Ninja Skillz

As requested by my sister in last Friday’s post, I have made her boyfriend a ninja for his birthday. 

I deviated from the directions a little bit, giving him an aluminum foil ninja star instead of crocheting one out of embroidery floss.  I used a little bit of rice to stuff the bottom so he would stand up better.  He also has a tiny ninja buddy – they like to hang out together!

It seems that I just can’t stop with the amigurumi lately – I can no longer just sit and watch TV, I must be crocheting.  Prepare yourselves for an onslaught of cuteness!

Garden Update

I thought I’d give the crochet a break for a day and share a few picture of my container garden instead.  Things seem to be growing pretty nicely – the cucumbers keep shooting up!

We should also be eating some lettuce pretty soon, within two weeks I would think.  I can’t wait to be able to come home after work and just eat from my garden.  Yum!

I’m also waiting pretty impatiently for the basil and the green onions, both of which are doing well.  I just love these foods so much that the growing process can seem soooooo slow!

Cthulu Amigurumi

I had a blast this weekend with my new amigurumi books!  I started off with Cthulu out of the Creepy Cute Crochet book, mostly because he was one of the easier projects.  I think he’s pretty cute, for a giant head eating monster, of course!

Watch out for your head…. aaaagggghhhhh!

Cthulu was a big hit with Tim – he decided to keep it!  I’m going to have to make another one for me!

Amigurumi Books

My awesome little brother gave me an Amazon gift certificate for my birthday.  I couldn’t quite decide what to spend it on, but with my new-found crochet fascination, I finally decided to get some amigurumi books.  The first one I picked out seemed pretty standard.

So, on the cover it looks like a chichen, an owl, bunny, lion, turtle, and is that a hedgehog?  Anyways, seriously cute, indeed!  I’m excited to start making them.

But then… I saw this……..

I cannot wait to make a zombie army!  OMG, it is going to be so awesome that the entire world might implode!!!!  Zombies, ninjas, robots, oh my!

Both of these books should be arriving today, so I can have the weekend to buy some supplies and get started on my zombie army!  Brains….. yum…. must eat brains…….

Triple Crochet Headband

This continues my new obsession with all things crochet. I made this headband from 1/8″ ribbon that I had left over from another project. It took a little bit more than one spool. I think I used an H hook, but I can’t quite remember now. Edit: I used an F hook!

I simply made a foundation chain that was almost long enough to go around my head, and then did one row of triple crochet into that chain. I attached a tiny strip of 1/4″ elastic to the ends to make it the right size and that’s it! A pretty simple project to use up left over ribbon, that produces a pretty headband!

Happy Father’s Day!

I made this card for my dad for Father’s day. I made the grill and fire from Perler beads – I had most of a bucket left over after thing-a-day back in February. I’ve been intrigued lately with the idea of putting 3D type things onto greeting cards.

The legs were made separately, and in hindsight it would have been best to iron one side of all the pieces, turn them out, push them together and then iron the opposite side. But, now I know! They managed to stick together rather well though, and I attached the grill to the card with super glue, using a book for pressure for about 5 minutes. The card filled out a father’s day theme since I got him a gift for the grill as well!

Chocolate Cupcakes With Caramel Frosting

I appear to be on a bit of a food kick lately! I made these cupcakes for a meeting I have today. The lab I work in was split into two groups for what amounts to an extended homework problem. Our boss gave our teams names – Team Butterfly vs. Team Cupcake. (Guess which team I’m on!) I promised my team cupcakes for today’s meeting, so here they are. Both the cake and frosting recipes came from my Better Homes and Garden New Baking Book. The cake is the Classic Chocolate Cake and the frosting is Penuche Frosting. The cupcakes baked up very nicely, with the perfectly shaped tops.

I’m a little wary of the frosting. I think it’s supposed to be pretty heavy and dense, but I had a really hard time spreading it onto the cupcakes. I think that if I made it again, I would use less powdered sugar to change the consistency of it a bit. I’ve always been very happy with everything that comes from this cookbook, so I’m sure that they will be well received by Team Cupcake!

Nachos!

It has been extremely hot here these past few days. I always find it a challenge to get excited about eating anything when it’s this hot, especially since using the stove or oven for more than a few minutes is out of the question since we don’t have air conditioning.

Last night I made these nachos – they were just perfect. The base was refried beans and melted jack cheese, the warmness of which was offset by lettuce and black olives. On the side is some salsa, sour cream and guacamole I made from the excellent recipe posted by Catnip and Coffee.

I tried to make this the healthiest version of nachos that I could – I used vegetarian refried beans, low fat sour cream and tried out some multi-grain chips (which were actually pretty good!).

As I was putting this all together, I realized that I felt a little silly plating out nachos for myself. Ever since I started blogging, I automatically try to make a pretty presentation even though I’m going to sit in front of the TV and nosh it all down in under 15 minutes. But then I thought about it a little more, and it really makes dinner feel a little bit more special, so I think I’ll keep my strange little habit!

Cool Pasta Salad

I made this pasta salad for a barbecue this past weekend. It was very refreshing, since it was about 95 degrees out! It has rotini pasta, cucumber, green pepper, muenster cheese and black beans with italian dressing. The beans give it a nice little burst of protein without having more meat, which was good because we had the largest pile of ribs that I have ever seen!

Wild Kingdom

Having a little rest on your coffee table, this tiny snake looks pretty calm and harmless….

…but when he shows up in a place you would never expect, he might give you a little fright!

I made this little snake with my newfound crochet skills – just single crocheted a tube starting from a spiral bottom, starting from the head with variegated camouflage yarn. It would have been a great idea to stuff him as I went along, but poking all the stuffing in there later worked out eventually. I also threaded some copper wire inside to give him some bendy-ness, although if I was going to give this away to a small child I would probably skip that part. He did have some shape forming abilities without the wire, just not as good.

The only problem I have left is that he needs a name, preferably one that starts with an S. Any ideas?

Granny Square²

For those of you who mastered crochet long ago, this post will not be too exciting (unless you can envision this as a meager start to an afghan). For me, however, it is a huge step up that I finally figured out how to make a granny square.

Now it seems so simple, but I really did struggle with this! I finally got it through my head with Crocheting for Dummies, which I found at my local library. The book has very clear descriptions of the different stitches, with tons of pictures (both animations of each step and photos of what the finished product should look like). I definitely recommend it to anyone struggling as much as I was with crochet! Now, on to amigurumi!

The Garden – It Grows!

Just a little update on my balcony garden. Apparently when you put young cucumber plants into 40 mph gusts of wind, the cucumbers do not win. So, I had to start over with the cucumbers, but this batch is doing much better! I have two pots, but only one is doing really well. Soon I’ll thin these out and put a couple of the good ones into the other pot. I love how once they start going, there is nothing stopping them!

Also going very well is the leaf lettuce. I think that this may be my favorite to grow, mostly because I can have a little fresh lettuce at every meal, and I don’t have to worry about finishing up a head of lettuce before it goes bad. Also, if cut right it will grow a second crop pretty quickly. It’s so easy to eat healthy when all the food is growing right outside your door!

The basil and lemon basil are starting to come in now as well. They are just starting to get their second leaves, soon they will probably shoot up as well. I can’t wait for pesto, yum!

One of my other favorite summer garden treats are green onions. I love them in just about everything, I’ll even eat them plain, dipped in a little salt. This was often how we ate them at dinner growing up, when grandpa gave us the surplus from his garden, so it reminds me of home!

Hopefully it will only be a few more weeks before things start becoming ready to eat – I’m sure you’ll see more before then!