Snowflake Crochet

Snowflake dishcloth, crocheted. Pattern on Ravelry.com

Wish Art Journal Page

Make a Wish, acrylics

Dandelions

Sigh. If I could figure out how to rotate this, I would.

The Eye's Have It - Art journal and sketch page

I watched a 9 minute video on how to draw an eye. Since then, I've become obsessed with them. I can't believe how simple it is. 9 minutes and I'm wowing my family, my friends, my self! Certainly I doubt any truly trained eye (get it) would be impressed, but for a novice, I'm more than pleased.

I Am Okay - Art Journal Page

One of my favorite page. My friend had ink spray bottles in the purple and blue. I sprayed the colors from kinda close up so the spray is minimalized.

Dabbling, Zentangle

So. I've recently begun doing some art journaling, which then led to doing some sketching. I'm no artist, I'll tell you that now. But I have really come to enjoy dabbling in the artistic hobbies. I have my best friend to thank for this new endeavor. She always seems to be into something new, which, of course, I then have to try. I in turn, have shared Zentangle with her. Ah, so many pots.

So here's an example of some of my Zentangles:

and

 

A good resource book for Zentangles, if you're interested, is The Art of Zentangle: 50 inspiring drawings, designs & ideas for the meditative artist
by Margaret Bremner (Editor), Norma J. Burnell, Penny Raile         

 

It's my favorite of those that I have seen. Lot's of fun, EASY to do, and makes you fell successful when you see your results. I started as a stick figure only drawer, and learned tons.

Crochet, crochet, crochet

Pretty much now I am stockpiling for Christmas. I don't know if I just want to let people pick out what they want, or if I should gift each item to each person. Here's some of my more recent creations:

This is Spring Petals. It can be found on Ravelry. Notice how one end is bigger than the other? I kept dropping stitches, a bad habit of mine with scarves and something I'm learning to watch out for.

This is a Tudor Homespun scarf. It's gone in the pile for gifting.

This is a 12 point star baby afghan I made for a friend's grandbaby. The colors aren't spot on in this picture, which shows it more pinkish. It actually was purple, pink, teal, and black.

This is a Chevron baby blanket I made for a worker at one of the restaurants that my knitting/crocheting group meets at. She is doing and owl theme and the brown and yellow fit in with her colors.

So ya, I've been pretty busy with crocheting. I enjoy it. It's something I can do for a while, then take a break from and pick up again later.

New Hobby

So in February, the library had a free crocheting class. My daughter and I went and learned how to crochet. She took right off, I struggled for a while. Got the hang of it now, though.

I started with a lot of scarves, such as the one above. My favorite (below) is really cute, but the pic didn't turn out very well.

It's actually a really cute green color and looks like a vine with leaves.

I've had lots of fun with it. My more practical project was a water bottle carrier I made for my daughter for her school field trip.

Perhaps one of the more unique projects was the pencil scarf I made for my daughter's teacher.

Most of my patterns I've gotten free off of the Ravelry website. What an awesome place for knitters and crocheters! Right now I'm working on a baby blanket for a lady who works at a local restaurant where our knit/crochet group meets. Eventually I will have to make something for myself! Right now tho, I'm enjoying giving away my "creations".

My Parent's 50th Wedding Anniversary

My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last month. My sister, myself, and our uncle plus our families were all invited to celebrate with my parents at a lodge a couple of hours away. Our parents wanted to celebrate with family and bought out the lodge for our use for the weekend. We had a great time and managed to surprise my folks with decorations, games, treats, and gifts.

Here's some of our event décor:

The balloon bouquet. I made this for the candy table that my sister and I put together. I made it from gold balloons, gold tulle, a dowel rod that I panted gold, Styrofoam, tissue paper, and a wide glass vase. It was rather simple. I used the tissue paper to hide the Styrofoam that held the dowel rod. I used 8 balloons (you can use more depending on the size of the balloon or how full you blow them up), tying two balloons together, then twisting the pairs together until all 8 are twisted in. The whole thing will then sit on top of the dowel rod. Tuck in gold tulle and viola!

Also in the background you can see water bottles my sister wrapped in gold duck tape.

The candy table, decorated with gold table cloth and tissue paper with gold swirls, plastic glasses with gold tissue paper, bowls with gold wrapped candy (we used gold gumballs, recess mini peanut butter cups, rolos, Hershey's nuggets, Hershey kisses with almonds, and Worther's. The center had a gold plate on which we put cookies we'd had made.

We had cake pops made, which the icing didn't turn out as gold as I'd liked, and put them in a gold tissue wrapped Styrofoam heart.

We did a picture assortment of my parents and made a "tree" out of a light-up branch my sister found at hobby lobby, and stickers on scrapbook paper tied with gold ribbon.

I spray pained wooden letters with gold paint, and glued gold flowers to the letters, then glued the letters together.

More décor, made from sticks painted gold, a gold box, and scrapbook paper and tulle.

My sister wrapped their gifts in boxes wrapped in tissue paper topped with a bow and a gold stem thing she found at Hobby Lobby. They turned out gorgeous!

During the day we played bags and washers, rode ATV's, rode horses, and in the evening we played the Not So Newlywed game, which was lots of fun. This was the winner's trophy

Mom and Dad had pens made at Vista Prints. Everybody got a pen marking the occasion. I made gift bags for them from goldish brown bags and paper flowers, again, Hobby Lobby.

We had a blast!

Resurrection

So ya, it's been 4 years, but I'm thinking it might be time to resurrect the blog. I enjoyed reviewing my past posts. I feel so less inspired these days, so perhaps some blogging will help rejuvenate my literal creativity. This is the first and final warning, what follows may be intellectually inspiring, or it may simply be dull and absurd.

Miracle Worker

My daughter has been watching a dvd she borrowed from the library called "Miracle Worker". It's about Hellen Keller and Ann Sullivan. My daughter, 8, has probably watched it about 4 times now. For some reason it has really caught her fancy, despite being an older, black and white film.

I can't imagine that she can grasp the concept of the complexity of it - living in the world as both a deaf and blind person, of the limits in resources for people with disabilities during those times.

How much mind sets have changed since then! Then, nothing was expected of someone in Hellen's "condition". Now? Everyone, disabilities or no, are expected to reach their maximum potential. And those potentials are measured against people of legend. Such as Hellen Keller.

What Hellen, and Ann, accomplished is mind boggling to me. Miraculous. I wonder if even Ann was surprised, in the end, by what Hellen accomplished. Was Hellen meeting expectations, or exceeding them? Don't forget, Hellen read lips - and she was blind!

For all that Hellen accomplished, I think it's important to remember that she didn't do it alone. Ann played an enormous roll in the extent of Hellen's accomplishments. Ann didn't sit back and expect Hellen to excel. Ann actually bled to see Hellen succeed.

My point I suppose is that for every person who expects someone else to be a Hellen Keller, they need first to be willing to be an Ann.

Married Minority

Man, sometimes I feel like I'm in the married minority. Everyone around me is divorced or getting divorced. I know, sometimes, it just doesn't work out. But that "sometimes" has turned into a large scale number!

Our neighbors just got a divorce. They have a girl my kids' age. She didn't seem to think twice about it. Neither did my kids. It was not the type of situation I wanted them to experience. They now have a "no big deal" second hand experience with divorce. That makes for an impression that is hard to override with words from me. They didn't see sad, suffering kids, scandal and embarrassment, worlds falling apart. They saw kids saying "meh" not caring if dad moved out - it's not like they'd never see him. They saw mom and dad getting a boyfriend and girlfriend. Which, to them at their age, having a boyfriend/girlfriend, is giggle, giggle cool. What kind of a message is that?!

Worse, it's not just our neighbor, it's this friend and that friend, this aunt and that cousin. What the H E double hockey sticks? What's a mom to do? How convincing is "the talk" if the proof that it's "no big deal" is bombarding them left and right, especially among their influential peers?

I sat with a group of women at a game last season. I realized as I was sitting there, that of the 6 of us, I was the only one still married. When I mentioned this, one of the girls started talking about the reasons she left her husband. I was like, my husband, he did all of that too. He had, to some degree, all the same faults she'd divorced her husband for. Doubtless my husband could come up with a nice fat list for me as well. Divorce has just become an easy out. And I hate the impression that leaves on my kids.