amigurumi – Imaginary Sunshine

What was your first clue?

Michelle — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:18:33 +0000

This is what a “Mister Snuffles” looks like. Go check him out. He is going to be given away tomorrow to D. Plus I had a lot of fun photographing him, he’s quite the ham for the camera. He even takes over my face at one point (but I decided not to post up photographic evidence of the fact that I lost a fight with a stuffie). But nonetheless, Mister Snuffles is done and all wrapped up and ready to be given away to his new home.

Today’s been pretty okay, in terms of… work. It was relatively slow. I spent way too much time trying to schedule meetings for the week. And since I have to drive for the meetings, I was hoping to get them on the same day, just at different times. No such luck. I have one tomorrow morning and one on Friday morning. My mom has one on Thursday morning. All with different to go over completely different things. So many meetings! I might be scheduling another one for Friday as well, I’m not sure yet… I’ll have to see how tomorrow goes first. Must say, I didn’t anticipate so many meetings this summer. Oh well, I get to meet new people (although, after the initial meeting, they’re not so new anymore).

People were fairly chatty with me today. Some people that don’t say much to me beyond ‘Hi Michelle’ and ‘Good morning, Michelle’ asked about my weekend. When I mentioned volunteering, they’ll ask me where I volunteer and what I do. One of them commented that it was good that I was doing something ‘worthwhile’ with my time rather than spray painting buildings… I must say, I’ve never spray painted a building before in my life, so I don’t think that I’d be doing that if I wasn’t volunteering for just two hours out of a week.

I had a weird conversation with people in the lunch room. Well, it was a sort of conversation. With A and A2 (I think I’m going to get confused with this…). A2 asked me what I did over the long weekend, and he told me what he did. A mentioned what he did as well and then I commented about volunteering and A just looks and me and then I get this conversation happening.

A: So, has anyone died on you yet?
M: [insert blink and stare here] Erm… No, they haven’t.
A2: Oh, well I bet someone will soon! [laughter]
A: You know when you become a nurse, people will die on you, right? Of course, if you end up treating me, I promise not to die. [wink and a chuckle]
M: [… not quite sure what to say] Umm, okay? [goes to microwave to collect lunch]
A: You know you have to be ready for it, right? I mean, everyone dies eventually.
M: [starts eating pasta] Uh huh… [opens newspaper to comics]
A2: I think she’s ignoring you.
A: Michelle, are you ignoring me?
M: What’s that?

In which it was a pretty good Sunday

Michelle — Mon, 11 May 2009 04:30:29 +0000

@ Kelsey – I suppose it could be a sign that we should get a dog. Or that people should invest in leashes. Or train their little canine friends a little bit more.

But speaking of dogs… Today at volunteering, someone who was visiting their mom (for Mother’s Day, of course), brought in their dog (a lot of people do this, provided they get permission first) and the dog ran off and came near me because I was sitting in an area where some of the residents had dropped lots of crumbs. So I look down, and there’s this furry medium-sized dog snarfing up pastry crumbs around my feet. I reach down calmly, snatch up the leash and give the dog a little tug as I’m getting up so I can take it back to it’s owner. The dog looks up at me for a moment and then goes and stands up on it’s hind legs and puts it’s front paws on my legs. It was kinda cute. I mean, badly behaved and went straight for pastries (although, I must confess, I like pastries too), but still cute. When I relaxed a little, he tried to run back towards the crumbs and I nearly let go of the leash, but I held onto it and it whimpered when it couldn’t run anymore. But the most important thing? I didn’t freak out over being around a dog! And the dog didn’t try to bite me! Score one for getting over my fear of dogs.

Mother’s Day went well in my house. I made breakfast (French toast!) and my family went out for lunch (without me, asI had volunteering at 1pm). Then for dinner my sister cooked (… she never cooks, so it was kind of weird) and she cooked halibut with tomatoes, which was really good (my dad helped her). So that was cool. For my mommy’s Mother’s Day gift, besides the meals, my sister and I paid for a set of new gardening tools for her. She likes gardening (despite her many allergies, some of which include allergies to certain types of trees, grasses and flowers), and the hand tools that she had were from before I was even born so… We got her new ones. And she likes them! The old ones had hard plastic handles, these ones are a little bit more friendly towards using them for long periods of time. So she likes them, which is awesome. We also got her pink pastries (… it was a spur of the moment kind of thing).

And… May 10th is also my non-anniversary anniversary with the Boyfriend! Confused? (It’s okay, half the time I am too!). Last year, I asked him out on May 10th (and if what I wrote was correct, it was like sometime just past midnight). I annoyed my very wonderful friend K to death about it, going back and forth on if I was going to ask him out or not. And kept her up while doing it as well (the crazy girl loves company?). So I asked him out. And… he took on his own sweet time getting back to me on that one. Or what seemed like an incredibly long time (everything seems a lot longer when you’re anticipating an answer and you’re not quite sure of it’s going to be a positive or a negative answer). So, I kept her up and kept myself up while I was at it. Obviously, he agreed to go out with me (or else I wouldn’t be referring to him as anything besides “That Guy From Work Who Rejected Me” – althought that’s a bit long, I’d probably just call him “C”). And K stayed up with me until I got an answer. =) Granted, we didn’t go out on our first date until after the summer was over and until I started up school again (… in September). So technically, not our anniversary (which was decided on back in… March – we take our own sweet time doing things) but I’m a complete dork and have to mention it anyways! Mostly because I’m a complete dork and mostly because I wanted to show off what I gave him!

You may have already seen the photos over at Chelle-Chelle.com (where I mentioned a little bit about the construction and yarn fibers) or seen on my Flickr (if you happen to be following me) or over on my sidebar (when I uploaded them earlier, prior to volunteering when I hadn’t had a chance to write this entry yet). But nonetheless, this poor guy is getting cross-posted just about everywhere.

Two little friends: Gwen & Albert

Michelle — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:24:02 +0000

Meet… Gwen and Albert.

Clay picked their names. I sent him a text asking for two names (one female and one male) and they had to be ‘old’ sounding. You know, like names that you’d expect people to have in the 1920s. Or something. And that’s what he came up with: Gweneth and Albert. But, you know, Gweneth is just too… long when it comes to saying something like “Gweneth and Albert”. And it’s a mouthful since Albert is two syllables, so I shortened her name so I wouldn’t be calling him ‘Al’. Because that’s too short. So it’s Gwen & Albert. Two little mice. Who now live in my room (who would have thought I’d be excited about having rodents in my room…?).

They’re two little sweethearts. And absolutely in love with one another. Plus, they match! I made Albert first (he’s the grey one) so his eyes are a little wonky (it’s either his eyes that are wonky or his ears, I’m not quite sure which…). I improved on Gwen by doing her face before I stuffed her full of polyfill, which I think improved it overall. Plus, the ears are a pain to stitch on when the body’s all puffy after being stuffed closed. Both of them are approximately 10cm in length, not including the tail. Gwen’s looks a little chubbier than Albert in some of the photos – she claims that the camera adds 10 pounds onto her tiny frame…

This is Gwen’s really curly tail. I’m not quite sure how that happened. I can stretch it out, but it bounces back. I did it slightly different than Albert’s tail as I’d crocheted into the back loops rather than under the V’s…

This is Albert’s tail, it curls a little, but can be straightened a lot easier than Gwen’s can. He’s more flexible that way.

And here are the two love-mice again! Yeah… Here you can see how wonky Albert’s eyes/ears are… Let’s ignore that. Plus, I may have done something weird with his nose… Ugh. Maybe that’s why I think Gwen is a much nicer model? Who knows…

The pattern is from KristiMN over at the crochetville.org forums! Click here to go check it out. The pattern calls for worsted weight, which is a decent thickness for yarn. Worsted weight is a #4 yarn. I used baby/fingering weight yarn. Which is a #1 yarn. I crocheted the bodies and the tails in double strands of this yarn (… never again). I used single strands for all parts of the ears, I used worsted weight black yarn for the eyes.