Crochet flower

I added a flower to the cloche hat:

Apron

I started sewing this apron in the 101 class I took a few months back at Stonemountain and Daughter. Once the class was over, I was busy with other work and the unfinished apron lay in a corner. I finally took a few hours here and there to complete it.

I love the fabric. I reminds me of Q*Bert.

Crochet cloche hat

I used most of a skein of Red Heart's "Magical" yarn in the color "abracadabra" to make this cloche hat. It switches between various shades and textures of brown, purple, and grey. I loved it as soon as I saw it. It was a fun challenge, since some of the grey and purple contained larger tufts that made it more difficult to see the different loops I was supposed to pull through.

The entire hat is done with half-double crochet except the brim, which is sc, sc, 2 dc in the next 3 st. I like how it sticks straight out.

 There is one little stripe of glittery purple on this side.

So many tufts!

Tree sweater forest

"Yarn-bombing" artists hit a number of Bay Area cities with unexpected and whimsical knitted creations

Most recently, the city of Livermore decided to dip its toe into the movement by hosting a Tree Sweater Forest -- a more mainstream example of this trend, yarn bombers say. The "highly organized and sanctioned" event as Rosendin described it, will decorate the trunks of more than 30 trees located on First Street between Railroad Avenue and Maple and L Streets. San Jose and Santa Rosa have hosted similar events. Installed on Saturday, the tree sweaters will be up until Nov. 22 and then donated to the Valley Humane Society for comfort pieces or bedding for shelter dogs and cats.

I made a trip to downtown Livermore just to see the tree sweaters. It was a Saturday and there were many people walking by and wondering about the sweaters. Here are my favorite nine sweaters (the first two pictures are of the same one). Click on any picture to see it come up in a larger size.

Tshirts into reusable bags

I love reusable bags. I have ten or so, and it's not enough. So when I recently went through my closet and set aside clothes to give away, and found these two tshirts that were too stretched out to keep or donate, I decided to sew them up into bags.

I turned in the sleeves on this one and simply sewed their edges to the shoulders of the shirt. Mostly I did that because it was the lazy way, but it also provides more reinforcement for heavy items.

 Here's a close up of the stitching that holds the inside-out sleeve in place.

Hanging as a bag. I turned the whole shirt inside-out when I was sewing up the bottom, so you can't see the stitching there.

Here is the second shirt. (The purple octopus is saying, "No, you've got it all wrong, AGAIN.") For this one I cut off the sleeves and sewed the raw edges under. However I wanted to keep the original hemming at the bottom so I just sewed straight across it.

Quick garden update

I'd originally used sisal rope to make a trellis for my peas, but between exposure and the dogs and cats squeezing through it, the rope broke in multiple places. Since I have plenty of poultry wire left over from the wheat grass mini-pasture project, I set that up for the next generation of peas.

The potatos that I had planted too early in the year are finally growing! I'm piling on the dirt to get more tubers.

Garden update

I'm a little behind on fall plantings, but I've gotten peas, dill, parsley, and spinach into containers. I still need to plant scallions, radishes, and maybe carrots.

I set up a raised bed with wheat grass for the dogs and cats.

They are enjoying it!

Although one of them has also discovered the joy of digging giant holes underneath the lillies, where there are breaks in the weed cover.

The sunflowers are happily blooming, but I discovered colonies of aphids and aphid-herding ants under the leaves. I sprayed them down with soapy water a couple of days ago - today I'll find out if it worked.

I saw this gorgeous plant at a nursery and couldn't resist bringing it home. I'd ever seen one before - it's Celosia.

The raspberries are finally growing!

And the strawberries as well!

The ferns are happy plants, too.

That's all!

Puzzle hunt party, part 3

Continued from part 2.
They spend some time discussing the definition of "paces" and trying to decide who should walk them. At this point it is completely dark.

Eddie ends up uncovering the "treasure."

But what does it mean? Someone runs the "code" through Google and they realize that it is a YouTube video ID. It shows a collie retrieving a tissue from a box.

Ray heads over to the box of tissues on my bedside table.

Inside of which she finds a big button that makes a "ding dong" doorbell noise when pressed.

The gang heads outside again and to the main door of the house, which is locked. They poke around and find a piece of paper underneath the doormat. It says, "Find it!" and then gives the license plate number of Miki's car.

Miki recognizes the number and leads everyone over to her car. "When did you hide something in my car??" I didn't get pictures since it was too dark, but she directed them to examine the license plates and wheel wells. Sure enough, there is a Nosework tin hidden in a wheel well. (I knew that Miki, as a Nosework instructor, would get a kick out of this.) Inside is a housekey, which opens the front door.

They entered the house and found a plastic easter egg in the middle of the floor. A quick search (I didn't want this part to take too long, nor for my friends to be getting into my housemate's personal items) yielded 25 eggs, each of which contained a Lindt chocolate and a tiny strip of paper with a bit of writing on it. They assembled the strips, and Allison (a horticulturalist) quickly identified "Helianthus annuus" as the name of the common sunflower. In fact, she had already noticed that one of my sunflowers had had another strip of paper wrapped around its stem, and had put it into her pocket until the appropriate time.

That piece of paper read, "The meat of this animal was the original main ingredient of canned dog food in the US." "Horse!" cried multiple people.

They headed back to my part of the house and Alex picked up a My Little Pony to find a magnet stuck to its leg.

The magnet was to be used to on an invisible maze, which had another magnet behind a piece of cardboard. Laurence pointed out that this would have been very difficult to figure out if he had not already poked at the cardboard and noticed that there was a magnet underneath. I conceded that I hadn't really thought that part through.

Miki tried her hand at the maze.

Then Eddie.

Meanwhile, other people were getting hungry and worn out from the puzzles.

Aaron gave it a try, using a marker to chart the maze.

At this point it was so late that I gave them permission to just pull the maze off the wall.

Eddie and Alex inspected the magnet that had been on the other side. There was a picture of the classic Monopoly pieces on the other side, minus one.

They realized that the missing piece was the iron, and turned over the actual iron I had sitting next to my sewing kit.

"Adorn forgo spit" turned out to be an anagram for "poison dart frog." They used a website to figure this out rather than actually writing out the possibilities, which I had expected. Agnes remembered that I had a green plush frog with magents on its feet, and it was attached to a set of metal shelves. Stuck to one of its feet was a little key. This was what they'd been working toward all along - the key was for a tiny lock which "locked" a ribbon wrapped around the cake box!

Everyone was ready to be finished with the puzzles at this point. We made BLTs for dinner and ate the cake for dessert. Then a few stayed to watch the new epsiode of Doctor Who. Props to Eddie and Alex for washing all the dishes after dinner! (And anyone else who helped - I was watching TV at this point.)

The consensus seems to be that the puzzles were enjoyable, but should have started earlier and there should be fewer per party. It took a total of 1 hour and 45 minutes to finish them. Next year I will have more experience and be better prepared! I said that I wanted my friends to set up a puzzle hunt for me next year, and they said, "Yes, and we'll laugh as you try to figure them out all by yourself!"

Puzzle hunt party, part 2

Continued from part 1.

The Firefox browser opened up to Scrabble.com. Aaron, who had previously visited my home and played scrabble with me, immediately located my game. I have a "travel" addition, which lets the players stick the letters into squares that hold them fast - convenient for setting up a puzzle.

It was not so straightforward, though. They picked out many words hidden with the square, such as "how," "measure," "man," "red," and "herring." (And also "anal," which had not been intentional!)

Alex thought aloud, "How do you measure? Measuring tape?" She looked to her left, and there was my shelving unit full of tools, including - yes! - measuring tape.

Laurence pulled the tape out and, under the 6' mark (roughly the height of a man), were numbers: coordinates which turned out to point to the French Trail in nearby Redwood Regional Park. After a bit of a false lead (what around here is French?), Allison noticed a map of Redwood Park on my wall.

On the other side of the map was a hand drawn map of the mini agility course I'd set out in my front yard. I thought that perhaps only the dog people among my friends would understand the symbols, but in fact multiple other people immediately recognized them. Off they went to the front yard, where they discovered a plastic bag filled with tea leaves inside the tunnel.

Back inside to the kitchen, they located the tea tins, and the corresponding one included a picture of Chimera.

In what was an unsettling moment for him, everyone turned to stare at the dog and a few people started to reach for him at once. He tucked his tail and moved away, and then they calmed down. Agnes called him over and he jumped onto her lap, letting her pick him up.

He turned out to be wearing a tag that said, "Prepare for a rainy day."

Someone asked, "How do you prepare for a rainy day?"

"Umbrella!" cried Laurence.

It turned out to be a stick and a small piece of plastic rain gutter hidden inside one of my galoshes.

Boy, is Ray on the case, or what?

Not pictured, because it was now dark outside, was everyone running outside and looking at the gutters. Allison pointed out that there was a small section of gutter piping wedged up above the outdoor light. Alex pushed at it and four balls fell out and bounced all over the deck! She immediately knew what to do - "The basketball!"

I had attached a plastic container to the wall along with a rectangle of white paper marked to look like a basketball board. Laurence dunked a ball into the container and was rewarded with a mass of purple glitter raining down on his arm as a hole opened at the bottom.

Chimera stared to eat the glitter, so I shooed him away and took a moment to vacuum the bulk of it up.

In the meantime, the guests went over to a piece of paper which was also covered in a pile of purple glitter and dumped it off. The writing underneath said "Sduw ri d edodqfhg euhdnidvw!" It didn't take long for someone to realize that it was a Caesar shift of 3, and the message said, "Part of a balanced breakfast!"

What's in a balanced breakfast? Eggs? Bacon?

Agnes is hungry and losing interest...

Allison finds the cereal.

And inside is a (homemade) jigsaw puzzle!

They diligently get to work taping the pieces together.

Although it takes longer than I had anticipated. I had gotten carried away when cutting up the pieces.

The completed puzzle (minus two pieces, which disappeared).

The back of the puzzle contains instructions to walk through the doorway, then "forward 4 paces, right 7 paces, left 3 paces," and so on.

To be continued...