Working on Sundays is POO Cupcakes

because working on a sunday is big-time poo, i made these cupcakes for marco and his co-workers. it's a little pick-me-up for them and an easy craft for me to do with mia, who helped eat the leftover strawberries :)

when i see these cupcakes, it makes me feel like i'm the best mom

i saw these amazing cupcakes in a woman's day magazine and i thought that i could make them exactly the same. i fully expected my very first cupcake (not only the first one i make with those instructions, but my first cupcake EVER) to be as perfect as those glorious, professionally made cupcakes with the amazing morphos butterflies (but since mia's theme was monarch butterflies, i made them in orange wings). yeah, and so thirty pairs of butterfly wings later (all done freehand, i'm so proud), i finally got them to look halfway decent... not completely perfect, but oh well. i'm thinking of remaking them for my babywearing meeting :) they do make me feel like i'm the best mom, though, because i made them ESPECIALLY for her birthday... and especially for her :)

i made a doll!

so mia is turning one on the 31st and i decided to make her a special "mommy" gift from me to her. so i made this doll for her :) yep, i sewed it with my own two hands! and embroidered her face and all :) she's "waldorf"-style, which means that her face is almost blank so that the kid can use her imagination and project onto the doll itself... it's all very theoretical... :) anyhow, so i bought this kit and followed the instructions and VOILA! here she is :D i hope my little girl loves it!

Acorn Head Toddler Shedir

so being in italy, you would think i'd have plenty of time to just sit around and do nothing, happily vacationing, reading books and sleeping in, knitting away (yes, in my sleep, that's how all great knitters do it!) but alas, i have an almost one year old, which means i probably won't get a vacation for another... oh... 17 years. so i've basically been taking care of her this whole time (with help from marco, of course, and my mom and aunt when they were here). so it took me forever to finish this, my second shedir, for my little one. it's unseasonable, it's totally going to be outgrown before she can wear it, but here it is, my acorn-head toddler shedir. acorn-head, 'cause i made some modifications for size and that caused the end of the hat to get pointy a la acorn. so that's what it's called :)

ah and let me just say that i love the goofball picture of my goofball at the end. it's.just.perfect. and exactly how i want to remember her babyhood.

a really long time since i've posted and... a baby fakedir (shedir)

i remember a time when i used to post silly things on my blog, simply because i had the time and the inclination. no one told me having a baby was going to be this much work! yes, i blame my inefficiency and lack of posting to my blog on the baby. she is the cutest time-vortex known to man :)

another thing i was doing was getting ready for our european trip 2008! for family bonding time, we decided to visit marco's family in italy. they had never seen the baby and this was quite possibly the only time they would have to see her quite so much. i took the opportunity to visit some of my side of the family as well. my cousin, pina, just had her baby (who will be turning a month this coming saturday), alana, and i went to germany (specifically bonn) to visit her. it was very fun to see her and the trip included a cool road trip to the didymos (baby wrap) store in ludwigsburg (about 4 hours away from bonn) and a visit to the surrounding castles and an aquarium around bonn.

after a few days in germany, we made our way to italy, where we saw marco's family and soon afterwards were joined by my mom and my aunt who came over for a week and a half. needless to say, family fun ensued! we had a great time. my mother and aunt left today and we are still in italy; we have a couple more weeks to go.

i made a baby shedir for alana so she could wear it on her little newborn head and here she is in all it's splendor. it's a bit long so it's cuffed (which i don't care for) but she looks adorable there. she's only 10 days old in this picture. additional pictures show the hat by itself and the stitch detail :)

here are my pics from the european trip!

strawberry toddler hat

nothing terribly original about a strawberry hat but i've always wanted to make one and since Mia can't really wear the incredibly wintery fake isle hat i made until next winter, i decided to make her something more "immediate" to wear. enter the strawberry hat :) it's simple and fits into her various berry hats (that barely cover her head now -- my baby is growing up so fast!) and she seems to view it as acceptable as she doesn't rip it off her head for a whole two or three minutes.

a definite loss & a baby fake isle

it's official, my computer, who was named Mr. Slate, is no more. all recovery efforts have been completely futile and he's been pronounced dead (and takes all my data with him). we are now rebuilding :(

out of the sadness of loss, comes creation... sounds poetic, right? well, it just means that since my computer died, i started knitting like mad, both as a stress-reliever and because, well, i had no computer. so out comes this completely unseasonable hat, which is wayyy too warm to wear in sunny california at this point. i hope it still fits her when winter comes! it looks much more complicated than it really is, and i love fair isle (i like to see it knit up); the pattern is a very clever one, using a striping yarn in what is really a two yarn hat, but looks a little like those complicated multi-color fair isle designs. and i have enough to make myself a hat too (or maybe some baby legwarmers) so those might also arise from my grief! either way it'll have to wait as i have already started another hat for mia, LOL!

and the cherry on top of all of it is... mia hates hats; i had to bribe her with some yarn to sit still for the first picture and then the second picture is the classic one of her ripping the hat off her head. sigh.

danger will robinson! danger!

so my hard drive crashed. it crashed in a fatal way, in which no professional drive saving companies could save it (we tried). it died and took with it my entire image bank, my grad school career and, oh well, everything. all i can do is sigh :(

so this is my excuse for the lateness of this pic! i actually finished this a few days ago but i didn't put it up 'cause i had no computer to really do it. i still don't, really. i'm borrowing the laptop i'm on... sigh.

it's the mary jane pithy hat with a brim. it's for a someone's birthday but she doesn't know it. i hope she does actually like it! more photos here. all i did was knit the mary jane pithy hat and then i added the stitch n' bitch newsboy brim. i think it cam out pretty good :)

sigh.

butterfly hat

two full weeks of not leaving the house because of sickness (first me, then my little one) has allowed me plenty of time to knit. so on a roll of prolific-osity (sooo not a word!), i knit this butterfly hat for myself... i had this random ball of patons SWS natural blue that i bought on a whim and wanted to use it up. i don't like the way it knit up, honestly, and i think a beautiful hat like this might knit up more elegantly with a solid color. unfortunately, this hat needed just a tad more natural blue than one skein, so i'm still stuck with a random skein of natural blue! bummer. oh well, i'll see what i can do.

i do love the way this hat looks from the back though! so beautiful, in my opinion. the stitch is super easy to do. oh yeah! i got the pattern here :)

the wee wig

i finally got around to making a hallowig! i've been wanting to make this forever but haven't gotten around to it. give me two weeks of being completely shut in my home, first due to my being super sick and now mia being super sick (but getting better)and here is my wee wig, a little toddler version of the original adult hallowig. i love it! my little one has always had a ton of hair but never like this! it looks so cute on her! and for a girly-effect, i made a little flower (no pattern, just winged it) to go on the side! i love it.

i didn't care that much for the way the pattern because i couldn't visualize how it came together (and some of the directions were sort of confusing) but making it made me realize that my modifications for my toddler size (100 stitches total) had to be modified mid-pattern. it took some improvisation but i managed through it. i did get some good directives on modifying the pattern, however, from this post on this blog.

before i attached the flower, i did get my poor rusty (my little BOY dog) to model the flower i made and then tried to put it on mia but she quickly crawled away! my girl is getting big in no time :( she even took her first steps today! i was super excited but scared at the idea that she's now MOBILE! oy vey!

finally! some knitties!

i'm finally done with some knitted stuff! to get me back in knitting i did a black and gray kitty hat for a swap (which i forgot to take a picture of!) and a basic cable hat from stitch 'n bitch. the hats then put me in the mood for yet ANOTHER kitty hat, one that i've been meaning to do for a while! here is my little one, in full kitty hat-love. i thought it was kind of appropriate that she was wearing her halloween pajamas (well, i bought them after halloween 'cause they were on sale for a dollar, and who was going to see her pj's anyway? lol~ i guess, the world) i love seeing my sweet girl giggling like this (which she usually does) and i finally have a brown and pink hat which replaces the one i lost that i made her :(

Halloween 2007 - Mia's First

so for halloween we originally had a costume but it didn't quite fit her right so i decided it was her first halloween so we would go with a costume that i made myself! so miss mia was a Monarch Butterfly and i was her prop (the Twig She Landed On). it was so much fun to make this costume! it was basically a skin on a baby carrier we have (a beco) and it came out great! i was wearing a brown tracksuit and had green leaves to show my twig-ness. she was a hit at the boo at the zoo and a hit trick or treating last night with her cousin, emily. we had so much fun and she was pretty comfy in there (she was only wearing a onesie, some baby legwarmers, her antennae, and some black socks). and best of all she got (me) a ton of candy :) the first pic is the whole costume, the second is my little ones' antannae, and the third is us in the pumpkin patch! more pics here.

in the stuff i made her before she was born

so i made her all this stuff before she was born, right? well, not a whole lot of stuff but some, and finally she's fitting into them! so i thought i'd show her wearing her stuff :)

the first one is the 5 hour sweater, which i now call the five hour plus sweater, 'cause it ain't taking five hours unless you knit the entire day without stopping for potty breaks or food. here it was flat and sad and baby-less (waiting for little mia to wear it).

i also made a couple of fruit hats for her, the first one being the little periwinkle fruit hat, also being called the eggplant hat, currently. hard to see in this pic, but it has a little stem and leaves. here you can see the hat in all its glory, pre-model.

the third pic is another hat i knit in a hurry, 'cause i realized that the first fruit hat didn't match what she was going to wear on her way home from the hospital. i know that sounds crazy, but i was waaaaay deep into nesting mode and on the hunt for the perfect coming home outfit at the time. i never took a picture of that one by itself, so here it is, on my best model :)

custom onesies

i made these three onesies for the crafty onesie swap :) i love them, even though they're not for miss mia... well, i might make her one like the tie one (actually i got all the stuff together to make one!). i love that one! anyhow, i also made a little orange hat that goes with her one of the onesies... my partner said she loved them and i hope her future baby will at least enjoy wearing them :) i hope she really did!

the hat, full circle

i absolutely love it when she wears something i made her. and this hat (remember it?) just happens to match our new wrap :) i love the way it looks on her :) what a cutie! she wears it when we go on our walks at naptime.

mia's piggy bank

although i didn't make this piggy bank, i thought i'd post it 'cause my once-crafty mom made it for mia :) she went to one of those ceramic glazing/ pottery places and painted this pig to match the nursery. isn't it cute? when she first told me she made a green pig, i was a little hesitant but now that i see it, it's great. and it's huge, so lots of pennies for the baby :)

heirloom tomato hat

i've got a horrible cold... and when i'm sick, i like mindless knits. what's more mindless than a roll border hat? i love to make fruit hats so here's my latest: the heirloom tomato hat made with a yarn that i got from a swap (the red and yellow variegated). it's quirky, yes, and goes with nothing that i own but i love it :)

hammy & the turtles

so i made a bunch of turtles for the shop the swap 5 on craftster! i thought they'd sell fast, but only two so far, the green ones, have been "sold" (really, they've been swapped). there is no love for funky colored turtles! oh well, i hope they go to good homes :)

i also made a little hamster, Hammy (original, huh?), only two inches tall, holding a pea ... he's super cute and went super fast! he's already on his way to his new hamster home :)

additionally, i made a star afghan for my friend leslie's son, logan, but i forgot to take a picture of it! DOH! i totally dropped the ball on that one... i hope she has time to send me an action shot! (hint hint) i know i swore i'd never make one again, but someone had the great idea to make it with super thick yarn and i totally jumped on that bandwagon. it came out pretty nice, too!

Two Turtles

i made two turtles in the last couple of weeks; i've been trying to make more but mia's been a handful and it's kinda hard to crochet with a sling on :-/ the blue one was for a swap ;) and the pink one was going to be for the shop the swap swap, but it was so cute and it was in her colors, so i decided to give it to mia. it isn't really to play with since its eyes are just glued on, but it makes a cute decoration and will be great for the shelves in her room :) i love these little guys and will be making at least three more for my shop the swap! also, i'll probably be making some octopi for that swap :) woo hoo for amigurumi!

tassel pixie cap (sans tassel)

so to ease myself back into a knitting habit, i started out with a sweet hat for miss mia, called the tassel pixie cap by she's crafty. i love the pointy-ness in the back but i'm considering whether or not to put on the tassel. right now, it's sans tassel, but who knows? i may change my mind. oh and look! i finally have a model for tiny baby creations. i must say though, she's quite a reluctant model and can only take it for so long. eh, i don't blame her. it's july and i put her in a wool hat for the sake of modeling cuteness. yes, i'm mean mommy.

done with school / ferrara pan project

free at last! i officially turned in my assignment for my incomplete class on tuesday. hooray! finally! it took a lot of coordinating around miss mia, but at least now i have something to show for it.

my semester project consisted of rebranding the candy company, Ferrara Pan (their current website is here). they make lemonheads, atomic fireballs, boston baked beans, amongst other classic candies. my objective was to update/ modernize the company's look and target a more mature audience (right now their target audience is children). my audience is more hipster-y types, young adults to people in their mid-to-late thirties. for this class i created a book that shows/explains a mood and objective of the rebranding and such; also it gives a set of visual standards of how to use the logo (and how not to use the logo), as well as typographic considerations, color palettes, etc.

i didn't post the completed project (the visual standard book is missing, which comprises of most of the explanations, etc.) but the products and advertising are in my gallery :)

bubby

i tried to make a bubby. but i don't really like the way the little guy came out. he looks nowhere near as cute as the one in knitty and honestly i thought he would be bigger even though i knew that he was supposed to be 7 inches tall (& mine is about 8 inches). i'm disappointed as i was making it for mia as her first teddy bear. maybe next time i'll make a baby bobbi bear instead (shell out some cash for the pattern) and hopefully it'll come out better. we'll see.

Two baby showers and a monkey

so it's a few days after the last days of school and let me tell you i feel loads better. not just because i don't have to go to school, but because i've made an effort to sleep and eat well and exercise more. my feet are no longer super swollen and the pregnancy is feeling much smoother (still uncomfortable but not as much). who knew that stress was that bad for you? i am grateful for having the opportunity to rest up before the birth.

one of the things i've done in my few days off was learn how to make a sock monkey (like i said i would! hooray!) i went to the maker faire with marco who really wanted to go. i mainly sat around at different crafty workshops 'cause i didn't want to overdo it; so this was one of the results of my workshops... my first sock monkey! i call him gerardo. like rico suave ;)

additionally, i've been meaning to put up the pictures of the baby showers (yes, plural, i've had two) -- both a family one and one my friend beth threw for me for my school friends. they were both really great. my aunt and mom put together a huge baby shower with everyone in the family circle invited (and a few good friends of mine, too). click here or the first picture to see the album :)

the next picture is of my school friends at an SF restaurant where my good friend beth (receiver of the crochet poo) organized a small dinner/baby shower for me. it was full of pasta and fun conversation :) for more pics, click the 2nd pic or find them right here.

i made a happy poo! and a baby cable baby hat

i love saying i made a happy poo. it is for my friend beth who is having a really poo type of semester... and since we always use the term poo, well, then this seemed really appropriate :) i got the pattern at puchitomato. my poo-colored yarn is red heart soft yarn and the color is called "toast." (a friend said if she ever got toast that color she would immediately revolt in terror).

the second is yet another hat i made for the baby. truly very gratifying, making teeny tiny hats that are done in a flash! to make it cuter, i stuck a huge pink & toast (poo-brown) pom on the top. as you can see, i've been very apt to use the poo-brown toast colored yarn. i don't know, i think it's growing on me! (ew. ew. ew.) this hat is of my own design, using baby cables in a certain pattern which didn't exactly come out like i had thought (i was hoping it would look like some cables were higher than others, but the cables just look the same). while i was knitting it, someone commented: "babies and poo! what else could possibly go better?" nice.

Faire Isle Dreams Baby Hat

last night i couldn't stop myself from knitting. i know i shouldn't have, what with the wrist thing and all but i couldn't help it... one little hat couldn't hurt, right? also, it was a newborn sized hat, so that's the way i rationalized that. anyhow, i couldn't find a pattern to inspire me so i made one up... and ta da! the Fair Isle Dreams Baby Hat was born :) i really like the way it came out and i haven't seen similar fair isle hats for small babies, so i was thinking i would sell the pattern on etsy... i think i will hold off on that, though until i figure out the sizes :)

baby superstar: the starghan

ok now that i've weaved in the ends of the starghan, i'm posting it! first things first: i HATE knitting/crocheting blankets. when i finished this baby i decided that it would be the last one i ever made (although i might talk myself into another one later on, i doubt it). it drove me insane!!! double crochet all the way around. and it sucked up yarn like a hoover! for this one i used FOUR SKEINS of yarn. i don't think i've ever used anything like four 200 yard skeins on a project. it definitely is not yarn-light. what's more, it's not evident in the pictures, but i ran out of the brown toward the very end and had to substitute a random brown from my closet (it matches well enough but not super well). i ended up with 23 rounds if that's any help (i was trying to make it to 25 but then gave up on it as i was out of yarn, out of steam, and was sick of working on it). any how the first shot is the blanky itself (green, white, and brown like the baby room), the second one was with a model (a sweet monkey i got from a swap). and the third was an ugly shot with a water bottle, for showing scale.

i'm happy to report that my wrists are starting to feel better. it's actually weirdly unpredictable, as one morning i'll wake up without the ability to pick up a pencil, and the next morning only one wrist will hurt and one won't, then sometimes it's really good and sometimes it's really bad. weird! i've been also fighting the tylenol but i might do it if it gets too bad. we'll see how it goes.

oh yes and one more thing: my crafty goal now that i'm on spring break is to learn how to make a sock monkey! i have the stuff, i just never got around to it. and it's not a wrist-intensive thing, so hopefully it'll all work out!

disneyfan and some news :)

i was in a "one tiny thing swap" this last month at craftster, so the one tiny thing i sent my partner, disneyfan was very, well, disney. this cell phone holder gave me the fun opportunity to make something up rather than follow a pattern. and it gave me something to make which i normally wouldn't (a cell phone holder and a disney item). the top pic is the front and the bottom is the back. my own design made in caron simply soft! yay :)

in other news, i am currently crocheting a star blanket for the baby. she is super wiggly and squirmy lately, and i'm thinking of calling her squirmy again instead of mia. and we're in the homestretch! next week marks the end of my second trimester :) wow the first trimester seemed to last forever and the second one seems like it went by in no time at all! i'm glad we're close though because i can't wait to see her. marco is getting super excited too :)

i guess it's also safe to say we're moving! marco has a new job starting mid-month and we're going to be moving closer to where my mom lives. we're super duper excited about that as we will be leaving our little one bedroom for a much bigger 2 bedroom apartment. and then this summer we'll be buying a home! hooray :) my biggest excitement about the new move: the new apartments have a washer and dryer IN THE APARTMENT. now, that may sound domestic, but let me tell you what a huge pain it is to have to carry your laundry down a flight of stairs and across the complex only to find that all the washers are being used. ugh!

an addition to the winnie cooper

although i loved the way the entrelac came out on my winnie cooper, i didn't really like those ends. i saw a lot of people putting fringe on theirs but i thought i wanted something to cover up my non-blocked ends (and i don't want to block this scarf 'cause i like the puffiness of the entrelac). and i just recently bought some pom makers (super cool ones by clover that make the boring task of making pon poms so much faster and pretty even) so i pommed it! it kinda takes the sophistication edge off the scarf (which i'm not sure if i like or not) but i can always take them off if i change my mind.

winnie cooper

after some feverish knitting i've finally finished my winnie cooper! what is a winnie cooper, you ask? it is knitty's danica, but since she's a little transformed with the red instead of the purple, she's been renamed winnie cooper (a charater played by danica mckellar in the wonder years).

not bad for my first entrelac scarf, huh? i think i might have kinda screwed up the beginning (there's a weird twist in the foundation triangles), but overall once established, entrelac wasn't so bad. it had a ton of ends to weave in though, so that wasn't fun.

in spite of it all, i love love love this scarf. lately i've had these scarves that are crocheted and feel a bit breezy due to the holes within the fabric. this baby is completely warm :) and she matches my only coat that fits (a ruby colored maternity pea coat). i added a little shot of the entrelac detail because i love it. :)

garden scarf

after a small hiatus in the needlework fields, i've risked carpal tunnel in order to finish up the happy hooker's garden scarf i had started before all this neuritis (that's what the doctor says is wrong with my wrist). i only have one coat left that fits me, my ruby colored maternity pea coat, and i decided to make a scarf to go with it so this is what i made for it, since i'm kinda crochet-crazy lately. i think the flowers are a bit floppy, though, and i'm considering blocking/starching them a bit since i used all natural fibers for this one.

since this scarfy delight, however, i've decided i want to jump on the entrelac bandwagon, and my next task will be knitty's danica. oh the entrelac goodness that awaits!!! i hope this doesn't mean they'll have to cut off my wrist!

one shrimp to rule them all

i made a bendy straw shrimp! i made a bendy straw shrimp! i was totally enamoured with a bendy straw shrimp that i saw on craftster and then someone posted a link to a quicktime tutorial on how to make them. i immediately bought bendy straws and here is my shrimp-o. it is a tribute to my friend katie who does this impression of the little shrimp in shark tales.