Inspiration in a Box (or Two)

We never used to do much online shopping, but you know what? I think we’re getting the hang of it. I haven’t had any projects that I’m really passionate about lately, I’ve just been doing a little busy work (although I stumbled across something fun that I’m really enjoying now - but we’ll talk about that when it’s finished) but now that I’ve gotten my mail I’ve got so many fun options that I’m barely hanging onto my project to get it finished before whooshing off to something else. I ordered my two packages about a week apart, but they showed up at the post office the same day! (Maybe they caught the same ride over?) The first was a package from Amazon that I bought as a reward for meeting a personal goal:

That’s the Harmony Guide to Basic Crochet Stitches, the Harmony Guide to Lace and Eyelets (that would be knitting), and Crochet Me: Designs to Fuel the Crochet Revolution. I am really, really excited about these. I finally caved (I’d been resisting because I almost never actually use patterns, not because I didn’t want the book) and ordered the Crochet Me book after I saw someone make the Baby Doll Dress (scroll down almost to the bottom, or just Ctrl+F Baby Doll) as a shirt. I don’t know about you, but I’m not much of a babydoll dress fan (especially one that’s crocheted…out of worsted weight yarn…) but as a top it is really cute. Let’s see if I ever make it.

The stitch dictionaries are just as exciting! I’ve already paged through them each twice and I’ve gotten too many new ideas to keep track of. Just the thought of designs I could make with this stitch or that - it’s so inspiring, and I can’t wait until I’m done with my current project so that I can attack something new with a clean conscience.

In the second package I found something very special:

It’s a brand-new wooden swift! It is so beautiful. I love it. (My children can never, never, never know that I have this, or where I am keeping it. They would break it, and I would cry.) I bought it from JoAnn’s online store when they sent out that 40% off coupon. What a deal! Now it will be so much easier for me to use my Gloss, and my Cascade 220, and that awesome yarn I bought in Colorado - and dyeing will be less hassle, and maybe now that I don’t have to keep it over my knees or around a baby gate, I’ll unravel a few more sweaters! I am jumping up and down over this. I haven’t gotten a ball-winder yet, but I don’t mind so much winding it by hand as long as I don’t have the tangles and snarling problems to contend with. I can’t wait to try this out too.

Then (because I was already ordering a package from JoAnn’s and paying for postage, and NOT adding a little something else would just have been wasteful) I ordered a little bit of yarn.

It’s TLC Cotton Plus (about which I have heard good things) and it was on sale for $2.00 a skein. That’s enough to make two large projects. YAY! I’m leaving them in their protective little baggies until I decide what to do with them - except, of course, the two little skeins that are in a bag that’s only tied, not sealed.

So. Darn. Gorgeous. I haven’t decided what to do with them yet: I may make my Baby Doll Top with the Tan, who knows? I’m also thinking that I might make the Ruffled Surplice from Interweave Knits with the Kiwi. You may recall that I bought the magazine with the pattern and some yarn for it last fall at Kid n Ewe, but it looks like (big surprise) the yarn I bought is the wrong weight. Really the wrong weight. (I am not so awesome at gauging yarn weights.) So, now I have 1200 yards of gorgeous wool/silk with no pattern attached, and a lovely summery pattern with no yarn attached, and a bunch of new, cotton-blend yarn just begging to be used.

Now that I’ve written it out, I think I will work through at least one pattern (though the urge to design something with my new yarn is strong) as a bit of a vacation. I can’t wait to play with my new toys! If only I could get that pesky project finished…

Long Weekends are Long on Fun

How’s that for a cheesy title? Still: this weekend we went and had some serious fun. In particular, on Monday we went out into Japan - the farthest from base I’ve been yet - to a little town where the people we asked weren’t sure they had an ATM. Why, you may ask?

Why, for an amateur Drifting Day, of course! (Don’t worry, Mom - Greg didn’t take our car out. Although he could have, for 5,000 yen!) Nothing says a good time like a dozen souped-up hobby cars on a go-cart track. Apparently drifting really is big in Japan, and it’s not just a construct of Hollywood marketing. And I have to tell you, watching it is really, really cool. I’ve never seen cars move like that. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty rough on the cars:

Seen here is one car in the process of losing its bumper. The driver just pulled off the track, took it off, and went right back to drifting. He wasn’t the only one to lose bits of his car, either (some lost hoods, front bumpers, stuff like that) but I think that was the only time something fell off and dragged while the car was on the track! We had a friend drifting that day, and he broke his fuel pump and had to be pushed off. (He quickly replaced it so he could drift some more.) Everyone was changing their tires something like twice an hour, too - one of the key elements of drifting is the burnout - and every time a car was disabled they had to clear the track and get it off before the drifting could resume.

Interestingly, they also cleared the track at lunchtime to comply with a peculiar noise ordinance: apparently there’s a local Onsen that doesn’t want to hear the noise during lunch when people come there to relax. We would have stopped anyway - stormclouds rolled in at about that time (and I mean that literally - the wind started blowing and we watched thick white fog roll over the top of the pine forest, sink down and spread across the ground) and it started raining, hard. We ran for the cars and went into town for lunch. After the rain died down, they started drifting again.

It’s really difficult to convey drifting through still photographs, but we sure took enough of them trying. They’re having another drift day in July, and we’ll probably head down to see it again. It was really a fun and interesting experience!

Oh, and I’m really sorry that the links are so hard to pick out - I haven’t finished tweaking the new blog scheme yet. Lots to do, lots to do! Also, several packages from several online orders across several weeks all converged on our PO Box today, and so tomorrow if I have time to take some pictures I will have a lot of fun things to show off. See you!

Heeey, I’m up late!

It’s nearly lunchtime in the States, which can only mean one thing: I am up waaaay too late. I’ve been working on my site, which is coming along nicely. It’s still in pieces - some pages have been converted over to the new format, and some have not - but hey! I’m doing all of this myself in between being a mom and a wife and all the crocheting that I’m still doing.

I actually have something to show you today:

I made a pair of wristwarmers! They’re a combination of knitting and crochet (and I have to say, I think I’ll do that more often. There’s intriguing potential in that mix) and they were fast and fun. I like them! The pattern is very simple and I should have it up this weekend - hopefully on a new-format page!

At any rate, I really need to get to bed. Morning comes early, as my parents used to say! Earlier here than there, but that’s beside the point.

Another Little Update

You can now purchase all of my toy patterns as a bundle. (Click here!) It includes Chaco, the Jungle Bugs, Lloopy Llama, Silly Monkey, and the Scarlet Macaw Hand Puppet. I’m offering more than 10% off their collective price (you save $3.00). I hope you enjoy!

Hang on to Your Hats

Well, with the preview page up and the Macaw pattern finished, I had a sudden urge to just relax with my yarn for a little while. (Sometimes I feel like I spend more time running my websites about crocheting than actually crocheting.) The result? A lot of fun and, surprisingly, a lot of productivity. I got into this because I love it, after all, and of the things I’ve done, my favorites are the ones I’ve loved doing. So let’s work backwards, shall we? I’ll show you what I’ve been doing.

Sunday night I made some strawberries. I actually started - and finished - them one night after the boys had gone to bed. I was woken the next morning by Max saying, “Look, Mommy, strawberries!” He had put all of them in a little plastic bucket he usually uses to tote around Hot Wheels and carried them from room to room, occasionally opening it to take one out and grin at it. Now, a few days later, they’re still sharing bucket space with Hot Wheels - an indication of their favored status. If you like strawberries, you can swing over to Inner Child Crochet and download the pattern. It’s free!

Friday night Greg needed to stay up to make some stateside phone calls. I had already tied up my loose ends for the day and was feeling bored when I remembered a ridiculously lovely hat pattern I’d seen on Ravelry and wanted to make. (If you can’t access the Ravelry link, don’t be fooled: it’s much prettier than the image on the pattern page would suggest.) Anyway, I decided to make one, grabbed some yarn, and two hours later - seriously, two hours - I had a new hat.

Taking a picture of your own head is a special challenge. I modified the pattern based on notes others had made that it was way, way too large when worked as directed. Perhaps the designer has chronically tight gauge, or used a yarn thinner than she had thought? Who knows. I eliminated one set of increases (working straight after Round 9), worked until it was almost long enough, and then worked the band until the hat was the length I wanted. Even with fewer increases, this hat is quite roomy. I can’t imagine anyone needing to size it up. But it’s pretty! And it was fast! It was fun working with post stitches again, too. I haven’t done that for a while.

In other news, I bought a head mannequin.

Nothing fancy, just sytrofoam, but they had it at the hundred yen store for 600 yen and I said to myself, ‘I could use something like that!’ She’s already proven useful, look - here she is modeling the results of my experiments with that bumpy brown and red acrylic I bought.

That helps us get around that pesky self photography issue, eh? I can’t say I’m thrilled with the results of my experimentation, although I did wing it and I made the hat flat on two needles (I haven’t done that before). Still, actually working with the yarn was fun. I had wanted to crochet it, but I found that even my trusty N hook - the largest in my arsenal - was unable to cope with the thick raccoon-tail sections that connected the thin parts. The texture made it fun to use, but the results are less than stellar. Meh. (By the way, I have since purchased a Q hook. Clearly I needed one…)

I’m having a fun week, though, and I can’t wait to see what pops up next!

This is Not a Drill!

That’s right, the pattern for the Scarlet Macaw Hand Puppet is now finished and up and available! If you’re so inclined, you can buy it! (PS: All those links go to the same page.)

Just as a heads up, when I redo the rest of the site, I’m going to adjust (read: increase) the price of some patterns. I haven’t decided which/how much yet, but if there’s something with a low price tag you’ve been eyeing for a while, it might behoove you to pick it up soon.

Dying of Curiosity?

Remember I mentioned a new site format? The preview is ready, although the page has been completed in an entirely different style, at great expense and at the last minute. (Haha!) If you want to catch the preview of the new format, you can see the sample page here. Please note that this is not a final page, so it is still subject to change and many of the links are not yet live. In addition you may notice that although there is a thumbnail for the Scarlet Macaw, there is as of yet no page: I’m working on it. On the other hand, I’m quite pleased with the layout (it doesn’t break, even when I view it on my laptop’s tiny screen). You’d have to shrink your browser window by a lot to mess it up, but it expands gracefully to fill even quite a large monitor. The pop-out menu should allow for quicker and more useful pattern browsing. I also did some fantastically complicated (for me) SQL/PHP, of which I am ridiculously proud. (Psst, Dad - the thumbnails in the main section are completely echoed! I won’t ever have to rewrite my pages just because I added patterns!)

All in all, I’m well pleased with the improved functionality the redesign offers, the increased flexibility the SQL provides, the more subdued color scheme (plus it’s green - I love green even more than autumn leaves) and the fluid layout. I’m not 100% on a few things - the box at the bottom of the center column, for one thing. I feel like something should be there, but I’m not sure what yet. Same goes for the blog excerpt. I want to put something there (besides more ads, although of course I could) but I’m still iffy on what belongs. I would value feedback, opinions and ideas from anyone - whether you like what I’ve done with the place or not - because totally redoing the all of the pages on the site is going to be a long and involved process and I want to make it the best I can.

Now, for something completely different:

The boys were digging around in a bucket of stuffed animals today and pulled out my old teddy bear! I remember when I was a child (I’m not sure how old), I realized that I didn’t have any stuffed animals. For some reason this disturbed me, and I raised the issue with my parents. They bought me this bear in response. When I went to college, I decided he needed a sweater, and realized he had no name! I named him Sam (for the LotR character) and I made him his sweater. Since I’ve been married he’s gotten stuffed in with the kids’ toys and buried, but I thought I’d document him while he’s up for air.

Who knows? He may stay out a while. Charlie really seemed to like him.