We had a lot of family visitors today, so Ira spent a lot of time being shown off and being awake at a time of day during which he really has no interest in being awake. Managed to get this one picture of him with a non-grumpy face, though!

On a beautifully sunny but bitterly cold day, here's another fellow from Amigurumi World, and my first attempt at making a full animal with arms, legs, and ears. Actually, it's more like my second or third attempt, thanks to the sneaky animals I live with. Up until recently the dog had been working in collaboration with the cat to get CDs, books, and small stuffed animals off of shelves and tables and into his waiting teeth. Either they're starting to get tired of this trick or I'm starting to get wiser -- this bunny actually got finished without incident.

The arms and legs on these little amis are the hardest part for me to make because of their small size, but the head, body, and ears were a breeze. Getting the hang of something new is a nice feeling!

He has emerged!

This tiny dinosaur has been trying to emerge for two days now. One day he will grow up and succeed in freeing himself from his eggy prison. He may well kill us all.

Is this a metaphor? Either way, he's better than those capsule-bound dino sponges.

Ottotine

Otto wishes you a late happy Valentine's Day! Even though he finds the whole concept of love a bit frightening.

Won't you be his Valentine?

The heart is one of three crocheted using this free pattern from Owlishly. The patterns for all three sizes were easy to follow and turned out very well and... heart-shaped of course!

So even though the time for hearts has passed, I couldn't resist posting this one!

Self Portrait with Mug

Here's a little mug I finished up yesterday! The pattern came from Ana Paula Rimoli's Amigurumi World, which has been a great sourcebook for learning the basics of crochet and ami-ing (although both Johnny and I had to resort to a youtube video in order to actually figure it out -- learning from pictures skill level down). I love the way she makes the faces on her amis, they have such personality. Mine looks a little bit peaky and hesitant, like he's feeling under the weather.

I've also been having a brief love affair with rounded photo corners. It's something that used to be on my list as an unnecessary touch, but as an experiment it's actually been kind of... charming! Anyway, searching through themed Flickr photo pools has been a great source for finding projects to stay busy with.

That and perpetual organization of my closet, which is small and depressing and missing all of the boxes of clothes currently still waiting for me in Tacoma.

good day sunshine

It's been fun at home taking pictures of things and working on finding a new job in "this economy." Kind of disheartening use of quotations, isn't it? Maybe with this free time I'll also get better at crocheting -- I'm working on it, anyway, and getting a little faster, producing a few little cute amigurumi. Hopefully my last check comes in the mail soon so I can be less poorish and afford more supplies, hooray!

Corgi Love!

The great cross country move is now over, so hopefully with less stress going on there will be more time to update this blog and all of my internet stuff and generally keep in touch more than I have been able to do for the past while. Everything has been pretty successful and it's pretty nice to be at home for now, warm and well-fed.



There's a lot of snow, but it's dealt with in a reasonable manner. Our corgi has been having a blast exhausting himself by running around in snow as high as he is. He's so tired by the end of the day that his usual midnight bedtime is now not early enough, and he looks at us contemptuously when we're not in bed by 10 PM.