Sea Creature Mobile

I've been working on this project for months now, started soon after Chris and I found out we were pregnant. I kept changing my mind about things over time and for a while I just wasn't inspired to work on it, but I finally finished over Christmas.

The creatures are made with a small hook and wool sock yarn, the coral base is made with worsted weight wool yarn.

I've written a pattern for it, and The Chris worked hard to take photos for me, so now I'm just looking for a couple of people to test the patterns and make sure it all makes sense, and if it works out, I'll try selling it on Etsy.

UPDATE: I've finally got the pattern completed and up for sale on Etsy!

Zeke's Sea Creature Mobile:

crochet baby toys

So much of my attention has been taken up by the little guy in my belly; so I've mainly been crocheting toys and rattles and such for him. Here are some of the things I've made in the last couple months, and didn't bother writing patterns for.

The thick grabby rings in the back right have jingle bells in them, as does the big block, which I felted (and which wound up larger than I expected, and more round than I expected, after felting). The barbell has something that rattles on both ends. And the rings are just felted rings.

I made this monster when I was sick, with some cool yarn Emily gave me. I might have to keep it away from Zeke when he's in the "put everything in his mouth" stage though, because I'm not sure how easy that fuzzy yarn would be to clean.

That's all for now. Once Chris takes a couple more photos for me, I'll also post photos of the mobile I finally finished.

New Year's Flu

Chris and I have started our New Year off with a ... whimper. We both came down with a bad case of the flu (at least it sure feels like the flu) a day after getting home from the Florida tour. I guess I should be grateful that the flu waited to hit after we got home from our last 8 hour drive (my sister-in-law Emily started feeling sick Thursday, the day we drove home), and that it even waited until after Chris went grocery shopping on Friday so we weren't completely starved during our two worst sick days. But it's hard to be thankful for anything flu-related. I even got a flu shot this year... my best guess is that my flu shot saved me from the worst of it - my fever never got bad enough that I needed to call the doctor, and Chris had a fever much longer than I did (and a couple degrees higher), but other than that I don't think I've been faring much better than the husband.

One thing I will say is that there should be a Law of Nature that prevents both husband and wife from being super-sick at the same time. Really, it's pretty tricky when we're both too worthless to take care of the other. When necessary things had to happen (preparing food, shopping for cold medicine and OJ, getting more water) we would kind of have to play a game of "who's sicker right now" to figure out who was nominated for the task. I lost out for lots of water-gathering and food and tea prep, but I kept getting light-headed, so Chris was nominated to make the Kroger run.

And let me just say, being sick with a corn allergy and wheat allergy makes things REALLY tricky. The only pain killer I can have when I'm pregnant is tylenol, but every single acetaminophin product on the market contains some form of corn. (I spent a couple months researching this - my only option would be to hunt down an old-skool pharacist and pay lots of money for him/her to make something for me specifically). Same with cough drops, as best I can tell. And what's a gluten-free girl to do when she needs chicken noodle soup? I actually make a pretty awesome chicken veggie and noodle soup that's safe for me, but it takes a lot of prep time... I can't just boil some water and pour it over some dry noodle soup mix, like what I had for the first 27 years of my life when I was sick (and what Chris did for himself yesterday). Nope, eating more than an orange, banana, apple, or snack bar the past couple days required tons of teamwork between me and Chris. (And let's face it, oranges aren't exactly easy, either). But between the two of us, we did manage to get some veggie noodle soup (with chicken broth) made for Saturday AND Sunday, which was a lifesaver.

I also caved on the tylenol and the cough drops... I decided that the flu symptoms were decidedly worse than the ones I'd have from the corn in each product, so after a night of being unable to sleep because of how badly my muscles hurt, and worrying about my fever, I popped a couple extra strength tylenol and was surprised to find that within 30 minutes my muscle aches diminished significantly, and so had the fever. (And as soon as the 6 hours of tylenol had passed, the aching came right back, and it was time to pop another). I also took the cough drops because my throat hurt so bad. And I gotta say, when I'm sick, I miss the conveniences of modern medicine and heavily processed food.

At any rate, we're still fighting this thing off, and still afraid of being contagious and bringing our pain on others (you can be contagious for up to 7 days after symptoms start, especially if you're still coughing, etc), but we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe just a couple more days?

The Skeene's Annual Tour de Florida

Well, the Skeenes have just completed their annual Tour de Florida, with a grand total of 7 cities over 13 days. This year's tour included stays in Jacksonville, Fort Myers, Lakeland, Fort Meade, Riverview, and Orlando/Lake Mary, with a cameo in Gainesville. Phew! It was great to see everyone and we had a good time everywhere we went... we're just a little exhausted. Next year we plan to do it again with Baby Zeke, but we're going to have to shorten it to a 3 city tour (with a cameo in Gainesville, of course).

Some highlights of the trip include:

1. The crazy seafood shack we ate at with my brother in Jacksonville - even if the waitress was evil and told me they don't accommodate food allergies - the dozens of taxidermied animals all over the place were still crazy cool.
2. Finally felting a bunch of my crochet projects, so I can get Chris to take pictures of those once we get home.
3. Cooking with my momma
4. The awesome seafood cookout in Fort Meade, where I ate my weight in shrimp and stone crab claws.

The low point? Realizing just how many allergies I have to deal with that are easy to deal with at home, but take a LOT of planning and special purchasing and whatnot away from home... kind of exhausting sometimes, but our hosts were all super-understanding and helpful about it.

Chris only thought to pull out his camera in Fort Meade, however, so other than the photos my dad took in Fort Myers, we only have some cool shots of the farm at Fort Meade. Chris will probably post some later, so I'll just leave you with a couple of my faves:

Walking off all those crab claws!


Emily and Duncan

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!