My cacophony of gentle muses

Moving to Wordpress

2014-08-24T15:27:00.001-07:00

I am moving to http://ellipsesbysandra.wordpress.com. Here is my introductory post explaining my new blog and the move. I haven't decided the fate of this blog or the name "SandiesSofties" yet ~ tbd.

Ellipses …

Life is a tangle of themes, strings twisting chaotically around each other and me until I am wrapped up in a thousand ongoing storylines. From the middle of the mess I try to trace the lines and find some broken and frayed from lack of conclusion, but most others thinning out in places then filling out again in turn throughout the jumble of this beautiful mess. The longer my fingers follow the strings the more textured and vividly detailed they become, stretching into all the Tomorrows; the continuity of these twisting lines makes every day make a little more sense.

Laying out these lines on paper, translating them into the stories they tell, I repeatedly find that so few end decisively. One disappears for a moment behind another; a question left hanging from years ago resurfaces to find an answer in a new territory of the tangle. Events, like beads on twine, decorate portions of these life-lines, bringing an otherwise ordinary theme into distinction. The beaded patterns change as places and people come and go, but the threads go on. The storylines of life continue to twist and turn – changing, growing, fading – and by tracing them out I begin to understand what has been and who I am becoming.

These lines, in translation, rarely end with a period. The complex, messy, interwoven life-lines end more often with an unfinished thought, a hesitation, a trailing off … to be picked up again … and again … interrupted by confrontation with new worlds or contemplation of current spheres of existence and thought … and continue on, swirling around my head and heart.

And so this blog is born – to be the translation of these thousand life-lines that end with an ellipse. …

… because I’m in the middle of this beautiful, messy work of art

where there are few conclusions

and continual explorations

of the meaning, substance, and joy of life …

And so this blog will be a collection of contemplations – some new, some carried over from my previous blog which got lost in its own maze of conflicting agendas, some revived poetry and papers brought back from the depths of my hard drive and storage boxes. And if it changes direction again, it will be a reflection of the tangle of themes that run through life. And I will write a new preface.

…

Journaling

2014-08-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

thoughts on thinking ...

Sometimes journaling is like reaching into the whirlwind of your mind and pulling out some debris, pinning it to paper, then going back in for more. But as you force hand to paper, slowly the whirlwind calms down and the pieces of swirling thought coalesce into something scrapped together, sometimes in a gratifyingly coherent structure, or more often in some unnatural, otherworldy jumble. But either way, you've tamed the wild storm and connected more fragments, slowly constructing your glass castle through which to view the world. (not sure what I mean by that last part ... i'll try writing about it more to figure it out ...)

Sometimes journaling is a truth-puking exercise.

But it is cathartic somehow to write. I process thoughts much better through writing than talking or thinking. Even thinking, the kind of thinking where you lose the world around you as you disappear into the abyss of your mind, doesn't move understanding or acceptance forward like writing does. Thoughts exist in varying levels of embodiment; the initial intangible feelings make their way slowly to the level of unframed anxieties or daydreams, which, if fed enough, grow into fleshed out alternate-realities, but still, even in this level, they oscillate between the conscious level where words define thought and the subconscious level where thoughts/feelings/dream-worlds are intimately, viscerally felt and understood. To force yourself to write is to push all of that to its ultimate embodiment, drawing shapeless thoughts out from the depths of your mind across the barrier of consciousness where only thoughts that can be formed into, or matched with, words can exist. Much can be lost in translation, but the more faithful you are to keep moving the pen across paper, the more the thoughts charge forward to be defined, embodied, and finished. The freedom of journaling comes in this "finishing," this closure to the endless cycle of thought-processing. Once thoughts have made it into written words, they can be left to rot or revisited at will; the cycle is complete. Written words are victorious proof that thoughts went somewhere, and we can be free then to develop, share, or burn them.

The Stuffed Men

2014-04-24T18:20:00.000-07:00

My blog content is evolving with my newfound gift of time, so today I am using this forum to share my satirical parody of T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men.

It is meant to be read side-by-side with Eliot's poem, but formatting details eluded me, so I am posting his poem below mine and letting the reader decide how to digest this.

This is part of a much larger collection of thoughts/writings I've been working my way through, which may be posted here as they coalesce into share-able narrations.

The Stuffed Men

Sandra Balisky

2014

We are the stuffed men

We are the hollow men

Standing apart

Headpiece filled with 4G waves. Alas!
Our cyber voices, when

We update our statuses

Are silent and meaningless

As bubbles bursting as they land

Or echoes in a canyon from a million lonely voiceless people

In our enclosed, virtual worlds.

Communication without talking,

Relationships without touching,

Pics and captions that belie

the haunting emptiness behind them.

Those who have crossed

With strong intent, to the Real World

Remember us – if at all – not as friends

But only as pixels, presenting ourselves

As the stuffed men.

We are the hollow men.

II.

Eyes I dare not meet in waking life

Deep souls call unto deep

I dare not answer.

I am AWAY

the status on my forehead clearly states

Collecting gigabytes of entertainment

Through my broken iphone screen;

There, in real world,

The voices are more obscured and more unheard

Than heartbeats in a shrouded tomb.

Let me be no further

From a wifi-enabled device

Than a moth to the light.

Let me also be

Anything or anyone I want

Disguised in anonymity

Behaving as the wind dictates

No better.

Not that real person

In life’s other kingdom.

III.

This is the cyber land

Where desperate men hide

From their fears

Of boredom, failure, and responsibility

Despairingly raising hope

To the google images.

It is like this

In our bubble world

Waking alone

In the century when we are

Most enlighted and connected;

Lives that should be lived

Sucked dry

by the Mind behind the machines.

IV.

The live are not here

There is no life here

In this canyon of masquerades

Two dimensional representations

Of everything that could be real.

In this last of meeting places

We fall together

All the words

of all the people

all the time

Swallowed up by the flaming, swirling black hole.

Lifeless, unless,

The internet dies

And the real souls

Multifarious rise

Eyes meet eyes

The only hope

Of stuffed men.

Here we go round the interwebs

The facebook, pinterest, google search

Here we go round the cyber chat

At five o clock in the morning.

Between the thought

And the action

Between the intention

And the behavior

Falls the internet

And life’s other Kingdom is suspended.

Between the hyperlinks

And personalized ads

Between the string of comments

And the consumer reviews

Life is very short.

When every secret is virtually

Shouted from the rooftops

And every reputation destroyed

By fact or fiction

And no one left who can discern reality

The shadow falls

But no one notices

Because the night is alight

With blue-hued screens.

This is the way the world ends

The world has ended but stuffed men don’t know it

We float on into hollow space alone in our bubbles.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Hollow Men

T.S. Eliot

1925

Mistah Kurtz – he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats’ feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

Remember us – if at all – not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

II.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death’s dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind’s singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer

In death’s dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer –

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

III.

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dad man’s hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death’s other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

IV.

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death’s twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Between Awareness and Aspiration

2014-04-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

Between Awareness and Aspiration

Looking out the kitchen window of our rented house that’s not quite right in at least 17 ways at a dreary neighborhood where crime encroaches and lackluster ambitions, décor, and city planning creep into the cracks of our society, I dream of a better life … but I know it could be worse.

Eating its way in from the back of my mind, stories from my student from Syria – of friends, relatives, cities destroyed by their own government – begin to shade the window through which I view my world.

…Her facebook feed filled with news of savage, rampant darkness…

…Mine flooded with laughing baby videos (my own no less a culprit), cute kitties, and memes of first-world problems… Scattered bits of reference to international drama – lives, planes, human rights lost – buried in my news feed, often overlooked in willed ignorance and fear…

Fear that it could happen here.

Fear that my discontent with life is only the tip of an iceberg of pain – pain I might live vicariously through a thousand tales, or pain that may be coming as our economy and government crumbles and with it our precious standard of living.

And yet I struggle with discontentment, wanting a more perfect life, home, and family; I know that I have it good, that my simple life is relatively extravagant, but because I live in a time and place where it’s feasible to improve on details I catch myself ungrateful for the moment, conspiring for ideal conditions on every front.

To be aware of, and to care about, all that is happening beyond the bubble of our first-world problems, yet still live at peace with one’s self and condition, perfectly content with the things at hand, no matter how imperfect they all may be … I don’t know how these ideals can ever be reconciled in one heart.

I dream still, endlessly, listlessly, of a better place, a real home, family close at hand, yet remain haunted by the silent question – who are you to dream? This “all-American, God-given right to the pursuit of happiness” … I’ve done nothing to deserve it, and don’t really know what to do with it. So many souls flaunt it in the face of international tragedies too large to comprehend, flooding our media (self-chosen news feeds and national news channels alike) with innumerable, irrelevant scraps of knowledge, entertainment, self-improvement …

Would we be better people for giving that all up, for self-inflicted penance from survivor’s guilt? If so, we embrace a ludicrous goal of leveling the playing field to one large, flat, sea-level globe of terror.

Would we be better people to live at peace with ourselves and situation, knowing we are proportionally more lucky than others? If so, who can?

As shackles of poverty, fear, and control fall off, we instinctively reach higher. We aspire to better our lives and selves. The more freedoms we’re granted, the more we want.

Born into a world of freedom,

consciousness deluged with virtual sensational detail of things that mostly don’t matter,

I’m torn

between awareness and aspiration

that weighs me down that tauntingly goads me on

Who can be content to simply be?

From one end of the spectrum to the other, the world leaves us hurting and hungry. Whether my vision is set on the problems of other countries, the vanities of our own, the insatiable human appetite to better one’s life, or a gothic self-loathing for undeserved gifts,

I’m looking down.

And I realize the freedom and truth in the words:

Set your mind on the things which are above, not on the things which are on the earth.¹

… But as it is, they long after a better country, that is a heavenly one … ²

For we do not have here a remaining city, but we seek after the one to come.³

Perhaps those who have less trust and fewer possessions in the material realm can arrive ahead of us at this conclusion: we have nothing here on earth worth investing our heart in; the eternal God, the ultimate and infinite source of life, liberty, and happiness itself, is worthy of all our heart, mind, and time and alone will satisfy completely.

Whether we are fleeing from one negative aspect of this world or into a positive, elusive other, the questions persist, and the answer remains: Look up.

… Looking away unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith …⁴

His presence is my peace.

His salvation is my grounding in a storm of world chaos and inward unrest.

His eternal life, received and enjoyed, can raise me above the problems beyond my scope of knowledge and capacity to bear, the guilt for being ignorant of and as yet unscathed by them, and the hypocritical endless yearning for “more-better-now” when I already have so much. Christ, in His infinite depth and richness, is the reality of the land and the life for which I search.

¹ Colossians 3:2

² Hebrews 11:16

³ Hebrews 13:14

⁴ Hebrews 12:2

Tutorial for making a Calculator Wall Mat

2012-06-29T17:38:00.000-07:00

As a high school math teacher, keeping track of calculators on an hourly basis in a classroom filled with 30 busy people and 54 distractions per person per minute has been, quite honestly, not at the top of my priority list. Once students figure this out (students in retrospect are smarter than they appear), calculators start going missing at an astonishing rate. I often wonder if there is some sort of underground black market for school calculators ... but until I stoop low enough to start keeping an eye out on craigslist and ebay for school calculators, or start counting calculators at the beginning and end of every class, I have invented an interim solution.

And once again, necessity became the mother of invention, and thus the hanging calculator organizing thingie was born. With this wall mat, students might take a bit more ownership in responsibly borrowing and returning school property, and I will be able to tell at a glance how many calculators are being scurried off to the black market on any given day. And besides, it's just super cute!

Actually, the inspiration for finding a way to organize calculators merged with my recent obsession with crayon rolls ~ after making a dozen of so of these adorable little things I started dreaming of taking these to bigger and better places.

Here are the directions for how to make one of these calculator mats for your own classroom (or adapt as you see fit ~ would be great in a craft room, as shoe storage, for toys, etc.).

Here's a picture of the massive amount of math ;) that went into this concoction:

These measurements are for a wall mat that fits 30 TI30-XIIS calculators:

Large background fabric (I used printed duck so it would be strong enough and I could avoid using interfacing to strengthen it: 23.5” x 43” (cut 2 ~ or just fold the fabric in half and cut around the fold line ~ all the edges will be covered with the border, so you get to avoid sewing the edges altogether J )

Pocket strips: 23.5” x 9” (cut 6 ~ these will be folded in half lengthwise)

Border strips: 23.5” x 4” (cut 2) and 43”x4” (cut 2) (These will be folded 4 times lengthwise to create something like wide bias tape, except I just cut them straight along the grain and it looked fine ~ but you can cut along the bias if you buy more fabric J )

(I bought 1.25 yards of the printed duck fabric, 1.25 yards of green fabric for the pockets, and .5 yards of pink fabric for the border.)

I found a roll of brown wrapping paper for $1 at the dollar store and used that to create pattern pieces. I find it easier to measure and cut the large brown paper, since I can trust the straight edges and corners, then pin those to my fabric and use a rotary cutter to cut the fabric out. I haven’t yet bought a big expensive cutting mat, because I’ve found that my plastic foldable craft table from Walmart (for $20?) can be used with a rotary cutter, and it provides a much larger surface and doesn’t hardly show the cuts. Maybe it’s doing bad stuff to my blade?? So far it’s still sharp enough though.

After cutting out the pieces, you will create the pockets strips. Fold each of the 6 green pieces in half lengthwise, then fold the raw edges over about ½” and iron the creases. Then start placing them on the background fabric. I laid the first one about 7/8 of an inch up from the bottom so that the border (1” wide) wouldn’t cut off valuable pocket space but would still overlap. Then I spaced the pocket strips out 7” from the bottom of one pocket to the bottom of the next. The fold will be the top of the pocket strip. The ½” line you ironed in will be your guide line for sewing. Once you have them all placed, flip the pocket strips down and pin the ½” part of the strip in place. (See picture here if these directions don’t make sense.) You will sew along the ironed-crease for each pocket piece, then fold them back up along the sewn line and iron again.

(Note: Since I was trying to save time and effort, I didn’t cut along the fold line. So I had to sew all the pocket pieces onto the left half of the fabric so that the back piece wouldn’t show any of these lines. It got pretty awkward though feeding all that material through the machine; you might want to bite the bullet and just cut 2 separate pieces for the front and back.)

Now to make the individual pockets: Measure carefully on the bottom pocket strip, then you can use those marks for the rest of the strips. I placed my big plastic ruler (18”) against the end of the fabric and marked off 1” for the width of the border, then 4.3” for each calculator pocket. You will have 5 pockets on each strip. (I like to mark above and below the ruler at each point so that I will get trustworthy straightness when I draw the vertical lines.) Then flip your ruler (or yardstick) vertically and trace those markings vertically up each pocket piece, all the way to the top. A pencil works fine, since you are going to sew over those markings and won’t see them in the end. Now sew along those lines, remembering to backstitch at the top and bottom of each little segment. I start from the bottom, sew the first vertical line on the first pocket, lift my needle and foot to feed the fabric through to the next pocket, and keep going all the way to the top. That makes it simpler, since you only need to do 4 long stop-and-go lines for the entire height of the fabric. (I don’t sew along the 1” marks for the borders.)

Finally, you will sew on the borders. I sewed them just like bias tape, so if you know what that means, you can skip these directions. I folded the strips in half lengthwise, then folded both long edges into the center, ironing each crease firmly. (The creases will be your guideline for sewing.) Then I laid them along the fabric, right sides together, with raw edge of the border matching the raw edges of the background. (Note: At this point I had folded the back and front pieces together, wrong sides facing.) I sewed along the first crease, folded it over, ironed it, folded the 2^nd half of the border pieces over the back of the wall mat, then topstitched the entire length of the border, about 7/8” in from the edge to catch both sides.

To make the “hooks”, I cut three pieces of ribbon and placed them under the border piece on top before I did the final topstitching step. I used three little loops, but have yet to see if that will be strong enough for 30 calculators. (hoping!!)

I didn’t know what to do with the corners, so I’ll leave that part of the tutorial up to your expertise, experience, or research. I don’t like how mine turned out L.

Here's a picture of the back:

That’s all! Enjoy J

Or, if you would rather not make this and would prefer to buy one from me, just send me a message! J

and, just for fun, since I forgot to have my husband take a picture of me working on this project, I took a picture documenting what he was doing while I was working :). pretty cute, huh?

Knitting and Herding Bubbles

2012-03-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

An episode in my new tender and tentative endeavor to write …

I spent nearly the whole day yesterday (4 days ago by the time this gets “published”) knitting a scarf. Despite using a technique to make the project lie flat, it still curled up till it was just a long tube. I read in my proudly purchased knitting book about steam-blocking, but the methods were different depending on whether the material was synthetic or natural. I didn’t know what this yarn was made from, since I had thrown away (or “stored” in a scary shoebox) the labels, but I guessed it was more fake than real since I never paid much for any of my yarn. So I went for the “lay-a-wet-towel-on-top-and-dry-iron-it-until-it-steams” method. And discovered 3 things.

1. It was real wool. I knew this because it smelled like the sheep barns at the state fair. Wet wool and sheep manure (droppings?) seem like a synonymous smell to me ~ not exactly unpleasant though. It smelled like a world I would gladly exchange for this one – a world, that is, where I envision myself living on acres of raw earth, living (is there a word that evokes a sense of living where every sense is absorbing life to a thrilling degree ... that differs from being merely alive in the medical sense?) … coming alive to life in direct proportion to my cultivation of earth, animals, and offspring. From a detached, journalistic perspective, I realize that this longing for a creative, self-made, natural life also flourishes in direct proportion to the number of moments I spend withering in a concrete, soulless chain-driven city-world. (I choose the word “chain” not only because it serves the purpose of sounding melodramatic, but also to describe the unnatural overtaking of chain restaurants, apartment complexes, theme parks, hospitals, and craft stores.)

2. (I had to go back and re-read this to remember that I had started listing some minutiae of day-to-day revelations.) The steam and weight of the iron had not only flattened the scarf, but also muted the design I had so laboriously created, using a chopstick as a makeshift cable needle. Discouraging much?

3. I have no idea what the third thing was going to be. When I start writing, the writing takes over and it’s all I can do to keep up with it, trying my best to herd coherent bubbles of thought onto the train of … well, point in case. Or case in point. Just in case.

What does “case” even mean??

Unspeakable

2012-03-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

I (used to think that I) have a superpower.

When I’m listening to music, I can close my eyes and see a whole world of brilliant, dazzling dancing, choreographed perfectly to the music … the colors of the costumes, the energy in the movement, the spins and swirls and solo acts or arrays of synchronized, rhythmic, human art …

But it’s all mine, trapped in my mind. I can only close my eyes and watch the show. One time it was so breathtaking I snapped my eyes open and said “ “ … nothing. My thoughts caught on my tongue and I found myself literally speechless. I was momentarily shell shocked by the complete frustration at not being able to translate vision to language. If I could only capture this, I knew I could create Broadway-worthy musicals, Grammy-award-winning theatre … but it was always and only a dream – vivid, lucid, perfect, and completely unspeakable.

Which brought me around to thinking again about a question I had spent years and hours contemplating – how do deaf people think? Or more specifically and abstractly – how would a person who was cut off from language of any sort process thought? How much would this isolation limit his ability to observe and make sense of this life? How much are our thoughts confined to formally defined and acquired vocabulary? To what extent are we sheltered from the infinite spheres of thought, just because the right words haven’t been spoken that would unlock worlds of ideas beyond the initiation and creation of our own mind? If someone was locked out of language altogether, need he be stunted in his intellectual thought-processing abilities? Or does the vast majority of our subjective understanding occur without language? While no one can truly exist in an intellectual vacuum, it is worth considering the limitations set by our domain of information.

And yet … surely our mind can access realms unknown to communication – as I realized in that startling moment of open-mouthed surprise, shocked that my words could betray me and leave me so thoroughly alone in myself. Our minds must have a touch of eternity, an element of the infinite; but to access that requires something that can break beyond the standard framework-barriers of language, something that can defy description. I know that music and art can do this, that a rainy day, scented candles, fuzzy blankets and peace with the world can do this. I believe that birth and death, love or hate can trigger this – this connection with infinite spheres of thought, sense, and visceral feeling known completely in oneself but unintelligible in communication.

And to express a fraction of an idea, a flash of a scene, a deeply intuitive sense of something elusively beautiful … this is art.

Observations in Translation

2012-03-21T16:12:00.000-07:00

In my creative writing classes we had to keep an observation journal to help train our brain to notice details and practice pinning down ethereal, visceral THINGS onto paper, recreating them in a medium which could be handed off to a random, literate, passerby (passerby-er?) and in their hands conjure up images similar to what we had seen. I am still dubious as to how effective even the best author-artist can be in this regard, since everyone brings their own back-story to any piece of writing and invariably filters new words and images through previous sounds, smells, tastes, and touches.

But regardless of the effect a description creates, it is still an incredible exercise to fashion a one-dimensional, monotone script of any 3-dimensional object, or multi-dimensional moment, complete with an infinite array of sense and emotions that cacophonously arrived at that point through a fractal-like series of decision and circumstances.

Try, for example, to describe a sunset as it actually looks and feels, while avoiding the pitfalls of overused, underrepresented clichés. Try writing “the sky was awash with brilliant hues of pinks and blues, decorated here and there with pillowy towers of cotton clouds. The red earth smelled fragrant from the cathartic days’ worth of rain and the air felt clean, ready to start fresh tomorrow.” Try writing that in a way that describes the scene purely, rather than uses faux-scenery to advance a plot or set a mood. Let the actual picture set the mood. If words can truly paint a picture, then plot is just a sideline to the story.

But it has to be written in the moment if it has any hope of presenting itself as genuine. I missed that moment last night, so I’ll try, like a photographer waiting for the right combination of light and shadow, to capture it the next time it encounters me.

A big step forward

2011-10-24T18:42:00.000-07:00

Monster Hat I made from a pattern by Miriah Gilbert

My friend, Julie Spencer, has been faithfully researching and sending me links to crochet ideas. When she sent me the link to this pattern on etsy, I was really excited to make it. I immediately bought the pattern from www.emiegracecreations.etsy.com and spent the next 4 - 5 hours figuring out how to make this hat. It's one of the more difficult things I've made to date, but Miriah Gilbert, the author and artist behind EmieGraceCreations, did an excellent job of writing a thorough, accurate, and readable pattern. I love the challenge of stretching my boundaries and learning new things, especially when the end product is something as adorable as this monster hat! :)

I immediately fell in love with this hat, and all the variations of it that the pattern suggests, and wanted to make a dozen and sell them all. Copyright issues and conscience, however, made me carefully consider my options. Every pattern-artist on etsy has a slightly different set-up up for their copyright information, and I've been slowly learning the language of it all. The copyright on this pattern said "You do not have permission to sell the finished product locally or online without purchasing a cottage license. ..."

So I wrote to Miriah, attaching a picture of the monster hat, and asked what she meant by a cottage license. She explained that a "cottage industry" refers to an individual person making crafts from their own home. If you buy a "cottage license" from someone, you are buying the rights to sell items made from their pattern, according to a 3-tier system. (I love how everything about the indie-craft revolution is quaint and personalized ~ even the copyright terminology!)

For a solid week I contemplated shelling out for the full life-time license, since it was a relatively big expenditure for such a small, fledgling business as my own. (I hope someday to be able to swallow costs like this without even noticing ... ) After "shopping" her entire etsy site, however, I was thoroughly impressed with her quality of product and instructions, and decided I wanted to take a chance on this. She has been so helpful in answering my emails and telling me her very inspiring story of how her own personal hobby turned into a full-time work-from-home business. With her permission, I may someday pass her story on to my readers here. ... ??

After buying the life-time license, I continued on to buy 10 more of her patterns, and I would highly recommend her site to any crochet-ers reading this. I was a little bit ridiculously happy to receive them and, like a new addict of Harry Potter (or some comparably compelling series, Twilight very much excluded), wanted to stay up all night making them all. The necessity of waking up at 6am to face 150 odd high schoolers the next day, however, compelled me to sleep. (By "odd" i refer to the ambiguous number, not the nature of said students.)

Here's a "teaser" of some of the patterns you can find on her website, and products that I will soon be selling. I'm really looking forward to this new adventure in my emerging craft-career, and appreciate to no end her willingness to share her patterns and the years of experience and expertise that went into constructing them.

She has so many completely unique and uber-cute patterns! I am especially looking forward to making this hat and slipper set. :) I will post more pictures in an upcoming blog post, as soon as I make these.

Sock Monkey Hat

2011-10-22T19:55:00.000-07:00

Mary Ann Hacking's amazing photography skills and her uber-cute baby wearing my sock monkey hat :)

My latest adventures in crochet creations:

A friend requested a sock monkey hat for a 6-month old boy, and showed me a picture of a hat that looked something like this. Based on the picture, I was able to figure out a pattern that consisted of hdc (half double crochet), sc (single crochet), rsc (reverse single crochet), and changing out hook sizes. I adapted the mouth idea and stitched in a mouth-line-thingy. I love the way it turned out! The colors are pretty much the same as the original picture, but I made up the stitches, stitch count, and assembly of accessories ... does anyone know where you draw the line in the indie-craft world between copying and creating? Is something like this a copyright issue? I sure hope not ... because I'd love to sell these! :)

(On that note, let me know if you would like to place an order. I'll be selling them for $35 - $40 depending on size.)

I gave this hat to one of my friends in exchange for her photography of some of my hats (see a future post for those pictures) and needed to make another one for my friend who requested this hat. The next day I sat down to recreate it from memory, but tried to make it slightly larger. Unfortunately, I was too lazy the first time around to write down the pattern as I went, thinking, I suppose, that I would remember what I did.

epic fail.

I worked at it for about an hour and a half, stubbornly in denial that something was fundamentally wrong.You know that slowly sickening feeling that you're making a big mistake but you know very well that you're not going to stop the chain of events that will ultimately lead to the impending disaster? All melodramatics aside, that was pretty much how I felt.

I'm including pictures here to prove to myself (and anyone else who cares) how vital it is to write down a pattern as you create something.

and yet ...

This experience, like all mistakes, provided the potential for learning on a deeper level. Spending hours on this "mistake-hat" forced me to analyze and perfect my color-joining technique. I plan to start creating mini-posts on techniques I figure out as I go, in hopes that the details I learn can be of help to other crochet artists. I took pictures of each step of the process as I went so that I can include step-by-step pictures and instructions in a future post regarding how to make perfect joins, as well as how to securely and invisibly tie off all loose ends.

The picture on the left is my original method of joining colors, which created a bump the whole length of the hat and distorted the shape. I tried something different on the next one and it worked beautifully.

I now have the pattern written down in a shorthand format that makes sense to me, but I would like to rewrite it in a user-friendly form, and possibly sell it on etsy. Before I do that though, I want to experiment with colors more so that I can claim this as my own invention in every regard. I'm thinking about a hat pattern that consists of hdc stitches with a red and tan yarn together and multiple sizes, so that somebody could make two as a psuedo-gag gift for a father and son :) I'm doing plenty of mother-daughter sets, and thought it would make for such a cute picture to have a father and son wearing matching sock monkey hats! ... more on that later.

This picture is proof of my eventual success in recreating my own pattern. I posted this picture on my facebook page (SandiesSofties) and got 26 likes/comments in one day! :)

And finally, here is a picture of my lil workstation ... I'm still dreaming of one day having my very own studio with a litany of storage options. :) (see my post titled "Visions of Bookshelves ... ")

Purple Baby Blanket

2011-05-14T18:53:00.000-07:00

This will be one of my most simply written blogs; I am just taking a few minutes to post pictures of my most recently finished project. I was inspired by a picture I saw online of a blue and white granny square baby blanket, and made my own based on some patterns I had found in some crochet books I had at home. (Beyond the Square: Crochet Motifs and Around the Corner: Crochet Borders).

This is a picture of one possible design of squares -- I decided not to go with it because the white was too overwhelming.

After I had put about 7 hours into the blanket (each square took about 9 minutes to make) I realized my work had just begun. My husband took this picture of me beginning to sew all the squares together (which turned into a 3 1/2 hour project excluding the nap).

My book on crochet borders has an incredibly fun assortment of border ideas ~ I chose this one for this blanket, but will probably experiment with others on future blankets, since there are so many to choose from.

This is an up-close picture of the border ~ it is a lobster-stitch chain woven through a double crochet stitch. The entire border took another 3-4 hours, and the final trimming and fastening off loose strings took at least an hour. (that's the most boring part ...)

Both sides of this blanket have a unique look and could serve as the display side.

And this final picture shows both sides together. I am going to post it on my etsy site for $130, based on the 14+ hours it took to make, and the going rate for similar products on etsy.

quite a lovely saturday

2011-04-02T18:38:00.000-07:00

so this morning i woke up early (well, before the tornado sirens went off at least), determined to add to my head covering collection. (as in, hats and head band scarf things ~ see pic ~ i don't know what they're called)

I laid out all the head-related things I still have (i wish I had taken pictures of the ones that I've already sold or given away!!). I'm hoping to get some time with my wonderful photographer (megan!) and some beautiful friends tomorrow to do a nice photo shoot of some of this so I can finally start listing things on my etsy site.

I had some coupons for Hobby Lobby and Michaels (both are right down the street) so I went out and bought some more yarn and some buttons and random scrapbooking stuff that was on clearance. I've pretty much made it a policy to only buy things at Hobby Lobby or Michael's if I can get it at least 35% off, and I've found out that if you go weekly, the sales rotate around enough so that you can buy everything at a very discounted rate! :) Here's the results of my shopping adventure today:

I branched out into a new brand of yarn today: Baby Bee Sweet Delight. I bought 6 different (mostly coordinating) colors and had a lot of fun making this hat. I love the multi-colored yarn, because it's like a mini-adventure making any project, discovering how the pattern turns out as you go. (lol, i guess that officially makes me a yarn geek??) I don't know if this will actually fit anyone ~ I just kept shaping it as I went according to some imaginary picture of a child's head ... I need to get some set of standards for head/hat dimensions so I don't have to keep playing this guessing game everytime. Is there somewhere I can buy a bunch of different sized styrofoam heads? That would pretty much be the coolest thing to line up against our patio window :). {Anyone up for a Paint the Foam Heads party?} For now, I'll have to try this hat out on a few of my friends' kids and make adjustments as needed to the pattern I made up for this hat.

I also began three other things but they all were being a little bit too much uncooperative and frustrating, so I changed gears and decided to write this blog post. I know that at some point here I'll have to pick a few items that people like and just make tons of those, but I haven't quite transitioned into the business mindset yet. At this point, everything I make is still a unique idea (or based on a pattern, but with the goal of learning the basics so I can venture forth into uncharted copyright-free territory). I've come up with a few things that I really like based on requests from friends and family ~ I'm always honored when someone asks me to make something, like an elephant or a baby boy bear hat, b/c it gives me that giddy feeling of theythingiknowwhati'mdoing!!! anyhow, somewhere in the process of manning up to the challenges and being too embarrased to admit that I really am not as talented as they think, I discover how to create amazing things that I never would have attempted on my own accord. So a big shout-out to everybody who has faith in me: Thank you! :D

and one last note and pictures for this post, before I turn back to the rebellious piles of unravelled yarn and half-begun projects behind me. ...

sock yarn!

I've been tempted to buy sock yarn every time I go to a craft store, but I've held back so far ... well, until my friend took a trip to Portland, OR and discovered an epic yarn store and brought me back the neatest sock yarn I've ever seen. So today I broke down and bought some more to add to the collection and picked up a few patterns and knitting needles. :) that will be another story, I'm sure.

behind the scenes

2011-03-28T19:23:00.000-07:00

So in between posts on life, creativity, and the pursuit of happiness, I thought i'd post some of the back-stories to my creations.

story number one, in which sandra finds alternate uses for skulls

so, to make a simple story complicated ... My friend has a friend who has a little girl and is pregnant with a little boy, and she (my friend) wanted a baby shower gift for her friend's baby. Actually for the little girl. Because baby gifts are never really for the baby, who wouldn't know a Gucci baby rattle from a dandelion, but might prefer the dandelion due to its edibility. Baby gifts are for the parents. And the older siblings, often on the brink of a pyschological meltdown from the epiphany that some scrunched-up crybaby is about to monopolize the Adults' Attention, gets left in the dust while the new ball of babyness gets loads of diapers, toys, clothes, and burp rags. So a plot was devised to care for big sister and Mommy. I was to crochet a baby boy doll to give to the girl to help ease her into the idea of having a baby brother. I loved the idea and was up for the challenge.

I found a pattern for a boy doll, changed up just about everything except the head, and ended up with an anorexic big-headed boy in footie pajamas. It was very disheartening. I posted pix of my failed experiment and put it away for a few days. I knew that something needed to be done soon, but wasn't sure what to do about it, and didn't really like it anymore, now that it was all skinny and ugly.

Soon enough, my friend asked about the progress of the doll, and I had to admit that I was starting off my crochet business on the wrong foot, what with disappointing people and not following through on orders in a timely way. L I learned all about that from my weekly etsy emails. Anyhow, she said the anorexic boy was cute and I should just send him. That kicked me into gear, because there was no way I wanted that droopy doll with a dangly head haunting my sales history forever. (admittedly, an overkill on the alliteration) I knew I could do better than that, and if the new adopted mommy of this boy was going to say that I had made him, I wanted to at least not be ashamed of him.

But I really didn’t want to remake the head. So I tried untying it.

When that didn’t work I just cut it off and gave up on the whole neck idea.

After remaking the body I tried to re-attach the head but it was very disproportionate.

So I undid it, stitch by stitch, still hoping to take it down to a reasonable size and just make it smaller from there on out. But the sewn on wig cap ruined that idea.

All of which is to explain how I ended up creating the skull bowl.

Determined to show the doll how disgusted I was with him, I decided that his upside down empty head looked quite reminiscent of a bowl, and if coated in plastic, would actually serve quite well for cereal.

(i would insert a clip here of the scene about eyeball soup from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ... but i'm not quite sure that it's appropriate or funny, having never seen it myself ...)

Anyhow, eventually I redid another head, used other eyeballs, since the original child-proof eyeballs were irremovable, and attached it to the (neckless!) doll.

And in the end, I kinda like him. :)

Visions of bookshelves and baskets, meet Sandra.

2011-03-23T20:22:00.001-07:00

A year and a half later and a half-size craft room acquired ... one which serves the purpose well but leaves much to be desired from my original dream ... (reposting this Jan. 3, 2013)

Sometimes I lay awake at night plotting to the minutest detail what my dream craft room will be like. It seriously gets me pretty worked up and I have to think about boring things (like cleaning up that craft room) to calm myself down and fall asleep.

Of utmost importance will be the shelves. A whole wall of shelves, like my favorite coffee shop in Seattle (Bauhaus) that is two stories high and has a bookcase running floor to ceiling along one side, a spiral staircase leading from the bar up to the loft, another entire wall of paneled windows overlooking the space needle set among the eclectic skyline and waterfront of downtown, dimly lit old school chandeliers, Harry Potter style, hanging sporadically from long rafters over rough-hewn wood tables where college students play chess like old men or homeless men read books like college students should, the remaining walls dark wood-paneled and graffiti-ed with the personality of an earthy, free-spirited, musty summer evening, and the ultimately-seattle aroma of freshly brewing coffee …

Wow. Homesick much?

Aiya.

Back in Oklahoma on a sleepless night …

Dang. If I could design the perfect art studio, it would be exactly that.

This wasn't where I was intending this to go at all.

Blaming it on the Sudafed. (taken purely for medicinal purposes. Although the inspirational writing side effects are nice …)

Ok, ok. Take 2:

A whole wall of shelves, some long, some cut up into cubes (yes, definitely lots of cubes!), some double-wide or tall … it doesn't have to be fancy. Actually, Timothy could build it for me from some re-purposed scraps of wood panels. (panels? 2x4's? boards? ...) I want more spaces than I could ever imagine needing, so that I can have a place for everything I have, and then more spaces for when I pick up the beyond-everything-i-need stuff. The problem with finite space is that I start multi-purposing and trying to coerce things that really don't go together, like useful scrapbooking scraps of paper and old birthday cards that I haven't reasoned away yet, into cohabitation and the results are just plain ugly. Soon enough my organize-able cubes turn into boxes of confused disaster with no governmental system telling things where to go and what to do. And then I turn into a disaster b/c I can't find anything and don't know where to put things b/c they just don't want to go with the birthday cards … yup. So the obvious solution is lots and lots more cubes and shelves. And baskets. Maybe I'll write a blog post about my affinity for baskets later. Or maybe Timothy should write that one. It might come out more interesting from his perspective … it would probably be titled something like "my wife's eerie and completely unreasonable obsession over wicker baskets especially if they have cute gingham lining or are "discounted" 50% off so as to still be more expensive than one should ever have to pay for a box." Anyhow, I shall have lots of baskets on my shelves and tidily tucked away in the cubes.

And then there will be project tables. There will be long expanses of Flat Space. And a big coffee table with cushions on the floor on which I shall sit Japanese style as I fiendishly piece together amigurumis in time to make it to the post office by 5:55.

And a wall of windows. Preferably. Or mirrors. Notsopreferably.

And on these tables will be some wire letter organizer things, with cute manila folders in them (only they won't be plain manila ~ I'll find some cute ones on etsy or cover some plain ones with wallpaper or magazine cut-outs). I don't know what those are for yet. But once again, if they did have a pre-determined purpose, then I would need twice as many so as to have enough for the emergency purposes.

The only problem with this whole dream world is that I don't belong there.

This picture gives a little insight into what my crafting environment most often looks like. Although I cleaned up for this picture, so you have to imagine lots more scraps and tape and pens and tea and Kleenex and cats (hence, the Kleenex) … I usually try not to take pictures when I'm in process, b/c it's such a cluttered messy mess that is very messy and I'm altogether in denial about it, preferring to think that the end justifies the means. (Thoughts/comments are welcome at this point. Just don't judge me.)

(it's a scrapbook I made for our one-year anniversary)

Here's a more genuine shot:

I wonder what would happen if my visionary self ever met my disheveled chaotic spontaneous self. I'm not sure that they know yet that the other exists.

No conclusion. But Sudafed is wearing off and I'm going to sleep.

Reasons I enjoy crocheting, and the like

2011-03-21T23:43:00.000-07:00

The gentle, lulling, repetitive motion

One loop after another after another … flows into a gentle sinusoidal wave of comfort, erasing jumpy, haggard patterns of stress and anxiety

An imitation of the great act of creation, watching a hat, a doll, a blanket, a mobile slowly emerge from my hands at the impetus of my own will ~ understanding in some small measure the joy and pride of my God, as a mirror humbly beholding and reflecting His creative essence

Projects turn to prayer as a friend, a brother, a joy, a fear is shared with God, my Comforter

In turn calmly crocheting or passionately exploring new designs and dreams, as my mood and energy dictate

I used to struggle with myself over the irony of the apparent futility of creative endeavors. Before I discovered crochet, I used to enjoy making puzzles, and yet I couldn’t quite stand up to the annoying reasoning voices telling me that putting together a picture that has intentionally been cut apart is the epitome of vanity. So I became a closet puzzler, hiding in the recesses of my mind from myself as I enjoyed long periods of piecing together a puzzle, finding irrational pride in matching pieces of cardboard together and watching dazzling images emerge, even as the voices were saying “you could have bought this picture whole to start with!” As I began to emerge into the mature adult I might become I ventured out into the world of cross stitch as a direct act of defiance to the voices that nagged at me. “Why would you spend twenty hours making something that serves no purpose? Who will ever appreciate this? You could be doing something else to make the world a better place right now. Or you could be sleeping. Who are you trying to impress anyway? Seriously? One stitch after another after another … ?” Sometimes it got to me. I don’t know how to answer any of those questions. There’s no point. But my mom does have one of my cross-stitched masterpieces framed on her wall. And I did find an indescribable peace of mind and heart every time I sat down to add another color, a new thread, an extra element to the picture. When I recently got married and started embellishing my dabbling interest in yarn, I would give voice to all these doubts and questions and often get myself worked into quite a frenzy, crocheting a hat while explaining that I really didn’t know why I enjoyed this (but I did, somehow, in those closets of my mind) because I knew it didn’t matter and I could just buy one and I know I’m not really accomplishing anything that counts for anything and I could be doing something better (or sleeping ~ that’s always an option!) and etc, somehow feeling obliged to side with “the voices” now that I had a sounding board (aka, my “hubband”) who might, just might, contradict me and release me from the bondage of perpetually making sense. Which he did, interrupting me, poking me, laughing at/with me at the absurdity of my sense of sense-making and encouraging me to just relax and enjoy the simple things in life. If you enjoy it, that’s good enough. … oh glorious freedom! J

I realize now that a lot of those downward spiraling thoughts of “this isn’t worth anything, don’t waste your time, what’s the point?what’s thepoint?what’sthepoint??” was symptomatic of a ferocious hunger to be seen, noticed, appreciated … and of a depression that was eating away at the joy of simply living. Since finding my husband I have discovered a precious ability to enjoy life, now that this anxiety to count for something or matter to someone was set right. With a companion to love, one in whose love (because it is growing with the Love of God) I could rest securely and confidently, I was able to face life in a fresh way and not be caught up in a whirlwind of anxiety-driven “dosomethingamazingnowandeverymomentoryou’reworthless”-ness.

I wish I had been able to reach this point earlier, but in my journey, I needed Timothy to set me free to be me and be happy with me. If I have a daughter, though, I hope she can learn to appreciate herself and enjoy discovering life and her own talents in a peaceful way, instead of feeling compelled to throw herself to the wind, hoping someone will catch her when she falls.

And I’ve digressed sufficiently from yarn to esoteric musings on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness so I shall call a halt to this blog post. Blogging. That is definitely an onomatopoeia.

p.s. for clarification sake, I didn’t actually hear voices. And I hope I haven’t offended anybody who does, b/c I can imagine that must be an incredibly frustrating experience, not to be belittled. Seriously.

fanatical, fantastical, financial figures

2011-03-20T20:47:00.001-07:00

$11/ hour. That’s how much I make teaching 8^th grade math in Oklahoma.

I’m so glad I didn’t calculate that until now, but now that I have enlightened myself on the futility of money-making in this particular line of stress-intensive (insert-descriptions-here) work, it does make facing the final 9 weeks a bit of a daunting and discouraging task. How can America at large expect teachers to produce an intelligent-and-competitive-in-a-global-economy generation of young people when They (the Great and Unknown entity of They-ness) pay teachers $11/hour?? Oy. But that’s another story for another book. (coming soon to your local trash can)

So in a moment of transcendent inspiration, following months of considering this idea of taking the crafty crafting world by storm, I decided that I could earn myself $11 an hour crocheting and skip the stress of daily teaching drama (left purposely ambiguous in this rendition of the story).

Since $11 is my “real” money after all the taxes and insurance and retirement and feed-the-hungry-millionaires percentages are cut out, I did the math (trust me ~ I’m a math teacher) and figured that if I made $140 dollars worth of products, five days a week every week, I could make up for all taxes, insurance, cost of materials, etc. and still come out ahead of my teaching salary. If I throw 5 hours of math tutoring a week into that, I’m down to about $100/day. That’s 3 hats. One bird mobile. Or 2.43 frog-and-turtle duos. (I just made that up. … but it sounds cute. I think I’ll try it.) Of course I still need to build in time for Research and Development (aka, designing the frog-and-turtle duo, since it inevitably won’t be quite right the first time), blogging, posting to etsy, facebook, twitter, etc.

Number theories make me giddy. Within minutes of this fanatical and fantastical epiphany I was sky-high in my dreams of living the high life in the delicate balance between creativity and insanity. Talking it over with my ever-faithful-and-pragmatic business partner, my husband, brought me quickly back down to earth. It’s too dangerous to take this leap of faith when we’re $100,000 in debt from college loans and trying to start a family in the reasonably near future. Etc. He was very loving and gentle in his reasonings. I was equally thankless and harrumphed in my murmurings against his reasonable reasonings. But of course it was what I would have told myself if I didn’t have him there to tell me.

But still… $11/hour??? I don’t want to go back to school tomorrow… I think that’s what this all comes down to … (apologies all around if any of my students ever end up reading this ~ I heart u all!)

So I’m signing off a bit discouraged … I have so many dreams of projects I want to do and so many leads to follow through on (see future posts) and not nearly enough time. I’m afraid that these dreams will shrivel up and die and my potential customers will forget about me if I don’t follow through soon. And strong. And my present career path is draining me of everything. That’s seriously another book though.

Closing quote from my dearest “hubband:” Honey, I think you’re wonderful.

Me: well, I know that, but I just want to be more wonderful.

Vote of confidence: 1

Vote of discouraged-i-just-want-to-hide-in-a-hole-and-not-go-to-school-tomorrow: 1

Score tied. Overtime play-by-play to be continued.

in the meantime, here's a picture of a knit headband i made today :)

I did it!!

2010-12-27T17:04:00.000-08:00

Putting pencil to paper can be cathartically therapeutic (is that redundant?); even more so with fingertips (mine) to keyboards (anyone's). Although written expression embodies and justifies, often victoriously, my convoluted and introverted thought processes (processi?) (case in point), the overhanging threat of impending written assignments sends me into frenzies of inactivity, or other-activities to justify my lack of productivity.

Which is all to say that I love to write. But I don't. write.

i know, right?

So, here goes a first attempt at presenting to the (intrigued) universe my recent discovery of a fascinating form of cute-squishy-creative-colorfulness. Of the genus: Amigurumi. Of the species: mine own.

I picked up some books on Amigurumi (the most noteworthy being Amigurumi World: Seriously Cute Crochet and Amigurumi Two by Ana Paula Rimoli) this past summer (that would be 2010, for the sake of my future clientele from the year 2011) and started making everything I deemed cute-cuddly-colorful enough to justify the time expenditure of such creations. My rationalization defenses weakened in the face of storefuls of pretty yarn in every color, texture and price imaginable, and the unending days of unemployment spread before me like a blank canvas (of multicolored synthetic acrylic - read, fake mass-produced plastic stuff for gullible consumers like myself) ready to be made into turtles, bunnies and teapots. I ended up making nearly everything in these books.

Then, in an inspired moment of uninformed excitement, I posted them on etsy, hoping to earn back some of my "investment" in cute yarns and books to appease (please?) my husband who was mildly amused by my rigorous hobby. (On a side note, he has been incredibly supportive of my obsession and handles each new creation with respectful tenderness and impressive-ed-ness.) Upon further exploration of etsy, however, I quickly ran across the author of these books selling the Exact Same amigurumis that I had been making (imagine!) and I realized that she could just as easily run across my site and be equally (but more justifiably) surprised. Would I be in trouble for selling something made according to someone else's patterns? (For the record, they were very well written patterns!) I tried to ask a lawyer friend about the consequences of such "copyright" issues, but he laughed at me. :( I think the potential battles between yarn ladies over stuffed animal patterns did not seem like a legitimate legal issue. (As if big men battling over little bits of green paper is?!) When he saw my consternation, though, he affably offered to research it for me, at the cost of $200/hour. sigh.

So I pulled all my listings off etsy and decided to try my hand at some of my own creations, for which I would assuredly not sue myself for selling. I started noticing some of my friends' baby toys, stuffed animals, pictures, etc. and mulled over ideas of how to create these forms in 3-d crochet. Thus, Theodore and Frank were born. And now I have arrived at the day in my story in which I wrote this story.

The End.

For now.

To be continued.

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Theodore:

Frank, the fish:

Wedding bears for my brother-in-law and sister-in-law-once-removed-to-be. (Chris and Katie, if you see these here before I give them to you, please act surprised still!) These are adapted according to pre-made patterns.

Business cards made by my friend, Cristal. She has been an incredible help to me in designing logos, cards, websites, etc. (Let me know if you want me to connect you with her for help with your own business logos, websites, etc.)

The bunny, Evelyn, in process.

A sample of some of my creations (all done by patterns from Ana Paula Rimoli's books).

Aliens and squirrel up close.

Some of the books I use most often.

Victor's head was too big the first time around. no problem. cut it off.

From left to right: Evelyn, Samantha, Victor. I don't know where these names come from. The animals usually tell me who they are when I'm done with them.

airplaine. with stitched-on windows. my husband convinced me that hot glue guns are to amigurumi what scissors are to origami: bad?

i'll take more artistic pics later of my yarns, but for now here's a pile of some of the cotton yarns I use for most of the animals.

And a knitting toy i found that is fun to use for hat-making.

And more big fuzzy yarns for making hats. I'll post more on my hat making adventures later.

if you remind me.