I'm getting Married next Saturday!!!

yep, thats right I am adding that to my todos for this upcoming week 1.finish crafting christmas presents, 2. fulfill order for five pairs of crochet handwarmers 3. plan and get married. Holy Cow! Do I have my head on straight?! Well when it all comes down to it, its about Aram and I and how in love we are and that we just want to be married... to make it official. We already feel married, very married and committed to each other. The hard part with all of this is my health. I feel alright and then I get up and talk with aram or my friend who we live with, Angela and I crawl back into bed tired and aching. When I first came up with the idea of getting married while aram's family is in town one idea kind of led into another and all of a sudden I was going to be a in big fancy dress and plans started to get out of control. I just don't have the energy for all of that. So the plans are very simple albeit unconventional, I am going to wear my normal clothes, and aram as well, we are going to go to Top of the World in laguna beach, and exchange vows and rings with the help of our friend who is an officiant, in front of our friends and his family. I figure that next year when I am healthier and we have more money we can plan a big celebration and include everyone that is missing from this wedding.
In the meantime, I got an unexpected order for five pairs of wrist warmers for before next wednesday... and I am in shock at how fast I have been crocheting (maybe I am getting faster than I used to be?!!) I already have one pair finished with part of another done. Plus I have a few more Christmas presents to make, wrap and send out. so for an injured sick person on bedrest I have committed myself to a lot. I just have to remember that i can always get presents late to people and everyone will understand.
I watched Julie and Julia today what a sweet movie about one's passion saving them. i can relate in certain ways since I feel that crocheting and crafting has helped me to keep my hands and mind busy while I have been healing. working on fiber arts has given me something to focus on, get better at and express myself. I am glad that I have had something cause I have really needed it. I have such a sense of accomplishment when I have finished something that pleases me.
alright, got to get back to work on handwarmers. Happy Holidays!!!

so many presents...so little time!

Well I have been busy making my presents for friends and family. I have been having so much fun with learning and getting better at amigurumi that I have been putting off making presents for people. I have spent some serious time in the last week thinking what is the perfect amigurumi animal for each of my close friends or family. I think I have it mostly figured out and have something like thirteen gifts to make (most are amigurumi animals) to make in the next twenty days! so I am putting the crochet hook to the grindstone and getting busy!
...But first, I wanted to share the recent amis that I have made. I have a parakeet that lives in my room and is in my eyeline from where I lay all day long, his name is sunshine and is such a joy to watch. so I have been wanting to make an ami of a bird and started out thinking that I was making a bird that looked more like a dove for a christmas ornament, but a I went it started to look more and more like my birdy sunshine. And then as I finished I was in shock how similar they look! I am so pleased and just love my little bird!
I made a pig from a pattern by Katja Heinlein. What an adorable pig, I thought about giving him away, but just love him so much, is it normal for a thirty year old woman to be so attached to stuffed animals? Oh well, I guess i am. Anyway, the pig and the bird seem like they are getting along quite well, with piggy giving piggy back rides to the birdy :)
Next I made a tropical fish for my friend's son who loves fish and even has trained his fish to make shots with a basketball in their aquarium. Again I was very pleased how the fish came out. I have a certain process for when I start a new Amigurumi animal when I don't have a pattern. I draw rough sketch and imagine the colors and how I am going make the shapes that I am thinking of, then I start to crochet. Then it seems like the animal takes on a life of it's own and I am just trying to keep up with what IT wants to look like versus what I thought it should look like. I am a slave to the art!
Anyway I am very very much enjoying my crafts, next I have planned a turtle from Ana Paula Rimoli ( I bought her Amigurumi Two book last night as an early christmas present to myself). then Yoda, a dragon, a chicken, wall-E...plus things like dreidels, necklaces, scarfs and something a friend asked me for called 'glittens'... I am drowning in my own creative ambitions!!!! but I love it :) oh well back to crocheting....Happy Holidays!

new creations

Well I had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with my good friends and was pleasantly surprised to find that so many people showed up so it was a big and happy crowd. I have finished the angel that I have been working on. this is the first amigurumi that I have made completely improvised from my own imagination. My mom asked me to make an angel ornament and so I went looking for angel patterns and didn't find the right thing for what I was thinking, so I set out to make one of my own. I fiddled quite a bit with the dress and figured out that making the dress on the body of the angel helped with a lot of problems about the sleeves and size and things like that. I am working on writing down and cleaning up the pattern for the angel and then I will publish it. Anyway, I finished the angel and gave it to my friend who I sell at the OC swap meet with and within two hours the angel was sold with a request for a second one!! I just love it when people actually are willing to give me money for something that I do only because I want to.
The last two weeks have been quite auspicious for me and making money at my craft. I made some fingerless gloves for my friend and she wears them all the time and requested that I now make three more pairs for Christmas presents and she is willing to pay me for it!! I worked on the patter for awhile and I came up with something that I really like, they are simple and yet very attractive and warm, the flower embellishment really adds to it and actually helps to figure out which hands are left and right! Anyway, that is all for now.. Happy Knitting!!

Introduction to myself :)

Hi! This is my very first blog ever! I am starting this blog because I want a place to start to publish my patterns. So I guess I will write a little of relevant information about myself first.

I went to beauty school in 2000 and the first time I touched hair to cut I knew that I was in my element, it just felt right. I worked in a wonderful salon in Santa Barbara called Cheri bibi which taught me a lot and nurtured my talents and I came to specialize in Wedding Hair styling. Its like my hands just knew what to do. So when I learned how to knit from a friend in 2003 my hands caught right on and I loved it! That first year I made scarves for every single woman in my life as christmas presents (I think it was like twelve or thirteen scarves). I stayed up late most night knitting away and loved it so much that I could hardly stop. I mainly made scarves and moved onto hats and baby booties. But then I got divorced at the end of 2005 and went traveling for two years. I put all my stuff including my needles and yarn, sadly and many times missed them.

So then a couple of years ago I settled in orange county needing to get a job and reestablish myself back in the 3D world lol :) I started to knit again and even found that I live next to the second largest yarn shop in the United States! ( The Yarn Lady) Then last year on September 8th 2008 I took an after dinner walk with my best friend and was bitten by a rattlesnake. It is the by far the most painful thing I have ever experienced! I was in the hospital for 8 days and when I got out of the hospital was not able to do much of anything but lay with my leg elevated. I was not able to knit or read or do anything that required any amount of concentration for a long long time. Finally in november sometime I started to knit again and finished an afghan that I had been working on for my mom.

My Fiance, Aram, moved back from Hawaii in january and we moved in together with a friend of mine with four young boys who is going through a nasty divorce. It was a mutually beneficial decision because we needed a lower rent situation since I cannot work and I like other people around to help me since I cannot move very well still from the rattlesnake bite and it helps angela since she needed some help while going through the divorce. I started a business selling Flexible Barrettes called Flexi8's in january and have been selling them at the Orange County Marketplace every weekend and started to build and build my business so that when I am well, I will be able to make some good money. This has been a great evolution for me because I am getting to sell something that is so pretty and I get to touch hair again! If you are curious I sell them at www.lillarose.biz/lani

Then last May Aram went to go get me some change at the Marketplace and came back with a book about crochet Afghans all proud of himself at having given me the perfect gift. I thought, but I don't know how to crochet! but I thought that I could learn. so then I went online and watched youtube videos and figured out how to crochet. I felt like a whole knew world was open to me. I applied this new craft to another love of mine of handbags. I made a market bag on one of the labels of yarn that I bought and started to sell them at the marketplace. eventually I made my own pattern for a farmer's market type bag. they are super cute! and I wanted to share my pattern with the world, so I thought of blogging at that point. since then I have found a type of crocheting called 'amigurumi'. These are these super cute animals and dolls made from crocheting in the round. so far I have made a lion, wiener dog, dragon and shark and now I am moving onto making my own patterns which I will also share as I go. right now I am working on Christmas ornaments for my family and friends and possibly to sell as I go. I am working on an angel which is in pieces at the moment and I am trying to figure out how to make her dress look nice. I found the website Ravelry.com and set up an account under 'redlflame' its a great website because there are sooo many patterns and ideas to look at to get inspiration.

I have a dreams of someday I would like to own or work on a sheep farm and grow the plants to dye the wool with, then dye the wool and spin it to make my fiber projects. So that is mostly what I can think of to explain myself and my relation to the fiber world. I don't know if anyone is interested, but thats alright, this is more about what I want to do for myself.

well Happy Thanksgiving! best to everyone out there... Lani