And Hello To 2016

I can guarantee the next check I write I will write 2015 for the date.

Here we are sixteen years into the 21st century! Blows the mind, it does!

One of the good things to come about for we 21st century dwellers is YouTube. I have John Cougar Mellencamp up as loud as I can get those rinky dink speakers to go. Listening to songs I haven't heard in a very long time! I watched/listened to a Bee Gees concert before John Fogerty sang for an hour and a half. 

At any rate, time's a ticking! 

I will have to convince this yellow cat sitting on my mouse to leave before I can upload any pictures into this post. He wasn't impressed with our photo shoot earlier. I put the snake you're going to see around his neck and tried to take his picture. I had to chase him down to retrieve my snake and I didn't get a picture of him wearing it.

Took some convincing but Tommy finally got his back end off my mouse! We'll get back to him and the snake in a bit. Right now we are going to talk about pickles.

I sent three of them off in the mail a few days ago. I seriously considered sending one of them naked but I chickened out at the last minute and put all three of them in envelopes.

If you are in the pickle swap over at AFA be forewarned if you continue you will see your pickle and if that isn't good for you cause your pickle hasn't arrived yet, you might want to close your eyes and scroll down a bit.

 This is Super Girl Pickle. I didn't know about Super Pickle when I crocheted this lovely little green girl with her big red smile and cape. Her hair is different kinds of green strings, yarn and such. I crocheted her with acrylic yarn and stuffed her with green fiber filling. Her arms and legs are crocheted green silk fabric. The pin at her throat (do pickles have throats?) is a girl scout pin.

H

Her cape is satin material that was the lining of a green leather jacket. I don't know what the girl scout badge on the cape is awarded for but it has garden flowers embroidered on it. Super Girl Pickle is about a foot tall. Somewhere around there. She's headed to Sunny California.

 This is Grandpa Gherkin and Baby Dill. Baby Dill looks like a hairy growth on Grandpa's side, but he looks like a little hairy pickle when you see him in hand. Grandpa is about 5 inches tall not counting his hat or his legs. His mustache is black felt glued to chipboard, sewn to his face. He started out with hair but my grand daughter said he looked like he had a turd on his head and we started calling him poop head. On a shopping spree to Hobby Lobby I found the straw hat on clearance. 71 cents for three of them. It solved his rather embarrassing problem. He's crocheted out of cotton yarn. His arms and legs are crochet cotton thread. Baby Dill is eyelash yarn crocheted. Both are stuffed with green fiber filling.

 This is Darla Dill and her little one Baby Dill. (Yes, another Baby Dill.) Darla and Baby are both crocheted out of acrylic yarn in camo. Their arms and legs are cotton yarn braided, knotted and attached. They have mother of pearl eyes and felt mouths. Mama is about a foot tall not counting her eyelash yarn hair nor her legs. Darla is the one I seriously considered sending naked. I worried about little Dill getting lost on the journey. He is sewn to his mama but the postal system can be brutal!

 This is Pete. He's about nine inches tall. He's crocheted with acrylic yarn and embroidered with light green cotton yarn. He has lots of acrylic yarn french knots too. I like doing french knots. I'll be keeping this little fella. He already resides atop the headboard with the rest of my stuffed menagerie of elephants, rabbits, a black bear and a monster or two.

I think these two will reappear in the future with a bit more character than they possess at the moment. The biggest one is about six inches. Both are crocheted out of eyelash yarn, stuffed with green fiber fill. 

All of the pickles were done while I was away on my kidnapping.

A whole peck of pickles!

And one more pickle, along with Miss Lola whose keeping her eye on Tommy cause she doesn't trust him. That little pickle is crocheted from some ribbon yarn. It didn't start out to be a pickle. I was trying to make some horns for a fish I'd crocheted. That didn't work out quite like I had hoped so I sewed the two together and they sure look like a pickle! I gave this pickle to the cats to play with. They don't seem too interested in it as of yet, but I'm pretty sure it will move from room to room with help of a feline sooner or later.

I wish I could say I have a picture of the fish I had planned to put horns on. I don't though. Not even sure just where that pink whale/shark, not to be confused with a whale shark, is at at the moment. It didn't get any horns. Not yet anyway. That's still an idea.

I had a great time making all these pickles but I'm glad to be over that phase!

 

 This is the little felt snake Tommy just didn't appreciate at all. No pattern to make it. You draw a spiral on paper. Pin it to your two pieces of fabric and cut it out so you end up with a snake. Then you sew up the inside seam and start stuffing the little devil as you sew the outside seam closed. You can wind him around posts, handles, ect. This one is orange on the other side. He's about five inches across. His eyes are french knots. I made him while away on my kidnapping.

 I showed you all two pink bags in the last post. This is just a pouch. It's about five inches across the bottom and maybe six inches tall. I wire wrapped a quartz bead to use as a closure.

This too was made while away from home.

I've been home from my kidnapping for almost a month and I just this evening unpacked all the stuff I brought home with me. I will have to clean my bed of the bags still sitting there before I can climb between the sheets.

I did a lot of crocheting when I was away on my kidnapping. I still haven't finished Annie's blanket since I came home. I've put about a dozen stitches in it but nothing more. An hour of crocheting and I'd have it completely done!

Instead I am on a book making kick...

 I apologize for the terrible picture. This one is a cake box covered in painted newspaper. About 5x7 inches. It has notebook paper pages. Seven signatures of five sheets each. Sewn with crochet cotton in the lazy long stitch. the leather button is purely decorative.

 This one started out as a pudding box. I covered it with painted newspaper before filling it with notebook paper. Five signatures of ten pages each. It's sewn with embroidery thread in the long stitch. I'm uncertain how I accomplished those criss crosses in the stitching but I replicated it in the next pudding box book also.

 Another pudding box book. This one is covered in a drawing on a book page. The drawing is of an old barn and a windmill. The yellow packing tape along the spine says something about caution gorgeous or something like that. It too has five signatures of ten sheets of notebook paper. It has a plastic button closure with a glass bead on a string.

 This is the back side. These two books are 2.75x3.25 inches.

 Another horrible picture. This one is 4x 5.5 inches. The covers are plastic that was once a sign that went in a holder by the front of a convenience store. It was an advertisement for Red Bull Energy Drink. This particular book has copy paper pages. There are 18 signatures of five sheets each. It's sewn with waxed embroidery thread in the copic stitch. 

This sheet of plastic is white on the backside but I thought using fragments of the advertisement would be cool for a book cover. The sheet of plastic is about the thickness of a notebook cover and was about four feet long and two feet wide.

 Here's another Red Bull book. This one is 5x7 inches. It has three signatures of 10 sheets copy paper each. It's sewn with red waxed embroidery thread. The back of this one is the red color along the right hand edge of the front of the book.

 This one is made from the Red Bull sign as well. It is 4x4 inches. It has 12 signatures of 6 sheets of notebook paper. It's sewn in the copic stitch with waxed embroidery thread.

 Another box book. This one is 3.5x2.5 inches. Test strips came in the box originally. I covered the box with painted newspaper. It's sewn in two shades of red embroidery thread in the long stitch. It has six signatures of 12 sheets of notebook paper each. The closure is a clear plastic button with a glass bead on a string.

 

And to end the art part of this post we have a little notebook with copy paper pages sewn in the pamphlet stitch. The cover is wall paper, a double thickness of wall paper. I folded the edges over and hand sewed them in a running stitch to secure them. The button is plastic as is the little yellow apple bead. This one measures 2x3.5 or so. It has about 20 pages.

On top of the heap beside me are three more books ready to be sewn together. One of them has all its holes punched too. The other ones still need measuring and holes punched. There are two different kinds of binding between those three books.

My stash of paper ends is getting out of hand so some little little book making will be in the near future for sure. 

My intentions for the new year are to 

make at least three fish pictures

make at least one book a week

finish Annie's kitty book before January is finished

crochet for half an hour every day

make one mug rug every week

 

We'll see how that all works out for me!

 

Here is one of those books I have to sew together in the next couple days. This one started out life as a cake box. I covered it with the graphics from a bag of Deli Cat cat food. The v3 are metal sticky back letters. I tried three different projects with cat food bags and this is the first one successful enough to merit showing off so I figured it needed a bit of bling when I ran across a pile of those metal sticky back letters and numbers when I was putting things away earlier today. They really jazzed up the cover. You all will get to see the cat book next post.

It's 3 a.m so I probably better think about getting to bed. 

Thanks for hanging in till the end.

May the new year bring you happiness beyond your wildest dreams.

Remember...

Be good to one another!

It matters!

Peace

831

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
831