random funniness

The last panel of today's Dinosaur Comic sounds like something Chris would say. I now expect him to say this to me the next time I say "Thanksgiving" when I mean "Valentine's Day," or "knife" when I mean "scissors," or "New Year's" when I mean "Election Day." (Blockbuster when I mean Best Buy, and the list goes on!) Yes, this happens often. More often now that the baby in my belly makes me forget things. But I will not pin this one entirely on the baby - I do it plenty without a baby in my belly as well.

Thanksgiving - gluten free, corn free, potato free, and still tasty!

We had a very tasty allergen-free Thanksgiving dinner at home this year. Although we were only having one guest over for dinner, I decided to go all out with making dishes because I wanted all the "fixin's," but also so I could test out some allergen-free recipes for upcoming holidays. I must say, I feel the dinner was a success! Everything was very tasty. However, it took a LOT of prep time (1 hour Tuesday night, 3 or 4 hours Wednesday night, 3 1/2 hours Thursday morning), and it certainly wasn't a low-fat meal! (Allergen-free ingredients are rarely low in fat.) But since I was so happy with how the recipes turned out, I thought I'd like to all the ones I used in case anyone else is looking for allergen-free dishes for the holidays.

Just a note to anyone cooking for someone with food allergies - if corn is a problem, check the ingredients of ANYTHING canned or otherwise packaged. Orange juice that has any ingredient other than oranges will contain corn products, as will most canned foods that have any ingredients other than the intended food and water. Same with half & half, brown sugar, butter (don't use margarine), olives, fried onions,

Kendra's Gluten, Corn, and Potato-free Thanksgiving:

Roasted Turkey

Stuffing - I added a couple stalks of celery, a couple cloves of garlic, and extra onion powder and garlic powder

Turkey Gravy - the drippings from our 10lb turkey gave us just about 2 cups of liquid for this.

Green Bean Casserole - the general recipe is one that Chris and I have adapted over time, but this year I had to make the cream of mushroom soup from scratch, and get special fried onions. Below is our recipe:

1. 4 cans (15 oz) of italian cut green beans
   
2. Cream of Mushroom soup, this one comes with an additional post of instructions to explain the technique. In hindsight, I should have cooked this longer to allow it to thicken more, and added more salt; our cream wasn't as thick as we like it for the casserole.
   
3. Thai Fried Onions (from the Asian grocery store)
4. Cheddar cheese - 1 cup
5. optional - green olives or kalamata olives
   

• In a 9 x 12 casserole dish, mix green beans and enough cream of mushroom to coat the green beans (usually 2 cans Campbell's Condensed soup, this time it took 12 oz of homemade soup)

• Sprinkle fried onions across the top to cover
• optional: sprinkle olives on top
• Place in oven at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes
• Sprinkle cheese on top, put back in oven until cheese has melted.
• Enjoy!
  

Cranberry Sauce - this I could have gotten from the can, but this recipe looked so easy, and I got some organic cranberries for cheap, so I wanted to give it a shot. Very tasty!

Chebe Cheese Rolls - super yummy! I prepared these on Tuesday night and froze them, popped 'em in the over 35 minutes before dinner time.

Pumpkin Pie - directions from the can of Kroger pumpkin
Pie crust - Pamela's Amazing Wheat-free Bread Mix (directions on the side, makes two pie crusts)

I would be mourning the loss of other thanksgiving staples like mashed potatoes and corn casserole (which I had the BEST recipe for) if we didn't already have too much yum-tastic food on the table. Our guest did bring mashed potatoes for her and Chris to eat, so they didn't miss out. She also brought a tasty sweet potato casserole that was safe for me to eat (hers just had orange, butter, and brown cane sugar), and there are plenty of recipes for gluten-free sweet potato casserole out there, but the tricky thing for me is making sure all the ingredients are corn-free too, so this year I decided not to put the time into it myself. Maybe next time.

Then this afternoon after Chris cut all the turkey meat off the carcass, I started some turkey broth for use in future recipes. It's really easy to do, and doesn't take a lot of maintenance. I followed the general idea of this recipe, but didn't add the veggies... just water, turkey carcass, salt and pepper.

Tasty fun times!

SF Galleries

Last post for the night! I decided that the "arts and crafts" post for San Francisco needed to be separate from the other post.

One of the things Chris and I love about traveling is checking out museums and galleries. While we didn't do nearly as much of that in SF as we did in New York, we did see was lots of quality stuff. Of course the SFMOMA was great times, and we especially enjoyed their new exhibition of Martin Puryear's work. The ladder to the left is pretty much the only thing we could take a photo of, because it was in the lobby. No photos allowed in the actual exhibit, of course.

We also hit a couple of gallery shows, one at Gallery 1988, where I fell in love with the artwork of Yoskay Yamamoto (left), and Chris fell in love with the artwork of... just about everybody, so I'm sure he'll post about it eventually. For more info about the show, check out 1988's blog.

Then we made our way to the Plush You show at DoublePunch, which was just plain crafty fun.

And I think Chris gets just as excited about street art as he does about anything in a gallery... the boy took a TON of photos on Haight street. Here are just a couple of them... of course he had to take a photo of the huge Shepard Fairey mural.

San Francisco!

Last weekend Chris and I had our "last hoorah," a vacation just for the sake of a vacation without any worries of childcare. We decided to take a trip to San Francisco - a city I love but haven't been to in 10 years, and Chris had never been. Chris was also always dismayed to say he'd never been to California, so we were able to mark that one off his "to do" list for a while.

Our friend Chip and his wife Bethy live right in downtown SF, and they were awesome hosts, letting us crash with them and actually taking the time to take us around town. We walked a LOT, rode lots of public transportation (subway, busses, trolleys, and cable cars) and had a very good time. Some of the highlights:

Lombard Street

Gotta love the sea lions

Does anyone know what this is? We couldn't figure it out, and we were standing on it.

The Bluebottle Cafe made this crazy "syphon coffee" that took forever but looked awesome. We just got normal coffee, because syphon coffee was too pricey. But we enjoyed watching them make it.

And the obligatory pics of me and Chris

another compost update

So with the first trimester sickness, followed by a second trimester vacation, followed immediately by a bad cold, I've been WAY slack on posts. Sorry 'bout that. Pretty much all I've managed to keep up on is my facebook status, and that's only because I can update in from anywhere on my blackberry when I'm waiting for something to happen. Anyways. I plan to make up for it by posting three blogs right now. Two here and one on the baby blog. So there.

I meant to post this ages ago, but my mini composter didn't work AT ALL. Chris finally had enough of it (when I couldn't stand the smell I put him in charge) and he did some research, and decided to pick up a 5 gallon bucket and dump all of it in the bucket. He also told me that for now on, we have to cover our compost with dirt every time we put more in there, so it doesn't get to wet. (We lucked out and got three big planters full of dirt from a freecycler, so we actually have dirt to dump over the compost now). This has worked to kill all the maggots and get rid of the odor, but the compost doesn't seem to be breaking down very quickly this way. Today I had to pot a couple of things (an avacado plant I'd been sprouting from seed, and some other random stuff) but I couldn't find any compost that didn't have big peels and veggie chunks in it, so I didn't use much of the compost in my planting, which was a bummer. But Chris got a second bucket to start composting in, so that the current compost can sit and do its thing and we won't keep adding new chunks to it. Of course, now that it's cold I don't expect it to do much breaking down. I guess only time will tell. Still. What a ridiculously long experiment!

big news!

So we've been dying to share this for a while now, but had to wait until "the appropriate time."

Chris and I are having a baby!

We're thrilled, by the way. And of course all the family is super excited.

I'm 12 weeks along; almost out of my first trimester. Been doing pretty well, considering. But that is my excuse for not posting much lately... I just haven't been up for extra computer stuff a lot lately.

We've set up a new blog page to specifically follow the pregnancy, then once the baby is born, we can post photos and updates on the little one there. Head on over to baby.youarenotyourjob.com. Even though we didn't make this public until today, I've been slowly posting some updates on there already as time allows, so the ultrasound photos, stories, and whining about pregnancy woes have already begun.

What's really exciting is that Chris's brother and sis-in-law are also pregnant (a couple months ahead of us) so we'll have kids the same age. They live in Laos right now, teaching english, but they should be back in the Atlanta area for a year when our kids are about two years old, so they'll get to have their terrible twos together, anyways. What fun!

Okay, that's enough for now. Woo hoo!

teapot giveaway

Found this from my friend k-dawg's site, it's a teapot and skirty giveaway! Given my love of teapots, I figured I'd have to enter, and if you post to your site you get an extra chance. I mean, what else is my website for if not to use it to try and get cool things?

green resalvaged purse

So I started this purse MONTHS ago, and it just didn't turn out the way I imagined it once it felted... I used a different brand of yarn for the base when I ran out of the expensive yarn for the rest of the purse, and it shrunk a lot more... plus for some reason the whole thing just looked crazy-misshapen when it was done. So I put it away for a while, and then wound up cutting a whole lot off of it, made a new base (and felted it separately) and hand-sewed the pieces back together to make a new purse.

So this is the final product. I like the color, but it still didn't wind up exactly right, so it doesn't sit well. I don't know if I'll use it much, but that's the story of my disaster purse.

In other news, I have a couple of other purses that I not only slaved over, but I even wrote patterns for them. But right now we're using the laundromat at our apartment complex, and it turns out the hot water cycle there isn't hot enough to actually felt them. So they're just sitting in my house waiting for me to figure out a way to get these felted.

Whenever that happens and I have final products (to make sure they actually look good when they're finished) then I want to find a couple of people to test the patterns to make sure they work. I'll let y'all know when I have something to show.

Compost and Plants update

I re-planted all my plants about a month ago, changing their containers and adding some organic plant food because they all seemed a little sad. Since then all the plants I repotted have been flourishing like crazy... they all seem very happy in their containers. I'm pretty pleased with the flourishing green-ness of my balcony.

Now for the compost update. About a month ago I started a small compost bin on my 2nd floor balcony as an experiment. Since then Chris and I have been saving all our fruit and veggie waste in a plastic container in the fridge, and then when it gets full we dump it into one of the little compost boxes in the back. We've been pretty good about turning it once a week or more, too. And we don't put any animal products in there either. However, so far I don't know whether or not this experiment has been very... successful. For one thing, a lot of pieces break down quickly, but a lot of others seem to take forever to break down, so I don't really know when I can actually "harvest" some compost for my plants, if there are always fruit and veggie bits in there. I decided not to put anything new in the center container so it has time to completely break down, but it doesn't seem to be doing much work to break things down either. The left container is the one I "feed" most often and seems to be doing the best, although it also seems like it will never break enough food down since I keep feeding it. It's crawling with ants like crazy, too, which I guess is ok, but really I think the ants are just taking all the food away.

My big concern is with the far right section, which is crawling with big brown maggots. It's smelly and gross and the whole thing looks like it's moving.

EWWW!

So I asked Google about my composting issues (ants, maggots) and I learned a few things...

1. The Internet doesn't have a clue about composting bugs. I found so many conflicting responses to questions about both ants AND maggots that I have very little faith in actually getting any correct answers. (Pour boiling water on the ants and DON'T pour boiling water on the ants were both in google's top 5 links, and I also found tons of conflicting reports on the maggots, with "these maggots are good" and "these maggots are bad" both in the top options). I can only hope I managed to discern which ones were actually wise counsel and which were the words of fools.
   
2. Apparently ants will show up if the compost isn't damp enough. If I dampen those sections it should help.
3. Apparently these particular maggots are okay and harmless if I want to let them stick it out, but they are there because that compost section is too damp. If I add more brown plant material and shredded paper it should help dry it out and get rid of the maggots.

I am especially amused that I've managed to simultaneously create too dry and too damp compost. I've also seen people saying that if my compost is off the ground it should help with my pest problem.. which is interesting since, as I mentioned before, it's on wooden slates on a 2nd floor balcony. How much farther above ground to I need it?

At any rate, I think I'm going to get the hubby to help me implement some of these "solutions" tomorrow so I can keep my distance... just the time I've spent today photographing it and dampening the ant-compost heaps has my skin crawling, and five bucks says I'll dream of maggots crawling on my food or something. ::shudders::

More Corn Issues...

Today I got an iced coffee in a cup that, I realized after finishing the drink, was made from corn-based plastic. I researched it after I got home and found out that, sure enough, the corn can contaminate my food. This explains my achy back tonight. It could also explain other times when I've been super-careful about food, but still wind up feeling sick. Yet another thing to look out for in the future... and probably more and more as time goes on, since the idea of corn-based plastic (and other non-food products) will only become more popular, I'm sure. And I was lucky that this one told me it was corn-based... they certainly don't have to.

I also learned in my research that it's not as compostable as they say it is, and overall isn't really any better environmentally right now, except for the fact that it doesn't leech plastic toxins into the food.

I guess I should start carrying a stainless-steel or glass cup with me everywhere I go... although neither is really the easiest thing to do.

It's always an adventure around here.

Hooray for days that don't go as expected...

I spent all week looking forward to my crafty Saturday, going to the Craft party with a couple friends, then checking out Wonderroot with another friend. But before I even left for the Craft event, the friend who was going to pick me up from the Marta station bailed. I decided I would not let that stop me, so I just walked the mile and a half from the Marta station to Young Blood. The craft party wasn't what I expected... I was the first person there, and the only activity they had was a cheesy straw loom weaving project that I tried to get into, but it just didn't do it for me. Normally I would have walked in there, realized the project wasn't fun, felt dumb being all alone, and left. But I was still determined, so I hung out and met a couple people, like Carey from full of fluff, who taught me some new stuff about patterns.

After that I decided to walk up the couple blocks to Knitch, only to find that they closed early, just 30 minutes before. I was supposed to meet up with my friend Kat when she got off work around 4 to go to Wonderroot, and I was currently on the way from her house to where we were going, so I just... walked. I window shopped and browsed through boutiques along North Highland. I went to Paulo's Gelato to see if they could give me info about the ingredients in their gelato, and the girl behind the counter was absolutely not interested in helping, so I marked that place off my list for good. And I kept walking. By the time Kat called, I was just a few blocks from her house, so I walked the rest of the way and met her there. The whole trip (from Marta to Kat's) was only about 2 1/2 miles, and not a bad walk at all. Suddenly Atlanta seemed a lot more manageable... sure it takes a while to walk through all that, but there are a TON of cool communities and great shops between Inman Park and Virginia Highlands.

View Larger Map

So then Kat and I hopped in her car to head to the less walking-friendly area where Wonderroot is, only to find that it was closed for Labor Day. Not to be thwarted, we headed over to Java Monkey instead and hung out for a couple of hours, which was tons of fun. Now I'm finally home and winding down for the night, grateful for a fun and relaxing day, even if nothing went according to my "plan" for the day. I mean shoot, I had so much fun, I just had to blog about it.

Craft:08 Release Party Saturday

Indie Craft Experience in Atlanta is hosting a Craft:08 Magazine release party this Saturday at Young Blood Gallery. I got my copy of Craft:08 a couple weeks ago, actually, and I've been psyched about the cold pressed coffee instructions. I was also intrigued by some of the other articles (like how to make your own silicone ice pop molds, or a turning an old necktie into a sunglass case), but haven't taken the time to tackle any of the other projects yet. So I'm looking forward to the party, maybe I'll get to try some of the cool stuff they featured, and meet more Atlanta crafters. A couple of my friends are coming with me, so it should be good times.

The Gourd Purse

I made this a month or so ago, but just finally got around to having The Chris photograph it for me. Both pieces are crocheted with Lion Wool, using a popcorn stitch for the bumps, then felted. I call this my gourd purse because once it was done I decided it looks very much like a gourd, although I don't think that was the intention.

In case it's hard to tell from the photos, the purse has a small handle and a large one; the large handle fits through the small one to close up the purse for carrying it. That does mean it takes a little more work to get things out of it, because you have to slide the handle out, but it's so cute that I decided I'm okay with it. I'm pretty happy with the metal ring for an accent, too... it's great for clipping my keys onto. And the little orange cozy is actually the perfect size for my ipod mini, but I find it comes in handy to hold my Marta card, my apartment complex gate card, and my chapsticks. You know, all the little things I need to have handy at a moment's notice.

And since this shade of green is currently my favorite color, the gourd has become my favorite purse.

I made these up on the fly and I'm still terrible and writing out patterns as I go, so I'm no help there. Sorry.

Compost

So I've been wanting to experiment with a tiny porch-sized compost bin, but I was determined not to spend money on a box for my experiment. All my research on composting told me just a few things, like the fact that I should start with some paper scraps, then some old brown leaves, then my fruit, veggie, and coffee scraps. Oh yeah, and that the container should be dark. So as I was determinedly looking through all my stuff to figure out what I could repurpose for my compost bin, I came across this black plastic CD rack that we were going to take to Goodwill, and I realized that with a few holes drilled in the top, it would make a great mini-composter... with three different partitions so I can have a few different stages of compost at any given time.

So I was pretty proud of myself.

the search for the tasteful animated GIF...

Following a conversation with coworkers, I'm curious if anyone has ever come up with a tasteful animated GIF... I mean, in all the interwebs, there must be a few that are actually a good use of the technology. But I learned from a google search for "tasteful animated gif design" that the word tasteful is a relative term... but did not find any that our "team of experts" deemed to fit in the category of tasteful.

Christina pointed us to amazon's ad for kindle, front and center, where the animated gif cycles through some screens to show how kindle works. But I don't know if an advert counts. I pointed to k10k's "About" and "Issues" buttons at the top, because their hover state uses a nice animated gif, but Nikhil said that it doesn't count because it only comes up on a mouse action. Oh, and then I remembered the diesel sweeties has had a couple clever comics that use the tiniest bit of animation, but I don't remember which ones.

Does anyone have a better example for me?

chalkboard paint revisited

I was just taking a look at apartment therapy's site and saw that they featured some other awesome chalkboard paint ideas... in fact, they've had a few blog posts about the awesomeness of chalkboard paint. They even have instructions on making your own!

I still haven't had time to be crafty, but I can't wait to find some fun uses for magnetic and chalkboard paint!

inspiration

So I've got the crafting bug right now, and am dying to mod lots of stuff into cooler, more useful stuff... so I dragged Chris to Home Depot last night so we could walk around and be inspired by the tools and supplies that are available. Let me just say, I love Home Depot. In college I used to wander around coming up with solutions to whatever art projects I had to complete, but it's been far too long since I just got to walk around and oooh and ahhh at stuff.

Last night I discovered panels of pre-built tile for backsplashes and the like (very fun), but even better, we stumbled upon Magnetic Paint! And chalkboard paint, and whiteboard paint. I wanted to buy them all! (But we were good, we didn't buy anything... just filed it all away in our brains until we're ready to actually use them in a project). Back in college my friend Dan introduced me to the wonders of tool dip... between that and all these other cool surface paints, I'm in resurfacing heaven!

more felt coasters!

Friends of ours got married this weekend, and they requested handmade gifts for their wedding, so I decided to make another set of felt coasters for them. This time I went with brown and tan, and I actually steam-ironed them to make them more flat and well formed.

Chris suggested I do different designs on each coaster, instead of doing the same thing for each one like I did for my gray set. He thinks they look like crazy monsters, so while that wasn't my intention when I started, I guess the grommet can't help but look like an eye... but that means I have some pretty deformed monster coasters!

I'm also working on a couple other ideas with felt circles, but those will take a while to finish. I did make a couple other crazy felt things this past week that I'll have to get Chris to photograph... it was a crafty week for the Kendra.

I've got all sorts of ideas for things I want to make, and some of them are things Chris and I can work on together, which is really exciting... I think we make a good team, skill-wise. So hopefully we're able to do some of the things that have been floating around in my head, and then I'll have all kinds of new stuff to post later. But probably things will slow down the rest of this month, because we are moving to a new apartment soon, and I have some freelance stuff that needs to take precedence over crafty fun. Alas!

the coasters (above), and the trivet (below)

on moving apartments

So we move later this month, to an apartment complex in Decatur. The past couple weeks we started looking at Decatur townhomes to buy, in case we found something we loved at a good price that we wanted to jump on instead of doing another year in an apartment. It was kind of nervewracking. We did find a place we loved and couldn't afford, and another place we liked but didn't think was worth what the seller wanted. But with all of that said, it was a great learning experience and we're feeling pretty content to rent for another year (in a different apartment where I can walk to the grocery store and will be closer to the Dekalb Farmer's Market) and watch the housing market until we find a place that meets all our requirements, including price.

The scary thing is that we haven't started packing. It's gonna be a bit nuts.

And that's what's up with our world.

Felt bowl and coasters

So this isn't a new idea or anything, but after seeing tons of felt coasters on Etsy, I decided I needed to make my own. And a bowl and trivet to go with them. They make me kind of happy.

I made The Chris take a ton of pictures for me. Poor guy. We don't have any room to actually set up anything real for the photo shoot, so he has to improvise. A lot. But he's talented like that.

Maybe one of these days I'll try to block these so they are a little less frumpy. I'm bad at things like that though... all the crocheting and felting seems like no problem, but the process of blocking seems like too much work to me. I have no idea why.

Jaime's Phoenix

Not a lot of exciting things going on, but I do have a new amigurumi to show you. This is a phoenix I crocheted for Jaime's birthday.

New Look!

So I just got really tired of having the old look up on the site, and of having such a small area to post, so photos and video couldn't be very big. And that design had just been up for years. And I was feeling kind of restless and needed to do something different that wasn't work-related. So here ya go. Did it last night and finished it up today. I think it will stick around for a while.

The reason I had to change the actual URLs for our blogs was so that we could use the new Blogger features that weren't around years and years ago when I first set up the site with these blogs. Now blogger is hosting them so that we can use the widget madness. Hooray for widgets!

Kudos to The Chris for helping me with picking out photos for the pages and for checking layouts in IE 7 while I was on my mac using Firefox. Some pages may be funky in IE6 but... well, in the real world I care about that, but on my blog I really don't care that much. You guys are too cool to be using such an outdated web browser anyways. Especially when you can download Firefox for free, even if there's some reason why you have to be on a PC and don't have IE7, like half the state of Georgia.

And that's all I have to say about that.

restless and transition

i am restless. and so i'm thinking of redesigning this site and making some domain name adjustments so i can take advantage of some of the cool new features blogger offers, that i can't use with the way i've got it set up right now. that means i may not be able to post for a while until i get it all changed out. we'll see how it goes. If at any point your bookmarks or RSS feed or whatever gets weird for this page, try going straight to youarenotyourjob.com and click new links to get back.

luisa's bat

K-dawg emailed me and told me I needed to blog. And I've got a bit of downtime tonight hanging out in Lakeland, so I figured now was a good time.

This is the bat I made for my friend Luisa's 30th birthday. We stopped by to see her on Friday the 13th on our way down to Florida for a wedding.

Luisa used to work at the Luby Foundation outside Gainesville, Florida, where they housed a lot of bats. One time she took me and Tiffany on a tour and we had a blast. Here are some video and photos from our trip... 6 or 7 years ago.

food update

so since i'm up and on blogger anyways, I may as well post a food allergy update. I'm not eating gluten, nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant), or anything with obvious corn in it (corn, corn flower, corn syrup). I've been feeling much better, which is exciting. I am not as tired in general (as evidenced from not being able to sleep tonight?), and not nearly as achy. I've pretty much figured out how to handle restaurants, including frequenting my most favorite Doc Chey's where the manager will watch the line cooks if necessary to make sure nothing contaminates the food. (I love Doc Chey's!!). After this busy weekend, I will probably re-introduce tomatoes and peppers, to see if those really bother me or if it's just potatoes. I'm not certain about the corn thing, but I think I get an upset stomach when I have corn, so I'm staying away for a while. I'm pretty excited to be figuring these things out, and I'm especially excited to realize that I don't feel so exhausted and cranky all the time anymore.

Hooray for discovering food intolerances!

electricity vampires and sleep deprivation

I cannot sleep. I don't really know why. Sure, I had a half-caff americano around 5pm, but should that really keep me up at 5am? I've been tossing and turning for 5 hours! So I finally gave up and just got up to stare at the glowing laptop screen. Today will be a tough work day. Not to mention Brooke hooked us up with free tix to a midnight screening of The Happening for tonight. Ouch.

So Chris sends me emails full of links to interesting things sometimes, and when I have a few free minutes I'll go thru them. But I've been really busy at work, so they are backing up and I've got about 7 emails of 2-8 links each that i haven't looked at. So I decided to check some of them out, and I found one I wanted to make sure everyone knew about.

Did you realize that your phone charger is still sucking power even when your phone isn't plugged into it? Same with your laptop even when it's got a full battery? I don't understand this concept AT ALL. What can my cell charger possibly be doing with that power if it's not going into a phone? Regardless, this is resulting in a lot of wasted money and greenhouse emissions. We are going to start trying to remember to unplug things whenever we aren't using them, but there are some sites that have other tips for reducing these electricity vampires.

good excuse

I have a good excuse for not posting or being crafty lately. I swear. The excuse is food sensitivities. I've spent the past month obsessing over food, mainly because there's so much of it I can't eat. So far I've figured out that gluten makes me feel icky, and strangely enough I'm pretty sure potatoes make my muscles hurt a lot more. Potatoes! I am also pretty sure that corn and rice are safe. But that's as far as I've gotten. Tomatoes and peppers are part of the potato family (strangely enough) so I am avoiding anything with gluten, potato, tomato, or pepper in them for a long time. During this process I try to see if I start feeling better (do my muscles hurt less? Is it possible that they will stop hurting altogether? Will I stop feeling so tired all the time?) and if things get better, I can bring back tomatoes and see what happens. Then peppers. Then I'll even try potatoes again just in case it wasn't actually potatos. Then comes the fun part (probably months from now) when I try gluten again (find my favorite bread product and chow down) and see what happens, most likely to find that it poisons my body. Hopefully though all of this I will figure out what I can and cannot eat, and from there feel like a better human being. Yay.

In the mean time, much of my life is revolving around coming up with yummy tasty things that I CAN eat, and researching and inspecting labels of everything to make sure I'm not missing hidden gluten. Did you know gluten is in FREAKING EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD? I would be better off if I just never bought anything packaged again, but let's face it, that's not very realistic for me.

I also decided that Food Restrictions Time was also a good time for me to lose a few pounds. I have a pair of pants that I LOVE that I bought about 4 years ago, and I think there is no good reason why I shouldn't be able to fit my butt into them again. So the goal is to fit back into them. I found this fantastic website called The Daily Plate where I have a free account, and I can search for the foods I eat and it will keep track of all the calories, fat, etc that I've eaten in a given day. It also tells me how many calories I should eat if I want to lose a certain amount each week, based on my weight. It's fantastic. So I've been planning my daily food with that, and learning how to control portion sizes (instead of eating half a bag of rice chips like I want to do REALLY BADLY right now, I only eat 10 chips which is like torture).

So with all of that going on, I've just been too preoccupied with preparing tasty healthy poison-free food to do anything else crafty and fun. I mean, I've kind of been having fun making things like mango salsa, sprouted 15 bean soup with chicken sausage, and curry-flavored roasted chick peas. But it takes lots of research and planning and grocery shopping.

Alas! I will probably be all-encompassed by this food nonsense for a few more weeks before I get used to it. I mean, I want to finish all my crochet projects, master resin beads, and fun stuff like that... but there just aren't enough hours in my days. So for now, they will have to wait.

update

So it's been a while since I've posted; there's been a lot going on. The quick update is that I had to get a root canal and I might be intolerant to gluten (that would be wheat)... and the only way to find out about the gluten is with a really strict awful diet, where I'm also trying to figure out if i'm intolerant to other foods as well (I'm currently wondering about potatoes and/or corn). It's making my really cranky right now because I really just want starches, but starches are what seem to be making me feel awful. So it will be a new rollercoaster of foods I can't eat, and avoiding restaurants until this is all solved. We love eating out so that's making this really hard as well. But on the plus side we'll probably save money on food! (Which is very necessary after the aforementioned root canal!).

I also just got a new computer because Chris's old one is about dead, so I gave him my old one and traded up. ::drools for the new macbook pro::

So with all this madness I haven't been in a crafty mood, or a reading mood, more anything fun like that. And until the new computer came I have been cutting down on my web surfing time, so that also contributes to the non-posting of blogs. And that's the update.

Pi day!

It's my favorite math-alicious day again, and I almost MISSED it. Luckily some random website tipped me off. So I went out looking for pi-themed crochet, and I discovered that last year's post about pi day is in google's top 10 list for a search of pi day crochet ... go figure. I'm a nerd. (For those of you who have no idea what Pi Day is, including all my coworkers, here's the wikipedia page to explain it all.)

In honor of the day, here are a couple of pi-themed crochet things I found:

Transcendental Number as Personal Chronogram (Pi)

And a little less high art: the Pi Calculator Case

Happy Pi Day!

Deer, side view

Chris posted a photo of the deer I needle-felted him for Valentine's day, but he never posted a side-view, which I like better. So here is a side view of my first completed needle-felting project. (If you can't tell, I'm playing catch-up with posts this morning.

I've been really slack with crochet projects lately. I still need to finish that sweater, and I made a baby blanket for a friend at work, but I don't really have any fun new projects to post. Hopefully I'll get some time to work on some of the stuff floating around in my head soon.

Nora's Dragon

I posted this to my Flickr account a while back, but kept forgetting to post it here as well. This is the dragon I made for my friend Nora as a belated Christmas present (I think I managed to finish it right before the end of January).

I was inspired by this slightly fierce but friendly really dragon, but I wanted to come up with my own design. The first time around the face was more of an alligator's face, so I made my dad a gator for Christmas (but forgot to take a picture, alas).

More Instructables Awesomeness

Much to my surprise, I got an email today letting me know that my crocheted goldfish is one of the winners of the Lion Brand Yarn Challenge at Instructables.com. I had seen SO MANY great projects on there that I wasn't expecting to win at all, so I feel very honored.

In other news, our lives have been crazy and work has been crazy and so blogging has been... nil. But things are good, and we're starting to shop for a house in Atlanta, which is pretty exciting. I actually haven't done much crocheting lately, because I've been focussed on other things. I still have a ton of half-finished projects and ideas for projects that I want to work on... and I actually have photos of some things that I haven't posted yet.

But if you're here looking for craftiness, check out my husband's blog where he posted the tiny needle-felted deer trophy I made him for Valentine's day. It's my first needle felting project, I'm really happy with how it turned out. But he needs to post a side shot... it looks better from the side.

momma purse

For my momma's upcoming birthday, I crocheted her a purse. She got it in the mail today so now I can post photos of it! I recycled a metal clasp from another purse and started by crocheting right onto the clasp, and then building it down from there. I used Lion's Brand alpaca yarn (same as I used for my elephant), which I love the look of, but the alpaca hairs really shed all over and I wouldn't recommend it for anything that is going to be WORN, which is why I just use it for purses and amigurumi. And it's really soft, so the purse was really flimsy... I had to rig some metal wire inside to keep its shape, and kinda sew that into place, and then I hand-sewed a lining to go inside as well. (I'm still kinda scared of my sewing machine, so I decided hand-sewing was the way to go). It definitely isn't perfect craft (I'm not much of a sewer), but I'm pretty happy with it. And my momma sounded excited about it, so that's what matters.

rocking my socks off

Okay, just when I was thinking I was making some kinda cool stuff, I find this girl's blog and find someone making way cooler stuff. I'm so jealous of her mad crochet skills... I like how she makes her stuff more realistic, not just cutesy. Most amigurumi is just some colored circles and cute eyes and a smile, it's a bit more rare to find someone doing something more realistic. I also think she's a bit more determined to make a ton of them until she gets it right... I don't have that much determination. Usually I just go with whatever I can come up with, or I give up. I never thought of brushing my yarn to make it fuzzier, I will definitely have to experiment with that now. And I might hafta try making her tree frog. I love tree frogs.

Blessings

This morning on the Marta the old guy I was sitting next to saw me reading my devotional and asked me if I was a Christian. I said yes, and then he asked if I knew where the ichthus fish symbol came from, so we talked about that for a minute. He said "I just thought of that when you got on the train for some reason." Then I went back to reading.

As I left he told me to "have a blessed day" and I told him to do the same. For some reason this phrase stuck with me... it's something cheesy that Christians say all the time and it always seems just like the stock thing to say instead of "have a good day" to signify "hey, I love Jesus, so I'm going to say blessed instead." But for some reason today I just kept thinking about it and what that actually means. I've been sick and feeling icky lately, and just really worn down... like it's just tough to get up and get through the days. So I started thinking about how I really NEED a blessed day... physically and emotionally. So I said to God "I actually need you to bless me today. I don't know what that looks like... but You do. And I know that however You choose to bless me will be what I need."

So I'm at work, having a quiet but productive work day (which is probably a blessing in itself) and I take a break to check Craftzine.com's blog, cuz I do that sometimes to give my brain a break. I love looking at cool crafty things. And what do I see, but a notice that I won their random book giveaway. How cool! I got pretty excited about that... I don't usually win things, but this week I won a crafty contest, which is awesome, but this one didn't even require any talent or anything on my part. It was just kinda random. And I immediately remembered my prayer for blessings. So that made me happy.

Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! -Matthew 7:9-11

Penguin wins!

My crochet penguin pattern won 2nd prize in the Instructables Homemade Holidays contest! Hooray! I'm pretty psyched to get a subscription to Craft magazine. I'm already addicted to their blog.

Crochet Goldfish Pattern

I made a goldfish this week, and I actually kept track of what I did and wrote a pattern for it. Since I'm kind of experimenting with writing patterns, I'm giving it away for free:

Crochet goldfish pattern in Acrobat PDF format (right-click: Save Target As... in Internet Explorer)
I would love feedback from anyone who makes this. I'm thinking the yarn i used is a little too dark orange, I may go looking for another color yarn before i make another one.
All the photos are courtesy of my wonderful husband. Yay Chris!

Update: When I wrote the pattern I didn't have a lot of time, so I didn't spend much time trying to format it to specific rows or testing it for typos. So a lot of people are mentioning having trouble with it, which probably means it has typos, and would probably also be easier if I reformatted it. Since I don't have any time to do any of that, I'm just removing the pattern until some later date when I can reformat it and get a couple of testers. I did all of that (good formatting, a few testers to verify it all works) with the Sea Creature Mobile, so if you're looking for some goldfish, there's a pattern for a different style of goldfish there.

Update 5/18/2010: Okay, enough people have been asking me to post it, so it's back up. Most of the people who have asked for it also promised to send me feedback, but no one has, so if you are the rare person who actually goes through the pattern and wants to send me notes/suggestions/feedback to make it better, I will forever be in your debt. At any rate, you've been warned that the formatting is weird, plus I just did some strange things to get it to look the way it is supposed to and sometimes that's hard to explain, but I do think that if you can look past that you can get it to turn out okay. Good luck!

my new hat

I made this last week to help keep my ears warm. My piercings get REALLY cold when it's cold and windy out. I also decided I needed more green in my wardrobe. I love this color green.

and since we've no place to go...

I really love the weather widget image for snow. Seems so much nicer than the real stuff outside.