Amigurumi Bumblebee ready for Halloween

This little bumblebee's friend, Bumblebunny, is ready for Halloween. Both of the bees were crocheted in the round and are a quick and fun project for beginner crochet artists. I used a 'g' hook and a lightweight yarn. There are some spots where the filling shows (as you can see in the pictures), so I probably should have used an 'f' hook. When making amigurumi, choose the smallest hook size that you can comfortably crochet with. The final result will be smaller, but there won't be stuffing showing!
                                                         
Bumblebee:

R1: chain 3, join, 6 sc into center (6)
R2: 2sc into each ch around (12)
R3: 2sc, sc around (18)
R4-7: sc around (18)
R8: switch to black yarn. sc around (18)
Place eyes. Sew on mouth. Make sure the joins where you started the black yarn are on on the top of the body. In this way, you will be able to cover the awkward join with the wings. I didn't do this on the first bee (see pictures) and it makes a big difference in making the bee look 'polished'!
R9-11: switch back to yellow yarn. sc around (18)
R12: switch to black yarn. sc around (18)
R13-14: switch to yellow yarn. sc around (18)
R15: sc, decrease around (12)
Stuff.
R16: decrease around (6)
R17: continue to decrease. Normally when you get down to 4-6 chains you stop and weave in the ends to make a round end. In this case, we want a pointy 'stinger' so continue to decrease until the yarn begins to pucker outward and you have only a single ch left. Tie off and weave in, creating stinger.

Wings: (Make 2 in white yarn.)
R1: chain 3, join, 6 sc into center (6)
R2: 2sc into each ch around (12)
R3: 2sc, sc around (18)
Tie off.

Assembly:
Sew the two wings together. Sew them to the top of the body, covering the joins between the yellow and black yarn. For antennae, tie together three pieces of yarn (about five inches long) and braid them together. Use the crochet hook to pull the untied end into the head on one side and then out on the other. Rebraid end, if necessary. Tie off at desired length and trim the excess.

If your bee is a fan of Halloween, like Bumblebunny, make sure to make him a costume! Be creative with this. Over the years, I've had bumblebears and bumblebunnies, but how about making a bumblebutterfly or bumbletiger?

I'd love to hear from you if you use any of my patterns. And I'd really love to see pictures. Thanks for reading!

An Empty Jewelry Box




Isn't this jewelry box cool? When I was home this summer, I helped my aunt clean the cobwebs from the rafters of her root cellar, and I came upon my uncle's old photography supplies. My aunt gifted a few of the tins to me and I brought them out of the cellar that they'd been resting in for decades. This tin had a gorgeous patina on the outside. I wanted to alter the tin, but I didn't want to lose the texture of the patina, so I painted it with a matte black spray paint. On the inside I used a peacock blue acrylic paint (the recipient is a big fan of peacocks).

I crocheted a peacock feather for the top, and I wish you good luck finding a peacock feather pattern--I couldn't find any! Instead I borrowed an old peacock feather fan from my mom and mimicked the shape and colors as best I could. I used eyelash yarn for the outside round and stem. The stem was a little too goofy, and I thought to cut it off before gluing the feather to the top of the altered tin jewelry box. But just when I was ready to do so, I thought perhaps I should make the feather detachable. I carefully attached Velcro to a circle of felt and glued it to the back of the crocheted feather. Then I glued a matching circle of felt to the top of the box. I wrapped the stem around the edges, to be used later, if detached. The Velcro clings to the felt on the top of the box enough to keep the feather in place, or allows it to be removed. I finished the project up by placing some cool little self-adhesive half beads on the sides and lid.

Looking at the pictures of the empty jewelry box makes me think of the four pieces of jewelry that I wear every day: my nose ring, my wedding ring, a toe ring from my grandmother and a ring on my thumb that I wear to honor my commitment to my husband's family. My jewelry box is empty (well, metaphorically anyway!) because I carry my jewelry with me through the day.

When I was tiny, I remember seeing a picture on the cover of National Geographic magazine of a girl with a nose ring. I thought she was beautiful, and felt drawn to her. I thought, "I wish people here could have that kind of jewelry." This was Ohio in the 1970's. Wheat bread was exotic, whole wheat bread unheard of, so a nose ring was not something I could ever expect to see on the people around me. But I continued to think that the nose ring (and the girl) were beautiful, and remembered the picture long after the magazine had left our orange-shag-carpeted home.

When I was a teenager, things began to change somewhat in my world. I  traveled out of the suburbs and met kids who grew up in urban areas. In Cleveland, my friend's step-mom (a step-mom! How strange and different that seemed) served us an exotic food: vegetarian chimichangas. They tasted like nothing I'd ever eaten before. "What is this delicious herb?"
"It's cilantro," she shrugged.

"I have to tell my mom about this! It's the best thing I ever tasted!" When I went home, my mother told me she knew what cilantro was, but that she hated it. I was perplexed.

In the early nineties, I began college and was earning the money to pay for it. I was on the Ramen Noodle meal plan, living in an apartment with others who had not experienced that particular rung on the socioeconomic ladder. One day, my friends invited me to go to Ann Arbor with them, where they said they knew a guy who had a piercing gun. I could get my nose pierced. I jumped at the chance.

A year later, I headed off to Alaska during summer break to try to get a job on a fishing boat. I found a position working on a floating processor. I remember that the company took us to the ship on a smaller boat and that as everyone strolled around talking and meeting each other, I wandered to the quiet stern and watched the wake pooling out behind us. I was so happy to be in Alaska, in the closest thing to a frontier that I was likely to ever see. I wanted to get away from the chatter and see the water seeming to grow larger as the shore shrank in the distance.

Later, my husband would tell me that that was the first time he saw me. A girl standing alone, with long black hair and a nose ring, staring backwards when others were looking not much of anywhere. I added a wedding ring to my list of every day jewelry a little less than two years later.

Back in the Midwest, my husband and I were living in State College, Pennsylvania while he finished school. My Hungarian grandmother sent me $10 as a birthday gift. I was working as a salad prep/bartender in a local restaurant while we tried to pay rent and out-of-state tuition. Ten dollars was a fortune. I found a tiny ring in one of the eclectic shops along College Avenue and bought it. I put it on my toe and have not taken it off. That summer I showed my grandmother. "Nagymama, look at this toe ring. You gave it to me."

"You're welcome, Dear."

When my husband finished school and began to look for a job, he said that he wanted to travel half way across the world to visit his family for three months. "If I don't do it before I find a job, then I will be working all the time and we'll never get a chance to go back for that much time." It was a wise decision and I will never forget the time I spend in my wonderful in-laws home, eating mangos and learning the language. Before leaving the US, I bought myself a large ring and placed it on my left thumb. I performed a silent ceremony as I put it on, telling myself that the ring represented my marriage to my husband's family. As long as that ring remained on my hand, I would remain committed to them. They are delightful, kind and loving people and I've never once felt like taking that ring off.

While visiting, I got the chance to visit one of the most densely populated cities in the world, to wander a gorgeous, long unsullied beach, and to eat my mom-in-laws cooking. But after only a week or so, my bread-raised soul grew tired of rice and, in the heat, I found I could no longer eat hot rice generously anointed with ghee. So I switched to the local fruit. I ate tiny prickly pineapples that had all the flavor of our large ones condensed into one bite. I had lychees by the bunch. And you know how each summer, you get to eat that one perfect watermelon, the one that tastes so good that you eat watermelons all summer long just trying to get another perfect one? That summer I had perfect watermelon after perfect watermelon. And the mangos!

Mangos were in season and the variety was as wide as the variety of apples I'd eaten each fall in Ohio. (I grew up a mile down the road from an orchard. An extensive orchard.) In my husband's family home, I ate tiny yellow mangos, and medium mangos that were mottled brown on the inside but creamy, sweet and tart on the inside. I ate oversized mangos with a slightly spicy bite to them. My mom-in-law chopped up green mangos and served them with onion and mustard oil. One day my husband's dad came home with two giant mangos the size of watermelons. The flesh was exactly the color that you imagine when someone says mango. It was so delicious, I ate an entire mango on my own. I also slept that summer. A lot. I later found out that mangos contain something that can make you sleepy when you eat too many of them. Looking back, that wonderful summer was like a dream. I slept that summer away, thanks to a glut of mangos.

This morning I woke up thinking about my permanent jewelry, and how each one defines me in some way:
the dreamer who loved nose rings even as a preschooler; the wife who gazes backwards; the granddaughter who misses the people she has lost; and the daughter-in-law, far away but still loving her other family. I enjoy each piece of forever jewelry, and wish you all equally empty (metaphorical!) jewelry boxes.

Neo the Unicat

Meet Neo. I recently got the chance to help Neo to become a unicorn. Or unicat, I guess. You can see how happy he is about his new hat. His owner, Lisa from the bunnylog, took this awesome picture of Neo. Seriously, this picture has me daydreaming about investing in a camera slightly fancier than the $99 point and shoot camera that I usually use. I love the expression on Neo's face, part annoyance, part patience. "Alright, can you please finish with the pictures so that I can shake my head and get this thing off?"

It funny how sometimes I see a craft someplace and instantly know how to recreate it. And sometimes I see things that are a little bit harder to figure out, and that is a fun process too. This hat was found on etsy from xmoonbloom, but the shop is no longer operating so I couldn't buy the pattern. I ran a search for unicorn cat hat and didn't find anything except a whole bunch of 'borrowed' copies of xmoonbloom's picture on various blogs. But when I just looked for just plain old 'cat hats', I found a pattern and hooked it up. All I needed to do then was devise a little horn and sew it on.

I hear that Neo wore his hat for only a short while. I'm glad Lisa didn't make him wear it if he didn't want to. Making this hat really had me thinking hard about the ethics of 'playing' with cats. 

In college, one of my housemates had a kitten named Nico. That poor cat got way too much love and teasing attention from everyone in the house.  One favorite activity was placing Nico in a paper bag and watching him find his way out. Maybe I am just justifying in retrospect, but he did honestly seem to enjoy the game. We'd all sit around the living room watching him get out and then putting him back in. It was much better than watching the old TV with lousy reception and too many commercials. Nico loved the big rolls of paper that were often lying around the house (lots of Fine Arts majors). He used to climb into the paper tunnels and peek out. Occasionally someone would unroll the paper roll while he was inside, sending him tumbling. I remember one of the guys giving Nico tinfoil shoes which looked pretty cool as he walked around on the carpet, but which slipped out from underneath the poor cat when he stepped onto the linoleum kitchen floor. I wish I could say that I read my housemate the riot act, but I probably just gave a weak, "That's mean." My housemates were all much cooler than I was and I had a hard time sticking up for things like that. I will say though, that Nico didn't run away from us and hide like a lot of cats. He seemed to adore the attention and came running to us whenever there was a crowd in the front room.

Here's another picture of Neo, hanging out with Lisa's daughter (she looks so pretty and mischeivious!) He's sniffing the acorn locket I sent, perhaps thinking, "Well, I may be wearing this silly hat, but thank the lord I don't have to wear a goofy locket!"

Thanks go to Lisa for being willing to share her pictures! Check out her blog if you get a chance, or just leave a comment on this post and I'll make sure she gets the message.

Amigurumi Mouse

Mice are busy little creatures, always rushing from place to place, taking care of themselves. When I was sixteen, and in Germany, my host mother was angry with me. She told me, "Du kummerst dich immer." (Or something to the effect--all these years later, my German is worse than rusty.) I wasn't familiar with the verb, so I asked what kummern meant. And she explained that I was always going from place to place taking care of my business. Which, as an independent kid, I would have taken as a compliment if her tone didn't clearly indicate that it was NOT a good thing. She told me (complete with pantomime) I was like a little mouse, scurrying from place to place, getting things done and not asking for help.

I took it to heart, and for a while I tried to ask for help when I should.

As an adult, I know that I'm not always successful--I tend to assume people are too busy with their own lives to worry about mine, and so I just kummern mich and get what I want done, done. Or, sometimes, not done. I have had this conversation with a friend who is the same way. I've said, "But I want to do this favor for you--I know you need it." But for some of us, it is hard to admit when we need help. And to this day when I see a mouse, I am reminded to slow down.

Amigurumi Mouse Pattern:

ch3 join with slst. slst

Row 1: 6sc into center (6)

Row 2: sc, inc around (9)

Row 3: sc around (9)

Row 4: 2sc, inc around (12)

Row 5: sc around (12)

Row 6: 2sc, inc around (16)

Row 7: sc around (16)

Row 8: sc *2sc, inc* around (21)

Row 9-11: sc around (21)

Add eyes.

Row 12-end: 4sc, invisible dec-->around until closed. (Stuff mouse before closing completely.) Do not tie off. Continue by making tail.

Tail: ch 17. sc into 2nd ch from hook. sc back to body. Tie off. Weave in ends.

Ears: Begin with ch3 join with slst

Row 1: 6sc into ring (6)

Row 2: inc around (12)

Row 3: sc, inc around (18)

Tie off, leaving a long tail. Fold ear in half, then sew onto stuffed mouse.

Whiskers: Use embroidery floss to sew on whiskers. (One strand of embroidery floss=6whiskers)

My son asked me for a grey mouse with no ears and no whiskers--it looks just like a tadpole!



Penny Passport: the socially acceptable way to collect good junk

As a young child, I resented the What Little Boys Are Made Of rhyme. "How come," I'd ask, "little boys get to be made of neat stuff like snips and snails and puppy dog tails, but little girls have to be made of dumb old sugar and spice?" Personally, I defied the stereotype. Not in any purposeful way; I was way too young for feminist politics. I just followed my interests. I hung out with the boys in the woods, where we caught salamanders and cut down saplings with contraband hatchets. We dug holes and made fishing poles out of branches and string. My pockets were always full of bits of this and that: fossils, bottle caps and acorns, small pieces of sandstone that were soft enough to use as chalk, interesting candy wrappers, rusty nails, and my pocketknife. There were also tiny twigs, twisty ties, snail shells, marbles, ribbons, wire and twine.

When I was in college, tomboy was no longer an innocuous label, and I tried to revise my antisocial behavior. But it was a process, and didn't change overnight. At that time, I lived in an apartment near the train tracks. I had no car, so I rode my bike to work, and then to class each day. I had to go over the train tracks. When I had time, and a handful of extra coins (not as often as you might think--I was on the Ramen Noodle Economic Plan), I used to park my bike and wander to the tracks. In the silent pre-dawn, the shadows were long and the rails stood out against the dark rocks. The air was so still that the metallic smell of the rails was noticeable, even on the days when the snow piled up. I would place my coins onto the smooth metal and leave them there. When I came back in the evening, the sun would be setting or have set and the pennies would have been smooshed by the passing trains. They lay glittery and bright in the rocks or the snow, waiting for me to pick them up. I kept them in my pockets as a sort of worry stone.

Nowadays, my pockets hold keys. Maybe a few receipts. Perhaps a Lego or a hair clip, just until I get a chance to put them away. But despite the possibility that I may have finally grown up, I love the smooshed pennies that you can make at touristy places like museums, zoos and amusement parks. Whenever I see a smooshing machine, I make sure to make one...or three. Logically, I can see that it is a total waste of the penny plus the fifty cents it costs to use the machine. But the sentimental part of me loves the thrill of an inexpensive souvenir. And the suppressed magpie inside still loves the shiny stuff. But smooshed pennies no longer inhabit my pockets, and you can only keep so many smooshed pennies in a little pouch before they get too jumbled to enjoy. So how can you display them?

How about a penny passport? You can buy a thick plastic penny passport at some museum gift shops, and they serve their function. But they are hard and pointy and, let's face it, they just aren't very pretty. I seem to have grown into that feminine desire for pretty things, so I wanted something larger and softer. And pretty.

A while back I posted about some tea wallets that I had made from an online tutorial. I brainstormed ways to adapt that process to a penny passport. This is the result.
 

     Left: Tea Wallet               Right: Penny Passport



Top: Tea Wallet     Bottom: Penny Passport


I did not take pictures during the process, but basically, I increased the length by a little more than double and replaced the tea pockets with small rectangles of vinyl sewn on in a grid. I really struggled with the vinyl, but in the end I was happy with the final product. Let me know in the comments if you would make a penny passport. If people have interest, I would be willing to attempt a tutorial, but that seems like a lot of effort to send it off into the ether if no one would use it!

Fiction vs. Non-fiction



Do you believe in Shrinky-dinks?



I remember being amazed by the world when I was little. Then I grew up and stopped seeing. And then I had children.

For me, one of the best things in life is noticing the miracles that take place around us every day. I love the way children remind us of these things. I used to peer into my little Shrinky-dink oven and watch with my mouth open as the plastic curled and twisted as if it were alive, then relaxed and flattened into a much smaller version of itself.

Children are born with their minds wide open. My youngest is that that age where she is trying to figure out what to believe, and what to doubt. For now, this appears in the form of sorting fiction from reality. "Mommy, is this movie real?" No, guinea pigs cannot talk, even of you give them tiny spy translators. No, you cannot make a house fly by tying a bunch of balloons to it. No, a giant lady is not under the water letting her goldfish children grow arms and legs and visit us on land.

At the same time, this daughter of mine is exploring the world of writing. She asks how to spell words and scribbles little stories into tiny notebooks. 

One Upon a Pon
"Don't you mean p-a-w-n, like in chess?"
"No, Mommy, a Pon, like Upon."



She tells stories in the car and, although they are usually pretty interesting, I do admit to sometimes concentrating on the road and mumbling the occasional 'Mmmm, hmm." Yesterday she was telling a story and said, "Then they came down in a parachute...Mommy, are parachutes real?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"Woooow!" Her voice was full of awe and appreciation.

"What about jet packs?"

"No, no jet packs." (Although, come to find out I might have been wrong on that one. Ironic that we were having this conversation as a man was jetting over the Grand Canyon.) "But it is true that people used to be able to go to the moon."

"Ha! That's not true!"

"Yes. Yes it is. It happened before I was born, but now we can't do it anymore because our computers are too delicate."

"Mommy, that is not real."

"It is! The first man to walk on the moon was named Neil Armstrong."

"No way. That is not even a real name!"

How could I argue with that?

These kinds of conversations open me up to being able to experience the everyday wonders in our world. We see marvelous, unbelievable things every day and don't even stop to marvel or disbelieve. Airplanes fly past the palm trees and I seldom stop to think--flying vehicles filled with people? Amazing! Water loving palm trees in the middle of the desert? How amazing (and sort of sad, right?) that we've figured out a way to get that much water right where they need it!

Shrinky-dink paper still comes alive as it shrinks, although my current oven is much bigger than the one I used in the '70s. I discovered the idea of making Shrinky-dink rings on etsy. I saw some very cute little rings that I loved. But since etsy is supposed to be all handmade, I thought the seller was stretching the definition of handmade. How could someone possibly print pictures onto plastic rings and call that handmade? It must be done by a big fancy machine. Then it dawned on me...those rings were handmade from Shrinky-dink paper! I googled Shrinky-dink rings and found an awesome tutorial by Planet June. Even though you might be tempted to do without a tutorial--the basic concept is obvious enough to anyone who has ever played with shrink plastic--you might want to look at it anyway. She has some great tips and gives the measurements she uses.

Shrinky-dink paper is something that we keep around the house, (because it is a necessity, that's why!) so it was easy to sit down and make a bunch of tiny rings. My oldest is studying the California gold rush in school right now, so she made a ring with golden nuggets and "49ers" written on it. The baby used rubber stamps to make a duck ring and a dog ring. My son sat this one out. He'd rather read a book about origami yodas than make girly rings out of plastic.

I made the tree ring to go with a polymer clay tree necklace. It was for a swap with the theme 'tree in your pocket'. I kind of botched that one; this is more like trees around your neck and finger, but the person I sent to didn't seem to mind. I suppose she can put these into her pocket of she wants to.

Playdough for Grownups

Instead of giving my children playdough, I like to give them small chunks of polymer clay. The things they make are tiny (good for fine motor skills) and can be baked immediately, then stowed away in their keepsakes collection. And, truth be told, another part of the appeal is that I can sit down and play with them and call it 'crafting'.

These fun little corn and toast pendants were my attempt at kawaii. They are small enough to wear as a necklace. They were gifted to my friend, whose daughter loves kawaii. (Kawaii is the Japanese word for cute. Run an image search on Google if you'd like to see some kawaii items.) I have to admit I can't quite put my finger on exactly what qualifies as kawaii.  If anyone can clarify in the comments section, I'd love to hear from you!



The polymer clay we use at home is Sculpey. It is inexpensive, available in large multicolor sampler packs, immediately ready for use, and soft enough for little hands to form. However, Sculpey tends to hold fingerprints and easily takes on nicks. (Note the fingernail nick in the toast's eye and the small indentations in the mouths on both figures (left by the skewer I used to push the mouths onto the faces).)

Fimo is actually my favorite polymer clay for adult crafting because when swirling colors together, the borders remain sharp. This is especially important when making polymer clay canes. Fimo does not retain as many fingerprints and does not nick as easily. Finally, I love Fimo because it was the first polymer clay I ever used, back when I was an exchange student in Germany. However, Fimo takes some kneading to get it in shape for use and it is a little more difficult to work with because of a general 'crumbliness'. It is also slightly more expensive than Sculpey.

Toast + Corn: True Love Always

Mrs. Toasty--amigurumi buttered toast.

Isn't she cute? I have to admit that I haven't quite figured out which items can be labeled kawaii, but I think this one fits the bill.

This sweet little toast is so easy to put together that I made two in one evening. Or maybe I am starting to get a little faster at crochet, now that I have been doing it for six months. I made her from two different colors of wool yarn, with cotton cheeks and butter. I used an F hook because the wool seemed thin, but if you use worsted cotton, you might choose G. When making amigurumi, the gauge is not important. What is important is that the stitches be very tight so that the stuffing doesn't show. I have seen a lot of otherwise cute little amis that were done too loosely and their little bits of stuffing show through.

If you try this pattern, I'd love to hear about it. I would also be more than happy to answer any questions you might have if you get hung up in the process. (My email address is in the About Me section.)

Bread 1 (front):
Row 1: ch11. sc into second chain from hook. sc across. (10)
Row 2-10: ch 1, turn. sc across. (10)
Row 11: ch 1, turn. INC, INC, sc 6, INC, INC (14)
Row 12: ch 1, turn. INC, INC, sc 10, INC, INC (18)
Row 13: ch 1, turn. slst 4, sc 10, slst4 (18)
Row 14: ch 1, turn. slst 4. (Because you are putting these slip stitches into a previously slip stitched chain, it will appear that you have 2 chains to choose from. slst through the middle two strands.) sc 10, slst4 (through middle two strands.) (18)
Tie off, leaving short tail.
Round 1: Beginning at the approximate middle of the bottom, change colors and sc around the entire edge. (When you sc into the slst section at the top, use your discretion, hooking into the middle two strands.) join with slst.
Round 2: ch 2. dc into back loops only around. Tie off leaving a long tail for sewing.

Bread 2 (back):
Exactly the same as bread 1, but skip round 2 of the crust. Instead, tie off after round 1, leaving a short tail.

Butter:
Row 1: ch 4. sc into second ch from hook. sc across (3)
Row 2-3: ch 1, turn. sc across. (3) Tie off, leaving a long tail for sewing to bread 1.

(Alternative, large butter: If you do not want to put an ami face on your stuffed toast, you may complete the butter in 4 rows of sc4. Then, sc around, ch2 at each corner.)

Cheeks (make two):
magic circle, ch2, however you start.
Round 1: sc6. slst. (6) Tie off, leaving long tail for sewing to bread 1.

Finishing (If you are like me, you might skip reading this part of the directions because it all seems so obvious, but please take a minute to at least look through them. I do recommend doing things in this order.):
1.) Position safety eyes onto front of bread 1. Attach.
2.) Sew on the cheeks, being careful to place them evenly and flush with the edge of the crust.
3.) Sew on the mouth.
3.) Sew butter on, taking a few extra stitches at the corner to emphasize the square shape.
4.) Beginning at the bottom of the toast, sew the two pieces of bread together. Tuck in the remaining tails from the butter, cheeks, and bread as you go. Sew through both loops on bread 1, and into the back loops only of bread 2. When you have about eight loops left, lightly stuff the toast.  Unlike most amigurumi, this one needs to be stuffed lightly. That way she can stay flattish. No one wants a toast with a tummy. Finish sewing. Weave in end.

This would be cute made with embroidered eyes and stuffed with catnip. Just saying.

Fabric Postcard

Today is one of those days that we look forward to and enjoy here in Arizona. This morning our usual expanse of blue sky was hung instead with marvelous, heavy, dark clouds. On the way to the kids' tennis lessons, humidity in the air pulled a sort of homesickness into my brain, so that while I knew I was driving in the Southwest, I was breathing the thick childhood air of my Midwest, inhaling the promise of rain. When we arrived, I heard a boy tell his mother "It smells like rain." It did. Arizona children learn to recognize the smell early on; it is so rare for them that it reeks of the exotic. Rain, when water falls from the sky! Imagine.

Later, as we drove home, a dust storm began to blow around us. A tumbleweed bounced across the road. As I pointed it out to the kids, an oncoming car struck the tumbleweed. We laughed as the car passed us with the massive tumbleweed stuck to its front end. A moment later, we nearly hit one ourselves. My daughter remarked, "I love when the sky looks like this. Everything looks prettier." I agree, although prettier is not the exact word I would use. In the light of an approaching dust storm, the sky changes and objects look grittier, and at the same time much clearer than usual. If you have ever experienced a solar eclipse, and the surreal light that shines at that time, you have an idea what dust storm light looks like.

Finally, this afternoon, the rainstorm began. In my family, we all love this rare desert rain, the kind that knocks the dirt and pollen out of the air. My son, with his plethora of allergies, gets a temporary reprieve. What marvelous air. Clean air! The humidity is gone, the water remains on the ground. In an hour or so it will be dry again and the sky blue. The evidence of the rain leaves so quickly it seems we've only dreamed it.

This fabric postcard was made for someone who is going through some big changes in her life, leaving her partner after many years together. She likes fabric postcards so I decided to make one for her. It seemed to me that the ones I saw online were symbolism heavy, so I went with that same theme. The postcard comes with a butterfly envelope, symbolizing metamorphosis. The postcard itself shows a figure performing the yoga tree pose. (The recipient practices yoga.) The figure is stretching, balanced  in the outdoors, to show liberation and fresh beginnings. I hope that when she looks at this postcard, she can feel the freedom of rain fresh air.

Sealed With A Kiss!

I don't know about you, but in my family, we tend to get dry lips during the winter.

And my children are prone to losing their chapsticks. In fact, this year one of the chapsticks took a disaterous spin through the laundry room, melting in the dryer and staining a whole load of children's clothing. I needed a solution, and thought that a chapstick cozy might do the trick.

I had seen sewn cozies, but I was looking for something different. Like crochet. I looked online for cozy patterns and learned that the crochet cozy was not as original an idea as I had thought! There are lots of free patterns for cozies, but I did not find one that was just right, so I started crocheting the picture I had in my mind.

I'm really happy with how they turned out. They are great. They use up small bits of yarn, they don't take too long to make, and best of all, they keep my washer and dryer from getting 'moisturized'. The only bad thing is that I am using up all my cutest buttons.

I just completed a really neat swap. Each person had three partners and sent two homemade Valentine items to each partner. I decided to send each person one personalized gift and one crocheted chapstick holder. I made box-envelopes out of cardstock and sealed them shut, then wrote "Pucker Up, Valentine!" My oldest was a little dismayed that her mom was telling some other ladies to pucker up, but I told her I was pretty sure no one would get the wrong idea.

Cupcake Stuffie

This little cupcake was made for a stuff-your-own stuffie swap.

Normally I would make the top and bottom and then sew them together, but because this was supposed to be easy for another person to finish, I sewed the top and bottom together and left a small portion of the blanket stitch at the bottom open to stuff the little guy.

Faux Postage Swap

Here is a picture of the stamps I sent to my partner.

Fabric Faux Postage

I recently participated in a swap where we were required to make four faux postage stamps to send to our partner. I made some self-adhesive stamps following the links provided by the host, but I also wanted to do something extra.

I came up with the idea to make iron-on fabric stamps.

It was my first time using Wonder-Under. I love it, but I think I ruined my ironing board cover! Make sure that you place an old scrap of fabric under your work to avoid the same fate.

Here's what I did.

Cut a small square of decorative fabric (about 4"x4") and a slightly smaller square of Wonder-Under or other paper backed fusible web. Following the directions that came with your web, attach it to the wrong side of the fabric square. Leaving the paper on the fabric, cut the fabric neatly into rectangles. I used a quilter's square and rotary cutter to cut mine to 1"x 2" and 1"x1 1/2".

Peel the paper backing off and fuse the rectangles to a piece of plain white fabric (damp cloth, high heat). Now fuse an appropriately sized square of web to the back of the white fabric. Leave the paper on and use decorative scissors to cut closely around the fabric rectangles. I used Fiskars paper scissors in a stamp pattern for this.

You are finished making your iron-on faux postage!

To attach to clothing or a backpack (or whatever), peel off the paper backing and place onto the item. Place a damp cloth over the stamps and fuse. If you place these onto an item of clothing or something else that will get a lot of use, you may choose to sew a quick zigzag stitch around the edges. Transparent nylon quilting thread is virtually invisible and would be a good choice.