Grandpa's Birthday Card

My girl has been up to it again.



Making ridiculously awesome cards,booklets and/or zines.



Whatever you want to call them - they are very, very cool.



And full of fun stuff, all designed, written and illustrated by my sweet, sweet girl. If you can't tell, these were for her Grandpa's birthday. And they were oohed and ahhheddd over quite appropriately by her grandparents. Just had to share them.

My Urban Jungle Cool Chick Hat

Okay, let's round out this trio of crochet posts with a really cool hat. See, I HAVE been crocheting - just not posting as much about them as I should be!



It's the Urban Jungle Slouch Hat from Vickie Howell. I've been eye-ing the pattern for a while. It just seemed like it would take a long time and then I wasn't sure if I could pull of the cool slouchy factor.



It turns out that the pattern was easier than I thought it would be. The hardest part actually was not constantly catching my hook on the puff stitches, especially because I used the recommended yarn (Caron's Simply Soft) which is a very soft, pretty and inexpensive yarn but it is prone to splitting for me.



The other reason I waited to start this pattern was (look above) how they described the way to finish off the hat. See, you ended and it looked like this big tube. This was my first time starting a hat from the band up. It scared me until I saw that somebody had linked to a video of Vickie seaming the hat closed here. Phew! That helped immensely!



You can find the pattern as a free Ravelry download or on Caron's site here. She even has a cool new slouch hat the Urban Revival, that I will be checking out as well. I mean, now that I know I can slouch with the best of them, I am ALL OVER IT!



CRAFT GEEK ALERT!

A Bulky Cowl

My first cowl. They are all the rage in the crochet/knitting world, doncha know? This pattern (as well as a slimmed down, thinner yarn version that is on my list to make) is from Jen Johnson. If you're on Ravelry it's a free download.



It is an easy pattern and did turn out VERY bulky with the Lion Brand Hometown USA yarn that I used. But it was fast to work up and is great for this cold days that you just want to scrunch your neck and head down into something soft and substantial.

The Artist's Beret

Remmeber this cute beret from S's art party?



Well, I had to share some more photos, this time with his sister wearing it. It's a cute pattern from Linda Permann in Crochet Today magazine.



It was really simple to make and besides making a cute party prop, it is a cute little cap for a cute twin sister to wear.

Leprechaun Visit Aftermath

Darn that leprechaun! The traps failed again. And he seemed a bit nasty this year. He even mis-treated the "girls". Obviously he is not a gentleman leprechaun. This is what we found:




Then we found green pee in all the toilets (sorry about the toilet picture) and he wrote naughty messages on the toilet paper.



He even abused one of our new chickies (see the green on one of them)!



And of course he had to go in and leave his mark on the would-be trappers.





Their response (after much indignant hooting and hollering) was to make leprechaun beards and wear them on the walk into school. They got a lot of strange looks from cars, but we're used to that by now.



Peelu wouldn't declare defeat however, and decided to whip up a batch of our rainbow cupcakes to help ease the burden of leprechaun catching failure.



Back to the drawing board for next year. That wily leprechaun!

Leprechaun Trap Set-Up

It's that time of year again. That sneaky Spring visit from the naughtiest leprechaun around. However, the kids have been through this for a few years now and are getting savvier in their thinking and trap designing abilities. Aided by a few friends they worked up this slick idea...



Using recycled items (because they had to be "green" - get it?) they designed a "club house" for the leprechaun (and his buddies) to come hang out in. The thought was that they would be so relaxed that they would be lured into one of the traps and stay caught until morning.



There was a little room to "crash" in that revealed a pile of deadly Viking weapons to apparently lop off some leprechaun parts?



There was also a movie theater...not sure where the trap part was there...




A cave for the curious leprechaun to crawl into to investigate but not be able to get out...



A little house with a mail box that was supposed to keep the leprechaun reading his letters until they kids got up and found him.





The zine idea came up yet again and R made a detailed mini (Very mini) zine for the leprechaun to read and get caught up in so much so that he would then fall asleep.





But the kicker part were the girls.....




I am not sure where they got this idea. But I had to laugh that they used some of their clothespin dolls as "bait" to draw in the leprechaun. Kind of like undercover policewomen, I guess. Very ingenious but made me wonder if they were watching old episodes of Cagney & Lacey or Policewoman.



It was hard work setting all of these elaborate plans up....we shall see if they yielded any captive leprechauns...

Ashes with my girl

This was my first time to make it to church on Ash Wednesday. I had to tote Peelu with me to make the noon service. There were only a few people there. And I think we knew all of them. My mom was one of the ushers. So Peelu felt pretty comfortable when Pastor asked her if she wanted the ashes on her forehead. She nodded yes with a solemn smile.



Pastor had also put a long mirror against the steps for people to take a look at themselves, if they wanted to, in order to think about what you personally wanted to work on during Lent. Peelu got her ashes and pranced over to the mirror and smiled at herself and did a little dance. I started to cringe a bit and then heard the laughter behind us. Everyone, including Pastor was smiling.



I think we'll try to make sure that we always get to an Ash Wednesday service from now on...

Clothespin Doll Kit Birthday Gift

If you read the last post you know we were invited to our friend's George Washington birthday party and we made some handmade presents for gifts. Well, we were putting away our supplies from the 4-H Idea Fair craft classes and decided to add a clothespin doll kit to our friend's gifts.



We already had the supplies cut out and on hand and it came together really quickly....



to make a pretty fun looking craft kit.....



that will hopefully bring some more creative fun....



to an already creative household...



As you might have guesses - this kit idea makes use of those piles....


and piles and piles and piles and piles (okay maybe you don't have as many crafty bits piles as I do) of little scraps and fabric bits that you might be collecting.



We also included two already made sample dolls and I culled a few photos with links from these crafty sites to give her a place to look for more ideas. All in all, it made for another great crafty kit idea that will be added to my repertoire of handmade crafty gifts for young friends.