Map, Ostrich Eggs, Zoo

Posted on March 29, 2014 by cpeezers

Thursday we went over to the Woodland Park Zoo. We were really happy to have a sunny afternoon for our visit. We’d been expecting rain for most of the day.

It’s a nice zoo with lots of beautiful trails in between the walks to the animal exhibits.

Davey enjoyed the animals, but I think his favorite part was the map.

That little guy loves a map.

We took quite a few pictures of animals so I’ve got to include at least one here!

David took a picture which depicts three things I am not sure I’d ever expected to see in one picture.

A boy with a map, ostrich eggs and a zebra.

And finally a nice close up of Davey playing in the “bamboo”.

Davey – formerly known as “the very picky eater” + Pinterest Success

Posted on March 26, 2014 by cpeezers

Davey has developed a reputation for being a very picky eater. For a long time, he wanted nothing to do with vegetables or basically anything that was part of a “mixture”. He did always eat a lot of fruit though, so he got some vitamins that way (plus some gummy vitamins sometimes). Besides fruit, he mostly enjoyed peanut butter and jelly, goldfish, vanilla yogurt, cheese, Life cinnamon cereal (known around here as “crunchies”), and sometimes chicken nuggets.

However, I never could envision him growing up to be too particular. David and I definitely are not, we don’t come from families who include picky eaters, and I did not see how it could be part of his genetic makeup.

I worried a little though. A friend from Colorado told me about her cousin who specifically requested that she have chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese at her own wedding as those were pretty much the only foods she liked. I could see this as Davey’s future for a little while. But, we never made a big deal about it and just kept encouraging him.

He is beginning to come around. This is now a kid whose current favorite food is black-eyed peas and cornbread. He also loves spinach salad (he likes it with 1000 island dressing, but he will eat plain spinach leaves too).

This brings me to some pinterest successes I have had lately and which have also expanded his eating repertoire.

I made a great simple pepper salad the other day. Basically just several types of chopped bell peppers, lime juice, cilantro and onions. Davey loved it. In an attempt to get him to try it, I first asked him to taste test each color of pepper to see what color he liked the most. I think red and yellow beat orange and green. He chowed on these peppers! He even ate some of the cilantro and said he liked it (I could not hang with him on that one).

The same night I tried a new Mongolian beef recipe. It was another great success, and Davey ate quite abit of the beef and enjoyed the sauce mixed with rice.

Davey still has his moments. He doesn’t like any of his foods to touch each other on the plate. He also wants to use a separate spoon or fork for each thing. So a fork for the rice and a different one for the beef. I think he was just picking out the peppers and eating them like finger food.

He’s getting there though! There be some regression on the way, but I’m no longer too worried that we will need to make sure and have chicken nuggets and goldfish at his wedding.

Knitting Flowers + Wires!

Posted on March 24, 2014 by cpeezers

In the last week, I have become fascinated with knitting flowers. I have a pinterest board devoted to knitted flower patterns: Knitted Flowers

Here is what first inspired me:

I am fascinated by that giant bouquet of knitted flowers!

So I also bought a knitted flower pattern book this weekend. Well actually, I got two of them, but I really like this one: Noni Designs Noni Flowers. She is very detailed and has included 40 flower patterns. Her results are so realistic looking. My results? Well I need practice. One of the best things I have learned from this book so far though is how to wire the petals.

I love the stockinette look on flowers, but stockinette likes to curl. So when I first finished this flower it looked like this:

It looks like a starfish doesn’t it? I also filled in the center with french knots. (I am a work in progress as a knitter of flowers.) But then the Noni book describes how to wire the flowers. It’s amazing! She recommends using beading wire. I need to make a trip to Yakima for some supplies, but in the meantime, the Dollar Tree had floral wire, which I think works just fine.

This picture is so darn blurry, but I think you can see the wire running around the edge of the flower.

I just threaded about a 12 inch piece of wire. I run it under those purl bumps on the wrong side. Once you have the wire running through the first few stitches, it will want to kink up on you when you go to thread the next few stitches around. She suggested having the wire form a U to the right side of the work. This works pretty well. I need more practice with it and still have had to work out a few kinks (literally!).

But I really like the end result!

Now I can bend the petals and shape them as I wish.

I made the stem with floral wire and tape (again thanks to Dollar Tree).

I have tried knitting an i-cord and threading a piece of wire through it for the stems also. That works ok, but the yarn is so soft, it is hard for that wire to not come poking through. I may work on that some more, so I can mix some knitted stems in as well.

So this is a lot of fun! I have made an Arum Lily, some hyacinth, a few more flat petal flowers, and today I made a rose. I need to make some more of the rounded “puffy” looking flowers. They are kind of fiddly though, so I am looking for a pattern I really like.

Plus! What a great way to use up my leftover sock yarn!

Knitting and a Jedi

Posted on March 23, 2014 by cpeezers

It is Spring Break and we are planning some serious relaxing. I am looking forward to some serious knitting time as well.

I just finished a sweater for my sweet little one year old niece.

This is from an Ella Rae book that I bought at my LYS. The yarn is Ella Rae also. It’s called Cozy Soft and is an acrylic/wool blend. It was really soft and nice to work with. The pattern was great too. It had a fun stitch pattern which kept it interesting to work on. I hope little Lila likes it!

A couple of months ago, I made a chicken sweater for a friend. I can now scratch that off my list of things that I had never made before. (I don’t know why I took an upside down picture of the sweater.)

I even crocheted a few little flowers for decoration for the little chicken.

I made this for a friend in Colorado who then gave it to a friend who has chickens. Look what my friend sent me in return!

She is a painter and she painted this for me! I felt so lucky to receive them! She does beautiful work. I love that we traded our work although I think I need to make her something else now because I just love these.

This weekend we are going to go to Comic Con. David and Davey are getting pretty excited. Davey has already picked out his Comic Con attire.

My serious determined Jedi (or the kid who really did not want his picture taken).

Spring is Coming!

Posted on March 16, 2014 by cpeezers

We enjoyed some time outside yesterday.

Davey was having a great time with bubbles.

We picked up a large bubble wand at the Dollar Tree. Davey was really working at making big bubbles.

This kept him busy for a long time.

We went to our neighbors’ for a bit, and Davey was laughing and laughing at their dog who really wanted to catch a remote controlled helicopter.

I love it when Davey gets really tickled. 🙂

Some Knitting: Art Implements

Posted on March 1, 2014 by cpeezers

I’m taking a Literacy class this quarter and one of the requirements is to build a text set. I chose Art and Creativity for my theme, and I am working on a paper and a display to go with it. It occurred to me that there might be a knitting opportunity in here as well. I started looking around for patterns, and I found a few that I have now knitted up.

I found a pattern for a tube of paint and one for a paint brush. These were quick very fun patterns to make. Here are links to the patterns: Paint Tube, and Paint Brush. They are on the same website, and there’s another pattern there for a pencil as well.

I made these with some leftover bulky Brown Sheep yarn.

I actually stuffed the paint brush with a pencil. It gives it some nice heft. There’s no context here for size, but it is just about actual sized. Using the bulky weight yarn really worked nicely as well.

I also made a colored pencil. This was actually supposed to be a bookmark, but I ended up adjusting the pattern a little (I made it smaller) and using finer yarn. My pencil is a little rough looking at the end. I could say that I did this to make it look more realistic, but unfortunately, that’s not true. I do like the effect though.

I almost forgot one of my favorite parts. The tube of paint has “retractable paint”. I knit an icord and you can pull it out of the tube and then push it back in! The pattern also gives the option of leaving the bottom open and putting in a snap so that you could easily pull the cord from the bottom.

When I finished these, Davey said I needed a palette as well to complete the set. I thought this was a great idea, and so I looked around for a pattern, but I couldn’t find one. I could not quite wrap my brain around designing it. Well, I was kind of getting it figured out, but it was taking away a lot of time that I need to finish actually writing the text set as opposed to embellishing it. So maybe I will try that another time.

I preferred the paintbrush and tube patterns, and I’d like to try the pencil pattern from that same website. The colored pencil pattern is very nice too but it would work better for its original purpose of being a nice flat bookmark.

I guess I better get back to actually doing the writing part of this project!

Umtanum Falls…almost: Icey Rode A Hed!

Posted on February 23, 2014 by cpeezers

We decided to try a new hike today. There is a waterfall called Umtanum Falls about 10 miles out of town. Such a pretty drive into the Yakima canyon. There was also quite abit more snow out there then in town so Davey of course loved this.

The hike to the falls is about a mile walk. It’s pretty flat and wasn’t too difficult except for being a little slick in areas. There seemed to be a thick layer of ice covering the trail. Fortunately enough snow had fallen to give us some traction.

We encountered a few obstacles along the way. Davey liked to name each obstacle. This was the Animal Bridge. Davey wanted to go under it, and apparently Buster wanted to go over it. I went up and around it as I was not too interested in crawling through.

We challenged David to go under. He assumed some kind of push-up position and scrambled through.

He came through in what I think is called upward facing dog.

We went through a very pretty arbor (while it was so snowy and pretty, I can’t wait to see the arbor and the rest of the trail in the late spring and again in the fall).

I think it was as we walked through the “arbor” that I noticed just these little clusters of green moss in the trees. I was kind of fascinated by these little bits of color, plus they were also in one of my favorite shades of green.

We also passed by “The Field of Brown Sticks”.

Unfortunately, about a quarter of a mile from the falls (we think), we had to turn around. The trail went into the woods and it just got too slick and icy. So close! But no fun to slip and slide either. Here we were at our turnaround point.

On the way back, Davey found what he called his “writing utensil”. He kept writing warning messages in the snow along the trail. “Icey Rode A Hed”! (I think that’s pretty close to his spelling. It was hard to tell for sure in the snow.) I am so amazed by his emerging literacy. All of a sudden, he can read. He’s writing words completely out of his head! I love watching this happen.

So the plan is to return and try this again after the ice melts and the mud dries.

Daddy Daughter Dance

Posted on February 16, 2014 by cpeezers

Davey came home from school the other day with a flier. He handed it to me and asked me to tell him what it said.

I told him that it was an announcement about a “Father Daughter Dance”. It was a special time for dads to go have dinner and to dance with their daughters.

Davey did not like this at all. “Where’s my dance? Why can’t we go? Why is it just daughters? What if sons want to go with their moms or dads?”

He sputtered about this for several minutes. Finally he said, “Mama, let me have that flier.” I gave it to him, and he crumpled it up into a ball and took it to the trashcan.

He then said that he did not want to talk about it anymore. It was as though he could not quite wrap his mind around this “injustice”.

I guess maybe I need to start lobbying for a mother/father/daughter/son dance. 🙂

This is one of those little Davey stories that I just had to write down and remember.

happy valentines.

Posted on February 15, 2014 by cpeezers

I knitted some hearts for Valentines Day. It had been such a busy week and I decided that on Thursday night I was just going to sit down for a little knitting time. I stopped by my LYS and picked up some red yarn – Peace Fleece in Ukrainian Red. It was a great red! I found this free pattern from one of my old favorites – Mochimochiland.

I tried to get a good picture of Davey holding a heart, but the light was not cooperating with me. Neither was Davey really for that matter, but that was ok. I liked this picture.

Davey had such a big day at school. They celebrated Valentines Day and it was also Clifford’s birthday!

He made us some beautiful Valentines gifts too. He made a heart with his handprints.

On the back was part of one of my most favorite ee cummings poems (he’s my favorite poet).

I love how he wrote his name. He insists on an upper case A.

Davey enjoyed showing David his Valentine treats.

Today it’s snowing. It’s really pretty and I wish I was capable of getting a good picture of it falling. Instead I got a picture of Buster letting me know that he wanted to play.