Just to show that my life isn’t currently all crazy toddler stuff, here is the Bunny Pod finished (previewed here)!
The head seems a little off (har har) and not as nice as the photo from the pattern but it came out cute nonetheless! I’m not sure what I’m going to put in it though!
 
I received the last of the packages for the Gocco Swap last week and I think it turned out great! I have to admit that I did expect some flakiness and/or no shows so it was a great surprise that everyone came through! One swapper had to drop out due to health reasons (hope things are improving you know who!) but I did have a back up swapper (he actually signed up too late but agreed to be a backup) and he pulled through with flying colors! I have to say, Gocco users rock! I haven’t shown my cards yet (I did 2) but will make a post after all the packages have gone out. I collated them Saturday night. It took me longer than I thought (3 hours! ok, maybe the tv might have distracted me for bits at a time) but I tried to keep it as organized as possible. Looking back, collating was the easiest part (once I figured out that dividing each set into twos helped speed it up instead of laying them out into twos)! The packing of the packages is kind of a pain! I printed up all the labels and wanted to re-use all the envelopes they were sent in and tried to carefully take off any of the existing labels on them. But I still had to tape a scrap paper over the front anyway so as not to confuse the post office with any old addresses. And then trying to tape them all up and write out all the customs forms for the overseas packages all while Sienna wanted my attention because she was sick! It was still great fun receiving all the packages, seeing all the great talent and getting inspiration from everyone. Autumn Gocco Swap-Success!
Currently I am addicted to Etsy, obtaining crochet patterns and swap-bot. I’ve been getting active again on swap-bot as it helps me keep creative juices flowing. I find myself looking for swaps to join and even started my own swap for Amigurumi food, my first hosting on swap-bot. And then found another Amigurumi swap with an Autumn theme, a knit/crochet dishcloth swap, and a knit/crochet Christmas ornament swap! That’s how I became obsessed with looking for crochet patterns. There are tons of free ones on the internet! Then I joined an Etsy favorites swap where your partner will buy you a small priced item from your Etsy favorites list (feel free to buy me something too! HA!). I debated joining this swap because 1. I could just buy it myself! and 2. I didn’t have an Etsy favorites list. Well, I decided it would be a nice surprise to see which item my partner would pick and then became obsessed with finding things to put on my list. Then I found this cute bunny pod pattern that I couldn’t resist and am currently working on. I figured that I got lots of free patterns, it’s ok to buy one here or there. And then last night found this cute pattern that I just couldn’t resist (again)! Crochet Dim Sum! I really just wanted to make the egg custard and am not clever enough to figure it out on my own but some of the other items are cool too. The great thing is that these patterns get e-mailed to you so that’s instant gratification!
Here is the top part of the bunny pod or the head. It doesn’t look as nice as the picture from the pattern. It’s funny how the shaping of the snout could really alter the look! I’m not crazy about my shaping of the snout but am too lazy to fix it. It’s got character!
And via Celestina’s blog, I discovered etsy seller onefourzero and got my own personal stamp with the bunny logo and my signature and e-mail/website, which I love. I e-mailed her my design on Sunday and it was in my mailbox on Wednesday! From the UK!! I love Etsy!!
After making this skullholder from the Happy Hooker book, I had such fun that I went on the prowl for more potholders and found this adorable fish! (I also want to make that cute chicken in her banner, which is from this book that I will probably end up buying but am trying to resist)
I already finished the dishcloth for the swap with the same color yarn as this fish. I might include this fish too, if I could part with it! When I told Yves I bought a pattern for the bunny pod, he asked if we were keeping that one because I seem to be swapping away everything I’m working on! HA! I told you I’m addicted!
I finally got around to doing a Gocco print of the Bob shirt I attempted to make here with the EZ screen print. I have to say that out of all the Gocco prints I’ve made, this is the one I’m most satisfied with probably because of it’s simplicity. If you or anyone you know wants this same shirt, just send me a shirt and I’ll print it on there!
It came out a little off center but don’t think it’s really a big deal. She sported it on Saturday at pumpkin picking.
I’m also happy to have started AND finished a monkey embroidery shirt for Sienna. I bought the t-shirt stabilizer months ago and did not use a hoop for this. It took me about 3 nights of doing this. I can’t say embroidery is my favorite thing as the process is much slower than crocheting, my eyes don’t see so well for precision needle sticking, the backs look so sloppy and I just plain suck at it. But you know, it came out pretty cute even tho the mouth is a little messed up!
(I just realized that these 3 shots were taken with 3 different cameras! ha!)
She sported the shirt today at the playground but with a sweatshirt on, couldn’t really show it off!
I am really enjoying getting back into swapping on swap-bot. It really gets my creative butt moving and this past week I’ve really been on a roll and trying to be more creative while Sienna naps instead of getting lost on the internet. Here are some of the swaps I’ve been in or currently in.
Fall Coaster Swap-when I signed up for this swap, I had the perfect fall color fabric in mind as seen here. The tutorial for this is found here. But I did not count on my partner hating the colors orange and brown! DOH! So I had to scramble for another idea and came up with these:
It’s a reverse applique coaster! I was so happy I came up with this idea but wasn’t sure how much my partner would like it as my seams are not perfect. (She ended up loving it and gave me a 5 rating and a heart!) Whew! Following a line was actually harder than I thought. I tried 2 with the free motion foot but found it was easier using the regular foot. Here is what my partner sent me:
She spoiled me (she is swappinLady on swap-bot)!! Not only did she make CD coasters, she made mug charms and a wine bag (without the wine, I just put something in there to make it stand!) and orange hot chocolate! YUM! That was so nice of her!
I also joined the zipper pouch and candy swap. I won’t mention who my swap partner is or what candy I sent her as she did not receive it yet. I hadn’t made one of these pouches in awhile and it was fun! I hope my partner likes it, the swap had a fish theme!
Close up of fish applique
the back
blurry inside (I love the color!)
I am addicted to google reader. If you are not familiar with Google reader, it helps you keep up to date with blogs that you read and you can see if your favorite blog has a new entry. There are several blogs that I read on a regular basis and then a few that I check when I remember or am bored. I finally signed up with Google reader (since I already had an account vs. making a whole other account with bloglines.) and now I find myself checking it constantly throughout the day. It’s just one homepage to go to to see if there are any new posts. It recommended some blogs to me based on the blogs I already had on there and that’s how I found the Belle Epoque blog and her Pay It Forward entry ( I can’t seem to link to the actual entry but it’s August 30th’s entry). I love the idea of it and was thinking of doing something similiar on my blog since I am always making things or see something cool to make but don’t because I don’t really need it. So of course when I saw this entry, I signed up right away! So now it is my turn!
“Pay it Forward†Exchange:
Here are the rules: I agree to send something fun, cute, and nice to the first 3 blog owners who post a comment on this entry. In turn, those three will post this information and pick 3 people they want to send something to and so on. Unfortunately, due to postage costs, I can only pay it forward within the United States. If you are interested in participating, be one of the first 3 blog owners to leave a comment!
You have to promise that you will then post about this on your blog, link to me, and then send something to the first three people who comment on your blog so that this continues. When I have the first three to comment I will email you a request for your shipping address and I will send out something that I hope will make you smile!â€
So there it is! She included the blog link of where she discovered it and I inadvertantly commented on that blog and made it under the 3 and received something from Ali too! I got beautiful earrings from Ali and a cool wrist pin cushion from Nancy (of Belle Epoque). SO for me, instead of the first 3 bloggers, I will take the first 6 bloggers and send them something cool! I decided to make it Fall related as I made this set of Fall coasters for a swap on swap-bot but since my partner dislikes the color orange (!) and brown, I made a different set for her (which I’ll post about another time) And since it’s close to Halloween, I crocheted a skull ornament and a buttonhole spider. I have a few more things in the works but these are what I can show right now! So comment and you can get one of these!!
The eyes glow in the dark and you can actually attach this guy to one of your buttons.
Last Friday I received my ami swap from my partner Christa (you may remember the jellyfish I made for my partner here). What an awesome partner I had! She not only sent me a great fat cat ami made of WOOL (no doubt from reading my profile about having a fat cat named Neo), she sent me ami poop and CHOCOLATE! YUM! And not just a few pieces of chocolate, one whole bar of Dove and a whole Ghirardelli dark chocolate with mint filling!
I’m glad I got this picture because as soon as Sienna got her hands on it, the googly eyes on the poo came off!
Here they are! The list of participants for the Autumn Gocco Swap. I know I said the limit was 25 participants but 4 slid through before I could close up the sign ups and I just couldn’t turn anyone away. Thankfully, the other participants agreed to print up additional postcards so all is good!
I finally finished the star-ghan I was crocheting for Sienna! Took me 2 months! I could have kept going with it and Yves wanted me to make it bigger but I think it’s a good size.It fits the crib well for now!
I also made this coffee cup:
Can you guess what it’s hiding?
har har har! The pattern is here.
I also joined a swap on swap-bot. I haven’t swapped in a long time but since it was an amigurumi swap, I knew it wouldn’t be a problem to fulfill. It was hard to settle on something to make for my partner, since she likes everything, so when I came across this jellyfish pattern, it reminded me of the jellyfish shot from the NY Aquarium a couple of weeks ago. I hope she likes it! I made another one to send to Zack since Tammy thought it was super cute too.
I finally got motivated to try the EZ Screen Print this weekend that I bought in January 2007 – yes! I bought the kit back in January of 2007! I think I was saving it for something really special plus I just got plain lazy. I finally thought of something special and I got off my ass! HA! Sienna loves Bob the Builder! At first I thought she kept saying Bob simply because it was so easy to say. She points to the TV and says Bob! She points to her books during bedtime stories and says Bob! But I guess she does like Bob because when we do put it on, she gives that little excited giggle of hers. So cute! The idea is not very original but I thought was still cute all the same. Remember those popular ‘Jesus is my homeboy’ and WWJD t-shirts a few years back? Well, now I gave it a little kiddie twist! Here is the transparency print I made:
The names on the bottom are for the test strip to make sure the sheets in the kit are still ok. Apparently you should keep the sheets in the refrigerator so they last longer! HA! And since this kit is over a year and a half old, I had to prepare myself for unusable sheets, with no one to blame but myself! Exposure time is only 50 seconds with transparencies, then you soak it in tap water for at least 15 minutes. I did this Monday morning and went out for a couple of hours and left it in the water all that time. After rinsing and letting it dry, it looked great!
I still had my bag full of mixed inks from the silkscreening class I took at Pratt in 2004. I wasn’t sure how the inks would be but the blue ink was still usable while the orange one was all dried up. I donned my too clean craft apron and was prepared to get messy!
Since this was just a test strip, I didn’t care that her name was so close to the edges. And I just used regular masking tape to secure it. I once again used some old sheets. This old sheet was my tester for making the shopping cart cover.
So of course since there wasn’t too much border for the tape, the screen came out while I was pulling the squeegee over it. And the combination of too much ink and the image too close to the edge, ink went in under the stencil. That was ok too. I was just happy it came out so it proved that the sheets were still usable! I decided to go ahead with the Bob stencils!
Well, it didn’t come out quite as I had hoped. The WWBD side barely shows up and the homeboy side needed some working with a stiff brush. I’m not quite sure why the right side didn’t come out so well. Looking at the transparency, I did see that the right side image isn’t as black as the left side image. I got these Bob images off the web and was thinking of working them over to make sure they were truly black but was afraid that if I worked too long on them, I would never get this project going. Live and learn! But I’m still baffled about why the WWBD didn’t come out as I know that was really black. Maybe because it’s just an outline and not a lot of solid? This is how the print looks:
I re-inked it again which is why the bottom line printed twice and out of registration. I really want to try this again as I really want to make these shirts for her before she loses interest in Bob! The sheets I got are the hi-res ones and I’m not sure why I got the hi-res ones since the site says the regular ones are fine for doing t-shirts. I might buy a pack of the regular ones and give them a try and re-work the image too.
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