Third Time’s a Charm

The third of my five kids is my one and only daughter and, let me tell you, she is an amazing person. She’s in her second year of middle school and her teachers tell me that other students look up to her and respect her, that she has the ability to direct and guide them while still maintaining friendships with many of them, in short she’s a natural leader. She doesn’t have to shout direction (although she still does when it’s directed at her brothers), her classmates just listen to her and value what she has to say. This year she stepped out of her shell a bit more and joined the school government as an elected class representative. As a parent it’s so great to hear stuff like that about your kids but it doesn’t really surprise me. My daughter has always had the ability to make friends wherever she goes even if it’s only for a short while. One of her friend’s parents summed it up best when he said “If I didn’t know her I’d want to be friends with her, she’s just got a friendly face.” Now that my daughter is (barely) officially a teenager it’s even more fun to be her mom. Now we can geek out and fan girl about the same shows and stuff. She’s totally into Doctor Who, Supernatural, and Sherlock (and of course super heroes, Harry Potter, and Star Wars…that’s just a given in our household)  and has even introduced me to some fun things like Nightvale (though I do’t have nearly the time to keep up on it that she does). Like I said, she’s all round awesome….but enough Mom-bragging.

When my daughter’s thirteenth birthday was approaching I wanted to do something fun and special.
At one point she mentioned wanting a tote bag she could put patches, on I knew that was going to be at least part of what I would “get” her for her birthday.  Then she sent me a picture of a Princess Bride themed bag complete with a link to the website I could buy it from. As if I’d buy a cloth tote bag! Over the years I’ve made a variety of sizes and styles of bags. They used to be my go-to birthday present for children and adults. I’ve even made a few to sell along the way.
I was thinking about a Doctor Who/Sherlock themed bag. Maybe one side would be the TARDIS and the other would look like Sherlock’s door. As I was planning it out in my head, picturing what the lay out would be and which types of fabric would achieve the desired effect, I walked in the fabric store and saw this rack of  appropriately themed fabrics. My life got a little easier. And easier is always better…or so I hear.

Since Van Gogh is one of my daughter’s favorite artists I chose the exploding Tardis print fabric (not shown in that picture). I loved the weeping angels fabric but it seemed a little thinner than the others. That’s no bueno for bags that are going to get a lot of wear. I did still include a Sherlock reference on the one side of the bag (it’s solid black with 221b on it) and made it reversible to be able to incorporate as many fun fabrics as possible.

 

Luckily bags are pretty fast to make. Just measure, cut the five sides (back, front, two sides, and a bottom)…

…sew the sides together…

…add a strap or straps and there you have it….A bag!

Being a birthday we had to have cake too. Well, actually, peanut butter pie because it’s my daughter’s favorite.

It’s very easy to make too so it’s ideal for a single mom trying to host a five-teenage-girl-sleepover while also attempting to run the four boys to their respective activities and friends’ houses (that was one seriously crazy afternoon right there!).

I really don’t think I’m ready to have a teenage daughter…can we please rewind life a few years here??

I also managed to whip up a baggie beanie style hat for her the week before her birthday. The girl loves her baggy hats…and mine too. I found the pattern for this one on another WordPress blog but it’s on Ravelry too.

Gratuitous fuzzy winter pony

Life Adjacent to the D

I live close to Detroit. Depending on who you ask my town could be considered a sub of Detroit. Detroit makes the news for all kinds of reasons most of which are not so good but have you seen the articles about it making a comeback? There are some really great things to do in Detroit and this weekend was full of them. It was decided we should take full advantage. My boyfriend & I, both second shifters, set the alarm for 6am. I can’t tell you the last time I saw 6am from the right side. It’s usually because I’ve been up all night.

The Sunday after Mother’s Day is flower day at Eastern Market. Eastern Market is basically the best farmers’ market you can imagine and today it was being taken over by flowers.

Unfortunately we were ill prepared for what we would encounter. At 7am it was already packed with people and wagons. That’s where we went wrong – no wagon. Therefore anything purchased had to be carried a couple blocks. Whew. I only purchased a couple Azaleas and called it good. It was really great to walk around and see everything though. I’ll go back to Eastern Market this summer when it’s not flower day to get all sorts of goodies.

Also happening this past weekend was the Detroit Comic Con which we attend almost every year. It actually doesn’t happen in Detroit at all but about 30+ minutes away at a convention center. My boyfriend enjoys these things and the shopping. While he shops I people watch and  snap pictures.

I love that people get so into nerdy things. I wore a Doctor Who tee-shirt and enjoyed the scene. I also bought some prints from artists’ alley. I would like to get them framed and hung in the very near future. One of my favorite artists is Tommy Castillo who is common to see at these kinds of events. Between my boyfriend and I we have an embarrassing number of his prints.

All in all it was a crazy busy weekend. I spent too much money and had boatloads of fun.

Nerding Out and Cute Cats – part 2 of the post-Christmas post

I’m starting to have a nerdy kitchen and I love it!!! Check this out!

Doctor Who cookie jar that makes Tardis noises & R2-D2 measuring cups!! I’m mean seriously how fun it that?!?!

That’s right our kitchen is beginning to look awesome. We had a Han Solo in carbonite shower curtain on the way but it got lost in the mail. We got a refund but unfortunately no shower curtain…yet. Also new in our kitchen is a waffle maker. I’ve never had one before and I’ve decided I love it! Homemade waffles are way better than those store bought toaster waffles.

As I’ve been back on the crocheting bandwagon (at least until school starts again) my kitten is stalking my yarn. Clearly this is something I’m going to have to work on but it’s made for some cute pictures.

He wants the yarn…sneaky bastard

Christmas was lovely but I’m kinda glad it’s over. I do miss all the decorations though! Love me a Christmas tree.

Why, yes, those are Star Wars decorations on there. Darth Vader will warn you away from the presents if you get too close!

Happening Stuff

Cat Problems

A little while back I got a ginger kitten from a friend. I think she’s evil. Ok, maybe not quite. But she really doesn’t like to let people sleep in and is very persistent about attention – when she wants it, of course, in true cat fashion. Well now she’s taken to peeing on our NEW couch. I can’t figure out where this delightful behavior is coming from since she’s been using the litter box for months now. Grrr. We got her from a friend who is willing to take her back if I can’t solve this problem – which is wonderful. This friend seems to think she just misses our roommate, who’s out of town for several months, or her cat mom and brother. The friend has suggested that a playdate with her mom and brother would help solve this problem. I’m not at all convinced my kitten is that emotionally deep! I’m thinking the problem has to do with the fabric of the couch or some problem with the litter box. Who knows? I’m pretty sure she’s on her last chance before she gets shipped back to her original owner. I feel bad about it but I will not have a pee couch and she’d be going to another good home.

Fun Overtime

Sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it?! I got paid to go see KISS and Def Leppard in concert! Pretty fun.

 

Knitting Progress

The sampler scarf is underway!! I can officially knit – sorta. I don’t know how to do all the fancy stuff yet like switching colors or binding off but knitting and purling happening! I’m so slow compared to crocheting but that’s to be expected. Although I may put it aside for a bit for to work on a couple simple Christmas presents which will be crocheted. Nothing big this year. No blankets but a few hats and maybe some fingerless gloves.

Other Stuff

I just received my first textbook in the mail. Renting from Barnes and Noble this year has proved to be remarkably cheaper than anywhere else! So nice. The second one should arrive before the end of the week. Here it goes – the semester begins at the end of the week! Whew.

Finally saw (a day late) the new Doctor Who!

My co-blogger and her family came over to watch. It was fun to see how excited her kids were about the new episode. I thought it was super fun and pretty funny. I look forward to seeing where this season goes. Rumor has it he’s going to be a darker Doctor.

 

If you have suggestions for my kitten or comments on the new Doctor Who I’d love to hear them.

Doctor Who, Home Improvement and a Scrap of Knitting

Home Improvements

Let’s start with the home improvement bits. If you remember I bought a house back in March/April. It’s lovely. However now there are, like, house things to be done – some of which I haven’t the faintest idea about. I already mentioned my yard (or lack thereof). So I was looking around and got the bright idea to paint my interior doors. They really do need it. The door on my office was multiple colors and the bathroom door was covered in so many years of hairspray that it just look terrible and is never coming clean. I thought this would be a fairly uncomplicated project. I planned on popping the doors of the hinges, taking them to the garage and slapping some paint on them. Easy, right? Well little did I know they used terrible paint on my office door (the first one I went to paint). As soon as I started washing it off old paint started peeling.

Figure 1 Can you see the different paint colors?? What were they thinking?

Figure 2 The start of trying to get the old paint off

Figure 3 About the point where I gave up

Yeah, I think the pictures show pretty well how it went. Did you know you can get a whole new door for around $50. Apparently you can. So at some point after the last picture I decided I had enough. I just painted over what was left. Before I made that decision I did try some stuff that was suppose to help my peel the paint off. It helped a little but it was still fighting a losing battle. I figure sometime in the future I’ll invest in some new doors. It doesn’t look terrible in fact it looks far better the having two paint colors but it doesn’t exactly look good either. I’m still debating painting a Tardis on it!! Luckily two of the four doors I wanted to paint do not have this problem. They should be much easier to paint. Or so I think right now!! I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

Knitting

At the beginning of summer my co-blogger and I decided to learn to knit. She just finished a really fun hat. I just started learning and my first go around didn’t quite work out.

I was attempting to do a ribbed pattern. Turns out I was not moving the yarn correctly back and forth so I ended up wrapping the yarn around the whole project. Oops. I frogged it. Now I’m starting over with a “sampler scarf.” Basically I’m practicing several different stitches and because it seems like a waste of yarn not to make something I’m going to make it into a scarf. I’ll post some pics when it’s long enough. I think I’ve finally got the idea now! You knitters – hats off – it’s tricky! J

 

And Finally DOCTOR WHO!!!

Yeah buddy! Saturday the new season of Doctor Who premieres on BBCA!

We are super excited around here! If you didn’t pick up on it both my co-blogger and I are fans of the show. Really it’s all her kids’ fault. If you’ve been reading our blog you might remember the Halloween costumes, the Dalek cupcakes, the incident with Scott Ian, the Tardis scarf, the bowties and seeing John Barrowman at ComicCon.

We both also follow, fellow WordPress blogger, Geekritique who is posting quite a lot right now about all things Doctor Who! It’s awesome!!!!

This is especially exciting because this is the first season that I’ll be watching as it’s playing as opposed to on Netflix or Amazon. Plus it’s a new Doctor! Aren’t you so excited?!?! You should be…fun filled geeky weekend is just a few days away!

 

 

 

 

Where did my motivation run off to?

According to WordPress it’s been too long since I published a post. I received an email yesterday telling me what I’m missing in the blog world. Except I haven’t been missing anything. I’ve just been reading blogs instead of writing them.

 

Since school let out for the summer I’ve been lackadaisical. I just stopped wanting to do anything on the computer (except pay bills since that’s, like, necessary) and, in general, have been a lazy human being. It’s been so nice!! However now I find myself scarily behind on things I would like to accomplish this summer. Remember this post when I talked about running and how I was going to? Yeah, I didn’t except for a few times despite the ongoing support of my co-blogger. *sigh* I also need tackle some additional things to prepare for applying to my next school which I’ve been procrastinating.

 

My boyfriend and I just had a “staycation” – he was scheduled a week off work and my schedule is several days on/off at a time so we had a chunk of time off work and together. It was nice. Before we bought a house we were going to go away but, well, really who has money after buying a house?!? After some solid down time around the house I’m ready to jump back on board the motivation train. It’s past time! Plus there are goals I have for the summer…but that’s going to be another blog post!

 

While May was mostly a down month (at least the first 22 days) there are some things that happened!  Some very fun things:

First, I got a new living room set! This is the first furniture I’ve ever had that has not been pre-owned!

I also got a new kitten from a friend who rescued a pregnant stray.

We also, finally, got a new bed. I love the bedspread I found for cheap online.

I did finish a very small project. I really liked the look and pattern and want to adapt it to make other items.

There have also been experiments in baking.

That’s right, spinach in brownies. You totally can’t tell at all. During the work week to help get lots of veggies/fruit in our diet my co-blogger and I have been making green smoothies (as long as you add berries it doesn’t look green). We figured if you can’t taste the spinach in the smoothies it could be added to other things. It totally can. Sneaky veggies.

 

My bf and I also went to Detroit’s Comic Con. It was pretty fun this year and I got some prints I LOVE to put up in the house. I also got to see Captain Jack Harkness in person. Although I didn’t pay to go up and get his autograph he was pretty dreamy just the same!

 

 

So maybe I haven’t been quite as lazy as it feels. However I still need a kick in the ass!

Through Time and Space

Today’s post is coming to you from another time and relative dimension in space…. Christmas to be exact.

If you haven’t noticed I love love love Doctor Who. Especially the tenth Doctor….but maybe I’ll save that for another post. I wouldn’t quite call this past Christmas Doctor Who themed but my kids and I are pretty enthusiastic about Doctor Who and that was reflected in our gift giving. There were Weeping Angel t-shirts, Tardis snow globes, character pins, models, and mini figures. It was great!
One of my favorite Doctor Who themed gifts was the TARDIS scarf I made for my now thirteen year old son.
I wanted to make something Doctor Who related that a boy that age would wear and my son does not wear hats. It would hide all his pretty red hair…don’t tell him I said that. I’m fairly certain teenage boys don’t like to be called pretty especially by their moms.

So anyhow, a scarf was the logical choice.
I started by Googling Doctor Who scarves and found this TARDIS night sky scarf by Gamer Girl Universe.

It’s pretty good but the idea of stitching the lines to create all the little boxes on the TARDIS did not appeal to me. Plus I like to make my own adaptations to pretty much everything. Following directions all the time is just boring.
Instead of stitching black lines on top of the scarf I decided to use front & back post stitches to create texture for the boxes on the TARDIS.

I made a great pattern chart to make sure I was getting the size and number of boxes right but of course I can’t find it now. Christmas was like four months ago and I’m not always the most organized person. Sorry about that.
So the basic order of operations went like this: make a Tardis, make another Tardis to be sure they’d match, attach the black to one of said Tardises and double crochet row after tedious row of black until the scarf was close to the desired length. Attach the second Tardis and add the finishing details.

I couldn’t find the cool color speckled yarn that Gamer Girl used so I stitched something resembling stars above each Tardis with a sparkly thin yarn.
I also wove some dark grey lines just inside the boxes on the Tardis that wouldn’t get other details.

Then I made signs on some off white fabric pieces. One Tardis was normal and the other became the Bad Wolf Tardis from the end of the Doctor’s ninth incarnation.

The finished scarf.

There is one inaccuracy to my Tardis scarf. I didn’t make the windows white.

Just a random tenth Doctor & Tardis picture for your viewing pleasure.

A Metal Head and Doctor Who

I’m going to tell you a not so well kept secret – I have terrible taste in music. I love Britney Spears, Ke$ha, Justin Timberlake….just to name a few. If it’s peppy and mildly catchy I’m in. I only draw the line at Justin Bieber. Ugh. My iPod is full of cheesy/wonderful music that people who ride with me don’t really want to listen to. This is all much to dismay of my boyfriend. He happens to love metal music. Let’s just say road trips can be challenging!

He invited me along to see Scott Ian doing spoken word. After he explained who Scott Ian was (he’s in Anthrax) I reluctantly agreed. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into.

Metal really isn’t my thing and I knew nothing of Anthrax. However I was pleasantly surprised. This guy was funny! He told great stories. Usually about other metal people of whom I knew nothing but my boyfriend was totally digging it. It was enjoyable. Scott Ian was not only funny but he was, dare I say, kinda geeking out. Now although I know nothing of metal music I speak semi-fluent geek. Then he brought up Doctor Who! Yes! This is something I knew about. He showed this picture:

Then he told everyone how when he was touring Europe he would show this and convince the audience that he was going to be the companion in the next Doctor Who season! He informed everyone that this was a picture from an upcoming western episode. This, of course, was before the newest Doctor was officially announced. Love it!

Actually this picture is from Deadwood. A really great older HBO show. If you haven’t seen it I’d recommend it.

So I’m still not into metal but I’m a little into Scott Ian. Plus he’s Meatloaf’s son-in-law. Meatloaf….there’s an artist I can sing-a-long to!

There’s No Day Like a Snow Day

Who doesn’t enjoy a snow day…even when it’s the 6th one in just over a month?
Some parents around here are probably starting to get a little tired of them.
I will admit I wish we could at least have a snow day where it was warm enough to go sledding (one on my parenting time please),but I was pretty happy to have a snow day yesterday.
We needed a day to just hang out and relax, my kids and I. So that is exactly what we did.
When we woke up at 9am it was -6 degrees Fahrenheit….and sunny, so so sunny. My 9yo commented happily “It’s so beautiful and bright! We don’t even need to turn any lights on.”
We get a little excited to see the sun in late January here in Michigan….
even if it’s not really doing much warming.

Clearly this beautifully sunny yet frigid day was going to be spent indoors. So, to pass the time, we made bow ties.
Bow ties, why bow ties you ask?
“Because bow ties are cool!”

Dude, you totally should’ve seen that one coming.

At first I was using a pattern I have and (mostly) following directions. Yeah, I know totally not my usual MO.
That was helpful for the cutting part but the way the pattern said to fold the bow part made too many layers of fabric to sew through.
The end results following directions were okay:

But it was taking too long and being too frustrating so I took the road well traveled and Googled. Good old Wiki how gave me some ideas.
After that I just cut a big rectangle, folded and sewed, made a band, folded a smaller band around the rectangle and neck band and Viola! A bow tie.

           

My daughter made her own:

Then I helped her tighten the middle band a bit:

She calls it her Timey-Wimey bow tie. A double doctor reference, what’s not to love.

As you can see bow ties really are cool!
Now to figure out what to do with today’s snow day…