A friend requested I make one of my weird little monsters for her new baby-to-be and chose a beautiful mossy green cashmere sweater from my pile of felted thrift store scores. The first attempt yeilded my usual slightly creepy creature:

not exactly appropriate for a baby I thought so I,d try again:

Still a bit creepy but more creepy-cute. She was happy with this little guy but I got a phone call the night she took it home relaying the dreadful news that her dog had devoured him in the misguided attempt to protect his people from invading goblins. D'oh! So I rescued what bits and pieces I could and had another go:

There wasn't much fabric left to work with so I had to leave some random inexplicable seams and somehow incorporate a left breast pocket:

Third time's the charm right?

I could title all my posts the same way, seems like this is all I ever make!

Scored this kit, my kid is greatly enamoured of the new creature he helped to make.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/make-your-own-stupid-sock-creatures-lark-books/1100907535?ean=9781600594403&itm=1&USRI=make+your+own+stupid+sock+creatures&

Then the other kid wanted one but couldn't decided which she liked best and I am not good at following directions so sort of made this up as it went along (took about 6 hours but that's what I get for not doing what the book said).

And 2 basic sock monkeys with embroidered eyes and dbl stitched everything to make them safe for babies. Our neighbours took one and the other went to the landlord for new baby gifts. Cute!

This pickled garlic is smiling because he knows how delicious he is .

A neighbour dropped off a trunkload of produce from her lovely organic garden this year and there was just no way I was going to be able to eat it all up before it went bad so...

a friend and I got together and canned a batch of salsa. I didn't realized canning salt was so much saltier than regular so we had to add a LOT of cans of tomatoes to even out the flavour but it ended up delicious in the end.
Here's my share, she took hers home before I thought to take pics. In fact, that happened with nearly all the pictures, lol. It's such an intensive process, the camera is not something I think about until the next day when the jars have cooled and I'm standing there admiring all our hard work .

3 of us got together at my neighbour's and she showed us the basics, then we met up for 20 days over 4 weeks and went canning CRAZY! We went through about 6 huge bushels of tomatoes altogether

and an awful lot of onions, peppers, and garlic. Lots of eggplant too but I can't eat that (upsets my stomach) so I didn't take any pictures of those jars. We made pickled pepper rings and green tomato salsa as well as green tomato chutney. I did plum butter too, that's delicious but lots of work for not much volume.
Here's a midnight batch (that's when my kids are out of the kitchen and I can actually work for more than 5 minutes at a time, ha ha) of pickles, carrots, beans, radishes, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and garlic.

Another batch of midnight pickles, beets and daikon radish, beans, garlic, and some roasted peppers we put up at the neighbour's house.

I also dried some of the tomatoes and skins in a dehydrator then pulverized those skins in a spice mill for instant dried tomato paste. I saw that online somewhere and thought it was pretty brilliant.


The last and most intense project was quince and apple compote. Nobody was available to help with that but it had to be done before the fruit flies took over my entire kitchen . A huge bushel of quince from the neighbour's tree and all the left over apples from our Scouting troup's apple day plus a ton of lemon, honey, ginger, and sugar. It took me from 9:30am to 2am the next morning. All I can say is good thing it's tasty AND somebody else can deal with that tree next year! It's really neat watching that golden fruit turn pink as it cooks though...

This is not even all of it, 1/4's been taken by one of the girls. Over 50 jars in total.

I was seriously sick of canning after this but have since started planning for beets, lol. And I'm looking around for a good pressure canner so I can put up jars that aren't vinegary or lemony. I'm an addict.
Just look at this cupboard... how could I not want to do this every year?

YUM!
The whole set on flickr if you want to see even more pics http://www.flickr.com/photos/craftylittlemonkey/sets/72157631861001759/

I don't want to buy emulsion or fiddle around with glue making my own screen right now, I just want one premade that's ready to go. Does anybody know where to order screens or know of someone who offers that service? Thanks bunches!

I just came across this invaluable resource. Rufflers can be tricky to figure out but once you have, they are a great tool to use.
Here ya go!

http://www.youcanmakethis.com/products/free/free-the-ruffler-unruffled.htm

Oooh, these are Super pretty!

http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2012/06/how-to_colorful_crochet_hawaii.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+craftzine+%28CRAFT%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail

I would love to do an old fashioned cross stitch sampler for my little daughter. I'd like to include some images and that 30 days has sept or however it goes rhyme as well as the alphabet, days of the week, months of the year, seasons, continents, oceans, colours, and if there's room a list of different trees or cloud formations or something of that nature (nature related, ha ha).

I'm more than willing to purchase patterns and frankenstitch it all as I like it or to alter a pattern that has some elements that I'm after or to pay to have it designed or to swap for a design but I have always been a sort of random stitcher and don't even know where to begin looking. Does anybody have any resources or know of a person or a place that does custom designs like that?

Thanks so much for any info you've got to pass along, I'm really looking forward to making this for her as a keep sake she can have and pass along to her own babies. It's very exciting to plan!

My fave is the one where they've heated up a rock to paint on it with crayon (hot rock melts the crayon), that's such an awesome idea!

http://www.inspirebohemia.com/search?updated-max=2012-02-17T14%3A17%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=3

http://www.hutchstudio.blogspot.ca/2012/03/garden-club-whirligigs.html

Wonderfully inspiring work and it looks like it's ever so much fun too!

Very clever, and she's pretty funny too  .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PMe-LlxJZUA