Another type of art

I've been trying to keep busy lately, so when I came across this, I knew it had to be my new project! In case you're wondering why I haven't been keeping myself busy with yarn work .. Well that's another story for another blog post. But I have a perfectly good reason!!

Anyway, I went out to buy materials to make the DIY paw print art. I decided to keep it simple and just use black paint.

There's my doggies with Yuna, the doodle looking particularly concerned about what's going on. 

We set up newspapers on the ground, and with treats in hand, we were ready to begin! None of the dogs seemed to like having their paws painted, but Yuna was more tolerant than Ellie. I really wanted to do this though, because I know dogs don't live very long and this will be something that will last forever. 

That's the finished product! I put my hand print on too. I know it all doesn't fit together very well since my hand was a bit too big but I think that way really captures our characters and interactions with one another- unstructured messy fun! 

Warning: Cheesy post ahead! My Golden 10 Year anniversary!

So yesterday was my 10th anniversary with my boyfriend! I'm so glad that I got to spend it with him before he jets off to China, and I won't be able to see him for 5 months, which is the longest we would ever be away from one another since we started dating in gr. 8. I think before that, the longest was only one month which felt long enough already.

Anyway, to celebrate, I dug up lots of old pictures of every year we were together.

2005: Back when taking photos in photo booths were all the rage

2006: Trip to Disneyland with my family (Oh my God, his hair.)

2007: That time in Playland where we won all those toys

2008: When we tried to look fancy for my birthday dinner!

2009: The prom! Our last year of high school

2010: Celebrating the Vancouver Olympics

2011: Tandem biking around Stanley Park

2012: Handmade Mario cake for his birthday!

2013: We started getting into pumpkin carving on Halloween

2014: The year we brought Ellie home [edit: found a better family photo of us three :) ]

That brings us to this year!

 2015: Marks 10 years! We dressed up all nicely to celebrate! 

I love making cards! I was pretty proud of how cute it turned out and so I had to share. Although I drew it myself, I copied images from the internet.

We walked around Granville Island where there are so many arts and craft stores. Sadly, no yarn stores (they even had a store dedicated to people who beaded as a hobby, which I would've thought was less popular than knitting/crocheting).

We topped off the night with dinner at Kobe where they offered Teppenyaki! The chef really put on a good show. The picture in the middle is a cocktail drink we ordered just because they allowed you to take the cup home, which I thought would make a great memento.

Anyways, if 10 years passed by just like that, then I'm sure 5 months will be gone in a flash (trying to make myself feel better haha). I am excited about having more time to myself to knit though! Happy knitting guys!



Love is in the Air

Happy Valentine's Day! And it's all about love. Let me spell it out for you!

Yeah, I totally saw another knit blogger spell things out of yarn during Christmas (like 'joy', 'snow' etc.) so I was inspired to try to write words out of yarn too! I thought it would be tough to get the yarn to stay in the right place, but it all just stayed put :)

Despite people's complaints about Valentine's Day being heavily commercialized, I love Valentine's Day! Especially the Valentine's Day cards! 

Those are cards I've collected from the kids at work! Isn't it sweet?

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my boyfriend today though. He usually makes me plan things, but I can't think of a thing! Maybe dinner, or spend the day with our dog? Whatever we end up doing, I hope it'll be fun! We're not really a romantic kind of couple, but we're usually pretty good at making special days special (I mean that in a good way.. usually!)!



Toasty Toes!

Hi everyone! I finished my slippers! They're pretty trendy if I do say so myself! They look like knit Ugg boots for indoors. And, another more superficial benefit of them is that they cover my ugly toes when I take photos indoors. Surprisingly, slippers are knit completely different from socks (well, at least these ones were).

It took a little longer than expected to finish them because I've been so burnt-out from work, but I think if I just straight knitted, it would take less than a week to complete. By the way, here is the pattern!

For such pretty looking slippers, it was relatively easy to make. The only trouble I had was attaching the band to the actual slipper. Thanks to some quick thinking, I used stitch holders to hold the band in place while I sewed it together.

Another problem I ran into, was finding six identical buttons. I went to the dollar store (because Michael's buttons are so expensive) and bought two giant bags of buttons thinking that there's got to be six matches somewhere in there.

Yeah. The most I found were three of the same. So then, what did I use on my slippers? Well, to be honest, I just used ones that were similar enough. I mean, I don't think you can really tell unless you look really close. At least I've got a ton of extra buttons for future projects!

Too bad winter is almost over. I don't really have a reason to wear these beautiful slippers!



Out with the Old, in with the New!

In a week, it's going to be me and my boyfriend's 10 year anniversary (time flies doesn't it?)! Needless to say, I'm super excited about it, and have been planning meticulously for what to do and what to get. My boyfriend however, decided to give me my gift early! Ta-dah!

I have joined the 21st century and now finally own an iPhone! The phone on the left is my old phone .. even kids have mistaken it for a toy phone before, ha! I've had it for 5 years now, so I guess an upgrade has been long overdue. What I'm most excited about though, is the camera! Remember how after almost every post I complain about my shitty camera? Well, the iPhone camera is supposed to be much better than the camera I've been using on my Window's tablet. Hopefully the days of blurred details on my precious knitted objects will be a thing of the past. I want everyone to see every stitch, every design and every mistake I've made on one of my projects. I hope it doesn't sound too silly being excited about a camera phone, since it's by no means a professional camera, but hey, it's a huge upgrade for me!

 

This is a photo of my current project from my tablet:

 



 

I've edited it to make it look nicer already. And, here is a picture from my new phone!

 Okay, maybe I should've taken the same photo with my two different cameras to really drive the point home, but I think it's pretty clear anyway that the photo quality is different.

 

In case you were wondering why it's taken me this long to knit a pair of slippers that should've taken me maybe only a week, it's because I have been planning for this big event. But no worries, progress is slow, but it's happening!



Eyeing them down ...

Yet again, I've already begun eyeing new patterns and I'm not even finished with my current project yet. My next project however, has already become a raging debate in my head.

Should I make that crochet hat next? My friend actually gave me a written pattern on how to do it, which I think would look awesome for my boyfriend. But .. I also found this really creative and original gem, and I do want to expand on my knitted dolls category! Or I also find the desire to make another huge project extremely tempting. I want to make something similar to this plain hooded cardigan except more multicolored so I can use up my leftover yarn which I just have so so so much of. This pillow can also help eat up leftovers though, and it's a crochet project (which I still want to hone that particular skill) and I've never made a pillow before. Alternatively, I was considering knitting just anything from the knitting books that I got for Christmas since I haven't used them yet (but I have looked through them! .. And then I could also say I used knitting books before, ha!)

Decisions, decisions ... in the meantime, my slipper is coming along quite nicely ..

It almost looks like it's made for a baby, (one of my coworkers actually asked if I was pregnant when she saw me knitting this at work, and seemed surprised when I said no, its for my adult feet), but it fits pretty okay on me when I thrust my foot into this unfinished business although its tough to tell too accurately since its still on the needles. I hope it turns out useable .. the pattern is seriously adorable, which I will show you guys once I'm officially finished with these adult booties!