Too many puppies!

Look at these sweet things! 3.5 week old golden retriever pups.

And these little babies are only 2 weeks old. Their eyes just opened in the last few days, and they still can’t walk yet. They just sort of scoot around. And it appears that they like to sleep on top of each other. Totally cute.

We will be bringing home a little brother for Magnus the weekend of November 8th (from the second litter)! Now, we just need a name. Hubby keeps bringing up the name Grendel, but it hasn’t grown on me for the last 2 years that he has been talking about it. Today, in the car, he suggested Bear. Hmm..not sure, seems so generic. We’ll see if the boys can come up with something appropriate.

Last night, in preparation for our meeting with the puppies, we read Too Many Puppies. We love this book! It is a very sweet book about a little girl’s golden retriever, Milly, who has puppies. She wants to keep all the puppies, but her mama says that would be “too many puppies!” She doesn’t agree until the puppies get bigger and more rambunctious, and then everyone agrees that it would be “too many puppies!” Instead all the puppies get to go home to have their own families. After the puppies leave, she is sad, until she remembers the day that she brought home Milly, her sweet and wonderful “grown-up puppy.”

We are very excited about a new puppy, but Magnus will always be my first “grown-up puppy!”

Antique Finds

This past weekend, I finally made it to our local “antique mall” to check it out. Okay,…they weren’t kidding. It was five floors of antique’ing madness. I restrained myself pretty well. Came away with a just a few things. The little crocheted doilies were very cute, and I think I might use them to back some embroidery collages. Not sure yet.

The washboard is to use for wet felting wool. Last time, I used my husband’s sushi rolling bamboo mat and it smelled like sheep for a few weeks afterwards. I think he will appreciate that I bought a dedicated tool. I don’t have pictures of the other things, but my boys are into Tom & Jerry right now, so I picked up two vintage T&J comic books, just for fun. And, I found a very cool, vintage hand beater with orange Bakelite handle. J loves to cook with me, and it didn’t take more than five minutes from me arriving home that he was standing at the kitchen sink beating a bowl of soapy water with the new hand beater!

Images from the Fair

A Celebration of Rural Living…

Sheep herding demonstration. The dog is attempting to separate the sheep into two different groups.

Check out this fluffy prize-winning chicken!

This was a blue ribbon turkey. Gorgeous, isn’t he?

Shearing a sheep. The boys were allowed to pet her and she was so soft, and just a little damp from being sprayed a bit to make the shearing go more easily.

A plow which was part of the oxen-pulling demonstration, I think. I’m not sure if we were supposed to be sitting on it or not…

Who can resist petting a baby cow?

The Common Ground Country Fair is the coolest fair ever. Well, it’s not like I’m an avid fair-goer, but it’s the coolest fair that I’ve ever been to. It’s put on by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, and this was their 32nd year. Tons of educational opportunities, yummy food, cool activities like cardboard sledding and haystack jumping for the kids, and lots and lots of animals.

MOFGA’s website says that 59,000 people attended the three days of the fair this year. 59,000! Wow! I heard Saturday was extremely crowded, so it’s a good thing we got there early on Sunday morning. It wasn’t bad at all, and we were leaving just as it was starting to get crowded. I restrained myself from the amazingly lovely fiber tents, and only came away with two cool needle felting patterns from A Wrinkle in Thyme Farm, and a nice redware gingerbread boy ornament for our Christmas tree. Impressive. I didn’t think to take a picture of all the lovely yarn, but check out Soulemama’s post. It was hard to step away from all that wonderful fiber.

(The place where I bought the needle felting patterns has a fiber CSA. Ooh….how totally cool is that???)

I was watching someone groom an angora rabbit, with the woman next to her spinning the angora into yarn, and it made me want to raise Angora rabbits! The fair is a dangerous place. J’s teacher told me she was there on Saturday to learn how to raise chickens. Hubby has put his foot down on the chicken idea, but maybe I can convince him that rabbits would be nice…

International Day of Peace

My son was excited to go to school today because they were making pinwheels for a pinwheel parade. When we got to school, I saw the origami paper out and the sample pinwheel and asked the teacher about it. They are making origami pinwheels to celebrate International Day of Peace on Friday with a pinwheel parade. How fun is that?! I think I might have to make some for home. They were attaching the pinwheels using a push pin (I think) to a pencil eraser, and then the pencil becomes the stick to hold the pinwheel. Here is a tutorial that I found: Origami Pinwheel instructions from TinyShiny.com.

Felt play food

I went on a felt play food spree last fall and made a bunch of stuff for my younger son for Christmas. They enjoy playing with it, but they don’t play with it as much as I hoped. (The lure of Legos…) But, when they do, I’m happy to have it! I got rid of all the plastic food, and now they just have wood and felt food. The felt food is by far the cutest.

In any case, I’ve been making some wet felted wool apples as fall decorations (and for playing) which got me back into a play food kick, and was seduced into buying this pattern from UmeCrafts.

How fun does this look?! I’ve been looking at her patterns for awhile, and at only $5.90, I figured I’d spring for one and see if I liked how her patterns worked. (Gotta love a Paypal balance. It’s like free money.) She sent the pdf pattern right away, so now I just need to get started on it! Maybe tomorrow. I’ve been doing some niece birthday crafting.

If you don’t want to make your own felt play food, there are plenty of crafty, talented people selling it on Etsy. Or, my favorite place to buy felt play food, the Wool Food Market. Katie’s stuff is amazing! It’s all wet-felted and needle felted wool (which means she uses wool roving) as opposed to using wool felt sheets. We have her Easter eggs from last year, and they were so awesome to hide around the house on Easter morning. We also have a few other things, and it’s all adorable. Check out her gallery. I covet the earth layers set.

Wooden toys and scroll saws

I just found this website with instructions on how to make a wooden bird cut-out toy. Okay, I totally need a scroll saw now. I have never done any woodworking, but this looks like such a lot of fun. The hubby has promised to show me how to use it.

Crocheted mama octopus

Last week, I mentioned that I was crocheting a new project. My husband’s aunt taught me to crochet in June when we were visiting them out at the lake. It took all of about 10 minutes max. I was crocheting a dishcloth to practice, but practicing is so boring! So I bought Ana Paula Rimoli’s book, Amigurumi World: Seriously Cute Crochet, and set to making the penguin for my younger son who loves penguins.

Well, I had to put that on hold temporarily as I was crocheting while we were away for the weekend and I didn’t have any stuffing. So, I started an octopus for my older son. That one ended up being finished first, and now I’m back to making the penguin (with a slight detour to a very fun felting project that I will tell you about later!).

My legs are a bit lopsided (I think I miscounted on one or two of them), and they didn’t get spaced out exactly as they probably should, but it all adds to the charm, right? It is truly adorable. Unfortunately, my son’s only comment was, “no mama, I wanted the baby to be blue and the mama to be purple.” Uh thanks for the appreciation, kid. That’s okay, I will just have to keep it for myself!

K’s Birthday Crown

It’s my baby’s birthday today! I thankfully finished his birthday crown to his specifications last week. He wanted it to be red and white with blue stripes and a blue star. So, I made his crown pretty much exactly like I made J’s birthday crown, except I made the elastic in the back just a little bit longer for his older noggin, and added the requested stripes. It’s all made from wool felt that I got at Weir Dolls & Crafts or from my local quilting store. The letter K on the star was stitched free-hand using a split stitch with 3 threads of embroidery floss. The pattern for the crown was taken from Amanda Soule’s The Creative Family.

Here he is this morning, setting up our birthday ring.

And here are both completed birthday crowns.

And this one is just funny.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BUDDY!

Crocheted spaceship, astronaut and aliens

I have been crocheting amigurumi recently from Ana Paula’s Amigurumi World: Seriously Cute Crochet (I will share when I have one done!), so I have been looking at other crochet ideas as well. The amigurumi are a lot of fun because it’s a bit more of an “instant gratification” thing than some big afghan or something. In any case, I just saw this link posted for a free pattern for a spaceship complete with little astronauts and aliens. How cool would this be??

Rocket Ship with Astronauts and Aliens by Elizabeth Mareno.

Etsy:: Handmade Kids Contest

So, I just voted in all seven categories in the Etsy Handmade Kids Contest when I should be making my children lunch for school tomorrow. What a lot of fun and cool ideas! It was so fun to find some new sellers and get some more “hey, I could make that” ideas. (As if I needed any more of those.)

So, go vote. It was fun. Voting ends September 8th. You get a chance to win a $350 Etsy shopping spree (Holidays are around the corner!) with a vote in each of the seven categories.