Roar, Roar Dinosaur!

With Jeffrey’s second birthday fast approaching I decided to make him another sock animal. He recently has become interested in dinosaurs, so a dinosaur it was! Since this was the first time I was making a dinosaur, I used two plain socks that I didn’t really care about. I’m pretty happy with the end result as the contrasting colours worked well together. One sock became the body of the dinosaur and the other became the spikes, mouth and limbs. I used felt for the mouth, eyes and spots.

I had some difficulties with the spine. Firstly, it was difficult to stuff due to its size and shape, and secondly, getting it to stay pinned in place to sew it to the body. In the end I found that pinning it with safety pins and then sewing the ends on before sewing the rest in place worked really well. However, once that was done I found another problem… It looked wrong as there was no spike by the head of the dinosaur! So, out came the scraps that had been discarded and an additional spike was fashioned and put into place. Presto!

This week I was also requested to try and make a version of ‘Slimey’ the worm from Sesame Street. This is the result.

While he doesn’t look much like ‘Slimey’ (I gave no promises to my friend), he is cute and perfect for little kids. I used pipe-cleaners within the body to allow him to bend as well, which should be fun for the kids too.

The other project I undertook this week was to make a sock monkey baby rattle. This one is for my baby. He has been made using one baby sock, stuffing, embroidery thread and a bell. 

Upon testing with my baby he seems to be a hit! Since the rattle is for little babies, I embroidered the eyes instead of using buttons to make sure there was no choking hazard.

New Goals and This Week's Accomplishments

So while I was away I made some cool purchases. Two items I purchased were little books on how to knit and crochet ‘sock’ monkey’s! Super cool, right? 

One of my goals as a sewer/handcrafter is to learn new skills and undertake new projects. Currently I only know how to knit in a straight line, with a basic stitch, and I have never crocheted before in my life. So, now I have a new skill or two which I am going to learn. Step one – learn to crochet. My Nan-in-law has kindly agreed to give me crochet lessons and I’m going to be starting them with her soon. So excited!

The other cool purchases that I made were… you guessed it… more socks! Well, I can’t help myself, I was in America and they just had so many cool socks, for so much cheaper than what I can buy them for here. So – are 60 pairs of socks too many to buy on a holiday?

Now that I am back home I have also done a reorganisation of my craft supplies and this included an inventory of the socks that I have in stock. I did a count and I have 177 pairs of socks – best get cracking to use them!

This week I also finished off my sock ‘clown’ monkey. I think he is quite cute in his own way. He may not look entirely like a clown but I think his little afro adds to his charm. The reason he ended up with an afro is because when I sewed his hair on I didn’t like the original loop style of hair that I did – so he got a haircut!

Another thing that I have managed to accomplish this week was to finally create a logo/banner for myself. You can see it now at the top of the page. The handprints that are used in the background are actually my kids handprints. Jeffrey had a great time making them – Matthew, well he didn’t really care but wasn’t the most cooperative.

All in all a busy week – lets hope the coming one is just as productive.

Home Again, Home Again Jiggity Jig!

Well, we are back home again finally! We have actually been back in Perth for a week, but have been staying at my parents house as my mum was kind enough to offer to help me get the kids clocks turned back to Perth time. Thanks mum!

The journey home took the kids, my mum and I longer than everyone else as we decided to break up the journey with a couple of stops to give the kids a break. So we had a 2 hour flight from Kalispell (Montana, USA) to Denver (Colorado), a couple of hours lay-over, then a 3 hour flight from Denver to Las Angeles (California), where we stopped for the night. The next day we took a flight to Sydney (New South Wales, Australia) – this was the long haul flight of 14 hours. We then had another stop for the night before our 5 hour flight home to Perth. You know those kids on flights who scream the whole time? All I can say is thank God my kids aren’t those kids!

I learnt several things travelling with my two children under two:

1: We would have been better off not using the sky-cot. The problem with using the sky-cot when you have an older child with you as well as an infant is that you cannot lift the armrests on the seats behind the bulk-head. You also are constantly having to go in and out of the overhead lockers to access your things since you can’t have them at your feet.

2: Travelling with an infant who needs formula for the flight is a serious pain in the bum compared to breast feeding! Cleaning bottles is a problem, and you have to have the tin of formula on the plane with you taking up space. Not only that, but you end up spending more time going through security at the airport since they have to scan any made up formula or pre-measured water.

3: Don’t bother with books or activities for the toddler if you have a tablet with games and movies on it. You just end up hauling around these things and not using them.

4: Thank God for the tablet with games and movies on it! It was our life-saver when Jeffrey was over-tired and losing the plot.

Now that we are home I have to do all the unpacking, laundry, shopping, cooking and getting back to regular life. This is also going to have to include a trip to the doctor for Matthew to get his next round of vaccinations poor love.

We had a wonderful time while we were away seeing all of our family – but it never feels like enough time.

I’m hoping to get settled back in to regular life within the next week and back to my crafts. I’m super excited to show you what I picked up while I was away!!! Stay tuned to see!