Finger Knitting

Just before Christmas I discovered this craft called finger knitting. Okay, I might be stretching the truth. I had a pin for finger knitting, but had never tried it and found out the Instructables video (linked below) that Beffers found was much simpler. Beffers (my SiL) learned it and showed me how cool it was. As soon as she showed me what she was doing I demanded she send me the pin and help me along. Yes, demanded is the right word. I lacked the gumption ever try it. And yet, it didn’t need gumption to learn! Just about 10 minutes and then I replayed the video to make sure it sank into my brain. It makes me wonder what other gems are hiding in the depths of my pin boards. Are you a cool pin hoarder too?

Here is the link to the sweet tutorial video. Before you click I want you to know that the video is a little odd as it is shot upside down and the maker of the vid at one point misidentifies her fingers. Just keep watching what her hands do and don’t worry about silly little things like a mix up in words. Instructables wins again!

Sorry for the fuzzy-vision

There are many different things you can do with your finger knit projects depending on your level of creativity. Bracelets, scarves, and (my favorite) Christmas tree garland. 

Beffers followed the tips on this website, the blogger made several different strands of different colors and then laced them together to make a beautiful rainbow scarf. It helps that Marlena has phenomenal hair to go with her lovely rainbow scarf. Instead of making a rainbow scarf, Beffers knitted orange and gray together then laced the strands to make a huge fluffy scarf to match the handmade hat her hubbster had received as a gift the previous year. You gotta love handmade matching fashion!

Isn’t he adorable?

A couple of quick tips to add to the awesome bloggers and instructors there already are out in the world. To take a break and save your work put your finger loops onto a chopstick. I was going for marathon knitting and couldn’t avoid a potty break any longer so that tip really helped me. If you are teaching a younger person or it is your first time trying finger knitting, avoid the fru-fru fancy yarns and just pick a no frills yarn to learn. Later on you can do the fancy stuff but it is important to learn it at first.

Ultimate Fall Bucket List

Fall is my favorite time of year and I realized that it has become a thing to make seasonal bucket lists or other short term Fun To Do lists. I searched the topic to death and came up with a massive fall season Bucket List. I have already completed a couple and will insert those pictures as breaks from straight text.
Fall Bucket List

1. Make a new fall wreath
2. Visit an orchard
3. Make Chili
4. Watch Football
5. Go apple picking
6. Bake a pie
7. Go on a fall color drive
8. Enjoy cider
9. Make/Eat caramel apples
10. Sit by the fire
11. Go on a hayride
12. Celebrate Oktoberfest
13. Visit a pumpkin patch
14. Carve a pumpkin
15. Play in the leaves
16. Find your way through a corn maze
17. Decorate pumpkins
18. Fall crafts
19. Go trick or treating
20. Make Halloween costume
21. Take fall photos
22. Make apple cobbler
23. Rake leaves and jump in pile
24. Make pumpkin dessert
25. Tailgate football game
26. Find the perfect fall sweater
27. Perfect a pumpkin/caramel/or/apple latte DIY
28. Host a friendsgiving
29. Go on a picnic
30. Have a campfire
31. Roast marshmallows
32. Go on a hike
33. Make pinecone bird feeders
34. Go out for coffee/hot cocoa and doughnuts
35. Host a football party
36. Stargaze under a quilt
37. Bake pies
38. Roast pumpkin seeds
39. Create leaf art
40. Decorate for fall
41. Candles and music at night
42. Crunch leaves
43. Make fall soup
44. Jump in puddles
45. Fall treasure hunt
46. Have a Halloween party
47. Bob for apples
48. Make a scarecrow
49. Make apple cider
50. Learn the Thriller dance
51. Wear flannel
52. Go to a fall festival
53. Watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
54. Gather leaves
55. Press leaves
56. Make pumpkin pancakes
57. Make mini caramel apples
58. Blend pumpkin smoothies
59. Go to a haunted house
60. Watch Halloween/Thanksgiving movies
61. 

DIY Googly Eyed Headband & Hat

I found a great craft on Pinterest done by The Crafty Blog Stalker.
The best part about this craft is that it is almost entirely a Dollar Store Craft. The one exception is you must buy or already own a hot glue gun and glue sticks.

Just so we’re clear you will need:

• Hot glue gun and glue sticks

• A package or two of googly eyes
• Headbands (the wider the headband the better for gluing eyes)
• And/Or, a knit hat

Step One: Gather supplies and get a workspace.

Step Two: Plug in your hot glue gun.

Step Three:
For the hat–Lay out a pattern that you like. I put a piece of cardboard (used the tag from the packaging) between the hat fabric layers. It would be lame to make a fun hat that you inadvertently glued shut.

For the headbands–Pick out a pattern that you like.

Step Four: For hat–Apply dots of glue to the backs of the googly eyes and stick to your hat. Allow to fully cool and dry before throwing it on your head. Again, you don’t want to have glue and hair and forehead all trapped and boiling hot.

For headbands–I applied glue to the headbands directly because my headbands were a bit more narrow than my big googly eyes. Be very careful not to get glue on your fingers. It’s stinkin’ hot! For the large eyes, I mashed them down and waited a couple of seconds to make sure I didn’t knock them back off while they were still cooling.

Step Five: Once you allow the pieces to fully cool, I picked away those little hairs that I always seem to have to deal with when hot gluing.

After doing that bit of housekeeping, throw on your accessory and hit the town.
I believe that people should dress up, or at least start getting festive during the whole month of October. I think the headbands would be a great accessory for people to wear who work in places they are not allowed to dress up. Offices and such typically err on the serious side. Hopefully your office doesn’t have a policy against wearing googly garb.

Kids: Get someone intelligent to supervise you. Or better yet, learn how to properly use tools, because when you’re an adult no one will stop you from chainsawing your fingers off. Hot glue is painful, please be careful.

This would make a fantastic costume piece too.
For example: I am working on creating a cherubim costume. The cherubim from L’Engle’s Wind in the Door were described as being a mass of eyes and feathers and wings. I believe a huge package of craft feathers and more hot glue is in my future. Feel free to use this idea and out-nerd all your friends at the next Halloween party. Perhaps more simply, this could be the spider eyes for a fun spider costume.

~Kat~

State Fair 2013 Part One

We went to the state fair for Kit’s 45th birthday. The young man who tallied up our prices assumed we owed one adult, one senior and one parking fee.

Kit was tickled at first because we saved $9 on his ticket. Then the rest of the day he was worried that he looked over 55 (how old you had to be to get the discount).

Check out this impressive ceramic piece we saw in the 4-H section of the fair! I love the design, colors and all. It was the only puffer fish we saw in the whole 4-H area.
I took some other photos of the embroidered crafts, but somehow the camera didn’t save them.

Check our this fancy little show piece tractor. It doesn’t run, as I first hoped, but it is still super cute.
Notice Kit’s backpack, we filled it full of two kinds of cheese snacks, sandwiches, water and granola bars. This way we saved about $20 on fair foods that would leave us lethargic. We saved our coma inducing foods for after the fair.

We hung around the ring in the wing alongside the cows to see Miller’s dogs working. We got to see six ducks herded under and over wire bridges by six excited border collies. Watching working dogs is fascinating and strange to me. Their owner also showed how they worked following word commands and whistles. They followed both styles of work commands seamlessly. I can’t wait for the next cattle dog on our farm. Geena was Kit’s favorite working dog and sadly, I never got to meet her.

A few adorable Boer goats, snuggling the afternoon away. Most of them were gone, judging began at 9am eastern and by afternoon there were only a few stragglers.

There were mountains of veggies in the produce room in addition to this lovely tomato collection I already shared.

Check out these cucumbers! Despite what the sign says I believe these are pickling cucumbers not pickled. Can you believe how tiny they got those Mexican gerkins? Wild stuff.
Speaking of wild and weird. I don’t remember a “critters” division from last year:

Top left clockwise:Wally the Walrus potato, this was easily my favorite and I just kept giggling at his little face. The next guy up didn’t have a cunning name that I recall, but it made a very cute whale. The baby tater tot was watching over the blue potato buffalo and the carrot bird at the state fair—they had an entire story to go along with it!
Lastly, the Duck Taters, I was thankful not to see another lame reference to the TV show that shall not be named. The duck bill had be giggling like a kid as well.

The final impressive thing in the veggies room were the entries for the largest pumpkin contest. Please note, first and second place are both in this photo. First place is the large orange pumpkin weighing in at 1,034 lbs and 2nd place is the white/ghost pumpkin weighing in at 94 lbs. Holy smokes people!!
The thing to keep in mind about this behemoth is that the tiny looking pumpkin sitting at the feet of the blue ribbon winner would make pumpkin pies 1,000 times better than its competitor.
Alas, we weren’t judging flavor.

After looking at all this food we had to bust open the backpack for lunch. Then my phone died and I was forced to take photos on my actual camera.

State Fair Time!!

State Fair time means we are celebrating Kit’s birthday again!

We enjoyed a full day of produce, crafts, cakes, livestock and booths!
Can’t wait to share pictures of some of my favorite things and stories of the adventures we had.

The hubbster also requested a visit to Tom+Chee, a locally owned restaurant featuring gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches.

More to come soon!