In His Steps

Spousal Unit and I traveled down to California to visit my family this past Christmas for a week of vacation. We were excited to see them and had presents--everything was set up just fine! We got to attend the family Christmas Eve party at my aunt's house and the Spousal Unit got to meet my cousins' children. Passing out the presents! My mom and grandma getting blurry shots--they were on their feet a lot during the party. But, Spousal Unit held still for me, though! And then he stole the camera! So hi, that's me! Now, Christmas day was lovely and had no photos--we had breakfast at our family friends' home, did a white elephant gift exchange there, and then came home and opened all of our presents (we did it late because my sister had to work the morning). My sister's boyfriend joined us for this and I enjoyed getting to know him better. After that, we all went to my aunt's home (other side of the family) and had Christm...

As I was working on completing my degree, I was eagerly awaiting my graduation present: Lan, my Souldoll Soulkid Liddell. She had been ordered, so I was now waiting on her arrival. Part of my coping with the months of waiting was to make clothing for her so she would have something to wear. I had no one else to model for her but Rania, even though Rania had a different doll body than Lan. I found a pattern written in the notes of a project done by one of the people I watch on Ravelry, so I followed it as best I could. My project notes are here . Up until the collar, I had no trouble with the pattern, and I was able to wing it the rest of the way. It came out very pretty, I feel, with the sparkly yarn on the hems and collar. I was even able to make it with ample room on the chest for the bustier Lan to wear it. Here is the finished product on Rania--you can probably tell it's a bit large for her in some places, but it looks great on Lan!

So, here we are for the first of the new crafting blog posts! Last year, my friend Josiah and his wife had a baby, so I was determined to make something for their boy. This is the first human-size sweater I have ever made, but I was happy to find that my skills learned making doll-size sweaters were a big help. I made the sweater out of a good, washable cotton blend yarn (I would never make a new mom something for a baby that needed to be hand-washed--that's just cruel). You can find my project page for this sweater here . It was a raglan style, top-down sweater knit flat, though I was using circulars. Making the button band was interesting, as I did it as I went. I had to guess and place where I wanted the buttons way ahead of time to do it. Josiah and his wife are very tall people, so I was making a much bigger sweater than any newborn would normally expect. The body of the sweater was the most tedious part, but that's normal. Rows and rows of...

When I was growing up, video games were that thing that wealthier friends of mine had and played. I could never fathom being interested in playing them myself. As I grew older, more and more of the friends I had were gamers in that way. They would talk about their games and I would zone out (irony of ironies) until they went back onto a subject I could relate to. Some made valiant attempts at including me. I button-mashed in Soul Calibur and Super Mario Smash Brothers. I enjoyed the prettiness of games like Final Fantasy VII and Legend of Zelda. Heck, video games inspired my art for a time, even though I still never played. I had to work, I had to go to school, I would rather read books or draw or craft with what little spare time I had. And I knew, deep down in my little soul, that my obsessive personality would grab onto whatever game it was and not let go. Well, suddenly my life changed dramatically. Last year in June, I reached a milestone: I graduated college. For the first time...