Monkey See, Monkey Do

If you're looking for the February NewFO Linky Party, Click right here.

Thanks to all who offered up their encouragement and support on my sock monkey project.  In my last blog post about this, I was having a little trouble with the tail.  Thanks to "Brown Family" who blogs at Yellow Mound Quilts for the catch that I was supposed to have cut the piece for the tail on the fold of the sock.  This would have made the strip twice as wide, and that would have been about right.  I was curious, and I checked the book I was using.  No mention of the fold.  Remember what I said about the instructions being not very instructive?  Oy.  I've penciled that part in for next time.

And thanks to Lethargic Lass from Plethora of Pinatas for sending me a link to a great tutorial from Urban Threads.  It has some great pictures and good ideas that would have made the job easier.  I received this link about the time I was going to do my guy's mouth, and it was very helpful.

Finally, thanks to JLVerde from Just Something I Made for her helpful suggestion of rolling the limbs while stuffing them to get the stuffing nice and even.  It made the arms much easier once I knew to do that.  

And this is one of the things I love about the blogging/crafting/quilting community.  Folks are so friendly and helpful!  So...wanna see him?

So he's all decked out there ready to watch a rerun of the Wizard of Oz.  He told me he really likes those flying monkeys.  (Are those voices in my head bothering you?)

And as I was writing this post, I just realized I forgot to give him some ears.  Back to the sewing room/ drawing board for me.  That would explain the extra strip of sock I had left over when I thought I was finished with him.

I gave him some yarn for hair.  There were instructions to do a cap for him, but the piece I cut was not going to work, so I decided on the yarn hair instead.  Also, I embroidered his eyes in a satin stitch with yarn.  This monkey is going to a year-old baby, and so I thought embroidered eyes would be the safest.  Using yarn also gave them some dimension, but it was surprisingly difficult to stitch using yarn.  If I were going to do this again (and I suppose I will some day), I would use Knit-Cro-Sheen instead.

Finally, my own sock monkey I had as a child had those strips of yarn at the wrists and ankles, so I added those.  They are tied in double knots so they should stay tied.  No problem if they don't, however.  I seem to remember cutting them off of mine at some point in time.  My Great Aunt Marie (known to us as Auntie Ree) made mine.  She was my grandmother's younger sister, and I loved her dearly, although I rarely got to see her.  She was such a delight.  So loving and cheerful.  I just now spent some time looking through some old family photos to see if I had any pictures of her, and apparently, I do not.  Oh well.

So if you read my post from earlier today, you know that I was gnashing my teeth about whether to go do my Curves workout.  I ended up going.  As I've already told some of you, I knew I would be glad if I went, and that I would hate myself if I didn't.  My feet don't feel any worse for wear, and I AM glad I went.  I'm going to try to remember this tomorrow when I will undoubtedly go through the same teeth-gnashing routine. Or maybe I could just go and save my teeth, but that would be way too easy.

One Foot Out the Door

If you're looking for the February NewFO Linky Party, Click right here.

What follows is a mere brain fart; in other words, my computer is working and I know how to type.

This morning I have been thinking of all the reasons why I shouldn't go do my Curves workout.  Or maybe that's sort of inside out.  Actually, I've been thinking of all the reasons I should go and listing them next to the reasons I don't want to.  The biggest reason I don't want to go is because, um, I don't want to.  (Honestly, not everything has a good explanation.)  However, I do have a pretty good excuse.  Whether it is a good enough excuse is the question that is plaguing me this morning.

Here's my excuse:  my feet hurt.  Especially the right one.  Yes, these actually are my feet.  Weird, huh?  No.  I'm kidding.

  This is my hurting foot:

Well, yes, that is a left foot.  The left one hurts too.  This was before my pedicure yesterday.  Now they're looking a little less, um, wrinkled and hairy.  (Think I'm kidding?)

So here's the deal:  I'm cursed with short wide feet.  And how a person can live to the ripe old age of 40 and not figure out that they have wide feet is beyond me, but I managed to do it.  It's been a long time since I was ripe and old at age 40.  I'm even riper (some might say I've gone over to rotten) and older now.  But suffice it to say that living to the age of 40 without figuring out that one has wide feet means that one has spent one's entire life in ill-fitting shoes.

Now this isn't completely my fault.  It seems to me that some shoe salesperson along the way might have mentioned that my feet were a "D" width instead of just smooshing my feet into "C" widths and selling me the shoes; but then, most shoe stores don't carry wide widths and so the "selling" part of the equation would have suffered.  But that brings me to today's excuse for not working out:  my foot is hurting.

So here's the story on that:  Several years ago, my feet were so bad I could barely walk.  On that, I truly am not kidding.  If you've ever walked around Disneyland all day, then you have some idea how my feet felt when they hit the ground in the morning.  On more than one occasion, I was in tears over the fear that I actually would become disabled by my hurting feet.  

So I shelled out the big bucks and got custom orthotics, because honestly, what choice did I have?  And my feet improved within months!  And not just my feet, but other painful areas on my body as well.

Fast forward to about a month ago when I went to the New Balance store for some new kicks and the New Balance guy tells me I really need to be in a half size larger shoe.  (Gravity, Man.)

And even though my feet were feeling fine in my current shoes (they were simply worn out), I agreed to try the next size larger.  They felt fine too, so I figure, what the heck?  Right?  Wrong.  Because after wearing those larger shoes for a couple of weeks, my feet are hurting again.  I'm kind of a dunce about this kind of stuff, but I can figure out cause and effect.  The cause puzzled me a little until I realized that my orthotic no longer fits the shoes and it was slipping back and forth and causing me problems.

Which brings me back to my original dilemma.  Should I take the day off and give my feet a break?  Or are my feet an excuse for not doing the workout I don't want to do?  These are weighty matters, I know.  The day is but young.  I still have time.

February NewFO Linky Party and Giveaway

Oh Frabjous Day! Callooh, Callay!  (Ahem.)  I'll bet you weren't expecting that.  If it doesn't sound familiar to you, it's from Lewis Carroll's poem, Jabberwocky.  I've just always liked the sound of those words and they popped into my head just as I started typing.

It's a rather frightening creature, isn't it?  Just another one of those images designed to give children nightmares.  But that's not what you came for, is it?  Please pardon my tangential brain.

Ahhhhh.  That's better, isn't it? 
So here we are two months into 2013.  Did you start anything new this month?  I have quite a few things to show you.  First, I started a project on my original list...the Heart of the Home tablerunner.  I was able to complete the ten heart blocks before setting it aside.

Also, I started the first of the Quilting Snowladies embroidered quilt blocks.  There are twelve blocks in the series, so I have quite a ways to go on this.

While I was waiting for the tea-dyed muslin for this project to arrive, I found myself between embroidery projects, and so I started a quick little project.  It isn't finished yet.  I still need to add a border to it and then turn it into a little quilt.  It's from a free pattern by Wendy who blogs at Sugarland Quilts.

Finally, I participated in the "It's All About Me" blog hop.  I both started and finished my piece for the hop.

The hop ends today.  If you've missed any of it (or all of it), you can find the full schedule of participants right here.  Honestly, folks have been so clever and creative with their pieces.  You'd never know we all started with the same pattern.  Such fun.

But this party is all about YOU!  So now I'm ready to see what YOU started during the month of February. I had quite a few starts for the month, but you only need one start and zero finishes to link up below.  Everyone who links up is eligible to win this month's needle nanny.  Here's the little cutie I'm giving away this month:

And if you don't know what a needle nanny is, it's a strong magnet that you can fasten to your stitcheries, or your clothing, or whatever!  I stick my needle to it whenever I finish my embroidery for the morning.  They are handmade from copper, brass and nickel in a small village in Thailand, where proceeds from their sale contribute to the health, education, and welfare of the community.

Here's what you need to do to be entered in the giveaway:

1.  Please link-up with your newly started projects from February, finished or not.  If you feel like it, show us the progress you've made on any other previously posted NewFO projects.  

2.  Please link back to this post from your blog.  Also, please link to your blog post, not your blog.  To do that, just click on the title of your post to isolate it from the rest of your blog.  Then copy the URL and use that to link up.  Links to blogs will be edited or deleted entirely.  Also, this is not a place to advertise your Etsy shop or some other event.  To be clear, you may include references to other items in your post, but there should be something related to your NewFO's as well.  Inappropriate and/or unrelated links will be deleted.  

3.  Finally, don't have a blog?  Upload an image to my FlickR group and link to that.  If you have questions about how to do that or about how to link up, please email me.  If you're having trouble posting your image, email it to me as an attachment, and I'll be happy to do it for you.

4.  Obviously, I need some way to contact you no matter how you link up.  No email address and no other way to contact you equals no entry in the giveaway.  Email me separately if you need to.

This giveaway ends one week from today.  Winner of the needle nanny will be announced on March 7, 2013!  I will ship interplanetarily, and so this giveaway is open to all residents of planets orbiting the Sun.  Overnight delivery to the planet Uranus will include a minor surcharge.

Now, show us your new stuff!

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