'Oh Dowy Baby'

As promised, but later than intended, here is the report on the success of my handmade Christmas gifts:

  

Meet Dowy. My niece gave an audible gasp the moment she ripped the paper open enough to see what was wrapped inside (much to my heart's delight).

Now, I'm treated to photos my sister sends of J feeding Dowy pizza party (wooden pizza, not real pizza), sleeping with Dowy hugged to her chest and reports of how she won't go to bed without "Oh Dowy Baby."

Though she took quite a bit of time, Dowy wasn't very complicated. I found the pattern on Lion Brand Yarn's website. I'm a huge fan of their patterns, and as they advertise, there are 3,719 free patterns to choose from. If you sign up on their site, you can save patterns for future use.

There were a few challenges to Dowy's construction. The first was the hair. In the pattern, I believe they use a mohair yarn, but I preferred to use something I already had. Using a craft needle, I made a loop between two stitches and then I tied the loop in a knot with the remaining yarn. I wish I was working on something right now so I could take pictures. Next time, I'll do a step-by-step.

In any case, the hair ended up being my favorite part. This is the same method I used to make the mane on both the lion and horse amigurumis I made earlier in the year. It's time consuming, but totally worth it.

Back to Dowy's hair, as it started to fill in, I knew completely this doll must be for my cutie niece. It's such a wonderful feeling to know that something you've made is well loved, isn't it?

It was also quite a challenge sewing her feet and hands inside the sleeves and leggings and it was really difficult sewing her head on. But in the process I discovered a curved craft needle and light shone down from the heavens and angels began singing. From now on, the curved needle is a must-have in my crochet cupboard. 

Gift 2:

Again, if I had begged for a reaction to this gift, it couldn't have been better than what actually happened.

My cousin's baby -- well, I guess he's really a toddler now, amazing how quickly that happens -- ripped into the wrapping paper, took one look at this monkey and immediately hugged it to his chest. I nearly wept with joy. Then, he toted it around showing it to people.

This pattern came from Caron Yarn's website. And the best part was it taught me something new.

I've had a very difficult time with changing colors. My obsessive need for perfection (seeking, seeking, seeking) was perpetually unhappy with the way it would look like a mistake to go from one color to the next as if it was in the middle of a row. This pattern, however, has you fasten off and then join the next color with a slip stitch! (Sorry, I had to succumb to the use of an ! to truly express the importance of this revelation.)

Oh joy, oh joy.

One of the best parts of making this was when, after lunch on Christmas Eve, I was sewing on the face while sitting with the grandparents of my heart, Uncle Don and Aunt Ro. I could tell they thought it was adorable, so I felt a new confidence in giving it to my cousin's baby.

Here's where confession time comes into play (I wouldn't be me if there wasn't always something to confess).

It wasn't to show off that I was completing the monkey while sitting at Uncle Don and Aunt Ro's table on Christmas Eve, a mere hours before I was supposed to give this gift away. What's it called? Oh yeah, procrastination -- I really hadn't finished it at that point.

Then came the adventure.

All I had left to do was finish the face and sew it on to the head. But I completely overlooked the fact that I would need stuffing for it. So, I called my sis to see if she could bring some to our aunt's house so I could finish it real quick before it was present-opening time. As she did make a special trip to Mommy's to get the camera I nearly cried when I realized I forgot, I can't blame her for forgetting the stuffing.

Hope was not lost, however. When we got to my aunt's house where Christmas Eve festivities were taking place, we searched her basement for stuffing, but to no avail. Finally, one of my cousins (aunt to the baby the present was for) called their mom, who knew just where her bag of stuffing was. Though I'd hoped to avoid EVERYONE in the family knowing how I'd procrastinated, I couldn't ask for a more understanding bunch of people. I really do think it's genetic.

The next day, Dowy was kind of the same. I was embroidering her face at the last minute and had just applied the last strip of tape to the haphazard wrapping when sis and her family pulled up to Mommy's.

Though it was harried there at the end, and though I'd intended to make 12 handmade gifts and only finished two, the delight on the faces of those two cuties made my entire holiday season.

Now I'm working on a classic teddy bear for a friend who will become a daddy in about a month. I've got a week and a day to finish it, but I'm pretty confident. Will report back on the progress soon. Hopefully with this one, I won't be completing the finishing touches on the way to seeing him.

Capturing Christmas Vacation

One more day to go ...

I feel kind of like a kid on the last day of school. Just one more day of work and then I don't have to be back until Tuesday. Something tells me it's going to be a long day, though. In this picture, Marcy is trying to catch a snowball, but I think it looks like she's doing some sort of happy, school's out dance. It's like she knows she gets to go to Grandma's.

I'm really excited for this Christmas, because I got a new camera and I can't wait to play around with it. I love taking candid portraits of my family members when they don't know I'm doing it. I think people look so much better in pictures when they have no idea they're being taken.

So, to be a covert photo sneak, it's essential to not use a flash. I hate using a flash anyway, because it makes people look totally washed out and blows everything out so that all you have left is contrasts.

Being very poor, I have a very low-end camera that I got on sale on Black Friday. Among the joys of living in a small town is having specialty stores where you're addressed by name upon walking in the front door. You receive trustworthy advice and a never-ending free pass for asking questions of people who are experts in their field. Such is the case with Hokenson's, the camera store here in town.

Both Bill and Bob are excellent photographers who know what they're talking about, but also know how to explain everything in layman's terms. I took photography in high school, so I used to know how to use my 1970s Canon AE-1 fairly well. I also used to know how to develop black and white film. But, those days are gone, my Canon is broken and I don't have a darkroom. Seeing as film is quite expensive to develop, I decided I really wanted a digital camera.

Enter the Black Friday sale. I found some cash in a pocket and had some more money in my savings account, so I decided to check out the sales. I told Bob what I wanted and how much I had to spend. For $70 -- which was $20 less than usual -- I got an Olympus T-100.

So far, it's a great little camera. It's a 12 megapixel with 3x optical zoom. There are these neat art filters, which can distort the image and you can manually adjust all sorts of setting.

I am by no means an expert photographer, but this Christmas, I'm hoping some of the things I've learned from having to shoot at work will help out in my low-light settings.

The biggest thing is your ISO setting. The lower the light, the higher you want to set this. On my little camera, the ISO goes up to 1600, which I was recently advised is the highest you really want to set it. Any higher, and you start to get a lot of noise -- the grainy, pixelated look.

There are other settings, which I don't quite understand. Though they're the same as they were on the old AE-1, I haven't had time to read the manual to figure out which is which and how to use them. But one neat feature of my camera is it has little screens that show how changing each setting will affect the exposure. Playing around with the camera before the big event you want to shoot helps a lot. I've been having fun, and I'll continue to share tips I pick up along the way.

In the meantime, I really have to go to work. As anxious as I am not to start what promises to be a long day, I'm already late. But, with the promise of lovely vacation time on the horizon, surely my mood will be much more cheerful than my bah-humbug attitude of late.