Month: May 2012

Happy Mother’s Day

Aynaria 4 Comments

Throughout my life I’ve interacted with the traditional mothers, those who’ve had their own or adopted children. I’ve also met plenty of women who didn’t have children of their own, but they surely nurtured and acted motherly to those they’ve interacted with.

In honor of Mother’s Day, there will be a special service at out Lutheran church. Several children’s choirs, including the one that my daughter’s is in, will be singing.

I received my Mother’s Day present a day early…

Yesterday my daughter handed me the gifts she’d made, and told me, “Mommy, I couldn’t wait until Mother’s Day!” Which was fine by me, I don’t get into the holidays too much but I still will do things for others because I know some do recognize them. My daughter made me two gifts; one of her drawings, she’s such a talented artist. A few of her pictures have been featured locally, and she gave me a coupon “chore book.” How thoughtful!

It will be a relaxing day for us. Yesterday, I completed a lot of yard work including mowing down an area that was wooded.  I thought it would make a nice spot to sit when the fireflies finally make an appearance. Today it will feel great to relax, while hanging with my daughter. Perhaps… I’ll even get to work on my crocheted Coraline.

Father’s Day will be here soon… I’m tempted to stop by the local yarn store and see whether they have a specific yarn available. I know they have a special sale for this day. Naturally, I don’t have the yarn in my little yarn stash, to use for my dad’s Father’s day project, so my daughter, and I will most likely stop by the store on our way home from church.

I was able to complete all my Mother’s Day gifts, on time; they were all handmade, even the cards. The recipients actually love hand crafted items, and I know what they like, so these gifts won’t be wasted.

Hopefully I’ll be able to share some of the photos this coming week. 

Happy Mother’s Day!

Just whistle while you work…

Aynaria 3 Comments

It’s a little after 9:00 am, but I’ve still accomplished a lot around the house. All the inside work has been completed, and now my daughter and I are moving outside to complete a few projects.

Naturally, my daughter is looking forward to this, since it means more outdoor playtime for her. I’m looking forward to getting my hands dirty in our garden, and walking around barefoot. Something I typically do when it’s nice outside.

Last evening, we watched the movie; Coraline again, and one day soon, I’m hoping I get a chance to write my thoughts about the movie. In some ways it was similar to the book Coraline by Neil Gamon, but a lot had been changed. Regardless, I still liked the movie, and will be purchasing it for our collection.

This evening, I’ll be putting aside my crocheted Coraline, while I work on last minute items for Mother’s Day. My daughter’s children’s choir will be singing in the Contemporary church service, at our Lutheran church, and I’ve decided to make another crocheted necklace. And I think I’ll make a few more hand-made Mother’s Day cards.

If I have time, perhaps I’ll make something for myself too.

Question: Are you doing something special for Mother’s Day?

Field Day; fun hanging with my daughter’s class

Aynaria 2 Comments

Today, is a big day at my daughter’s school. It’s time to put the textbooks aside, for a bit, and go outside and play for several hours! It’s Field Day.

Field day, is conducted outdoors, if the weather is nice. And it encourages the children to exercise in an entertaining way, the various obstacle courses encourage the children to keep moving, work on fun games as a team, and participate in a little healthy competition also. Regardless of who receives the most points; they all seem to have a great time, and are disappointed when Field day comes to an end. I’ve participated with this activity, and many other school related functions, since my daughter was in kindergarten.

My daughter looks forward to me coming to school, and so do some of the children. Many of them know me from the various activities I’ve volunteered with. I must say that I’m curious to see what type of physical activities their gym teacher has cooked up for today’s adventures.

I most likely won’t be putting anything up for the Finished Object Friday link party, but I’m sure I’ll be posting things I’ve made during the coming weekend. Mother’s Day is the second Sunday in May; this Sunday. I do have completed crochet amigurumi projects to share.


Back to Akismet; Word Press anti-spam Plug-in

Aynaria 9 Comments

When I first started blogging in 2004, I was using Akismet, it did a great job of rounding up the obvious spammers, and tossing them into a the marvelous anti-spam pit; never to resurface again.

A few years ago, I changed to Defensio. I liked it a lot… On average, Celebrate Life receives about 400 or more spam comments daily. Of course,  none of them ever make it live, since the anti-spam plug-ins do a great job of trapping them.

I didn’t have a problem with Defensio, until the last WordPress update, which went live a few weeks ago. After that, Defensio would occasionally mark legitimate comments as spam. I could have lived with that, but when I’d approve the comment, it would disappear. The comment was gone, poof, deleted….

I’ll give you an example, although, Nicole of D’Nali, had already commented a few times, after the WordPress update it saw any of her comments as spam. To make it worse, when I approved her comment, stating it wasn’t spam, Defensio thought it’d knew better and would just toss her back into the spam pile, but with a new title; very spammy. If I tried to approve it again, poof comment was gone for good.

For the most part, Defensio still did its job, and only acted temperamental with some commentators. The instant it started behaving badly, I’d simply disable Defensio, approve the comment, and then go back and enable Defensio. Yeah, that wasn’t annoying… <sarcasm>

The next reader to receive this treatment was Teeni from Aunty’s Tea Room. I guess Defensio needed someone new to torment, since Nicole’s has been silent because of computer issues.

Between you and me… I think Defensio was trying to punish Teeni for shutting down her old website. 😉

Yesterday, I pulled the plug on Defensio, and this is why…

Every single comment by Teeni would end up in the spam folder. I went through the extra steps of approving her comment, and then went on a search for a new anti-spam plugin. About an hour later, I decided to check my comments…

Guess what?

Defensio decided it wasn’t happy with my decision…

Teeni spam

Germ 1

And I found Teeni’s approved comment, tossed back into the spam corner,  but this time it has been upgraded to “very spammy”, and she brought friends!  Hooray for Teeni! 😉 Approved comments, you know the ones that had already gone live on my site without landing in the spam box, were now hanging out with her in her “very spammy” corner. Guess what? Some of my comments were there too!

Defensio was disabled after that. I really loved their anti-spam WordPress Plugin, and only started having issues after the last WordPress update. I will be following up with Defensio to see what the issue could be.  In the meantime, I’m using Akismet.

There are other anti-spam plugins available, like  the CAPTCHA plug-ins, which I absolutely loathe. Some of those words are hard to read, why torment your readers with them! Also there’s GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin, but that requires Javascript to be enabled. The majority of people will have this enabled; but there are some who don’t. Addons such as NoScript ( a plugin that I use) turns off all scripts. You can manually enable scripts.

Also, a few of my blog visitors are blind. I want their experience to be enjoyable, and I don’t want them jumping through a lot of extra hoops. The American Federation for the Blind, is an amazing organization, over the years they’ve opened my eyes to many things that seeing people take for granted. They’ve written a few articles about making sites easily accessible for those who are visually impaired. I’ve included them below.

Blogging for the visually impaired

  1. How you can make your site accessible to the visually impaired
  2. Is Blogging Accessible to People With Vision Loss?

I only purchased two skiens; Caron Simply Soft

Aynaria 7 Comments

Caron Simply Soft Lt CountryPeach

I normally use acrylic yarns for testing new crochet and knitting projects…

The yarn is usually cheaper, which means I’m not as concerned about damaging the yarn, if I have to rip out the stitches. Over the years, acrylic has changed a lot, and giving the buyer a huge array of choices.

I only use acrylic, bamboo, or cotton blends yarns for my vegan friends.; I’m vegan too, and although I will crochet and knit items that aren’t, when it comes to making things for myself. I make sure its vegan.

But even if I weren’t vegan, I’d still only wear fibers that weren’t created from animals. Why? Animal fibers such as wool, mohair, and cashmere, make me itch like crazy! I have no problem crocheting or knitting with those fibers; I just can’t wear it near my skin.

 After dropping off my daughter at school, I returned one skien of yarn at my local WalMart. While there I had a nice discussion with the customer service employee who took my return. We got on the subject of crocheting and knitting hats, and she talked about the different ways she creates hers. Thanks for the tips!

After our chat,  I decided to take a stroll back to the craft area to see what they had. Uhm, I wasn’t planning on buying anything. /whistles innocently

And what did I see? Caron SimplySoft yarn. 6oz of the Lt. Country Peach was priced at $1.00 apiece, so why did I only purchase two? I must be insane!

These will work nicely for my paler complexioned amigurumi crochet dolls. If only, I could find appropriate caramel and chocolate tone yarn for some darker amigurumi dolls. I can also see myself using this yarn to make baby afghans for our church. Our Lutheran church has a ministry that gives crocheted afghans to church members babies that are getting baptized. The afghans are crocheted by volunteers within the church. While our church does a lot of outreach work; homeless shelter, food pantry, quilts created for those in underdeveloped countries, we have numerous ministries that look after our own too.

Ok, let’s ignore the fact that I disobeyed my no more yarn for a while shall we?

I only spent $2.12! In all seriousness, even when I was purchasing a lot of yarn. You know to build up my stash while I was learning crochet? I didn’t spend a lot on it; I had a budget and stuck to it. The only time I purchased yarn, was when it was on sale. Partly because I was new to crochet, and didn’t want to waste money purchasing yarn that I might mess up while learning to crochet. But it’s a habit that has stuck.

You know, I really should have purchased more than two skiens…

Amigurumi Coraline; work in progress wednesday

Aynaria 27 Comments

This week is flying by, hard to believe its Wednesday already. Not too many work in progresses to show today, that’s because most of my projects are complete!

Hopefully, I’ll be able to feature them and my amigurumi Coraline in Finished Object Friday. I’ve missed the past two.

But, back to Work in progress Wednesday…

Coraline is one of my favorite books by Neil Gamon…

By the time I discovered Coraline, I’d already read numerous books by Neil  Neverwhere, MirrorMask, American Gods, Angels & Visitations… are just a few that I read. I love his writing style, and although Coraline is considered a children’s book, the dark plot kept me hooked, so much so that I finished it in one sitting.  That’s not the first time I’ve done that with one of Neil Gamon’s books.

Amigurumi crochet Coraline daughter book

Towards the end of last week, I did a search for amigurumi and Coraline. Makes sense, right? I’ve only been making a ton of amigurumis over the past few weeks. Might as well start checking out amigurumis based on some of my favorite book and gaming characters, right? My search led me to Sharon Ojala’s lovely site, and her crocheted amigurumi Coraline. More on Sharon, including links to her free patterns, at the end of this post…

I really loved Sharon’s Coraline, and started making my own… uhm well my daughter’s  amigurumi Coraline towards the end of last week. I wanted to deviate from the free Coraline pattern, but my daughter requested it be similar to Ms. Sharon’s, ok I can do that…

Since my daughter was enamored by the Coraline she saw, I dug up my worn copy of Coraline and gave it to my daughter to read. She loves the book, and has almost finished reading it. Since she started reading it, she now carries the unfinished Coraline with her, when I’m not working on it.

I was really excited about starting this amigurumi project, making amigurumi animals, isn’t new to me, but I am new to making amigurumi dolls. Because of that, I’m having fun making Coraline. To be honest, I could have had this doll finished a lot sooner, but I’m taking my time with her, savoring the experience, and learning some brand-new techniques such as crocheting the legs in a different way than I’m used to, and crocheting actual fingers!

Thus far, my favorite part has been creating the face, and rooting her hair. I’ve done plenty of hair rooting, but this is my first time to hair root an amigurumi doll.

Amigurumi crochet Coraline 2 05 09 12

And here’s a closeup of Coraline. I wanted to embroider the eyes, but my daughter wanted buttons, and so buttons it is.

Coraline is almost finished. Coraline’s hair needs to be trimmed, and I need to complete her legs, boots, and create the arms, and fingers. I’m looking forward to crochet fingers, since I’ve never done that before.

Hopefully I’ll have this completed by Friday, perfect timing for us to watch Coraline the movie, again!  Yesterday, my daughter was sick, so she stayed home from school. We watched the movie, instead of waiting until Friday.

Will I make another Coraline? Of course, I adored the book, and have had fun creating the first Coraline for my daughter, but I want one for myself.

With my crocheted Coraline, I’ll be making some modifications with the Coraline I create; different hair, outfit, facial expression, I’m looking forward to making one for myself.

Where can I get the free pattern for amigurumi Coraline?

This pattern is a free design by Sharon Ojalo, if you haven’t checked out her website, Homemade Obsessions, you should. Sharon’s extremely talented, and friendly. I’ve enjoyed chatting with her via Facebook. In addition to the free amigurumi pattern for Coraline (which also has a video tutorial) Sharon also has numerous other free amigurumi crochet patterns, so stop on by her site, and check out what check out her amigurumi patterns.

Sites I’m linking too

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

Pattern Testing; Cuttersaur is complete

Aynaria 4 Comments

About a week ago, I mentioned that I was testing a crochet pattern.

Shortly after I started crocheting I joined the Free Pattern Testing group on Ravelry. Of course, I wasn’t planning to do anything with it at the time, but I did want to stay in the loop with the designers. Here’s what users see on that forum…

This group is for helping budding designers and willing testers to come together and help each other in an open barter system. Testers get the benefit of getting free patterns and designers get the benefit of free testing.

What a perfect way to keep tabs on budding designers, by hanging out in the pattern testing forum, right?

But back to my first pattern testing project..

Not only was this my first time testing a crochet pattern… It’s also my first time using a super bulky yarn for an amigurumi project and creating a hat this way. I thought, this could be interesting…

What’s great, is the pattern turned out how it should.

Here’s the thing…   If I’d tried this pattern a few months ago, parts of it, would have been a bit confusing. Why? What’s obvious to someone whos experienced, won’t be obvious to someone who’s either new to reading patterns or brand-new to the craft.

Part of being a pattern tester is alerting the designer of mistakes, and perhaps offer suggestions to make the pattern more readable.

Pattern Testing Cuttersaur 1

When I sent my survey questions, I mentioned that it might be a good idea to explain parts of the patter better. My reasoning was that people new to patterns or crochet, might not understand some of the vague terms. I also gave suggestions. With those changes, I believe the pattern can be created by most of your newer crocheters.

Guess what? I’m still new to crochet. It’s only been about five months now, but I have learned a lot, crocheted numerous projects, devoured forums, and literally hundreds of crochet videos, so I have indeed come a long way with crochet. The beauty is, there’s still so much more to learn!

Initially, some crochet patterns were quite frustrating since the details were vague. I had to do internet searches to find out what they were talking about, because the designer assumed the user would be able to interpret those vague instructions; not so…

I ended the email, by thanking the designer for allowing me to try out her pattern. I also told her that my daughter has now claimed this Cuttersaur for her own. Which is true. My daughter has named it “Mob” (why I have no idea) and has it perched on her nightstand.

Ravelry users can check out her patterns by clicking on Babbling Bats designs. She only has three patterns listed. Perhaps she’s a new pattern designer? You can also follow her blog. She writes about cooking, crafts, and freelance writing.

Pattern Testing Cuttersaur 2

 

Will I use this crochet pattern again?

I most likely will make this pattern again, with modifications. I’ll use a worsted yarn; possibly a furry yarn? I’ll also embroider the eyes. I wanted to embroider these, but due to the super bulky yarn, it was slightly difficult.

The bottom line, testing a crochet pattern was a good experience; even if I were a bit frustrated with using super bulky yarn… initially.  I love my worsted yarns for my amigurumi projects. More important, the crochet designer did a great job responding to people through her pattern testing thread. I appreciated that.

Oh by the way, the scarf wasn’t part of the pattern, I decided a teeny tiny swirly twirly scarf was in order for this little critter, and decided to whip one up quickly to accompany this little amigurumi. I also decided to weave yarn into the hat, and tie it into a bow. My daughter loves bows.