All About Halloween

So, now that Halloween is over I finally have some photos from our celebrations.

You've already seen their costumes, and I had them done in time for the Halloween Spooktacular at the O.C. Performing Arts Center. They always have fun stuff set up before you go in, and the kids got to try out a violin, which they thought was fun and funny.



And here is Joe with the girls in our seats. It's a beautiful center, and we get the same seats for the rest of the performances this season.


We headed over to Tanaka Farms' pumpkin patch, I think this is the 4th year we've gone. It's so much better than the ones at the mall. The girls climbed the pumpkin mountain, walked the corn maze, and played around. And, of course, found the perfect pumpkins! (Though we never got around to carving our pumpkins, we'll probably do that one evening this week.)





These are a few pieces we painted last week at Color Me Mine. We had gone to see a play and had some extra time on our hands, so I took the girls over. We had the whole studio to ourselves!

LRRH painted her Statue of Liberty, I painted the pumpkin plate on the right, and Mizzy did the pumpkin plate on the left. (She actually did everything except the first couple of base coats of orange.


And finally some trick-or-treat photos! Mizzy had to take a small break about halfway through, and LRRH kept coming back with extra candy. I told her she should only be taking one piece at a time and she said "But then sister won't have any. I'm getting for her!" Aw, I was proud!

You can see the parrot on LRRH's shoulder that Joe got rigged up for her. It was perfect!


The kids have adopted our friend's two grandmothers as our own and they wouldn't trick or treat with anyone else.


This was taken about the end of the trick-or-treating. Notice the hat and parrot had disappeared....

Quick FO

Here is the beret that I knit for LRRH out of her "sunny day" Kool-Aid yarn. (I just used my Ann Budd Handy Book of Knitting Patterns for this one. I modified the tam pattern to have a longer brim and overall length.) !Viola! as they say in Paris...

A very few FO, and some progress

The Hogwarts Year One Scarf, for Gryffiindor house. Our friend, "Harry" needed one to complete his halloween costume. I knit this with Premier Yarns "Serenity". It's the Deborah Norville line of yarns from Joann's. It was soft enough to knit with, but will probably soften up with a washing. I used size 8's and just knit and knit and knit and knit. It wound up being about 48" long, and pretty thick. It is knit in the round so that there isn't a right or wrong side. I like it a lot, and I think it's perfect for a young Harry Potter fan! (LRRH wants one, too!)



This is a small cowl I whipped up overnight last weekend (thanks for Mizzy for modeling it.) It's the Wham Bam! Thank You Lamb! cowl pattern (on Ravelry as a free download.) I needed a quick gift for a party LRRH was invited to and happened to have the Lion Brand Wool Ease Thick & Quick as called for in the pattern. Plus it was just the right shade for the birthday girl, one of our adopted grandmas. I would make this again in a heartbeat, and I have some more of the Wool Ease, plus some other nice chunky yarns in my stash too!

(FYI: It just looks really big on Mizzy, on a adult it does not go over the shoulders.)



I've been plugging along on my Fall Colored Cardigan (which is really the Ribby Cardi by ChicKnits. Here is the color scheme:


And I did get the zipper put in, too. I really debated about perhaps doing a button band, but after having done the zipper I may never do a button band again! I do realize now that I've knit a size too big for myself, but I don't mind. I'm not someone who tends to wear my clothes very close-fitting to begin with.


Oh, BTW the cardigan body is knit with Knit Picks Shamrock yarn and the sleeves are Knit Picks Wool Of The Andes. Both have been a joy to knit with!

I only have 2 other projects on the needles right now but no photos. I'm knitting a hat with the yarn that LRRH and I dyed with Kool-Aid (a small beret for her) and the Wrap Top that I started months ago but haven't picked back up.)

Hello, I've come up for air!

I bet you were beginning to think I had just given up blogging! Nope, just been way, way busy. ( I'm trying to get some posting done over here too!)

But, I have been alive, and knitting and crafting and sewing when I have the time. Which over the last month meant I got to do those 3 things between the hours of 10 PM and midnight!

First, and most importantly, halloween costumes! Both girls new early on what they wanted to be: LRRH a pirate princess and Mizzy a bumble bee.

For LRRH I chose Simplicity #2845 for our dress. It is really a simple nightgown shape, that was easily shortened to make it easier to walk in. LRRH chose all the fabrics herself, and my favorite is the jolly-roger lace. (We also used that in the rapunzel-style hat.) The only thing missing is the fake parrot she'll be carrying on Halloween. Maybe on her wrist? We'll see!


For Mizzy, I chose Simplicity #2795. It was an out of print pattern I happen to find on etsy.com and was a simple a-line dress that used bias tape for the hem, finishing, and straps. The only hiccup with this costume was that I had to strip together the yellow and black for the fabric to cut the pattern. And I didn't have the best needles for the job. But I figured it all out, and she LOVES it. And that is the most important thing!


We took a small trip to the bead store yesterday, and this is what I came up with. (But not all; I made 2 others as a gift but can't show them here, yet.) A halloween themed one for me with a pumpkin and skeleton charms. And the girls each got a wizard charm bookmark. I go to a beadshop that has a small wagon filled with kids beads, and the girls will just hunker down and paw through that cart for a good 15 minutes. Long enough for me to choose what I need and keep them still. Plus they get a little baggie filled with kids plastic beads for $2!


LRRH and I did a small homeschool lesson that involved a discussion on natural fibers like cotton, flax/linen, and wool. So we went down to the LYS and choose some wool to dye on our own. I used the hot pour tutorial I found on Knitty.com. She picked out her colors (pink, orange, and yellow like in the rising sun). It was a great way to get her involved because it was all food safe, and didn't involve a large pot of hot water. A simple crock pot was all we needed!



The girls always have a notebook and colored pencils in the car with us. Actually this is where LRRH does her very best work, LOL! LRRH was given a cute little tote by Aunt Sheree a few years ago and uses that for her notebook & pencils. So I got some fabric out of the stash and copied the design so that Mizzy could have one, too!


I was given a neat sewing book by Sheree as well, and stitched up this pocketed tote from it for myself. It calls for ticking striped canvas, but I couldn't find that. But I really liked this damask printed canvas, and I like it quite a bit. (I use this tote for books and lessons for Mizzy to keep busy while LRRH is in her speech class.)

New Post

I have some new posts up on our homeschool blog. I also made it public and available for feeds if you happen to use Bloglines like I do!

No Much Knittin' Gettin' On

I have had zero knitting mojo over the summer. Zero. I can't tell you how many things I've tried to cast on and decided against. I did a major stash search to find some inspiration. I completely updated my queue on Ravelry an actually matched some of my stash to projects. And in the end, I've done 2 garter stitch scarves and about 4 inches of a vest pattern I already knit. *Sigh*.

But here is the yarn/knitting that has been done this summer.

During the above mentioned stash dive, the girls found some stray yarn. LRRH found a pink fuzzy kit that had been a trade and Mizzy found some fuzzy novelty from Joann. Both were just simple garter stitch.

LRRH in her Pink Fuzz Scarf. (It's a Cabaret Kit from Knit1Crochet2 which consisted of their Truffle boucle yarn and a coordinating eyelash.)


Mizzy's is a ball of Joann Sensations Angel Hair. This seems like a fleece of some kind wrapped in an eyelash. It was very soft and almost slippery.


I am already in the mood for fall, Harvest, and Halloween. I went looking one night for some more Halloween inspired yarn and found two beautiful hand-dyed yarns on Etsy. It took a while to two vendors that both sold colors I liked in a superwash merino that had similar yardage. I found CraftsMeow and TwilightKnits. (I hope to have a scarf knit from these by Halloween, if I can find my mojo.)

This is "Wicked" from TwilightKnits:


This is "Witches Brew" from CraftsMeow.


And I'm going to knit a couple scarves for two Harry Potter fans, and try to get a vest finished before the holidays start. Maybe it's just some cool weather and an early evening that I need. But I miss my knitting terribly.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

I just returned from a week at my mom's house in Arizona last night. It's about a 7 1/2 hour trip, but with kids and potty-stops it turns out to be a 9 hour trip. Thankfully my girls are GREAT travellers and it's a nice journey. Though driving through the desert in 113 degree heat isn't always the best.

Anyway, I went with a mission: to help decorate my niece's bedroom as a birthday gift. My mom wanted to paint though I don't think my niece was all that excited about it. But it needed to be done. She was living in a bedroom that had beige paint on the walls and old furniture that wasn't hers. So I told my mom that I had wanted to come anyway and that if she watched the girls, I'd paint and build furniture with my niece.

So, here is the result of 2 days of painting, 1 day trip down to Phoenix to visit IKEA, 1 day of building furniture, and 1 day of arranging/moving in. NOTE: These photos have not been altered in any way. The walls really are that color, LOL!











It's a lot of color, but the black furniture looks really good with the bright walls. I have to admit that when she first told me she wanted black furniture I really, really didn't think it would look good. But the whole point was to give her the room *she* wanted to have. And anything else would have looked juvenille; she's a senior this year.

So, I only got one evening of knitting in. I was just too tired to knit. And I wound up staying an extra day just to rest. I did not want to drive 9 hours when I was that tired.

I hope she loves it!

Makes you dizzy, right?

One of the last sewing projects I worked on the last couple weeks was the backing to a quilt for Mizzy. A friend had done a Thomas The Tank Engine quilt that was never sewn up and she offered to put it together for Mizzy.

Here it is:



When we went fabric shopping Mizzy kept saying "Care Bears are my favorite character. Scooby-Doo is my favorite character. Minnie Mouse is my favorite character." Etc., etc. So that's how we wound up with this one. It's loud and bright and funny, just like her!

Meme Thursday

I have an internet friend, Karen in CT who does a lot of fun meme's. I myself did one about a month or so ago, and after I saw Karen's recent post I thought I'd play along. (Plus it reminded me of "Loving Thursday" that Sheree used to do, so here goes.)

Rules of the game:

* List six unimportant things that make you happy;
* Mention and link to the person who tagged you;
* Tag six of your favorite bloggers to play along , and comment on their blog to let them know they have been tagged. I'm not tagging anyone but if you read this, feel free to play on your own!

1. The way your house smells the day I use lemon furniture polish. (But it only lasts for the day.)
2. Sunlight coming through my windows at 3:00 in the afternoon in November.
3. Being made to play along when my kids turn into "cats". Cats like milk in bowls and to be pet.
4. Owning one skein of yarn because it's too beautiful to not have in my possession and to think about it's possibilities. (I've been sorely laking in the knitting mojo department lately....)
5. Logging into Bloglines and seeing all of the blogs I follow with new posts.
6. Hearing the keys turn in the lock when My Geek comes home. I swear there is a buzz in the air for that moment. (And I know I didn't post about it, but My Geek *finally* found a job. A real one with a real company with a real phone and a real desk and real paychecks. I suppose I didn't want to jinx it somehow. Or maybe we were both just holding our breath. But it's great so far and he loves it and the kids adjusted really well to him being gone everyday. )

What makes you happy?