Don't panic! She should be dressed by this afternoon. This is the body to Rosa's Baggie Doll. Her tail is handpainted. More pics to come....

I try to be one of those parents who takes an interest in thier kid's education. My daughter's class is making dioramas of dino life and my daughter needed a rubber dinosaur for her diorama. So my neice, my husband, and I went on a dino hunt.

Princess really wanted a ptaradactal (or however you spell it) because that is her favorite dinosaur. So we dropped Princess off at Girl Scouts and went hunting Pre-historic critters.

Life is made up of sureal moments and I believe the dino hunt counts as one. How often do you have three adults sitting on the floor at Target playing with rubber dinosaurs (and the occasional other animal) while trying to figure out which one a 7 year old would like best because the store is sold out of her favorite dino. After much debate we decided on the bracheasaurus in the picture. I named him Schnieder just to be silly. What made Schnieder the dino of choice....he resembled a giraffe. By the way, Princess has renamed and regendered the dino. It is now a girl dino named Girrafie.

Rosa sent me the second baggie in the GoddessDoll's Baggie Swap. If you look closely at the picture you will notice that Rosa sent we quite a challange, but the moment I opened the bag I knew I was making a water spirit. Can we say Green Mermaid! I should be posting more pics of the doll soon. I started to sew the body together last night. Harry, the cat, was annoyed by the sewing maching because it prevented him from peeking out the window behind my worktable. Why a cat needs to check out the yard at 9:30 at night is beyond me.

What can I say, I'm a good old Pennsylvania Dutch girl at heart. Yep, around this house we outen the lights, red up the room, eat sauerkraut on New Year's Day, and eat lots of chicken pot pie. On one of my Yahoo groups there is a gathering planned for Lancaster County in April and I hope to attend at least part of the one day. I decided to commemerate the day by creating a series of Chicken Pot Pie ATC's. Each ATC has my recipe for pot pie on it and a Hex Sign. Maybe the next set should be ham soup with ribbles.

Just a note. the card on the left is clearer in real life, I photographed it with my digital cmaera. The card on the right was scanned with my scanner. I like my new scanner. It's captures my cards nicely.

She is finally finished. Yeah! Her name is GlynnisGlytha which is a combonation of Gaelic and Old English and means "Beautiful, Holy Gift." I looked them up so don't yell at me if the Gaelic is wrong. She is a nature spirit that loves sunshine and dew covered flowers.

GlynnisGlytha is my baggie doll for C.Jane. I hope her new guardian loves her.

The First Day of Spring. A time of fertility and hope. Wishing everyone a Blessed Ostara, may your lives be filled with bounty and good things.

She isn't near done, but she is coming together. Her clothing is starting to take shape, her hair is on but undecorated, and her body is together.

I love making figure dolls, it's so fun allowing their personalities to come through. Each doll is unique and each speaks in a different way.

Well, I'm off to work on her somemore. Toodles for now!

My baggie doll for C. Jane now has a body. I know, she's in pieces, but she'll go through a little therapy and be all better again.

I'm happy with the face on this one. I freehand drew the face. It's not perfect, but it's a sweet face complete with beauty mark.

Before I am done, I plan to add a little extra color to her skin. She's too pale for my taste. The color would be great for a corpse doll or a goth doll, but she needs a little color and a few tattoos.

I have this little group called Goddess Dolls (we're on Yahoo, stop by sometime) and we are doing a baggie swap. You place 12 items in a baggie, send it to your partner, and they make a doll for you. It's really fun.

This is my baggie from C. Jane. She included some really cool nature stuff. As soon as I opened it, I knew I was making her a nature fairie. Stay tuned... I'll post pictures of my progress.

Ok, so it's a bad pun. It's all that was coming to mind while I was getting the picture ready to share.

So what am I swatching? You ask. Well, this is the yarn I am going to use to make a diaper bag for the husband's cousin. I can tell you that because I doubt she is reading my blog. It's Palette Yarn from KnitPicks in Sky (the blue) and Blush (the pink). This swatch was felted and did nicely. The yarn is beautiful, soft, and very nice to work with. It's 100% Peruvian wool.

I'm making her a pink and blue felted checkboard diaper bag. What can I say, I like knitting purses and bags. I'll keep you all posted with picks as I go along.

I'm not Irish and I'm not Catholic. In my house I refere to St. Patritck's Day as a Day to Honor the Spirits of Ireland. My favorite goddess hails from Ireland. Besides, I'm happy for any day that is an excuse to eat champ (a herbed mash potato dish from Ireland) and corned beef with cabbage.

The ATC at the left was me having a lot of fun with a Vargas pin-up. I felt that today just cried out for an ATC to memorialize it. After all, St. Pat's day is the one day we can all celebrate life the way the Irish do.

I'm happily knitting away on my second pair of socks. I like the yarn for these much better than I liked the yarn for the last pair. This pair is being made from Pattons Kroy sock yarn in the bright, but fun colorway of PaintBox. I'm using the same basic pattern as the last pair, except I'm doing the cuff as knit on row, K1P1 one row (the pattern has a name but i can't remember what it is called--honest, I found it in the 365 Knitting Patterns perpetual calender.) Like I said the color is bright, it reminds me of spilled Fruity Pebbles. I'm halfway through the foot on the first sock and should have it done to model soon.

Good news from my hand doctor today. My hands are healing from the carpal tunnel surgery very well and my tendonitis is healing and won't need surgery. Someday I may have hands that work like normal people's hands

I am by no stretch of the imagination a sculptor, but I can muddle together a face on occasion. She doesn't have a name yet, just goes by Celestial Goddess. i sculpted her from polymer clay and didn't use a single mold. I believe she may be from Central America during the Meso-America peroid, she sort of has that Inca face. I'm very fond of her and she is prettier in real life than she is in my mug shot of her. She will be part of a doll I am making as part of the Goddess Dolls Group's Celestial Goddess Challange.

Come on out Steve (I think that's the guy on Monster House) and put the big DONE stamp on them. They are finished and in the wash already.

Let me say that they were a learning expirence. The second sock looks 100% better than the first. Will I wear them? Yep, they may be loose but I can always use slipper socks. Will I make another pair? Yep, they are already on the needles and should be documented on the blog in a few days.

The particulars on this sock.
Pattern: Step Right Up from the book Learn to Knit Socks by Edie Eckman

Yarn: Bernat Sox in the Jazz Hot colorway (60% acrylic/40% Nylon Yarn)

Needles: US size 3 double points made by the Swallow Needle Company.

Comments: First I need to use a smaller needle. Even though I am a tight knitter, these socks are loose. They will be fine as bed socks and run around the house socks, but other than in my slip-ons they will be too big.

Second, Keeping the stitchs tight when you move from one needle to the next is vital. I've decided that they are not ladders, they are textural features. Same as the holes in the gusset. If you are offended by my racing strips and air vents then you can knit me a proper pair.

Third, these are the first socks I ever knit. Not bad for someone who went into this scared. I can face down trolls and orcs, but knitting a pair of socks scared me. I'm proud that I overcame my fear and accomplished something. When I first read about the Knitting Olympics I thought that it was a great idea, but I didn't enter. My hands were still giving me trouble and I had to admit, I am the world's slowest knitter (snails can knit faster). But I did give myself a challange, I was going to overcome my fear of making socks. I first decided to learn to crochet socks (I'm a long time crocheter and it's just more comfortable with my hooks). I crocheted two pairs of socks and then decided to start a knitted pair. They are my first knit socks and dispite the unique textural features they have I am proud of them.

Fourth, I'm addictied to knitting socks. I love the feel of them and they are quite fun to make

Fifth, the only real downside to this. I didn't like the yarn. It split too easy and just felt rough. I had a problem with it sticking to my needles if I made my stitches tight. I bought it because it was cheap, I liked the colors, and it seemed like a good starter yarn. I was not impressed with it. It just lacked that certain something that made it a fun to work with yarn.

First, I needed to post a little yarn porn. (I bet that phrase messes with the search engines). This is the yummy yarn I bought at the Mannings last weekend. I'm debating on whether I want to pair it with a black yarn or a cream yarn for the socks. Opinions anyone?

I also found out that the company, Wool in the Woods, that made this yarn is based in Bigglerville, PA (just up the road from me, right near where they have the Apple Festival and the South Mountain Fair). How cool is that? For those who don't live in my backyard, their website lists all the retailers they sell through and by the looks of it, they sell all over the country.

I've been busy with my second sock. I finished the cuff last night and it looks much better than the cuff on the first sock. During Medium, I did the heel flap (twice because I messed it up the first time) and turned the heel. Today I plan to do the cuss-it gusset (in my opinion the hardest part of a sock.) and start the foot. I'm itching to play with the Kroy yarn, but I won't start another pair of socks until I finish one. It's forced monogamy in knitting, but I know with my attention span I would end up with 50 pairs of single socks and no mates.

In life I believe in celebrating the little things. I'm proud to celebrate the completion of my first sock. I finished it last night while watching some program on the vices of the ancient Romans. I would have done the happy dance but 10:30 at night isn't condusive to loud happy dances, so instead I tried my sock on and did a shimmy. I'm waiting until I get both socks finished before I model them. You will just have to wait and hope I knit fast (sorry, fast knitting is not one of my abilities).

I took a little trip to the Mannings in East Berlin, PA today. They are my local yarn store. I love going there and "petting the wool". I had such a hard time deciding on what yarn I wanted next to make socks with. I can't buy a lot of yarn at one time to two reasons: 1) it's not in the budget (for some strange reason my family feels that groceries are more important than wool) and 2) if I acquire too many yummy sock yarns at one time I will want to knit with them and then I will never knit the second sock to any pair of socks I make. I did splurge a little. I bought this beautiful yarn called called C.W. Ewe, it's a limited edition 100% superwash wool that is hand dyed for the Mannings by Wool in the Woods. I don't know the colorway's name but according to the label only 14 skeins were dyed in this colorway. It's beautiful and bright (the colors range from a deep fushia to orange, to yellow, to lime green. Can we say bright socks? I knew you could. I'll post a pic of it as soon as I get one. It's so soft and yummy and the sample sock that was there was beyond comfortable. I also bought myself a set of size 2 Brittany double points. They are beautiful but I'm half afraid to use them, they look so fragile. I was told that they will stand us to a lot of abuse (good because I abuse my needles).

Well, I'm off to work on my second sock, my first one wants it's twin and Harry Potter the cat thinks two would make a nicer pillow than one.

So far so good on this heel thing. The heel flap isn't too bad. It took me a second to remember how to knit back and forth after knitting in the round. I've learned to take it slow and talk to myself as I knit. Of course, I also swear like a drunk sailor while I"m knitting everytime I mess up. I tend to be a perfectionist that feels the need to get things right the first time. There are flaws in this sock, I will admit that there are some major flaws in this sock but I feel that I am doing well for my first attempt. Before I know it I will be knitting flawless socks.

So far the whole sock thing wasn't too hard. K2P2 rib is simple. This part was meditative. Now I'm up to the part that I am dreading. There are just some complicated looking stitches in the heel.

My husband keeps telling me that some knitting terms sound like euphamisims for adult things. Gee, wonder what "turning a heel" is the polite way of saying?