Seminar at S.C.R.A.P. yesterday.

Flowers I made of paper and fabric.

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I'm A Little Teapot....

 

Ridiculousness knows no bounds. I started to crochet a miniature tea set and lost interest after the teapot. Now I'm too much of a hoarder to throw it away. Anyone want a crocheted miniature teapot?

One friend who saw the photo on Facebook inquired whether it would be suitable for her fairy house.  I offer the following two photos for purposes of scale:

A Plug for Jessica

I helped out at a friend's wedding by making bouttonieres for the groomsmen and a corsage for the mother of the bride.  You may recall the wedding where I did the bouquets a few years ago in this blog (key word "weddings").  The groom at this wedding was the brother of the bride at that wedding and when he got engaged, he told me he was counting on me doing the flowers.  This was right before my surgery, so I told him he'd better find someone else.  As it turned out, though, I was able to a little bit with the corsages (photos below).

But what was really adorable at this wedding were the program place cards at each place on the dinner tables.  Unfortunately, my cell phone photo cannot do it justice.  I found out they were done by Jessica Marcotte, an absolutely fabulous designer for parties and such who works out of the bay area.  You can find her blog here.  Check it out!

Father of the Bride

Mother of the Bride

Groomsman

I'm Back!

 

I've been gone a while, Friends.  Mostly I've been rather incapacitated and in too much pain to tend to my blog.  My right hip had been displaced since childbirth, unbeknownst to me, and after a fall and an injury back in 2008, it became obvious what was happening.

I had total hip replacement in March and I am still recovering, but as you can see by my photo taken at a wedding last week, I am free of pain and suffering!  I haven't felt this good, well, ever!

I've been busy with crochet projects on and off when I could manage, and I've posted a few of them here.  I'll try to be more diligent in future about keeping this blog updated.

Lap Robe for Mrs. H

I found a huge lot of crocheted afghan squares at an estate sale recently and this is the first product resulting from those squares.  It is a lap robe for my friend Linda's mother.  I did not crochet these, obviously.  All I did was join them and crochet a border.

Emma's blankie

 

I saw Baby Emma for the first time live last Friday.  She's so tiny, I hope they use this blanket as a stroller cover until she grows into it, or else she may get lost in it.

Orion's blankie

 

This is the longest baby gift I have ever created.  The "baby" in question is about 2 now, I think.  Orion's mom and dad are scientists.  I mean real scientists.  His dad worked on a project involving dust that came from Saturn.  I mean, really!  How many people can say that?

Anyway, way back when his mother was expecting, I heard rumors that the baby's name, although they were keeping it a secret, had something to do with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and I got this great idea to applique symbols from the book onto the blanket I was making.  I planned a goldfish and a porpoise and that funny little face with the skinny little arms and the tongue hanging out and a "Don't Panic" button and some mice with a teapot and....

It got so complicated I knew I'd never finish it.  So when the baby was born and they announced his name was Orion, I got another great idea!  I'd applique stars on the blanket in the shape of the constellation Orion.

That was a great idea until I found out how many stars are actually in the constellation Orion!  I had no idea!  It's not at all what you see on the Orion Pictures film headers.

Then I got to thinking.  Of course, that's when all great ideas stall, when someone gets to thinking.

These guys are scientists.  They're going to know if the stars are out of alignment.  I was so obsessed with my artistic license, I couldn't finish the blanket.

Other babies and baby gifts came and went and I thought sure the parents thought I was snubbing them or something.

Finally, I spoke to a mutual friend who told me to get over it and just finish the blanket already!

So I did.  I took a lot of artistic license and the constellation is probably only recognizable to me, but at least I finished it before he grew out of it completely.  I think.  I'm going to give it to them this Sunday.  If they are at all offended by the poorly crafted constellation, they're polite enough to keep it to themselves, I'm sure.

My Review of Buffalo plaid mega tunic

Originally submitted at WomanWithin

This amazing mega tunic is easy to wear, soft and cozy...and fashionably plaid. We provide the finest plus size tunics and plus size plaid tops for the price.

• A-line shape
• Button placket
• Mandarin collar
• Rich pintucking
• 32" lo...

Buffalo plaid mega tunic

Love It!

By Myownigloo from San Francisco on 11/19/2010

 

5out of 5

Sizing: Feels true to size

Pros: Great Color, Figure Flattering, Quality Materials, Versatile, Washes Well

Best Uses: Travel, Casual Wear, Work

Since I was a schoolgirl, Autumn has meant plaid in the wardrobe. I love this plaid tunic so much I got it in two colors and two sizes (because I'm losing weight and want to wear it when I get to the next size down). Comfortable, gorgeous, just like the photo.

(legalese)

Giants Rock!

Testing remote blog posting.

Labor of Love

I cannot believe it took me seven months to find the time to get back here after I reported back in December 2009.  http://squcps.blogspot.com/2009/12/radio-silence.html

The least I can do is show everyone what I'd been working on all that time I was gone.  (It's actually been finished a few months now, but I'm catching up with the rest of my life and since my osteoarthritis has taken all the cartillage out of one of my hips, I'm cane dependent and very slow.  Everything takes longer than it used to, so my time is even more precious.)

But here are photos of the friendship afghan that I assembled.  I'm sorry they aren't the best quality photos because I used my cell phone in bad light.  Still they do give the general impression of the project.

First are photos of the work in progress.  I crocheted a navy blue frame around each square so that they would more easily line up.  Then I laid out the squares on the bed until I was satisfied they would make a balanced presentation.  I had help from Booger, who was quick to take her place as project supervisor whenever she saw the squares coming out of their package.  The lirtle pieces of paper contain names of the maker of each square.

Following are photos of the final product with the name tags removed and all squares framed and assembled.  Each square was knitted or crocheted by an online friend of the recipient, a young woman widowed much too soon. It was our wish to comfort her in whatever way we could, and this was the result. Some of the squares have significance to her because they are reminiscent of her husband's likes, such as the center Tetris board.

Bastille Day Story

I know it's been a while.

Someday I'll have to catch up with y'all and let you know where I've been and what I've been doing.

Someday.

Meanwhile, stop me if I've told this before.


Whenever Bastille Day rolls around, I always remember my trip to Paris when I was 17.

I was traveling with a church youth group to England in 1970. It was quite a momentous trip in many, many respects. I had never flown before. We had gotten a charter on the first 747 plane to cross the Atlantic -- the return flight to Paris. In Paris, we had a 24-hour layover before we went on to Heathrow. It was so exciting!

I was 17. Besides one other girl on the trip, who was 15 or 16 at the time, no one spoke French. And our claims to "speaking French" were quite nebulous, especially since this was Paris where we learned that the French spoken is analagous to the American English spoken in the Bronx. We couldn't understand a word!

But we were so determined to use our French in possibly the only 24-hour period of our lives when we'd have the opportunity, that we just kept trying.

Because of the time zone difference, we arrived at our hotel in Paris at about dinnertime on our biological clocks, but it was after midnight there.

My friend the Freshman in French and I, the Junior, roomed together. We were wide awake as Paris was shutting down. We occupied ourselves by laundering our delicates in the "funny little sink in the bathroom" and then writing letters on the little balcony. So romantic! We were in our pj's and bathrobes. It was 2:00 a.m. local time and most of the hotel staff was leaving the hotel, their shifts having concluded.

Two young men saw us sitting on the balcony and called up to us to come down and join them! OMG! What do we say?

We closed the French doors and consulted each other. How do you say "Go away?" Ummmm. Don't know.

"Um" (me), "let's tell them to 'Come back tomorrow!'"

(Her): "Great idea!"

We opened the French doors and peered out, saying, "Come --"

-- and before I could say "back tomorrow," in my faulty French, they entered the hotel and came up to our room and started banging on the door!

OMG. Turn off the lights! Shut the door! Be quiet! Don't answer! They'll go away.

Then went back downstairs and outside and counted the windows (we peeked through the curtain with the lights still out).

They came back up and started banging on the door again!

OMG!

Then we got another great idea! We should use Morse code and knock S-O-S on the wall between our room and the one next door, summoning two strapping young men from our high school to rescue us.

I took a shoe and started knocking. The French guys went down stairs and started counting windows again. They came back up.

I stepped out on the balcony and the guys next door stepped out on theirs.

"Jo Anne, this is your own stupid fault. You should never have talked to those guys in the first place! And by the way, that wasn't S-O-S you were tapping, you idiot."

They went back inside.


So much for chivalry.

Well, eventually the French guys went away, but not after waking the entire hotel. (We learned later that one of the high school guys went down and went out drinking with them.)

Next morning while my girlfriend and I were having our petit dejeuner of croissants and cafe au lait, the Methodist minister who was the leader of the youth group came over to our table. Without even asking us what had happened, he said, "You girls are forbidden to speak French for the rest of the trip."

"But, Rev!"

"No buts. No French. Period."

Well, then it was time for our tour of Paris. We soon learned that our tour was taking place on Bastille Day and that on Bastille Day, all Parisians leave the city and go picnicking in the country. The place closes down! We saw the Louvre from the outside. From the tour bus, we saw the Arche de Triomphe and the outside of the Tour d'Eiffel because they were -- well, outside. Other than that, we were spoken rudely to by anyone we met except in one little cafe where we stopped for ice cream. (The BEST coffee ice cream I ever tasted in my life.) There I surreptitiously spoke a little French with the waiter until I saw one of the adults giving me the evil eye.

Finally, it was time to go to the airport. The minister was having a hard time understanding the tour guide and apparently the gates had been changed for our departure. The tour guide was trying to direct the minister where he should go and he couldn't find all the English words. He answered a question of the minister's in French and the minister turned to my girlfriend and me and said, "What did he say?"

You know those times when you remember later what you should have done or said and then kick yourself?

This wasn't one of those times. We'd been carrying this grudge for over 12 Whole Hours!

My girlfriend and I looked at each other, then turned back to look at the minister, shrugged our shoulders and said in unison, "I don't know, Rev. I can't speak a word of French."

Happy Bastille Day, Everyone!

Radio Silence

So sorry I've been lax in posting on the blog.  The latest project is taking up a lot of time.

It's a joint afghan by a set of international contributors to a message board that I frequent.  We are making an afghan for one amongst us who lost her dear husband suddenly and after only a couple of years of marriage.  It's a small way for us all to comfort her, a virtual hug turned real.

I am the one putting the squares together, so my time to post on the blog is quite limited.

But I had to share this bonus I received with the square sent to me by PipneyJane.  She knows about my penguin fixation and whenever she has cause to send me something, she includes one of these:

At Long Last!

This gown took longer to make than the baby took to "germinate."

And here is the Little Miss and her lovely mom:

Nearly There

I am so sorry about my absence for so long.

I have been working frantically to finish a christening gown that I started when the mom was 3 months pregnant.  The baby was born on July 31st.  The christening is in November.

Crochet projects have all been on hold while I concentrate on this and I'm so happy to say I'm almost finished.  I expect to wrap up by the first or second weekend in October.

Here are some really bad photos of the work in progress ....

...AND two of the more important COMPLETED project (for which I cannot take any credit):

More photos of the baby (and a fantastic photographer if you're looking for one in the Bay Area) at The Jess Page.

California Girl Encounters Tennessee Wildlife

DD has moved to Nashville. She is encountering as new and strange the sorts of things I took for granted growing up in the Midwest.

Her latest email to me was so LOL funny, I just have to share it. With her permission, I present it here in its entirety:

"I didn't get to tell you about the wildlife out here. This is like the roadkill capital of the world!

"The first time I ever experienced a traffic jam near our house, when we finally got to the scene of the "accident" and saw that the slow was caused by a very large buck that was right in the middle of the road. I don't know how some idiot managed to hit something so big. It's like running into a parked car.

"Since then I've noted a carcass every 50 feet or so on every major highway.

"Now, in Nashville, the drivers here are rather obnoxious with regard to speed. The rule of thumb is generally 5-10 miles BELOW the speed limit. There's a cop pulling someone over for speeding, every few miles or so, and that's for people who go 1-2 miles over the limit. So I was über stumped as to how these slow pokes manage to hit so many animals.

"Then I had a few experiences of my own and I've found that the animals here tend to be a little red-neck themselves. For example...

"One morning I had a chipmunk run in front of the car, then a squirrel then a cat, all that I barely missed. Shortly after that, a large turtle was sitting in the middle of the road and it took two people to move it. It turned out to be a snapping turtle and it looks like someone had already hit it with the car because its shoulder was smashed and bleeding. We got it to the side of the road but, while moving it, it peed on us. It was some really bad stank in the car after that.

"One night I saw a cat in my lane so I moved to the next lane to avoid it. It looked up at me and then jumped right in front of the car as I drove past. I didn't hear any bump. I stopped and was freaking out. So someone got out and looked and told me nothing was hit. I guess it went right under the car.

"The next day there was a dog running along side of the car. I got this premonition/vision of it jumping in front of the car so I slowed down to about 15 mph. It then walked in front of the car and sat there. I stopped and it looked at me with this silly-ass grin and its tongue hanging out and then it ran off.

"A few nights ago there was an opossum in the road. I stopped for it and it stared at me for a few seconds. Then it turned around and went running down the road in front of the car - not getting out of the way but just running along like I'm supposed to follow it. It was friggin' hilarious and we were all laughing so hard watching it waddle that I could barely drive. It finally jumped in a bush from embarrassment.

"Yesterday morning a chicken crossed the road in front of the car which then inspired about a million-and-one chicken-crossing-the-road jokes.

"Then last night there was an opossum crossing the road and we passed it while it was in the lane next to us, heading toward our lane. I breathed a sigh of relief that it hadn't gotten to my lane as I don't think I would have seen it in time. But then a second later I passed a car going in the opposite direction - oh no! This morning I checked and there was no new road kill so I think it made it.

"This morning I almost hit two vultures that were picking at a carcass. I also avoided hitting a turkey and a pea hen.

"These animals are seriously stupid and just oblivious of human life around here. You'd think they'd evolve into some sort of sentience regarding pavement but... they don't.

"Anyway. Fun times.

"Love ya’."

My Own Igloo

I gave myself my moniker years ago when trying to set up a Yahoo! account. I tried to make it PenguinLover but that was taken. I really don't like adding numbers to a screen name that is already taken, so I tried MyIgloo.

That was taken too. By then I was getting a little annoyed, so I said, "Well, all right" (and yes, I really do talk to my computer screen), "how about MyOwnIgloo?"

Thus, a globally challenged persona was born (scroll down to the bottom of my blog to see my trademark).

May 2009 is a signature month for myownigloo because in May 2009, a law firm partner who likes to bake on the side made me My Own Igloo!

Ain't it grand?

Meet Nellie Nester

This was the handmade item for my Warm Ewe Up swap on Ravelry. It took so long to make, I had to send it separately from the last package.

I completed Nellie weekend before last and didn't post her pic because I wanted Mo to get a chance to see her first. Turns out, the timing was perfect. Check out Mo's post on her own blog.

Mo's photos are much better than mine, but you can get a peek into my apartment in mine. That's my favorite piano there in the background. If you look really closely on the right-hand side in the background, you can see my penguin bathrobe draped over my balance ball. As a housekeeper, I make a lousy photographer. (Or is it as a photographer, I make a lousy housekeeper?)

Mo collects nesting chickens and what better gift for a winter swap than a cozy?

Warm Ewe Up Final Reveal

I am happy finally to have some time to devote to the ol' blog.  This public thank-you is long overdue.

My poor swap partner had quite a challenge in me because I have so much stuff, I have no business participating in a swap.  Yarn has become my screen monster that threatens to eat our home.  So when someone says, "What do you need?  What colors do you want?  What kind of yarn," yada yada yada, I put my hands up in a defensive gesture and scream "Noooooooooooooo!"

In spite of all that, she uncannily chose absolutely perfect gifts for me!  I'm not going to build up the suspense here because I am so excited about these fingerless gloves, I simply can't put off mentioning them:

She designed and knit them up herself and every detail was a thoughtful gesture for Yours Truly.  She tells the story of their creation better on her own blog, where I am proud that my gloves share space with Pavarotti.

I am positive she has ESP.  I was eyeing sock monkey patterns at the lys while she was choosing these pattern book to send me.  All of them are perfect for me and thoughtfully take into consideration my taste and the type of projects I do.

She is a very good photographer, too, and sent me a photo taken in her home, upstate New York, near where my own DH was born and raised.  I love it up there, and her photo captured the autumn leaves that I recall so well from the only time I ever visited there.  (A portion of the photo is barely visible under my fingers above.)

The little lamb has already found a home with the Baby in the Seafoam Booties.  The two are very good and fast friends now.

Now I have officially sworn off swaps until I have finished all my UFOs and made a dent in the yarn that threatens to push us out of house and home.

Brooch Contest: First Prize

It's been a while, hasn't it?

I think enough time has passed that I can safely show you first prize in the brooch contest that I sent off to Norway a while back.  Hopefully it has made its way across the ocean by now.  (See Vote on a Brooch herein.)

Congratulations to Sølvi (aka xGvJx,) who asked for a Gryffindor scarf bookmark.

This is crocheted using embroidery floss instead of yarn.

I got the idea for this bookmark last year when I scored a huge lot of embroidery floss on eBay for the Best of Hats/Worst of Hats hat.  I recognized the colors and made a bookmark similar to the one above for my daughter.

I didn't have the colors anymore, so I went to my lys to purchase more floss.  What lot of colors there are from which to choose!  I did not trust my color memory.  Luckily, as I was trying to decide whether I'd chosen the right colors, a very Aloof Young Woman (aged 13? 14?) strolled past me.

Me:  I said, "Excuse me?"

AYW:  (eyeroll)

Me:  "Um, are you a Harry Potter fan?"

AYW: *(eyeroll)  Yes.  (with an implied, almost audible "Duh!")*

Me:  (showing her the colors)  "Gryffindor?"

AYW:  (Repeat response between the asterisks above.)

When I'm ready to make the other three houses' scarf bookmarks, I think I'll take my daughter, or at least one of my younger friendly-type friends, with me.

Warm You Up Winter Swap Blog Question #5

The question is what pattern would you make again and again?

In all honesty, I can't say there is one pattern I enjoy that much.  My attention is always on the next project and the next and the next and the next.  I often think "This is a good pattern to make again for so-and-so," but I never get a round tuit.

If it ever did happen, among the running would be:

• some gorgeous glass cozies made from thread that I don't even have a picture of to show you;
• the Love Knot dress for babies (I'll add the photo later if I can find it....);
• cotton shopping bags;
• zombie Amigurumi;
• the bridal purse (search "weddings" herein); and
• baby shoes

Now, to celebrate spring, here is what my Christmas cactus looked like this morning.  Its second blossom to come to full term is showing, plus another one aborning: