I know I promised but,

I'm just too excited about it

a couple of days ago I posted a couple of new items to my little online store. a good old friend of mine has ordered a couple of hats and baby cocoon from me and this morning when I was getting the kids ready for school and finishing up printing a gift message and preparing for shipping I had another sale.

I'm so excited. that makes 4 orders in the last 2 weeks.
I guess what is the most exciting to me (besides people liking my work) is that the things I've made are going all over the country.
Cool

and the winner is

Emma!

Emma has a good friend she met in Kindergarten who last year invited Emma to come along with her to her Wednesday night church group. it runs during the school year. they have a lot of fun playing games and have lessons about Jesus. they memorize verses and get awards for memorizing and so on... and I feel it's very important to have good friends, so that's a big reason Emma has been going with them.
this weekend they had a pinewood grande prix race for the different age groups. they have been preparing for the last few weeks. one night they were given their block of wood and they got to design what shape they would have cut out and one of the leaders took them all and cut them out. then the kids got to take their cut out cars and decorate them however they wanted. Emma was so excited about that part. she wanted to paint it and needed very girly colors. she painted and painted and wanted to paint more and more. I had to tell her that soon she would have to be finished and just let it dry. :)
so race day came on Saturday. Tim and I went (with Ronan) to watch her race.
Her car didn't do very well at all. I could tell that she felt a little down about that, but we pointed out that this was a lot of fun and that way she did very well, and the boy's car she raced against wasn't as pretty as her car. that picked her up a bit. while the races continued I was talking with her and she said that she hoped that her car would win an award for the best design.
It did.


She got first place and won a trophy


her friend got second

I'm glad she got to have such a great day

time for some kind of therapy?

have you ever seen the movie 'Airplane'? the main character on that movie has a problem, a drinking problem. it's not that he can't stop drinking but more that he just can't make it get to his mouth. this lack of aim has been funny for years and years. What has this got to do with my family?
I have recently discovered a similar problem with Ronan. my poor baby has a problem with terrible aim when it comes to bandaids and his face.

you may recall a post last year of Ronan missing his owie by a little bit. I still can't contain myself when I see that picture.
now I'm seeing a bit of a pattern here, but it seems that his aim is just getting worse.

one more thing to keep track of

I have been thinking that I do an awful lot of blabbing on about what I crocheted here on my blog, I think to the point that I am boring. plus I've not really been mentioning family a whole lot lately.
Winter is an awful contributor to that... we're all trapped inside, confined to a very small space with many people getting on each other's nerves... not a lot of happy, cheerful interaction happening while snow bound.

So I have decided that a different blog might be more appropriate for my crochet ramblings and that way I can use it as a portfolio of my 'work' and I can safely send people from my store there if they would like to see more of what I've done or what I am working on now.

This blog will be just about my family and what is happening with us, not Me.

Valentine's Day

ugh

I jumped on the cocoon train

okay... I did it. I don't know that I'll keep doing this, but I just might because I figured out how to use a stitch that I really like that, it seems, no one else is using for baby cocoons.

I started to experiment for a baby hat and swaddling cocoon for the daughter of a darling friend who is due very soon. I want to have just the right stitch so it doesn't look to geometrical and, well, retro to put it nicely.
I figured out how to do a tunisian knit stitch and I'm very happy with it. it works up nice and squishy soft and it looks like I knitted it instead of crocheted it.


I'll put a picture up of the prototype soon. it's totally cute. it makes me wish I had a tiny baby to try it out on.


As promised.... a picture of the cocoon with hat

my current project

I have recently become blank when it comes to ideas for my store. I just don't have/make anything that anyone just really wants. but my problem stems just a little deeper - even though I have nothing brilliant to do right now I just can't help it, I need to play with yarn.

I accept the fact that I may have a problem. it certainly is an addiction.
so I started goofing around a little and here it is ~ my current project. He/she's not done since I need to make legs and arms yet and I'm toying with some ideas for pointy little hands because it tangles things. I think I'm going to call him/her either the Hermit Tangler or the Bohemian Tangler. I'm not sure which name yet but it looks like some kind of tangling monster.
he's designed after a little monster that my sister used to draw when we were much younger. It started out as one of her monsters and it quickly became something else, though very similar.