Month: April 2012

A tad busy; assignments, gardening, and new stitches, oh my…

Aynaria 6 Comments

The past few days have been busy, which meant I haven’t had a chance to respond many of the comments on Celebrate Life. Thanks for responding, I should be able to get to those this weekend.

This morning I finished a few clients projects. Which means, I have the entire weekend to spend with my daughter. Yeah! I’m looking forward to that.

Also this morning, an article that I’d written on one of my business sites went viral, and so that’s received more activity than normal. I must say,  it’s been interesting seeing the amount of activity/sales that’s generated. The thing is, I wrote that article last year.

That site has done well monetarily, but I’m seeing a nice jump because of a recommendation from someone I never even met. I write under a pseudonym with my business sites.

I’ve received an award

The lovely and talented knitter; Michelle, of Will Knit for Food, awarded me with; The Versatile Blogger award, and so I’ll be linking to her tomorrow, and posting my selections for ‘Versatile blogger’. I do hope you stop by and check out some of the sites I’ll be mentioning. With some, I’ve ‘known’ the bloggers for a while, and others are fairly new to me; the bottom line they’re great bloggers, and I hope you stop by their virtual homes and say hello.

Playing in dirt

Earlier this evening, we planted flowers outside, or should I say “I planted them.”

My eight-year old daughter got distracted by playing., and who could blame her? It’s a beautiful day in Maryland, and so I took regularly paused to watch her frolic about the yard, while I planted the lovely flowers. I’ll post pictures this weekend.posting that tomorrow.

Smelling the roses

Thankfully my day is winding down, and now I’m hanging with my daughter. I’m in the process of learning a beautiful crochet stitch; shell stitch.

Sauteed vegetables: Cauliflower, broccoli, baby carrots, and sweet corn; vegan

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I adore food, but I never overindulge…

I only eat when I’m hungry. In our household we mainly eat whole foods; eating as close to the natural food source as possible, so you won’t see to many prepackaged meals here.

Vegan vegetable stir fry 04 19 12

What you will see is foods bursting with nutrition, flavor, and color;  healthy foods, such as shown in the above photo.

With the exception of the carrots, all the food pictured came from a local farm, so they were fresh. It won’t be long before we’re harvesting our own fruits and vegetables.

Vegetable Stir fry

As you can see, there are variety of vegetables combined in a stir fry; cauliflower broccoli, carrots, and sweet corn. A small amount of olive oil was used, a few cloves of oven roasted garlic, was introduced to add to the sweetness of the cauliflower, carrots, and sweet corn.

A simple meal, but alive with flavor.

 

Guinea Pig: Obligatory cuteness post…

Aynaria 5 Comments

This morning my daughter asked me, “Mom, did you post that photo of Angel on your website?”

Whoops…

A few days ago, I took this photo of our guinea pig. We both said “aww” when she flopped down on her side, and went to sleep. The poor little lady was tuckered out from all the running she was doing on my bedroom floor (and later my bed).

Guinea Pig Angel

After Ms. Daizy, the guinea pig died, I was going to get another friend for Angel. They’re social animals. However,  Ms. Angel actually is thriving by herself.

She’s more active since Daizy’s died; she has my daughter and me giggling with her crazy bursts of speed. She loves to snuggle, and will hop onto our lap, when she wants to sleep.

In the above picture, Angel is sleeping.

Question: Did you know that guinea pigs normally keep their eyes open; even during sleep?

Work in Progress Wednesday; Amineko, Red Angry Bird, and Swirly Twirly scarf

Aynaria 17 Comments

As I sit here writing about my works in progress, It occurred to me that at times I take what I’m doing for granted.

I’m truly thankful that I’m healthy enough to do make the crafts that I enjoy, and share my love of crafts with others. I rarely keep the things I create.

Crochet Amineko MarigoldnMario 1

Crochet Amineko

Marigold (gold amineko) seems upset. She has her back turned away from Mario. My daughter named the crochet amineko’s.

The gold Amineko was featured in last weeks Work In Progress Wednesday. The Amineko in white, is my work in progress. I made the white Amineko different from the first, since I crocheted a sweater onto the Ameniko. I really love how it turned out, and am pleased with my crochet progress.

At the time the above picture was taken, I still needed to make the legs, tail, ears, and mouth.The white crochet amineko is now complete (for the most part).

Crochet Angry Bird 1 04 18 12

Crochet Red Angry Bird

My five-year old nephew adores Angry Birds, and so I’m making his favorite Red Angry Bird.  My progress came to a halt, because I realized I needed to purchase eyes. Whoops, once I visit the local craft store, I’ll finish crocheting this Red Angry Bird.

Yesterday, I wrote a post linking to the free Angry Bird crochet patterns I’ll be using. Stop by, and snap up those free Angry Bird Crochet patterns, that crochet users have offered for free.

Crochet Curly Scarf 2

Crochet Swirly Twirly Scarf

I’m making this scarf for my daughter….

Yesterday, I started working on crocheting a swirly twirly scarf. My inspiration came from this swirly twirly scarf.

I changed the stitches used, and used an N crochet hook. I already have ideas for the additional scarves I’ll make, but I’m pleased with this. I’m still new to crochet, perhaps been doing it for about five months, but I’m having a lot of fun.

This scarf is almost complete. Yeah!

I combined two different types of yarn for this project. The cream colored yarn glimmers, and the pink yarn has pink metallic thread woven into it. This gives the scarf a sparkly effect; it’s a shame I couldn’t capture that look with the pictures I took.

This scarf was made for my daughter; she’s loving what I’ve done thus far. I had weaved a light pink ribbon into it, but I do believe I’ll take that out and use another ribbon?

This is the first scarf that I’ve crocheted, and it’s given me ideas for Christmas gifts, and so I’ll be playing around with different types of yarn, and adding beads to some of my creations.

Since I don’t have much left to do with these projects, they should all be featured in Finished Object Friday.

 

Sites I’m linking too

  1. Tami Amis WIP
  2. Yarn Along
  3. Frontier Dreams
  4. Crochet Addicts CFS
  5. The Crochet Way

 

Angry Birds; What’s on my crochet hooks?

Aynaria 11 Comments

I’m so thrilled with how the amineko’s turned out. Because of that, I’m crocheting more amigurumis (crocheted toys).

Angry Birds

Since I have the beginner amigurumi kinks worked out; I’ve started making a Red Angry Bird, for my five-year old nephew. I’ve completed the red, and most of the white section.

I would have finished the Red Angry Bird yesterday, but I need to pick up the eyes before I can continue.

Most of the Angry Bird patterns that I’ve seen assume you know how to make a magic circle, single crochet, and how to decrease crochet stitches. Those requirements, seem to be common with amigurumi patterns.

Searching the term, Crochet Angry Birds, will bring a lot of search results…

Which can be overwhelming, when they only thing you want is a simple crochet pattern. It shows just how popular these little critters are. I was one of those folks, who was out of the loop for a while. Anyway, It was hard to weed through all those patterns, but I was finally able to do it yesterday, while my daughter was resting.

Free Angry Bird Crochet patterns

Currently I’m working on this free Red Angry Bird pattern on Queenie Chan’s website. She also has a White Angry Bird crochet pattern, I’ll be crocheting that one too, but big red is up first since that’s my nephews favorite. I did find the Black Bomb Angry Bird pattern on Ravelry. It’s also free, but you have to be a Ravelry user; My Ravelry user name, is Opalt. I will make the Black Angry Bird next, since he likes it almost as much as the Red Angry Bird.

I still don’t know too much about the Angry Birds. I know it’s a game, and my daughter recently started playing it, and although I’ve looked over her shoulder as she plays, it hasn’t interested me enough to participate. 😉 I thought I’d read something about an Angry Bird movie or was that a TV series… anyway it looks like these birds will be here for a while.

Potential copyright issues..

When I first started seeing the patterns, I became concerned since Angry Birds, are indeed copyrighted. However, the official twitter page of Angry Birds/Rovio regularly tweets the picture of fan created Angry Birds. I’ve seen numerous types of materials used. Which seems to be a smart move on their part, since Angry Bird fans, are indirectly promoting the game through the art they’ve created. It’s how I found out about Angry Birds. I didn’t know what the crafter was talking about, so I did a Google search.

However, if you try to profit from your Angry Birds, if they find out, don’t be surprised if you run into some legal issue. I’ve already heard instances where this has happened.

Already thinking about Christmas

I’m going to start making hand-crafted Christmas items. I’d mentioned it, a few months ago, and yesterday Nicky another crafty lady, wrote down her Crafty handmade Christmas list, and so I’ll be doing the same.  Last evening, after my daughter went to bed, I was able to complete one Christmas present; a scarf, so now I have something else to add to my Finished Object Friday. Since my daughter reads this site, her name will most likely be left off the list. 😉

Question: Is anyone else getting a jump-start on their Christmas list?

Combating spam; some websites welcome it…

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Cat spam police

You’ve been to those sites, where spam overruns the comment section. It’s a major turnoff, right? The site owner is given the impression, that they aren’t paying attention to what’s going on in their virtual home.

I promptly left. It was obvious the owner, wasn’t paying attention to their websites, so why should I?

The thing is…

I just assumed that site owners (who allow this sort of behavior) aren’t reading their comments.

Some of them do…

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a website where the owner dedicated a post to the amount of spam received on their site. I read the post and nodded, yep I can relate…

Bad Behavior has blocked 5493 access attempts in the last 7 days.

That’s the amount of spam, my Bad Behavior blocked on Celebrate Life. Naturally I receive a fair amount of spam since this site is allows Dofollow, CommentLuv, and Keywordluv. Additionally, I recently started promoting this site, so I’ve seen a surge in traffic. But if you’re post is spam, or links to a porn site. Sorry it won’t be published. This is a family friend site. My larger sites receive more…

You know what surprised me? As I continued to read the author’s post, I realized he was mocking  those who left comments on his site, say what? Sure enough… looking through the amount of comments he received, I noticed most of it was spam. In fact, this could be true with the majority of the posts I saw.  His site were overrun with junk comments.

I have no idea why he chose to accept all those spam comments, since it’s obvious he reads them. Perhaps he wanted a high comment count? That means nothing, if the comments left are junk. The quality of the comments left, would far outweigh the volume, right? In his case, I guess not… He really should check out Google’s post; hard facts about comment spam. A few years old, but it’s still relevant today.

I guess some of them actually do read their comments, they just don’t care.

With the numerous anti-spam plug ins available, regardless of what platform you’re using, why keep let publish those comments? It would appear that would send the wrong message of I don’t care about the types of comments that are left on my website.

I’ve been blogging since late 2004, and have had websites since oh about 1998? When it comes to blogging, I’d thought I saw it all; I guess I haven’t…

If you’re not monitoring your site(s) for spam, or personal attacks, why should I bother to comment?

While I was sleeping…

Aynaria 4 Comments

Sleeping Star

The school nurse called (twice) today but I didn’t hear the phone ring. I was too busy sleeping.

More on why I was sleeping later…

It appears my daughter was throwing up in school, most likely a stomach virus, and so she was sent to the nurses office. My daughter’s now at home. As soon as I received the message, I was out the door to pick her up from our Lutheran school. It doesn’t appear to be major. I’ve seen this before, but the nurse wants her to stay home tomorrow, and she will.

Sleeping the day away

Admittedly, it’s not something I have the luxury to do, and I rarely need a nap, but today I did, since I didn’t get much sleep last night…

Why?  Today’s the day, when I volunteer at the homeless shelter. I enjoy this ministry offered by our Lutheran church, and thus far, since attending the church, I’ve been able to volunteer every month. It’s a great chance to interact with those whom I’m serving breakfast too, but more on my homeless shelter experience in a later post.

My internal alarm…

I’m usually awake by 4:00, it’s just how I’m wired, but if my mind knows I have to be somewhere early; it will keep ‘waking me’ every hour (after I’ve gone to sleep) so I won’t oversleep.  You get the picture? Since my mind knew I had to be somewhere by 5:15, it triggered my body to wake up early. So no…  I didn’t get a lot of sleep.

In hindsight, I should have had the phone by my bedside, but it was downstairs where I couldn’t hear, it. Since I couldn’t hear it, I didn’t even hear the phone ring. <sighs>

I feel terrible that I missed the call

I slept only an hour, but I still feel awful that I missed those two calls, but I was at the school, ten minutes after I got that message.

I’ll be working on my client’s projects after she sleeps, and in the wee hours of morning? In doing so, I can spend most of my time with her tomorrow.