Carrot scarves and cupcakes

As a way to save money, I've started using the library again. You know, that place that has books you can borrow? I remember having a hard time finding new or hard-to-find titles when I was younger and living in a much smaller town, so I was pleasantly surprised by the public libraries in Sacramento. The on-line search and hold service is frickin' awesome. My latest find:

Twinkie Chan (http://www.twinkiechan.com) makes some adorable crocheted scarves and other accessories. From the few I've made, the patterns are really simple too. After seeing the carrot scarf, I had to make it. But I only had half a skein of orange left, so I made a kiddie-version:

I am working on making the cupcakes (see scarf below), but they seem to turning out smaller than in the picture (too small of crochet hook?). So I've altered the pattern, and am thinking of making a cupcake-banner for the kitchen. The husband will have to deal with the girly-ness of it. Yes, it is pink and yellow. Maybe if I make him the bacon-and-eggs scarf he will be happy?

More crafty goodness and gardening (when it was sunny)

In our "backyard" is located a huge fan for our HVAC system, and it does not exactly "go" with our gardening scheme in our very very small yard. Jay got all man-crafty after it was installed and made this trellis-enclosure for it. It is two-sided, sealed, and attached to the fence with just a couple of small screws, in case we need to access it. Then we spent a day de-weeding and covering the ground with white rock. The plants on the outside of the enclosure include some ground cover (creeping jenny), two ornamental kales, geraniums, yellow daisies, and in the green pot is an asparagus fern. In the back corner (far right in the above photo), I planted three different rhizomes, including some larger ferns, and two others that I can't remember at the moment. Hmmm....I remember one is an ornamental tropical-looking leafy plant, and the other starts with A....astiridae? Anyways, it's pink. When they finally emerge, I will put some photos up. It is a little exciting waiting for them to peek out. And yes, gardening can be exciting!


Super-cute ceramic mushrooms for the garden, found at Target.


Close-up of geraniums.




Crafty-goodness:

A while ago I bought two pillow-forms at IKEA to cover at a later date. Procrastination set in, as it does with all of my crafty-intentions, and they sat, untouched, for about six months. In a craze of "I am going to finally finish all of my WIPs!", I made two envelope pillow-cases, using the pattern found on Chez Larsson's craft blog. It is one of the easiest pillow cases to sew: straight lines, some light ironing, and ta da!






Of course, as soon as I finished works-in-progress (eggplant, crocheted rag-rug, pillows), I had to start some new ones! A short list of projects I am now working on:

1. Knit amigurumi lamb
2. Knit amigurumi tomato (to keep the eggplant company)
3. Crocheted chevron baby-blanket
4. Bought a Knit Pick kit to knit flowers/floral motifs
5. Finally rolled my wool skeins into balls to start the owl sweater from Ravelry, then realized I didn't have the correct size of circular needles

Next post: cupcake experimentation

Gardening, crafts, and dog (not in that order)

The surviving tulips. Our dog likes to lie in the sun, and I happened to plant these bulbs in one of his favorite areas, in the hopes that, once they started to grow he wouldn't lie there anymore. I was wrong. the ones to the far right (which I tried to crop out) are pretty flat and pitiful. Most of them have done well, though.


I am not sure what this plant is....I have vague recollections from Plant Taxonomy class that the overlapping leaves are in the Iridae family. So it must be related to Irises. Anyways, it is red, the hummingbirds go ape-shit for them, and they grow like crazy. Jay and I have to rip them out of the ground every year, otherwise they take over our entire, very small, patio area.



My favorite plant right now. It is a coral-bark japanese maple. The leaves are coming in right now, so it looks great in the little red pot we found at Green Acres Nursery (off of Folsom Blvd.), which is also one of my favorite nurseries.


Wallace. He is giving me one of his "looks," which he does when he doesn't really like what I am doing. He still doesn't understand posing for the camera, and I haven't figured out a command for that one yet. He may still be pissed about the shock-collar we had to get him. We have really lame f'ing neighbors with nothing better to do than complain to our condo's board if he barks more than twice, during the middle of the day. Really. I hate our neighbors, if you couldn't tell. Not all of them. They know who they are.


In crafting news (news? sure.), while I was recovering from the miscarriage and "scraping" (shudder), I sat on the couch and made little woodland creatures. I used the Sculpey clay that bakes in the oven, and I think they turned out pretty cute.

Two little owls. Super cute.


In the front-left, I have a gnome-like guy I was working on. I haven't finished painting him yet, and I am not sure if I am happy with him. The hat was all wrong, and something about the proportions are off. The guy in the front-right is a fox. I am still painting him too, and he is turning out pretty cute. I made an amigurumi fox (from a pattern from Etsy.com), and I will post that later. It is in the baby-box for when that eventually happens.



Mushrooms. These turned out frickin' awesome. So these are the Before picture, and below, you can see them in all of their Glittery Glory. I forgot how fun glitter was.


These still need some cleaning, and I am going to get the canned air to do that later.