catching up on crochet

My quest to rule the world thru little crocheted items continues.  I am thru all the niblings now and moving on to Godchildren.  Ain't they lucky?  HA!

These aliens are for Olli.  Aren't they cute?

       

This one I made for Ethan, but it was so cute I knew Olli would want one too.  He is always trying to make yarn balls in my room.... and this is basically a yarn ball.  I actually found it impossible to crochet, I could not tell where the stitches were, so I knit it in the round instead.  Handy to be able to do both, hey?  :)  I followed the same pattern even.

   

These are for Tuna.  They are little fruit houses.

   

Each holds a little bug.  The snail goes in the pear.  (Yes, I know pears aren't usually brown.  I didn't have a nice golden yellow color so I asked mom to pick and that is what she picked.  Deal with it.)

   

Last but not least is Greg's Cyber Zombie.  I made him to remind the boys what too much screen time can do to you..... scary!

   

Have a great weekend!

Anne

Do NOT BUY THESE STAMPS

I have hundreds of stamps.  Hundreds.  They range from rubber mounted on wood to rubber without wood, to clear and even foam.  In fact, the foam stamp set I bought at the Target Dollar section of Curious George is a great set.  It stamps beautiful clear images of George doing monkey things.  I also have several nephews who enjoy both cars and Cars- the Cars referring to the movie.  So I was super excited when I found this stamp set at Micheal's.  I just could see my nephews, especially the three year old who is OBSESSED with Cars, stamping out little Maders and Lightning McQueens. 

    

Aren't they great?  All the images a kid could want.  Until, that is, you stamp them.  This is what they stamp:

   

The freaking stamps do NOT STAMP WHAT IS SHOWN ON THE TOP OF THE STAMPS.  In all of my stamps I have NEVER EVER EVER seen a set do this.  This is blatant misrepresentation and fraud.

  

Here is the Lightning stamp:
  

Here is what it stamps:

  

Can't have a Cars set without Mader!

   

 Here is what he stamps:

  

What  a freaking rip off.  It really makes me angry. 

Anne

HoneyPop cards and more animals

Happy Tuesday!

I had a doctor appt yesterday, that always gets the week off to a good start.  Not.  :)  At least she isn't making any major changes right now, she wants me to give the surgery recovery a few more months.  She is threatening to change my meds tho- and the one she wants me off I have been on for like fifteen years- and it is what (hopefully) is keeping the lupus under control!  And the substitute medication is one that has made me viciously ill in the past.  Hopefully before my next appointment the new Lupus drug will have a better track record... :)

I made two HoneyPop cards last week, just cuz I wanted to try the new sets I purchased.  The first is the baker cat.  You can make the cake up to three layers, if you use the stamps they give you.  The best part of HoneyPop is that you can use it for whatever you want- the cake stand stamp was NOT designed to be used with the honeycomb paper, but I wanted to see how it would work out.  I like it.
   

    

 

 This set is the "cherry on top" set.  I just realized today, when I was looking thu my sentiment binder for a different card's birthday sentiment, I have a stamp that says "Happy Birthday with a cherry on top!"  It would be perfect with this HoneyPop set.

   

  

I did stickle the cherry so it is sparkly.  And the little cherries off to the side are covering a smudge. Ha!

   

One of the things I love about Ana Paula Rimoli's patterns is that they often have two or more pieces to each.  The mushrooms came in a set of three.  I am pretty sure I badly miscounted the baby's stem rows, as all three have the same height in the book.... hehehehe.   The recipient didn't notice or care.

I adore penguins, so this is one of my fave patterns.

Have a great week!

Anne

Blog You Must Follow!

If you don't already follow the imaginisce blog you really should start.  They give away AMAZING prizes all the time!  I, in fact, have won TWO so far.  The first was a paper package of the most amazing paper.  The second was the COMPLETE line of fabric and paper flowers, with the tools to roll them.  It arrived today.

    

Of course I had to make a flower right away.  I need a little practice with the rolling technique, so I only finished a layered flower.  The flower layers were all in a cute little paper purse.  (The pink one shown above.)

    

The package also included the Badge Pin Combo pieces.  These are neat because you can make one flower and wear it as a pin or as a hair accessory!

    

Of course, I would never GLUE the flower to the metal, I like to have options.  I used some fabulous Glue Arts massive glue dots to hold the velcro.  They aren't really dots, they are more large squares of intensive holding power. (Yeah, I won them too!)

   

I am pretty sure I have enough flowers for several lifetimes.  Or at least the next few weeks!

Thanks Imaginisce!

Happy Weekend,

Anne

book of the month

I forgot to put this in my previous post, I have another book recommendation.

Critical care : a new nurse faces death, life, and everything in between

by Brown, Theresa.

This book chronicles the first year of a nursing career, and it is really interesting.  Ms. Brown started out on a cancer ward, and the book covers her life, the patients, and the working environment.  Since I like looking into other people's lives, the book was great.  :)

  The reasons I really wanted to read it are twofold.  First, my sister recently told me of her first "code" where the person died, a few years ago when she worked as a cardiac rehab therapist.  The second is that my cousin started her nursing career as a pediatric cancer nurse, so the stories from this nurse's experiences gave me a glimpse into what Barb experienced.

It was both good and bad to read this book after my recent surgery.  Good because she says nurses are so used to dealing with poop that it doesn't faze them, which taught me that my fears of having an accident in the hospital were unfounded.  Bad because one of the code stories involved an old surgical incision that split open... wide open.... which is scary when you recently had surgery!

All in all, well worth checking out from the library. (I don't ever actually purchase books, lol!)

Anne

 

Octopi and the rest of the card class cards

I let all the niblings list their top picks for prizes as I have been feeling a bit off lately and need some distraction.   Strange things going on in my mind lately.  Pry the lupus is attacking it again... whatever.

So Tatie picked the Octopi.  (Is that a real word?  I don't have the energy to look it up!)

   

Here are the rest of the card class cards.  This one I picked so I could use the same supplies as the second grad card.  I had a PILE of one inch squares left over for the second card... but I wanted two (at least slightly) different cards.  I will let the ladies color the stamp if they want, but I liked it in black and white.

  

Jodi requested wedding cards.  This might be a bit whimsical, but I liked it.  I think of the trike and regular bike in the background as childhood and being single... and now the tandem bike is center stage.

   

In case Jodi didn't find the bike card acceptable, I wanted another choice.  I saw a technique online for inking embossing folders before embossing with them, so I tried it.  Worked great!  I remember one card class where I had people embossing on white-core cardstock and then sanding- didn't work out so well.  Neither did inking after embossing.  I think this will be easier for them.  :)

  

Have a good week!

Anne

Men in Black and daisy power

Happy Saturday!

    I have made about five of these ninjas.  Sorry, my camera sucks on photographing black things!  I am getting better at the little silver stars tho...  :)  This one is for Logan.  He came over Thursday and demanded I make him something.  He made a list of about ten items, then I quit writing them down and made him list in order of wanting.  His number one pick was the mushroom family, and he wanted me to start right away.  Then he sat next to me saying "crochet faster!"  When he left, I promptly picked up my book and read the rest of the day... and the whole next day... then I remembered I said I would have something done by Sunday.  So today I made him a ninja cuz I knew I could finish it in only a couple hours.  Moral of the story- hollering "crochet faster!" does not appear to work.

    

This is a panda I made last week for Moo's birthday.  I found some patterns online and she picked the one she liked best.

  

This is another card for card class. I have about a million one inch white squares from last year's graduation card class card, so I wanted to use some of them up.  The beautiful flowers are from Paper Wishes.  I got a huge bundle of flowers for a great price.  I have several words to choose from so the ladies can pick their occasion.

              

Hope your weekend is great!

Anne