I received a Real Fee for Yule!!

The kids went in together on my gift this year and bought me a Fairyland RealFee, Haru. She's beautiful and I can't wait to make her some new clothes. I'll be doing patterns, as well, but I really need to get caught up on the patterns I've already created. I'm working on the lighting issue. Our living room just eats light, so I think I'm going to ad some extra lighting to my work area. Hopefully, I can squeeze in enough room to photograph the "how-to" portion of the patterns as I sew. I already have more light over here, but as you can see from the photo, not quite enough because it's too grainy for my purposes.Haru.JPG
Haru hasn't got her ears on yet and we're using her sleep face until I can get her awake face sealed.(probably in the spring/summer as it's just too humid here) I tried to glue in the magnets for her ears and such and discovered my super glue was too old. :( Anyway, we'll get new glue and maybe make some horns or antlers for her.
If you have any ideas for types of clothing that you'd like to see on her or the other Pukies, let me know. I'd love to hear from you.
--Sinéad

Blog posted on Wednesday December 28th 2016 03:25:58 GMT -08:00

More experiments with the new pattern

I used the previously posted basic pattern to make this chihuahua by adding ears, a snout, and tail. It took two tries to get the ears and snout right. :) Yule_chihuahua.jpg

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Then I finally made the snowman that I'd been thinking about all season whilst making Yule presents like this vest for Liam.Liam_s_vest.JPG

We do our family gift exchange on Solstice. The kids all received knit or crocheted items from me. :)

Blog posted on Saturday December 24th 2016 23:10:11 GMT -08:00

Travel pics: The Search for a New Home

Apparently the shock I suffered from seeing myself in the mirror caused a severe lapse in blog entries. :)

I've finally edited the pictures I took. There aren't a whole lot and next time I'm going to do this while on the road. We'll start with our first camp site and the only place we set up the tent. It was the first state park we saw as we left Ely, NV. We found pine nuts, which made Liam happy. The sun was setting by the time the tent was up.

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I don't want to depend on a tent again. It takes too long to set up and didn't suit our needs.

In Calente, we stopped by the original location for Vasu Video. It's still vacant and the name is still above the door, albeit, peeling.

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We stopped in Panaca on Halloween to see the house where Liam spent all of his teen years. It looks like the current inhabitants were ready for the trick or treaters.
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We visited Nine mile rock outside of Panaca. You guessed it, it's nine miles out.
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Then we traveled on over to Cedar City, UT, our destination.
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We did some walking around and Liam did some shopping but there weren't any pictures taken for some reason. I wasn't feeling all that great, so maybe I forgot. :/ Then we went up to Beaver to find a spot to camp in another state park. That's where Alysium and Dragon found a lava rock, climbed on it and then a tree, climbed up it and then a very small flower, they just looked at that.IMG_1480.JPGIMG_1482.jpgIMG_1483.jpg

After driving through Beaver city, and Parowan, we drove over to Beryl and Beryl Junction. No pictures, but I wrote down our impressions of each area to share with the kids. Then we went through Enterprise where we saw our first wild turkeys and stopped at a National forest for the night. Liam was in his natural habitat and was climbing on the rocks, exploring the grove of trees and such. Alysium and Dragon found what looked like a big dragon egg cave, climbed another tree, much smaller this time, found some lichen, I see at least four different colors, and climbed some more rocks.
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We headed back to Panaca in the morning, but not before trying to capture all the colors around the stream as we left Enterprise. It doesn't do it justice at all.
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Back on BLM land where Liam and his parents used to gather pine nuts, we visited a favorite camping spot for humans from a time before white men crossed this land up to the present. We always seem to leave our trash behind.
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Note the larger amount of sunshine.
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Our last stop before heading home was somewhere in Idaho at a roadside picnic area where we had dinner and then Liam drove and drove and drove until we were home. We rousted a sleeping Catherine from our bed, sent her home and I was excitedly greeted by the dog for about half an hour or so. Chihuahuas are like that. Then we slept for a very long time.

Blog posted on Sunday November 27th 2016 22:04:53 GMT -08:00

Mirror Shocks

What do you do when you see your father looking back at you from the mirror? Well, I looked in the mirror last week and saw my 78 year old father looking back at me. Creepy, right? Especially since I'm a female and only 50. So, what does one do? Well, I'm changing my make-up routine. We're experimenting with removing the eyebrows and reshaping. Dad has zombie eyes, my mother used to call them bedroom eyes, but they've sagged/sunk further and the eyebrows are wild and have them hemmed in, same here. We're attempting a more arched appearance without going extreme. I can't really do anything about the lack of hair on my head, just keep up the fancy hat /scarf routine. I don't go out much, but it's really not fair to my husband. He married a young looking sexy woman and in less than ten years he's got an old man for a wife. :) Thank you chemical soup world. Especially the fragrance industry.
It would still have been a shock at the age of 78, but more reasonable, I must say.

Blog posted on Wednesday November 16th 2016 03:28:52 GMT -08:00

Video making

We got back from our trip and I came down with a stiff neck that had migraine intensity. Probably the result of fragrance exposure again. Anyway, I decided I wanted to participate in the Etsy holiday campaign, but I wasn't personally up to the task. The campaign required I make a short film of my product. I called on the only offspring available before the deadline and Josephine came through for me. Not only did she help make a new hat for the film, she filmed, moved equipment and generally made it happen. The director's cut is on youtube and the less than 5 second version has been submitted to Etsy. I will post trip pics later as I still have not fully recovered my mobility.

Blog posted on Tuesday November 8th 2016 21:01:18 GMT -08:00