Nothing says "almost summer" like the firing up of the cob oven

 

Our cob oven spent the winter covered in a green tarp, and home to a small green frog. However, as of yesterday it was liberated! 

Our friend Bobby spent the day working with us around the house, and to celebrate a successful work day we fired up the oven for the first "cob pizza" of the year. 

 

Lots of new toppings to choose from this time, including: roasted butternut squash, ricotta cheese, pickled peppadew peppers, apricots and broccoli rabe.

As the sun went down we lit up the "campfire" for part II of s'mores-makin! Bobby admitted that he has a hard time just sitting around a campfire, so he used hot coals/embers to start hollowing out a piece of wood, which he hopes to turn into a pig-shaped bowl for his mother. A very intriguing project, to be sure.

Roasted

After a long weekend of working on the garden and house, Mike and I relaxed around our backyard fire pit last night. It was chilly, but very reminiscent of pacific northwest camping adventures. I dug out the roasting sticks for sausages and marshmallows.

On Saturday I tried my hand at making homemade graham crackers. The dough was horrible to work with (terribly tacky) and I had to add so much graham flour to make it workable that they ended up tasting quite dry. However, add a couple roasted marshmallows and chocolate chips to them, and they become rather tasty.

Look, I made a potholder!

Earlier this month I got an invitation to participate in a crochet-along (CAL) from one of my Ravelry groups, Good Things Together. I've never participated in an "along" before, but I haven't been crocheting as much lately so I figured this would be a good opportunity to make a new project that I didn't have to have a recipient for, or even a reason for. The project was a flower potholder, and as luck would have it, I actually needed a second potholder.

The pattern was designed by Delights-Gem, and you can currently see all of the potholders made during the CAL on her recent blog post. The pattern is posted here.

Happy Birthday, Dear

 

Back in my March my lovely friend Rebecca hit the big 3-0. To mark this momentous occasion, I gave her Bambi. Nothing says welcome to your thirties like a toy.

The pattern for this animal is from here.

Waddle! Waddle! Chucks make ya wanna...

Last weekend Mike and I headed to Bow to finally catch up with my jet-setter mother. We managed to catch her between travels, work and school. We spent a wonderful weekend antiquing in Mount Vernon, Sedro Woolley, Bellingham, Fairhaven and Laconner. I found a fabulous set of white milk-glass cups and Susanna got me a very cool pink lamp for my dollhouse.

We also officially celebrated Mother's Day with a rodent.

Mouse pattern adapted from here.

I made the head a little larger and hand-sewed it from wool felt. The crown is made from wool felt as well, and I added white pom-poms for a little extra bling.

To celebrate spring (which totally isn't here but I thought if we said we were celebrating it then Spring might take the hint) I brought up gifts for Aidan and Vanessa as well.

Back in February when I gave Susanna a Kangaroo with Chucks, Aidan was most impressed and asked if I would make him and his cousin Vanessa animals too.
Aidan chose a Penguin (to go along with the crocheted one I made him earlier) and Vanessa requested a duck (to match the needle-felted one she made last month).






I was happy that they chose animals with only two feet apiece, but these birds were not so easy to make converse for. Achieving balance was no easy feat!

The duck is hand-sewn from wool felt using one of my patterns. The purple converse pattern is the same one that I used for the animals on the Game Time baby mobile.

The penguin is adapted from the book Wild & Wonderful Fleece Animals. I reduced the pattern by 75% and then changed the bottom half to create "legs" and "feet".