Goodbye 2015

Hello Readers!

Not sure what to say about my absence here on the blog. Life happened, the blog got neglected. That's all I can say, I guess. At any rate, here I am again, back in the saddle.

My kidnapping went well. I've been home for about three weeks now. 

Christmas has come and gone.

Life plows ahead!

All is well in my world!

                          

Today will be heavy on pictures as is the usual when I've not blogged for a few weeks. 

Enjoy...

 I spent some time with my sister while on my kidnapping. Among other things, we made a pair of oven mitts from wool sweaters. They weren't exactly successful oven mitts, but we gave it a good go anyway.

 The last day of my kidnapping, I made these three little copper wire and glass bead baskets. I left two of them at the Art Center in Lucas on my way home and the one in the middle is headed to Canada tomorrow. The biggest one is about three inches tall. All are made from salvaged copper wire. Sister Jeanny gave me the glass beads a few years ago.

 I did a lot of crocheting on my kidnapping. This pink bag was done within the first few days.

 I went to see Jeanny for the day and came away with three really cool metal alligators. One of them spruced up the pink bag beautifully! Annie made a great model to show off the Alligator Bag.

 Annie always sews when I am at her house. She made this mug rug over the course of a week or so. She also started another one but it didn't get finished while I was there. I love how many stitches she put in each of the shapes. This is totally her creation. I didn't do anything with this but thread a needle occasionally and tie a few knots.

 Cupcake, their elf on a shelf, was in need of a dress according to Annie's mama so I obliged with this teal colored frock crocheted with acrylic yarn and a broken blingy snowflake sewed to the bodice. Annie woke up the next morning to Cupcake in her new dress and told me that Cupcake had helped herself to my yarn and knitted herself a dress.

 Not quite done with this one yet. It's a pouch, nothing fancy. It's about 4 inches wide, 6 inches long. I'm guessing on those measurements.

 I sewed a pouch for my crochet hooks. I didn't really want to sew a pouch for the crochet hooks but something had to be done with them. They were running amuck. I didn't do a stellar job of packing things on this kidnapping.

 It turned out pretty good. It's definitely useful.

I did have a fun kidnapping this time. I got to spend a good deal of time with Annie.

 Here we are in her daddy's pickup truck, at the county landfill. Her daddy is in the back of the truck getting rid of the trash into the big pit with seagulls everywhere!
You'll get to see said birds shortly.

 There was an ice storm while I was at the son's house. Half an inch of ice all over everything for a couple of days. It was cold as the dickens!

 It snowed a little bit, but ice was the biggest concern. There was a lot of tree damage in Hutchinson. None to speak of in Nickerson.

 While it stormed outside, I stayed inside... sewing. This is a felt mug rug.
I made another mug rug also. I do not have a picture of the orange starfish mug rug. I left both of the mug rugs in Lucas.

 I needed a needle book to corral all the needles and pins too so I sewed one together.
Backwards.

 It has three 'pages' made from cotton fleece and a filter of somekind. It holds quite a few needles and pins.

 I did not intend to sew the cover on ass backwards but it was too late to start again. It's functional. The sheep was the beginnings of a mug rug to begin with. I should have just gone with it that way instead of using it for the cover of the needle book. It's all fun and games, practice makes perfect, as the saying goes.  On to the next project!

 A trip to Hobby Lobby produced a skein of bright orange fuzzy yarn that just begged to played with. I have a couple of hunks of crochet with this yarn that wasn't working out as planned. I kept them for use on a fish picture in the future. Once crocheted this yarn wouldn't unwind. So I made a goofy hat. It's a really warm hat! The teal colored yarn was part of the stash I brought with me.

 I always take some felt and embroidery thread when I'm kidnapped. It's always packed, ready to go! The felt is .... the embroidery thread isn't hard to pack. I keep it all in one place all the time.
I took everything out of the felt bag to see just what the heck was in it one afternoon.

 I found a stack of shapes of red felt, all cut the same. They looked like fishes to me.

 With a bit of alteration... I added some fins and a tail in different colors.

The ring atop the head is a copper jump ring wound tightly with embroidery thread.

 They measure approx 2.5 inches high and 4.2 inches long. I'm guessing there. I can't measure one now though. I left them all in Lucas at the Art Center.

 This thing is sooooooooo soft to the touch.

 It's a pickle hot pan holder. That yarn it's crocheted with reminds me of suede. It's not though. I sewed some felt pickles to one side. It's about 7x7 inches.

 This picture is truer to color than the previous two. I love making french knots. There are hundreds of french knots on those pickles!

 Cupcake with some of the reindeer ornaments Annie and I put together one afternoon. They are from a felt kit I bought at HL.

I used up the teal colored yarn while away from home. You won't get to see a picture of the fish stuffy I made. I left it in Lucas too.

 Some seagulls at the landfill in Reno County, Kansas. Seagulls. In Kansas. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of seagulls in this one location! Seagulls love landfills. Especially Kansas landfills. It astonishes me that there are seagulls where there is no sea.

I got a cake!

 I'm betting I'm the only person whose ever received a cake for being kidnapped. Just proves my kidnappers love me! It was a yummy cake....lemon with lemon filling. Terah apologized for the icing. She knew I wouldn't eat it, but as she said, You can't have cake without icing! Especially if you're going to write something on it! I don't like icing on ANY cake. That's just me. I scraped the icing off the piece I had and Annie gladly ate it for me.
Terah said the girl at the store gave her a funny look when Terah told her what she wanted written on it. It's a cake the girl won't soon forget!

 Annie's blanket is coming along nicely. It would should be finished by now but somebody has been slacking. That somebody would be me. I still have two panels to crochet together and then a couple rounds around the outside edge. How many rounds around the outside edge depends on how much yarn there is to work with and how much time remaining before it must be complete.

 I made a couple books over the last couple of days. Cut the paper yesterday, sewed them together today. This one was made from a cream cheese box.

 It is filled with all different kinds of papers.

 The covers are painted newspaper. It measures 3x 5 inches there abouts. I'm guessing again.

 This one is a brownie box covered with painted newspaper with all different kinds of paper just like the smaller one. It measures 5x7 inches. there about. I'm guessing.

 Both are sewn in the long stitch with blue embroidery thread. The blue one has an orange plastic button and bead shaped like an orange tied to string for a closure.

 I've made about a dozen of these woven 8mm film balls. This is the only white one...the beginning of the film on the reel. The others are all black. The film is of a football game between Norton and Phillipsburg in 1973. It makes great weaving material, does the film! The balls end up being about an inch or so. I've no idea what I will do with them. They'll languish with the bag full of paper balls woven the exact same way? I really don't know what I am going to do with them. I wove most of them on Christmas Eve when I was at a get together.

 I decorated my Christmas Tree twice this year. When it came time to set it up, the box of ornaments could not be located out in the storage shed. I was presented with the box of red ornaments but the hodge podge of ornaments was nowhere to be found. I went out there and hunted to no avail. So I put the red ornaments on the tree. All over the tree! It looked hideous.
So the next day Ma and I both went out there and hunted for the right ornaments for the tree. We found them after searching for half hour or so. We, meaning Ma, moved a bunch of stuff to get to the tote they were in.

 We brought them in and took most of the red baubles off the tree. The ornaments I'm showing you all today are mostly new ornaments from this year's swapping adventures. This a beaded fish by Penlowe.

 If you click on these pictures, they will get larger. This is the cicada on the tree. Some of those red balls, a polish star and icicles of the plastic variety. I can't see this picture real well while typing about it. This is the top of the tree.

 This is the felt snowman made by Sun Trade. He's so cute!

 There's Mel's fish and Nanner's village in a wine glass.

 Martha's needle felted snowflake is so pretty! There's some more of those red balls.

 Nothing new in this picture. The lion is one of my fav's and there's a couple of my polish stars. And dead center is the pickle on the tree.

 This here fella has got to be the coolest thing hanging on the tree! This is Stinky the Cyclops Elf by Russell. Isn't he adorable! He's hanging front and center on the tree. You cannot miss him!

 My tree doesn't really have a garland on it. I started making a paper chain for it but never got the chain long enough to actually put it on the tree this year. The links in this chain are about a quarter inch wide and less than an inch around. Gonna take a lot of links to get it long enough to go around a five foot tree.

 When I was cutting pages for the brownie box book, I overestimated how many pages I would actually need for the book. Not a problem! I just need to tape up another brownie or cake box and the pages will be ready to go.

 I like this picture better.
Those things on top of the book pages will be round ornaments once I get their strings ready and glue them together. I made those this morning while talking to my sister on the phone.

This is the only picture of my christmas tree this year. It is not a very clear picture! Perhaps I will get a better one before I tear it down for the season. We'll see. It will be up for another couple weeks at least. The boys will come here to do our thing after the new year. We have yet to coordinate schedules for that wing ding.

I haven't shown you all the pickles I made while on my kidnapping. There were a boatload of pickles besides the pickle pot holder. No pictures to show of those right now. For some reason the camera on the phone decided to delete that session. That's OK. I haven't packed them up to go off to their new homes just yet. That happens later this evening. So expect crappy pictures of pickles. It will be dark when the photo shoot happens.

I guess that's it for now. No more pictures to talk about. It's cold outside. Gonna snow later tonight. All the bad stuff is south of me thankfully. Were expected to get about half an inch of snow.
Thanks for hanging around to the end!
Remember....
be good to one another.
It matters.
Peace
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