Baby Whale

 


I made another whale from my pattern and he turned out pretty cute.




He's a baby because I used a smaller hook and thinner yarn, but the same pattern.

Somehow his pink-lined mouth and big eyes look smiley and friendly instead of like, "I'm going to swallow you whole!"

Finished Dolphin

 

It's a little chubby, but I like how it turned out.

 

The Making of a Dolphin

 

I've been trying to make a crocheted dolphin, but have struggled with getting a nice body shape.

The top doll is an earlier incarnation. I didn't love the body shape, but I added the face and dorsal fin to see if it would look okay -- it didn't.

The bottom one has a much better shape and I love the tail. I haven't gotten the fins sized correctly yet, but I'm getting close!

The prototypes are usually left lying around until my cat adopts them as his toys. Sometimes he steals the ones that I'm still working on, unraveling rows of crochet. Someday I'll learn to put them away, if I ever stop thinking it's funny when he carries things around in his mouth.

Little Owl in Silver and Brown

This guy stands about 3" tall, and sits 2" tall.

He took me between 2.5 and 3 hours to make. People always ask me how long it takes to make these dolls, and I never know the answer! I almost never make one in a single sitting, so it might be spread out over several days. Plus, if I'm writing the pattern as I go, I may have to unravel it and re-do a section a few times (or 20).

So, as I make them from my finished patterns, I'm keeping track of how long it takes.

Clucky Chicken

 

I made this gal last night, to triple-check my pattern. She took about 4 or 5 hours. If you want to make your own, the pattern is available in my Etsy shop.

Jason liked the original, in white, better.



I like both, but the new, brown one looks a little... wilder!

Vacation!

I'm in New Mexico, visiting my family and having a blast.

So far, we've watched the Sex and the City movie, played with the baby, went to the farmer's market, bird watched, had a picnic, and ate an early Father's Day dinner at a Pacific Rim restaurant called Mix.

Tomorrow Dad and I are going on a tour of his childhood New Mexico hometowns, and maybe check out Roswell.

This weekend, Mom, Stef, niece Mazie, and I are going to Carlsbad Caverns to see what it's like underground.

Stefanie has been helping me get an Etsy shop set up to sell my amigurumi patterns. I only have one listed so far, but I'm on my way. :)

Making stuff for Christmas

 
Here are some little dolls and ornaments that I made for Jason's little nieces and nephew. I didn't make the whoopie cushion. I doubt the boy will like the crocodile/dinosaur ornament I made for him, but I worry about him feeling left out since his sisters will each get two little things.

I like that fat yellow bird a lot. I may make some more like it.

Midgets

 
 

I've been eating a few tomatoes that I grew on the patio. This plant is called Mexico Midget, and the tomatoes are teeny tiny, but with a great, strong flavor. The plant is taller than I am.

I have other tomatoes growing in the front, and I've eaten one yellow cherry so far. The rest haven't ripened yet. I hope they will survive our vacation.

I like growing food! I have a dream of one day having a huge garden, and learning how to can and dry and freeze food so we can eat home grown food all winter long.

In other news, I have been using a different amigurumi book to make some other kinds of animals. These seem to go faster than the bears. They are pretty little, so that makes them go faster.

Amugurumi World is a very cute book. I've only used two patterns so far, but I haven't found any mistakes yet, which is nice. I'm not good enough at crochet to fix people's patterns!

Batch 2 of Bears is DONE

Here are the finished bears from batch 2.
I've made a yellow head for the 3rd batch.
The pattern is from this book, if you want to make some bears. The ones that the author made are much more perfect than mine, and yours could be, too.

Guess what! We're cooking more food on the grill tomorrow, with some more friends. Here's what I'm making:

* Jerk chicken (I haven't ever made it before, so I hope it's worth the trouble. I have enjoyed eating it before, so I think it will be good. I'm using a recipe from Emeril which was printed in Everyday Food)
*Pasta salad
*Watermelon lemonade (I might as well just say that I'm heavily inspired by this month's Everyday Food, which is a BBQ issue. This recipe is from there, too, and Martha recommends adding vodka.)
*Fruit tart (not from Martha!)

So, hopefully that tart will look gorgeous and I'll take a picture of it.

More little bears

 

Here is the status of this batch of little bears. You might be able to guess that I prefer making the bodies and heads to making the arms, legs, ears, and faces. Those littler parts are a bit tougher to make, and the faces completely determine the personalities of the bears, which is quite important. I don't want to give any mean, or sad, or disappointed little bears to the babies I know! So, the pressure is soul-crushing, as you can imagine! Just kidding, but I do have to pay a bit more attention when I make the faces, so I can't be concentrating on a movie or anything.

More importantly, I'm so glad that everyone I know in Kansas is safe and their homes are unharmed! Tornadoes are very scary, as I remember witnessing several from too close for comfort as a child. We lived in a trailer, and next to a corn field, so all the stereotypes were fulfilled when the tornadoes came barreling across the flat farmland and toward our neighborhood. We were supposed to go to City Hall and sit in the basement there. But, when my sister and I were home alone after school (we were latchkey kids), it was tough to decide if we should WALK to City Hall, totally exposed to rain and whatever debris might fly (or the eerie calm that comes right before the tornado -- KIDS DO NOT LIKE EERIE!), or stay in our house and see if the whole thing got picked up, Wizard of Oz-style. We were lucky, and never got picked up by any tornadoes and taken to Oz. Not even our chiuahua got picked up!

In other news, Jason is about to turn 33 years old, and we're going to Water World to swim and go down water slides, and float in a wave pool, or whatever activities they have there. And, separately, I'm going to make cupcakes! Is anything cuter than cupcakes? All of you who know Jason know that he doesn't particularly care about "cute," but he is a fairly good sport about my appreciation of it.

BBQ

Our BBQ was fun. People even liked my fake cheesecake.



Joe tried out being a Noogler. Please note the spinner on top of the hat.






Here is little Iris with her new bears. I heard that she had syrup in her hair, which explains the style of it.

Little bears

Here are two little bears that I crocheted for a baby I know. I'm working on making some for all the babies I know, but it takes a while. I get pretty into it for a while and then I get distracted by some other hobby. I have hobbies again! It feels like coming home, to have so many things I want to do, rather than feeling like I don't want to do anything.

Yay for life and feeling interested!

I want to do some painting, but I don't even know where my stuff is. This weekend, I will have to track down my art stuff and start doing something with it.

Today, I need to do some work. I'm kind of pissed at them, so it makes me not want to work. They write things in IM like, "watch ur error scores. I want u to continue to do well." Well, I had one mediocre score, out of 28 scores. What the fuck? That's BAD, now? My average score is still Very Good. Why do I let such stupid shit bother me? I can't stop it from pissing me off, so I have to just find some way of getting past or around it.

This Saturday, we are having a small BBQ at our house. That should be fun. We haven't hung out with friends for a while, so I'm pretty excited. I hope I didn't forget how to talk to people! We need to figure out what we're going to have, and go get the stuff. If you have any good summer recipes, why don't you just tell me what they are?

~Tonya

What I did so far

This week, I started writing a book. I don't have much yet, but taking that first step is a milestone. The book has some mystery in it. I hope I can figure out how to do it well. I've read enough books, now to simply emulate the good ones....

I'm also crocheting some dolls for the babies I know. I'm not that great at it, so they end up kind of wonky and out of proportion. That's okay with me, since I think that's cute.

I'm also trying to take good care of myself, like eating well and flossing, since I don't have the excuse of No Time. And I'm trying to keep our house cleaner.

We decided to stay living where we are, and buy a portable air conditioner to make it livable this summer. I believe Jason bought one last night, and we should get it in a week or two. That should help A LOT. The portable kind doesn't have to stick out the window, but just has a hose that goes out the window. I don't think the HOA will have a problem with that. The picture shows the one that we got, but we will put it in our bedroom, not the dining room. Good thing, because our dining room doesn't have any windows!

TTFN, Tonya