic. =) I think I'm going to redo her eyes. I don't want to do the plastic eyes because she's for Kate, but I think she looks a little nuts with these big ol black eyes. I'll post a picture when I fix her. =)



And her super cool hair. What a nifty technique.



The girl who designed her goes by Owlishly on everything, her patterns are on artfire and Etsy and she has a blog as well. Here's her artfire store...

And her blog.

I really, really love that hula girl. And all of her stuff, really. Super cute.

And crazy eyes or not, Kate digs her. =)



I'll try and post more that I work on, I always have something going on. Right now it's a quilt, and I LOVE the fabric so I can't wait to work on it. I just can't find any time. =) It's not like I can take my sewing machine to bed and work on it while the kids are asleep. I can crochet while I'm piled up watching TV though so that's what usually gets done around my house. When I finish that quilt, I'll post pics of that too.

Ten on Tuesday

1. I should be working =)

2. We took an impromptu trip to Durham, NC this weekend, we went to see the Alabama game. I was looking at the schedule and looked at stubhub to see what ticket prices were and realized it was probably the only Alabama game where we could afford tickets. =)

3. It was Dash's first game, and even though my Auburn heart is crying a little, he looked awfully cute.



4. While John and Dash were at the game, Kate and I walked through the Sarah P. Duke Memorial gardens. They were so beautiful. I'm jealous all the Duke students get to lounge around in these gardens when they aren't in class. We found this huge butterfly on some Lantana and stopped to take a pic.



5. Duke's campus is gorgeous, all the buildings are huge and gothic and beautiful. I was looking for the chapel and saw this big pretty building and thought "is this it?" but I didn't want to ask anyone and look like an idiot. Then I turned the corner and saw this sucker...



And realized that no, that wasn't it. This chapel is huge!! There was a wedding there when we were there (right smack dab in the middle of the Alabama game, you know the groom didn't pick the date). What a lucky bride.

6. Dash and I got my mom a hummingbird feeder for Mother's Day. She subscribes to Birds and Blooms and in there they suggested putting a red ribbon on each feeder, and that the birds would just come up to it while you were holding it. Can you believe that? I couldn't either.



How cool.

7. Here's a video, too, it reminds me of dance with the hummingbirds or something. =)

8. I tried my hand at Applique the other day, I was impressed with how easy it was. I was SUPER intimidated. I found a website though that walks you through it step by step (same site that showed me how to quilt) and thought it didn't look that bad. Here's my finished quilt square, one of my online friends has been diagnosed with cancer and all of the girls are putting a quilt together for her. She has four daughters, all blond beauties, so I came up with this design.



9. Seriously, that was easy. I drew out my pattern on some double sided fusing, temporarily stuck it to the fabric and cut it out, then stuck it to the base fabric and ironed it on and that made it a permanent bond. The sewing is just to keep the edges from fraying, but those suckers are stuck on there when you sew. Then it was just a matter of following the lines, which was hard around the curves but I used the manual dial a lot and turned it every few stitches and it worked really well. Then I just embroidered the faces on.

10. I have a four pillow designs from Don't Look Now, that's next on the agenda for Kate. And here's the tutorial on how to do the applique, I know a bunch of ya'll are crafty. =)

Frog Lifecycle...

As I mentioned yesterday, we had some tadpoles hatch in our swimming pool. =) Chlorine, shmorine, although from these pictures you can tell there wasn't much chlorine in there. =) By the time we saw them, they were pretty big, we only came across them probably 2 weeks ago and they're already turning into frogs. So here is the froggy lifecyle, as witnessed by the Dixons. =)

This is how big they were when we found them.



Seriously, it was like some scene out of probably Roz's worst nightmare since she hates frogs. =) There were TONS of them swimming all over the place. Dash thought they were awesome.

I think this was taken early last week, maybe late the week before that. They started sprouting legs...



This is what our pool looks like now, half of these suckers, full frogs but with their tails still out, and the other half are frogs. They climb up the side of the pool and hop to freedom, and every morning we go out there and see how many we have left. This morning we probably had 20 tadpoles left and there were probably 20 frogs on the side of the pool.



And finally...



(Excuse the color, it was dark out and I was just trying to grab a shot before Dash brought him in the house. I might be a tough girlie girl but I'm still a girly girl. I don't think I could handle a frog in my house.

This is from a few days ago, John got two of them in his hand...



You would think with all those frogs we would have a ton of them in the yard but either we don't or they're hiding. We even have a pond, and I don't see any in there. Of course the pond is covered with hyacinths and a lily pad, so they have plenty of places to hide.

I'm going to miss these little guys when they're gone for good, we've had a good time watching them. =)

The Fair

We went to the fair in our area Thursday night. They had a petting zoo and Dash is all about some animals, so we'd thought he'd have fun. Turns out Dash was all about EVERYTHING, even the giant slide. He won some prizes, fed some goats, and went on a few rides, most by himself, but some with John. We had a great time.



This was the oddest petting zoo I've ever seen. They had turtles, a porcupine, an alpaca, a baby deer... just odd things you usually don't see at petting zoos.



I don't know how I got to be 30 and didn't realize porcupines were so freaking big.



Kate had a lot of fun, too, Dash won two balls and she got to play with one, and she just enjoyed taking in the sights. And being cute. =)



Dash on the boat ride...



I don't know if I mentioned this on here... We have a swimming pool, just a cheapo metal frame one that we put up and take down each year, and this year it sprung a leak. John couldn't find it, the water got WAY low, and after some rain it got kind of wuggy. Dash wasn't super interested anymore so we just let it go. I came home from work one day and John told me to go out there and look in the pool and when I did, there were 100 tadpoles in it. I guess a momma frog got in there and thought it would be a good spot to have some babies. Dash has had a BLAST watching them turn into frogs, and so have I. I need to do a post on the whole thing, everytime I go out there they're further along and I grab a few pictures. About 75% of them have turned into frogs now and are climbing up the side of the pool and jumping off to their new life. I'm going to miss them when they're gone, they've been fun to watch.

Here's a picture I took last week, when I noticed they had sprouted legs...



And for good measure, here's a pic of our friendly outdoor hummingbird. We have three that visit our feeder and they have no problem with me coming out there and taking pictures of them. =)

One on Wednesday

My conversation with Dash last week:

Me: Dash, can you name some of the planets?
Dash: Um.... uh....
Me: What planet to we live on?
Dash: Uh... Earth!!
Me: Good job buddy! Can you name some other planets?
Dash: Uh... who lives on Penis?
Me: (laughing) you mean Venus??

The End. =)