Peach and Watermelon Festivals

Peach Festival is this weekend. I am looking forward to it, but at the same time I am kind of dreading it, because I know it's going to be like 100 degrees out. We have been eating peaches everyday for the past few days, because my husband's mother took my daughter out peach picking the other day. So I probably won't be stuffing myself with peaches at the festival this year. However, I may try something if it looks interesting.

The Peach Festival has me thinking more about the upcoming Watermelon Festival more than anything though. That was a deadline I set for myself and my little business. I wanted to get a table and sell some of my handmade crafts, as well as have a portfolio of my artwork to show people in case they wanted to commission any work from me. I have been making caricatures and portraits already, but I also do graphic design and digital art. Not to mention my jewelry, hair clips, and other assorted crafts.

Needless to say, I feel like I am all over the place and I either need to focus on less or I need to separate these into smaller categories of one larger company. I think I will do the latter, because one company making jewelry or drawing portraits will not do well where I live. I know I would get bored and lose my drive very quickly when things get slow too. Overall, I think this coming week I need to get my butt in gear and start making products, put the money down for a table, and determine how I will organize this business.

Tomatoes from Soda Bottles

I was looking around the internet today and I came across a pretty cool tutorial on how to make something like the Topsy Turvy. I'm sure you've seen the commercials on tv about the upside-down tomato plant hanger. Well this is pretty much the same thing only you make if with recycled elements.

It's pretty cool, and now I have another project to add to my ever-growing list of things I would like to make. Check out the process here. It can be found at instructables.com, which is a really great site, and if you've never been to it, you're missing out.

Here's another person's take on the Topsy Turvy. It's a little more stylish and it won't drip all over the place. I think this would be a good option for someone in the city, or someone who has a small but stylish garden. Personally, I like the cheap one made from soda bottles. I also love to reuse things I already have, and I think I would have to buy more items for the second project. Still, it's pretty cool, and I wanted to add it just to show the variations on the same idea.

A Movie Before Bedtime

Every so often, before bedtime we all watch a movie. Usually it's something animated like Disney, Pixar, or something by Hayao Miyazaki. A few nights ago I put on "Howl's Moving Castle". It's a classic. Every time I watch it I like it more, because it's so layered. Like an onion, no wait that's Shrek. My daughter seemed to like it too. It's hard for her to understand it though. She doesn't quite get that the grandma and the young girl are the same person. Still, she enjoyed the movie.

When we go out to Walmart, one of our favorite destinations, well there isn't much to choose from, we are always on the lookout for new movies to add to our collection of dvds. So, the other day we bought the animated flick, Igor. I had remembered seeing copmmercials for it when it was coming out in theaters, but my daughter was too young then for me to take her to it. (She just recently went to her first movie "Up" with her Nanny)

Anyway, we bought Igor and I think it's a cute movie. My daughter was a little scared, at the case. She said she didn't want to watch a monster movie. I had to reassure her that it was a funny monster movie and that she would like it. I think she liked it, I know I did. What did I like so much about it? Hmmm. It's hard for me to figure out exactly why I liked it, maybe because it's not like any other animated movie I've seen directed towards kids. There were times when I thought, "Oh, this is kind of twisted," but at the same time it was funny. It had a good, uplifting ending, which is always nice in a kids movie. I tend to throw up a little in my mouth if it's too cheesy or romantic, you know with the sunset in the background, and they live happily ever after. This wasn't that.

Good movies, always enjoyable!

New Dolly

I crocheted a new doll for my daughter these past few days. I never really new how to make doll hair, so I was a bit disappointed with all my past attempts at making a crocheted doll. I looked up so more tutorials on how to make a crocheted/amigurumi doll. I found a few different techniques that people use to make doll hair. So, I thought I would try it out. This is a fairly simple pattern that I created.

It is an amigurumi doll. Her head is made until you get to 30 single crochets. I then did five rows of the 30 single crochets. Then I just decreased until I had a row of 12 single crochets. The body is created until you get to 24 single crochets. Then I alternated decreasing and just doing another row of single crochets. This made the cone like shape. Then for the arms, I used an adjustable ring of three instead of six and single crocheted twice in each to get six crochets in a ring. I then just made five more rows of six single crochets. For the legs I started with a color for her shoes, I then made an adjustable ring and crocheted six into it. I continued with a row of 12 and then another of 12, then I slipstitched into the next chain, and I changed to the flesh color. I did one more row of 12 then I decreased one whole row, and continued with chains of 6 until I felt the leg was long enough, about three more rows. I also made a hat for the doll, this is crocheted until you get to 36 single crochets in a spiral. Remeber it is all just a multiplication of 6.

For the hair I took long pieces of a boucle yarn and tied four of them together until I had enough pieces. I pulled the pieces of yarn through the head. Some of the pieces toward the front of the face have more than one piece of yarn pulled through. I gave the doll two braids and even some bangs. I sewed two button eyes on to her. My daughter is almost three years old, so I thought I would try it. I also took some pink yarn and made her a mouth. Oh and the hat has a piece of yarn that is tied around it, so that it stays on her head, but can be taken off. I also tied little bows on her shoes to cover wear I changed the yarn. Just a tip, when you make amigurumi, make sure you leave a long piece of yarn when you are done making one of the pieces because that's what you used to sew the pieces together. That's about it, I stuffed the pieces, and sewed them together and out of came a pretty cute little doll. I think she kind of looks like a biker with the hat right now. I might still add some more things, but for the most part I think she is mostly done. Hope you like her.

Father's Day Comes Early for my Husband

I am so excited about the gift I got Garry for Father's day. It is awesome. I was trying to wait until Father's Day to give it to him, but I am not very good at that. He has to work then anyway, so we decided Father's Day would come early this year. I gave him his present yesterday. He started to open it up, and he was like wow, this is cool. It's a copper pen. I asked him a few days earlier what metal he liked best out of copper, titanium, chrome, and gold, because those are the metal options the guy who made it uses. Anyway, then he pulled the entire gift out of the case and freaked out. I was like, do you know what it is? And He said, "It's a pen with a circuit board in it."

It is really cool. I got it from this guy, Jim, on Etsy. His shop is called creativebark. You can visit his store at creativebark.etsy.com and see all the cool pens he has for sale. A very unique gift, one that is practical too. My husband loves his pen, overall it was a really good choice.

October 2008 Baby Shower Post Updated

I finally added pictures to the post I made about the baby shower way back in October 2008. Added some pictures of the car seat blanket. It has the instructions on how to make it to. Head on over there, NOW!
If you want.

Inspiration in Strange Places

The other day I was looking around the house, trying to find something to use as a pattern for a little doll. I ended up finding a long cardboard tube. I thought , hmm, maybe. So I wrapped it in felt and pinched one end. That is basically how I came up with the shape of this little doggy I made. Obviously it has come a long way from a cardboard tube, and actually that was only the pattern template, but yes that's the basic idea. It's been shortened too. I think I'll make him some friends in a few days. I already have plans for a kitty cat, that will be for may daughter. I will also attempt to make a bear, owl, and panda, and anything else that pops into my head, or is requested by my daughter. The doggy is for my son, he likes to slober on it. He also likes to throw it on the floor so I can get it for him only to start the whole game again.

I want to make it!

One of the websites that I like to look at from time to time is makezine.com and they made something pretty cool recently. I think one of the reasons I like it so much is because a lot of times, they'll show you step by step. Here they show you how to make a digital tv coat hanger antenna and a steady cam. It's pretty cool. One day I will learn how to use power tools. Go to this site!

It's nice!

Lately, it's been kind of nice out, so on my husband's days off we've been able to go out more. The one problem with that is, our car doesn't have very good air conditioning. We have to aim for bumps to get it to kick on. Yeah, I would love to retire that car. It's his baby though, and we need to wait probably another year before we can actually afford a good alternative. That's fine with me. I can wait, I know that eventually we'll have something better suited to our family. As it is now, only the four of us can ride in the car. It is only a two door, and don't even ask about trunk space for a stroller. We have an umbrella stroller that we bought like two years ago for fifteen dollars that still gets used very often.

On another note, that ballerina pattern I bought is not my first attempt at amigurumi. For those of you who do not know what amigurumi is let me attempt to explain. Amigurumi is a type of Japanese crochet that is done in spirals instead of in rounds. It's really pretty easy with a few differences from the western version of crochet. One difference is you use an adjustable ring to start. You also use an embroidery needle to sew the extremities onto the body.

A while back I made a few different amigurumi dolls and animals. I gave most of them away without taking pictures of them. I took a picture of one of them that I made and gave to my daughter. Some of the other things I made included a little bear and a white bunny. Here is a doll I made for my daughter using the amigurumi technique. There is one thing that is not always used in amigurumi and that is the addition of felt, I like the look of it. You can use just regular old yarn or thread to make the eyes and other details though. I tend to not use buttons and other things that can fall off, simply because it's not recommended for children under three.

I think I used too large a crochet hook in the past. I am pretty confident that the ballerina will come out well, I just need to get the right yarn and actually get everything together so I can get to work.

My Daughter loves Puppets

Lately, my daughter has started watching this show Oobi. It's a show where hands are the puppets. They have little eyes on there hands on a ring or something, and sometimes they have a little accessory like a hat or a bow. My daughter really likes this show so I started to imitate it with my own hand which of course she loves as well. Now she comes up to me and says, "Let me talk to Puppet," usually I am in the middle of doing something when she asks so I'll say something like, "Puppet's helping Mommy do something right now, hold on." It's really cute though.

Anyway, I thought since she liked these puppets so much it might be fun to make one for her. So, I came up with a little pattern for a puppet. I like to call it pocket puppet, for obvious reasons. It's small. I made it with just a few scraps of felt, cardboard, glue, and thread. I would imagine someone could make this in less than an hour. It is very customizable too. I'm probably going to make some more in different colors, genders, themes, etc.


Another great thing about it is that I can use it or my daughter can use it, so it's pretty versatile.

Cute Little Amigurumi Ballerina Pattern

I ordered a ballerina doll pattern from a shop on etsy last night. The store's name is owlishly. I always wanted to see what they were like. I'm a pretty decent crocheter, so I decided it would be worth it to give it a try. I think I'm going to make the pattern for my daughter for her upcoming birthday. She is going to be three and that's when she gets to start ballet school. She is always talking about when she gets to start dance school, so I know she will love this. The woman at owlishly makes a lot of really cute amigurumi crochet patterns.
Her blog is http://owlishly.typepad.com/ and you can see some of the other crochet projects she's been up to.

The family

This weekend we went to a cousin's house and I got some really cute pictures of my son and his cousin. They are both about the same age. So cute.

They are growing so fast. I can't believe my daughter is going to be 3 soon. My little girl got sick last night, poor thing. I think she is feeling much better now though.

Here is a picture of me wearing one of my newest hair clip designs. I crocheted some yarn and also used some silk flowers and a glass bead to make it. It's up for sale in my etsy store at steenta.etsy.com
I have been making a lot more items for my store. New designs and color combinations. I'll be putting them up for sale next week in my etsy store.

Wookies

This is so cute. Yummy Pancake on flickr posted a picture of some really cute little wookie cookies. You know, like Star Wars. They're really adorable. You gotta check them out. Wookie Cookies or check out her blog, http://www.yummypancake.blogspot.com/ She's got a lot of really cute handmade things. Crocheted bacon and happy toast anyone?

New Barrettes!

I made some really cute Fourth of July hair barrettes yesterday. They are made out of felt. I just did some hand stitching on them then sewed and glued them onto the barrettes. They are imperfect on purpose, I think it makes them more special.

My new camera!

I am so happy with my new camera! It came in the mail yesterday. Right when I got it, I started to charge the camera's battery, charging my old camera's battery used to take a whole day, this one was done in a little over two hours. I took a coupe of pics with it. I am so happy with it. I even re-did my etsy store. It looks a lot better now with the pictures I took. No blurry pictures. I haven't used it that much yet, but already it is a big improvement from my old digital camera.
Here is a picture I took of one of the bracelets I made. It is also listed in my etsy store for sale. Just go to
steenta.etsy.com

New Scrapbook Paper Yay!

I bought some new scrapbook paper and will be making some new necklaces soon. I will post them here after I make them. I can't wait to get started I just need some spare time. Even right now I am multi tasking. I am feeding my son and typing with one hand. It's the only way I can get things done.