Ocean Life Mobile

Last month my "aunt" Patty (also my former 3rd Grade teacher and mom's best friend) commissioned me to make her soon-to-arrive grandson a baby mobile. The theme was "ocean" and her only request was that I include a sea turtle (her son's favorite animal).

I recently designed a whale pattern, so I really wanted to incorporate that into this mobile. This dark blue whale is keeping an eye on those fish...

The sea turtle pattern was adapted from here. The original pattern was for a pincushion and I made a few adjustments to the body and shell.

The jellyfish is a combination of felt and fringe. It was a happy coincidence that the colors matched exactly, as I bought the felt and fringe separately with different purposes in mind - they happily came together to create a jellyfish.

I loved how my crocheted starfish turned out in the Under The Sea Adventure mobile, so I decided to replicate it in sewn felt. You can see that French knots were used for the spines on the front, and a backstitch was used on the back.

The school of white fish are cut from thick wool felt and accented with gold thread. It's only now that I realize that the accent lines look similar to grill lines on cooked fish.

Our Front Porch

As of last August, this is what our front porch looked like. This is actually a slight improvement over what it looked like when we first bought the house (the steps and section in front of the door were covered in carpet).
 
However, last month we decided that we were tired of water leaking into our basement, and it was time to demolish the existing front porch (built so that it sloped back toward the house and deposited all rainwater in our basement). We also decided that we had no personal interest in doing the demo ourselves, so we hired Rocky!


This was quoted as a 3-day project, but it actually drug out over a couple of weeks (reasons noted below). Rocky began by knocking out the existing concrete porch and steps and then built up a new form using the concrete from the old porch.

 

The form was then filled with more rubble, and rebar was added for structural integrity. Lastly, concrete was poured over the top and it was finished with a "brushed" look. Some of the issues we encountered with this project were:

• The porch was poured in two sections and there's a very noticeable line on the porch.

• The steps were made too narrow the first time, so Rocky came back and added an additional 18" to   the right side. 

• The area in front of the door still sloped back toward the house, so Rocky had to come back yet again to apply an epoxy patch.

The good thing? Rocky came back and fixed all of these issues without question and without an additional fee!

A marked improvement! It still needs to be painted, however that project will have to wait until next summer. In the meantime I've moved our Adirondack rocking chairs to the porch with the hope of spending some time bundled up out there this fall.

Felt Giraffe

Here's a giraffe that I made last February during that long adventure to my sister Susanna's house.

It took months to actually finish this because I wasn't sure how I was going to add the giraffe spots.  I finally found an embossed fabric at Michaels that worked, though It wouldn't have been my first choice for a color combo. I cut out the spots and used felt glue to attach them to the body.

 

I found the pattern online (cuddles the giraffe), but unfortunately the link is not currently active.
I adapted it by adding spots, a thicker mane, horns, eyelids and lashes. I would love to make this again, and adapt the pattern further by creating thinner legs. It will be less of a "toy" but much more realistic looking.

This was all sewn by hand out of wool/acrylic felt. The eyes are plastic safety eyes, and I added a wire armature inside.

Aprons for CHAP

I've mentioned the Children's Healing Art Project (CHAP)  before - a great non-profit organization in Portland that I've worked with in various ways over the last several years. They do all sorts of wonderful things for children in a health crisis, and as a result they have an incredible list of volunteer opportunities. My schedule doesn't allow me to volunteer during their open hours or for many of their events, but that doesn't keep me from being able to do something - whether it's creating layouts for party invitations, hosting a fundraiser or sewing aprons!

My latest project for CHAP was to sew up two aprons for them to sell at their holiday pop-up store.
CHAP provided the materials, already cut out, and I just had to sew them together - easy! It only took two evenings after work to sew them up, though it took me a month to find two available evenings. My favorite is the pink and blue one because of it's great geometric patterns. I may have to go by their store and buy it for myself.

 

Mike demonstrates how an apron works.

S is for Sea Shell

Last March Mike and I visited both coasts of Florida; spending a couple days on Sanibel Island and a couple days in Cocoa Beach. In both locations I collected a few small clam shells with holes in their tops.

Knowing that our four nieces would soon be moving from Pittsburgh to Florida, I gathered them with the intention of making necklaces for each as a welcome to their new home.

Using ribbon/cord for the necklace, I attached the shells and a metal letter charm with jump rings and chain. I can imagine the girls wearing them while running down the beach; their long hair flying out behind. Welcome to the sunshine state, girls!

Summer Becomes Fall

Our weekend began like this:
 




And three days later, ended like this:

 

In between 8 pounds of tomatoes were tamed into two very small jars of spicy-sweet tomato sauce.

Okey-Dokey, Artichokey

Last weekend my mom graduated from the certificate program at the Gail Harker Creative Studies Center. She's been in this program for the last two years, meeting for one intense week 4 times a year. When she joined she made it clear that we were not to get married, have children or otherwise embark upon anything momentous that would require her participation or full attention (Sara disobeyed a little by getting married, but after waiting 10 years before tying the knot I know that Mom didn't want her to put it off any longer).

As much as we missed having Mom around as much, it was great to hear all about the classes she took, techniques she learned, and to have generally lived vicariously off her enthusiasm.

Last weekend it all culminated in a two-day art show at the new Creative Studies Center in LaConner, WA (Mom had been commuting to their old digs in Oak Harbor, WA).

 Flowers for Mom/Nonny

Mom explored a theme of Artichokes for her show.

  

 

Dear Artichoke,
I know, I know
It's been a bad year.
Sorry about the
rain flooding your feet
Sorry about the 
sun not showing up.
But there you have it.
I cloaked you in manure
just the way you like it.
Now, do your thing.

- Nancy Scagliotti

 

We're all very proud of you Mom!

A Canadian Crab

In one short month my cousin (once removed) Cohen, turns 1!

Since Mike and I were heading to British Columbia last weekend, I decided to bring Cohen his birthday present early: one very red, big-eyed Crab.

This is Tipper the Crab, and a pattern for him can be found at Fresh Stitches. A crab seemed like a good idea for one-year-old (easy to grab onto) and it roughly stuck with the theme of the Fish Mobile that I made him a year ago. He is crocheted out of cotton yarn and stuffed with wool batting, and will hopefully survive this next year in one piece.

 

Though it would have been worth the trip to Canada just to see Cohen, our visit was in fact to participate in the Whistler Gran Fondo. And by participate, I mean drive the cars with all the luggage.

While we drove, Papa, Uncle Joe and cousins Brendan & Katrina rode their bikes the 74.5 miles up the mountain, among 7,000 cyclists in 90 degree heat. Though a little bedraggled at the top, they all made it, and they all had smiles on their faces (albeit, very weary looking smiles).

Luckily we didn't have to drive right back down the mountain, but rented a place at the Tantalus Lodge for the night. My cousin Will flew out from Calgary, and drove up to meet us later that afternoon, and it turned into one great family gathering.

 

Cohen, Brendan, Katrina, Mike & Will

An aptly named Holiday

Our Labor Day weekend was labor-intensive.

New 2010 Deck

Last summer we had a deck built off our kitchen, then Mike and I applied some Behr semi-transparent stain to it.  Fast forward a year and the deck is looking a little worse for wear. Not horrible mind you, just bad enough to be really irritating to Mike. So much so that he decided it was time for us to refinish it.

2011 Deck: mildew stains and discoloration.

Now according to the man at Miller Paint, refinishing your deck is about a yearly thing. I refuse to refinish the deck every year, and Mike refuses to let our deck weather gray.  So we spent 5 solid days over two weekends working on this deck, with the intention that we're going to get it looking so good, and so protected, that we will NOT have to do this again next summer.


First step, remove old stain.  We began by pressure-washing to see if that would work. It did, but took an agonizingly long time and really chewed up the wood. Then we tried a stain remover. This was applied with brushes, left to sit for 15 minutes and then THEORETICALLY rinsed off with the pressure washer.  This worked about 70%. So after stain stripper and pressure washing, Mike and I proceeded to sand the entire deck.

Sitting for 15 minutes (we could only do about 6 boards at a time, so this took a realllly long time).

Following sanding we used a wood brightener to neutralize the wood pH balance before applying new stain.

 Wood Brightener

 Early morning brightened wood

Then it was two solid days of staining the deck (two coats) using those same small brushes.  This time we went for a solid stain (maximum protection) made by Cabot. We agonized over using solid stain versus semi-solid. We really loved the look of our bright orangey deck and didn't want to lose the look of the wood. However the thought of doing this every year got me over that pretty quickly and we went for solid in "Mission Brown".

Hope this lasts...

Zen-Tangle

Ever heard of Zentangle? Susanna calls it doodling. Whatever she calls it, she's good at it.

While looking for something to do on the beach at the end of July, Mom introduced her to the art and she was off and running. In most of the photos from that trip she has her head bent over a notebook. Here are two that she did especially for Mike and I.