Crazy Art Project

I had a super crazy thought. A huge, monumental idea. It’s insane that I’m even thinking about it. I pondered a project so big, it could take me years to maybe forever to accomplish. An art piece so outlandish, I might actually try to do it. I even roped my daughter into considering doing it with me. Yes, it’s so big, I need help. I would even have to involve my sister and my husband too. And it might even have something to do with crochet.

There’s this book, a book I absolutely love, love, love. I was 19 years old and visiting my daughter’s grandparents in another state. She was just a baby, and I spent a month with them so they could get to know her. They took me to the library, which I was very grateful for since I was getting a little stir crazy being away from my own family. Reading has always been, and still is, a wonderful escape from…anything that needs escaping from. I came across this paperback called Mermaid’s Song by Alida Van Gores. I fell in love with it instantly. It’s about mermaid’s. I loved mermaids back then. I love mermaids now. It was a match made in sea heaven.

My favorite book of all time!

It’s a story that takes place in the ocean and didn’t have any of the nonsense about trying to be human. I returned the book, thinking I could find it at my leisure when I got back home. That turned out not to be true. Had I known how difficult it was going to be to find that book, I would have ‘lost’ it and paid the library for it.

Advertisement

Skillet Chicken

I don’t really write about food here (or anywhere) but tonight, I couldn’t resist. My son was laughing hysterically after eating my delicious dinner. Before he ate it, I warned him that it was an experiment, so it might not be so great, but I thought it looked good. My son, being the good son that he is, tried it with an open mind. To my delight and his, he liked it. The more he ate it, the more he said he liked it. Then he said it was definitely a keeper.

My skillet version. 

Boy, was I relieved. It took an hour and a half from prep to finished product, so if it hadn’t worked out, I would have scrambling around for something else to make real quick. As we were eating, I told him how I came about this new recipe. I’m not usually very adventurous when it comes to cooking. What I cook, I cook well. I just hate to cook. I love looking at pictures of all the yummy food I see on other blogs, but that hardly ever transfers to my kitchen.

Freebie Friday – Tunisian Crochet Phone Case

I haven’t done a Freebie Friday in a while, mainly because I haven’t had as much time to dig around the internet for cool patterns (or write up my own). But since I was tasked (forced) to make something for CYC course, it seemed like a no brainer to share it. Ok, no one tasked (forced) me. Making your own pattern was optional, but since I went ahead and wrote up my own pattern, here it is. 🙂

Tunisian crochet mobile-phone case

Tunisian Crochet Cell Phone Case

I’m trying to come up with items for our ultimate-prize-box at work. I already have a few items in there but I need more. I recently asked the kids for ideas on things they’d like to see in there and the answers I got ranged from the doable to the impossible. I heard ’emoji’ this or that a lot. Surprisingly, they say they want items that represent our program. The name of our after-school program is World Academy and our logo features the world. We brainstormed about bracelets, jewelry, hats, bags, and cases with our logo.

So in that spirit, I decided to make a cell-phone case using our colors and a depiction of the world in cross-stitch.

Loosely based on our logo. Very Loosely!

Tunisian crochet lends itself well to cross-stitch so I went with that. The kids were fascinated when they saw me cross-stitching on the case and almost all of them were excited it was going into the box. But the more I look at it, the more I want to keep it to represent! I guess I’ll just have to make another one for me. 🙂

I’m thinking I should make some type of yarn/hook/accessory carry bags/cases for those students who have gotten really good at crocheting. I think they would love to have something to carry their stuff around and having it in our colors would be an added bonus. I’m starting to get excited here.When I presented the idea to one of my 4th grade girls, she sat down right in front of me and said we needed to talk about design ideas. We didn’t have much time so we’ll have to do it later. She also asked if I could get it done by the time she reached the ultimate prize box. She’s reaching that milestone pretty fast. I don’t know if I can! The pressure! Sure I can. I got this. 🙂 I think I’ll have to have a brainstorm session soon with my ‘master’ crocheters on designing something that would work. It always makes them feel good when I take their input and they often surprise me with their ideas. Can’t wait to get started!

Yellow Crochet Emoji Hand Puppet

So this happened.

What happened?

It was supposed to be a heart emoji puppet. I made it a little differently than the other puppets. I’m trying out different mouth techniques until I find one I really like. I want it to feel comfortable in the hand and open nicely.

I messed up on the heart eyes. I wasn’t getting it right so I had the brilliant idea of tracing a heart directly on yarn as a guide. The plan was to embroider the eyes and cover up the marker. Yes, I used a marker. Foolish. It bled through the yarn! Anyway, I digress.  That didn’t look right either so I went back to the drawing board and crocheted the hearts, but now there’s an outline of the marker! I pretended it wasn’t there and the kids haven’t mentioned it so I’m going to keep pretending I don’t see it. 🙂

Open wide!

He started looking less like an emoji and more like Pac Man and then morphed into a yellow frog with red heart eyes. Can’t win ’em all. The kids still like it though. I know this because they keep grabbing it, running away and squealing. So into the ultimate prize box it goes.

Yay! Ultimate prize box!

Craft Yarn Council Teacher Certification Level 2 Passed!

It took a while but I finally received my pin and certificate for level 1. I had already sent in my level two swathes and was waiting to hear about my exit call for level 2 to go over my work. This time around, I didn’t pass right away. Overall, my master teacher had good things to say. She commented on how good my weaving in of the tails was. I was glad because I was a bit obsessive about it. She said it was obvious I loved tunisian crochet because that swatch was great and my lesson plans were based around a tunisian crochet phone case of my own design that she liked.

She asked if I published my designs and I replied that I don’t. She said I should publish my tunisian designs. Was that my heart skipping a beat? I think it was. I was floating.

Then came the crash to earth. She said most of my swatches were excellent but she did have a few comments about some of them.