octonauts, to the launch bay!

We have a new love in this household.  While vacationing at my parents over Christmas, Bugaboo discovered the marvelous Octonauts.  Anyone who regularly watches Treehouse knows what I'm talking about.  To everyone else, it's an adorable tv show aimed at toddlers based on the book series of the same name about eight animals who live in an underwater base and have adventures with the animals around them. "Explore, Rescue, Protect!" is their motto (I love it), plus the kiddies get learn a lot of stuff about sea-creatures.  Anyhow, my point, is that while we usually have way too many toys in the house, just after Christmas we are well beyond capacity.  So when we're playing with lego and my little man starts asking me to build him some octonauts, I decided to make him some octonaut lego.

 It was incredibly simple, I just found eight different coloured lego blocks,

 Printed out a picture of each of the crew,

 And taped them on to the blocks.

 (I have since re-sized and reprinted them so there was nothing hanging over the edges)

 But they shape up to a pretty cute crew!

 And for about 15 minutes of effort, my little guy has a new toy that didn't cost anything, and doesn't take up anymore space than it already had.

Tadaa!

nautical charts

Ouch!  2012 has not been my year for blogging.  And embarrassingly, 2013 seems to be following suit.  However, I'm not ready to let go yet, and so I stride forth, once again into the blogosphere and give you an update on my crazy cozy life.

I do have a project or two to ready to share, but instead, I have a little giftie.  Remember a long long time ago when I was saying how I was going to do up a nice proper version of the graphs I used to make my octopus hat and pirate ship scarf?  Well, voila, tout finis!

Here's the Octopus Chart (click for full view):

for a finished product that looks something like this:

or this:

And here's the Pirate Ship Chart:

for a little something that will turn out like this:

Yay! (You may notice that my charts are different formats.  Well, I actually had a much more detailed and therefor larger chart drawn up for the pirate ship, but it would have made the scarf too big for my little guy.  I had wanted to giver you that chart as well, but my computer is full of gremlins and the process by which my octopus chart was made would not be duplicated.  I made the small ship chart with a lot of cut and paste blocks; very tedious.)

With any luck, these will be understandable and useful.  Basically, it's just simple intarsia, using two colours for the octopus (the x being one colour and the o another) and three for the ship (the blue squares are supposed to be white, and the blank squares are blue).  Perhaps I will make a tutorial for intarsia one day, but for now, your best bets lay with a 'how to' book or the youtubes!

Happy knitting and if anyone finishes a project with either of these, I would be simply over the moon to see a picture of it!  Nautical charts indeed, oh the cleverness of me!

Ta!

radio silence, and a jar

Man, where have I been.  Parenting I guess.  It's been a busy busy time with two little ones about.  To be honest, a one year old and a three year old are a handful. However, we're still finding time to have fun (although, not so much time for crafts and mommy fun stuff).  I would like to post from the kids birthdays, and a few little knitting projects I have on the go, but today, what I am working on, is parenting.

We're at a point (with our three year old) where it seems that everything we say to him is either a threat or a bribe.  We can't just ask him to do anything, because he just won't listen if he doesn't have an incentive.  Whether it's something important, or something as simple as getting dressed.  Everyday, a battle.  The flip side to this is I just don't know which way to go with him.  I'm not opposed to changing my strategy.  I just don't know where to go.  He has grown into an extremely strong willed individual, so I never know whether I need to be more patient, or more strict.

In short, I've decided to try something different.  Not usually my style, but like I said, I'm willing to change.  Simply, we picked up a few packages of bingo chips and a jar.  Blue for good, and yellow for bad.  Every time he does something good, a blue one goes into the jar, and every time he misbehaves or doesn't listen, a yellow.  The idea is that we don't threaten with them, or bribe with them, they just happen.

"Time to get dressed bud," "No!" - Yellow.
"Please can I have some crackers?" "Sure thing, nice manners bud" - Blue

The point, is that when he then is asking for treats or to watch TV or something else special, we can look at the jar, and he knows that if there are more yellows than blues, the answer is going to be 'no'.

That's the general outline.  My other hope is that it will help us be more consistent, not having to always threaten things we don't really want to have to follow through with ("be good or we're going home" is the worst).  We've started this tonight (oh, and the jar gets emptied out in he evening, fresh start to every day) and hopefully it will last the week.

And on that note, I have a little hooligan to put to bed.  Night night.

order up!

Check me out!  I've just got my knitpicks order in and am ready to go.  To be honest, I really just bought some nice fun cotton for dish cloths, but I've found some great patterns and am pumped!  Who knows, maybe these will even inspire me to actually do some dishes (ha ha ha).  Anyhow, here's what I'm working with.

Oooh, and because I can't just get dishcloth yarn, here's a project I have lined up for my little guy.

  If it turns out I've already got the yarn picked out to do one for our little girlie too.  What fun!  Now I just need to find some time...

time travel, oooooo!

While life continues to be crazy, I seem to have fallen off the creative-wagon.  However, never to be defeated, here I am today with not one but two cute little projects to show you.  How, might you ask, can this be?  Um, well, to be honest, these are things that I made quite a while ago but never got around to photographing.  Now that you know my secrets, may as well get along to the good stuff.

Firstly, I bring you a little piece I like to call my Peony Sweater Dress!

(in actuality, it's the sweater from the Sweetie-Pie Kit)

It was something I had my eye on ever since I first stumbled across it on Pickles website.  They do this fantastic thing where they offer one free version of their patterns, and it just so happened that this was available for a 6 month old, and I knew it was meant to be.

Ok, so while I was knitting it up and stumbling over the fisherman's rib, I was a little less certain, but eventually I opened my eyes and really read the pattern (for any interested parties, you have to alternate between knit one, knit one below and purl, knit one below when knitting it in a round, silly me) and BAM, there I had a lovely little sweater dress.

Man, that's one cute baby, eh?

Oh, and to take you even farther back in time, back to the days when I didn't even know if I was having a little baby girl or a little baby boy, behold, the Stripey Baby Lap Blanket!

Now, to anyone wanting to knit up a fast simple and well loved gift, I highly recommend one of these.  A lady at our church gave us one for Bugaboo when he was born, and it was the most useful thing.  The trick is, that it's the right size to cover a baby's lap when their in the car seat or stroller.  It may seem small, but you see, if it's any bigger and covers their hands, they pull it up over their face (or at least my little monsters do) or you have to fold it in half, which gets bulky.  Oh, or sometimes it dangles over the sides (this is again, if it's too big) and then gets caught in stroller wheels or car doors, or drags on the ground and gets dirty... really I think you can see my point here.

Project-wise it's a breeze.  I don't really remember the dimensions; I just kind of cast on enough stitches to make it look about right, and then garter stitched away until it was the size I wanted.  Couldn't be simpler.

Not bad eh?

Oh, and if you promise not to tell anyone on ravelry, the glow-bug is actually covering a tiny little hole where I dropped a stitch.  tsk tsk.

Alright then, now maybe I can get something new put together.   Maybe.

experimentation with french cookies

So right now I have a bit of a love/hate feeling towards the current trendy-cookie, Parisian Macarons.  Firstly, I am not a big fan of trendy things to begin with.  Plus these border on the pretentious, being the latest trend for those of the snootier tastes in sweets.  And to top it all off, the name.  They are nothing like what most North Americans know to be macaroons, which probably came after their French counterpart, and once again, 'Parisian Macarons' just sound sooo pompous.

However, that's all surface stuff; a name and a reputation, and anyone who has been exposed to pretty much any type of children's programing knows that that's not the stuff to base opinions on.
 
Besides, you only have to look at the pretty little things to see what the fuss is all about.

They start as a plain almond meringue type cookie.  From there, they can take on just about any type of flavour or colour.  So I finally decided to see if they were really as special as everyone seems to think.  My local bakery does them in chocolate, which suits me just fine, and let me tell you, they are marvelous!  A crisp shell enveloping a soft centre wrapped around the icing, all layers of light chocolaty sweetness.  They are fabulous!  But man, do they ever come with a price tag.  Ok, so nothing break-the-bank-worthy, but $2.50 for a cookie makes me a feel a little guilty.

So, the natural progression for a crafty-schmafty such as myself: I can make some!  I had heard of the difficulties involved, how it's a delicate recipe with tricky little steps like not closing the oven door all the way when they cook, but I was willing to give it a try.  I found this recipe from Martha Stewart, and checked the reviews.  Some positive and some negative, I figured it was a safe place to start.  Most the ingredients are stuff I had around the house anyways, so it wasn't too far out of my comfort zone.

Well, to skip to the end, my results were twofold, which I'll explin later.

My batter worked well, but I made a mess when trying to pipe out the cookies.  Some comments complained that the recipe didn't allow the cookies to set long enough before baking, so I left them for a while longer to be on the safe side.  The recipe doesn't say where in the oven to cook them (it should be in the centre, if they're too close to either element they rise to fast and this cracks the shell).  When I took out the ones on the bottom that were cracking, I forgot to put the spoon back into the door to hold it open so I lost the little feet that were forming on the good ones.  And a few in the middle didn't quite cook through and wouldn't come off the sheet.  So yeah, they're pretty delicate.

Here'a what I got out of this: success, in a sense.  From a recipe that was for a dozen cookies, I had six turn out, which is not to bad all things considering.  The recipe took six egg whites (although it made way to much icing so some could be cut back there).  I didn't realize that the cracked macaron shells would just crumble (I figured I'd just use them anyway, but couldn't).  Plus, having to bake with the oven open means that the kids have to be elsewhere.  So with the cost of half a dozen eggs (with leftover yolks), a few hours of your time, finding someone to watch the kids, and all the wasted food, yes, you can make your own macarons, but $2.50 at the bakery is a better deal.  Besides, they don't really last well and even six macarons is a lot to eat in just a few days.

So, I will continue to love the little French cookies, and knowing me, yes, I will try to make them again, even in different flavors, but I certainly won't feel guilty about treating myself to a perfectly formed, just the right mix of crisp and soft, chocolaty, light and crumbly delight from the bakery.

Yum.

PS: I avoided using any silly French phrases on purpose, and yes, it was hard.

click click clicketty click

That, for the unknowing, is the sound of my knitting needle clicking away. It's taking an alarming amount of time and effort to ease back into creating things again. I blame tv.

However, despite the urge to do otherwise, I am finishing up a project that I had meant to give a friend at her baby shower last weekend (whoops). I'll let you know how it turns out.