OtGW Halloween Party

What's this?? A bonus post? Yes.

In addition to the costumes for Halloween, I decided to have a party. I then decided it needed a theme: Over the Garden Wall. If you haven't seen it, now is the perfect season. Just fyi, it is suitable for the whole family! To carry this theme off I decided to make a few decorative items and a corresponding menu of snacks.

You might remember hearing about OtGW when I made my very own Jason Funderburker frog a while back. Well it was easy to start planning from there. We watched the show again and I took extra notes, thinking about each episode and elements that I could incorporate into the party decor.

I have a piano, so Jason Funderburker sat proudly on top as he played it in the opening. A copy of Adelaide Parade, a song from the show, sheet music was printed out and set on the music stand. Along with our prized copy of Wirt's cassette tape For Sarah.

I purchased two chalkboard signs, one in a pumpkin shape with easel back, and a second shaped like an arrow. These I decorated with orange chalk. The pumpkin sign reads "Welcome to the Unknown" with elements of type and illustration referencing the title cards of each episode. The arrow became a "Pottsfield 1 mile" sign referencing the sign in the episode 2 leading to one of the more creepy episodes if you ask me.

Each room's main table had a centerpiece decoration as well, like a large pumpkin with lots of little glowing pumpkin lights for the town of Pottsfield and a small oil lamp and bundle of sticks for the woodsman.

One of the larger decorations I made was Enoch, also from episode 2.

Enoch

I bought one of those "craft pumpkins", 2 yards of burlap, a few rolls of darker burlap wired ribbon, and a metal 12 inch wreath frame.  I used a dremel tool to cut the pumpkin. First, I cut a hole in the bottom of the pumpkin not too large but wide enough for my hand and added smaller holes around it which I would use to sew the burlap body to. I also drilled two holes in the stem and used floral wire to make a loop to be able to hang Enoch up.

I used two colors of felt I had on hand as well as a sheet of white craft foam to make the eyes, nose and mouth of his face. They were glued on using Fabri-tac glue which is really amazing for felt.
Once the head was complete, I let it all dry in place.

I cut my burlap into one long wide strip to form the core of the body, about 8" wide by 32" long, then into thinner strips to start layering it on along with sections of the ribbons. I sewed it all down to the flat burlap core then sewed that finished body onto the pumpkin head. Then I "sewed" the burlap and ribbon body to the bottom of the pumpkin to form his neck area with a short yarn needle and crochet thread. I did this because I figured that hot glue would not really work in any lasting way since the burlap body was so heavy. Once it was done I thought I would attach the burlap body ends to the wreath frame to weigh it down and not just flap around like a wind sock, but the burlap was heavy enough that I decided not to.

The food was also appropriately themed. I printed out small signs to go with the various foods:

We had a pond of gummy frogs, to be named by whomever picked one out, as an homage to Greg's pet frog, Jason Funderburker, and the slew of names he has throughout the show.

Eat your Dirt (and worms) is a reference to episode 9 and as Beatrice's Mamma bird told Wirt to do. It was chocolate pudding (the cook kind not instant), with crushed Oreo dirt, and a gummy worm.

In episode 7, Aunties Whispers actually eats one the sinister black turtles that appear throughout the show, so I purchased some chocolate Turtle candies and added a sign. Next time I might crochet some black turtles...

Along with our favorite halloween candy (which I tried to find a pair of Ants in your Pants game pants to put it in as a nod to Greg keeping his candy in his pants) we also had my favorite Funfetti cupcakes with pumpkin flavored mini marshmallows and fall leaves sprinkles on top. Last but not least, I pulled out the orange pumpkin shaped spritz cookies I made.

orange pumpkin and fall shaped spritz cookies

I like to go all out for Halloween if you can't tell... I do not have a Pintrest account because I know I would find a million ideas and more. We had fun, even if the rain meant we couldn't do a bonfire like usual.

Hamby-Chan

After the last few things I've made, I wanted to do something silly, yarn consuming, and less ambitious. I've had two burger related crochet projects in my Evernote crochet notebook for a while. So this post will be part one of these two posts. I must be watching too much Food Wars anime...

First step is getting all the yarn colors together. A quick rummage through my yarn stash and I found most of the colors I would need: Soft white for the inside of the bun, green lettuce, red tomato, orange cheese, brown patty. I went out and picked up a skein of Bernat Satin in Sable for the bun since I wasn't too happy with the tans in my stash. I used a 4mm hook for this little burger.

purple and white is red onion on part two actually...

I know Nerdigurumi called hers Hamburger-kun and it is her pattern after all, but I'm naming mine Hamby-chan. Once I had the colors assembled the pattern was pretty easy to follow.

I am not sure I really get the slip stitch row at the end of the top bun part. I mean I got how to do it and I guess it works ok, but I kind of think you could just work into the back loops to get the same sort of thing. I also think I would arrange the "toppings" differently if I made this again. The tomato section being between the lettuce and the cheese makes it a little hard to see.

I used 12mm eyes as those are the ones I have the most of. I also embroidered a few "sesame seeds" in soft white to the top as well. The cute cheek blushies just put it over the top. Finished Hamby-chan is about 5in in all directions.

Looks good enough to eat! Maybe... if it wasn't so cute...

Kinda odd to think I went from hating hamburgers in high school, to loving them now. What's your favorite burger place? Think mine are Five Guys, Moo-yah and Hopdoddy.

Time to complete: about 6 hours because I was lazy, bet you could knock it out in three
Difficulty: Easy

Fall Sugar Pecans

Not crochet, I know... but I make these Sugar Coated Pecans pretty much every fall. They don't last very long because they are so addictive. I often give some as gifts as well. With it officially being fall I thought I would share my secret ingredients with you...

After 30 minutes.

 The secret is that I add two extra ingredients to the sugar mix: Ground Clove and Ground Ginger!

Finished

The extra spices give a great depth of flavor and add a bit of warmth to the taste. I'd say I put 1/4 teaspoon of the clove, and 1/8 of the ginger... I do make a double batch when I make these since Sam's sells a 2 pound bag.

Let me know if you try them out. They are so easy and dear lord do they make your house smell awesome. As the person making em too you get to have one... or several... during that cooldown phase where they are just a little bit warm. Gotta make sure they aren't bad, right?

Ok, back crochet.

Sushi Fish

A cousin-in-law (relationship terms are confusing...?) is graduating this month. She is going off to study at the Texas A&M Galveston where they do marine biology stuff. So, I wanted to get her a present and thought I would make her a little something silly and appropriately themed.

I've had this pattern for a Fish that turns into a sushi roll for a while now... I have no idea how I found it. Today when I went to look up the pattern, so I could get a link, I saw that the blog site it belongs to is entirely in spanish. The site is Irka! The pattern seems to be the only one on the site that is in English, but if you speak/read spanish there are a ton of adorable flower dolls on there in the Free Patterns tag.

There a few small issues I had with the pattern, maybe because of how it was translated. Also to note... I remember that "y" is "and", but had to look up "cad" which is spanish crochet abbreviation for "chain". On the body of the fish, in round 7, I think it needs to be an increase and then 4sc. And somehow at row 12 I still had 22 stitches instead of 24. Anyway I ended up doing two rounds of 22 and then immediately doing the increase row to 24 and skipping the two 24 around rows since I think I did two extra 22 rows... since it isn't super size important I figured I could fudge a little.

I used a bunch of colors that I had lying around. This is a great yarn consumption project. I had a kind of smallish ball of the orange and I was worried I would not have enough of for the fish body. Turns out that was more than enough. There were no suggestions for hook size, but since I was using all worsted weight yarns, I used my go to H/8/5.00mm hook.

So here is my finished fish. I gave it dead eyes since I stink at embroidering round eyes, and safety eyes might be too bulky to allow the transformation part. (Colors: Orange, Light Yellow, Green, Black)

dead fish :(

Once again in the sushi part, I had trouble making the bottom of the sushi roll part, but just kind of fudged to get it to be the same size square shape. Also, when I counted, both squares had 28 sts on the outside not 36... somehow I messed that all up.

Instead of making the rectangle nori wrapper, I decided to just start on the edge of the top piece and crochet it right onto it. So I did 28 stitches in back loops only to get a crisp white to green edge. Then did 6 rows of 28 around for depth. At this point I was really worried that my fish would not fit inside the sushi piece I was making...so I added another thickness row to make it 7 rows high.

unstuffed roll

Then I made sure I turned that roll part inside out and stuffed it into the fish mouth, lining up the hole and the mouth. I used the orange tail from the fish to sew the sushi opening inside the mouth. I like to when the roll is stuffed in, that the orange stitches inside the white look like teeth inside the fish maw. Plus then it just looks like a crocheted fish toy... In case you have vegan friends I guess.

*boop* boop* insert fish noises here

When the sewing is done the roll then can be pulled out and comes out right side out. Like so:

what is that fish kissing??

When the roll is stuffed with the fish you have two options: a) all in where the tail and butt look like fish, avocado and cucumber, or b) tail out for a more tempura fish roll look. Ha!

I know what I'm having for lunch today.

Time to completion: 2-3 hours. Skill level: super easy.
Final thoughts: Would make again for sure. Might do a little rewriting of the pattern for my own use, but really good pattern and so fun.

Cupcake Hats

My brothers girlfriend is pretty cool. She's a little bit weird and gets our humor really well, but also really smart and structured, which is a good influence on him. Anyway, so we were discussing things I have crocheted over dinner. She has seen the Alot, BananaShark and Dalek that I have made for my brother, and she asked if I could make her a cupcake hat that she saw on Pintrest.

I said of course, having seen many images of them on the internet. And a quick search on Etsy will give you a ton of patterns depending on how you want your cupcake to be frosted and decorated. I decided to get this Cupcake Hat pattern from the shop CrochetSpotPatterns. I picked it for two main reasons: I liked the swirl of the frosting and also loved that it comes in different sizes. I can totally see making some of these for friends children...

She asked for a brown or tan wrapper, white frosting, rainbow sprinkles and a cherry on top.
I love this hat because I can use up those half skeins of colors I have lying around for this job.

The pattern was simple and quick. The top of the hat worked up really fast if you are familiar with making circles and using back loops. The only part that took a longer time for me was the wrapper part around the head. I had to re-look up stitch tutorials to make sure I was doing the front and back post crochet correctly, but after that it was a breeze. I did add an extra row at the bottom where the pattern ends because I like my hats to cover my ears. So I simply added a row of regular double crochet all the way around. I think it looked nice and like the bottom of the cup...

Two things to note on the cherry part... I used the first row as my topside, and since I started with a magic circle I used that tail to poke out the top for a stem on my cherry. Then I had the full tail on the smaller decreased end to sew it down to the hat with. I also stuffed mine with some leftover red yarn scraps.

A cherry.

As it usually happens with these things, I ended up making another one as well for my sister. My mom, sister and I are going to Santa Fe in late February and since it will be cold we will of course need hats. My mom has one I have made already, and I of course have my dragon hat, so my sis would be the only one out. Can't have that.

She liked the picture on the pattern, so hers is brown wrapper, pink frosting and a cherry.

 For the top you leave a loop open...

...to make the icing swirl! Might try a shell stitch for icing next time...

Finished hats...

The white frosted looks better with rainbow sprinkles.

Super cute. Like I said, didn't need a full skein for all any of the colors. Even for both wrappers I didn't use even half a skein of brown. Great yarn consumption project. Total time for each hat was about 5 hours, only because of the wrapper part.

UPDATE: Made a hat for my mom out of leftover skeins from my upcoming slouch hat post. Not sure it reads a cupcake-y as the others do because of the colors. Also the soft yarn made it have a slightly melty shape as opposed to the coarser red heart or standard cheap yarn.

Tomorokoshi

A big congrats to Ramen Party for making their Indiegogo goal! Thanks to you too if you helped that happen! I know I am happy to have had a small part as a contributor. Tomorokoshi and I are really happy!! So here is the "pattern" to make your own Tomorokoshi (corn)!

Ingredients:
Yellow yarn
Black Yarn
12mm black safety eyes
crochet hook (4.25 mm)
embroidery needle
scrap felt in black and white

Body
Here is why I used pattern in quotes. This was so fast and organic that I did not write out what I did as I went along.

I think I chained 25, turned and sc in one loop only all the way back to the start. Then I did two sc in the end stitch to make a turn around the end of original chain to then chain 24 back down the other side of the loops. You can then continue around doing a sc in each straight sc and two sc in the corners. That should make a long oval shape. Once it is big enough that you like it, mine being about 3 inches long by about 1 inch wide, then you can just do sc around until the body from that top oval till the piece is about an inch long. Then I started decreasing to get the corn tapered shape. I did one decrease in the center of the long sides and continue around for a few more rows like normal. Then did a row with two decreases on the long sides and then continued around for another row or so. Then I did one more decrease on each long side and crocheted around once more even single crochet. This gave me the kind of corn kernel shape I wanted. I bound off leaving a long tail to sew up the bottom in the future. If it looks too short to you, keep going with decreasing and regular rows.

Face Details:
I used 12 mm black safety eyes and placed them low on the body like in the picture. Then used a little black thread to make the black line under the eyes and the eyebrows. This is why we did not stuff and sew up the body. That would make putting eyes on impossible, and the embroidery harder to do.

The mouth I made from felt pieces I had lying around. I drew the mouth shape on some paper and used it as a template for the black felt. Instead of cutting teeth out of the black shape I used white and cut teeth to glue on top of the black mouth shape. I also used white but colored it with a yellow marker to make the tongue. I glued it all down to the body, but next time I might sew it on.

A note on the limbs, be sure to leave long starting and ending tails to yarn for tying into body.

Arms:
chain 9, turn slip stitch 8 back
I tried to make fingers, but this piece over all was too small. I tried to
A) in end stitch do a tassel of two piece of black yarn, fold to make loop insert loop through end stitch, pull ends through and secure. these 4 dangles are now fingers - did not work as planned.
B) when tassels did not work, I tried just tying two long threads and then trimming the end to look like finger lengths.. looked awful, so no fingers.
Then sew the arms to the sides of the body, lower than the eyes and mouth.

Now you can stuff and sew up the bottom of the Tomorokoshi.

Legs:
chain 11 (8 leg, 2 foot plus 2 for turn)
turn, sc in next 2 chain from hook, slip stitch 8 back. bind off.
Sew them onto the bottom of the body where you sewed it closed and hide the ends inside.

DONE. My final size is about 3 inches by 3.5 inches.
Time to completion: 1 hour.
Skill: EASY PEASY!

Lunch without Coworkers

I have remarked on my job status before, on working from home and the lack of coworkers. But there is never a time where I miss them more than at lunchtime. Since we have moved to a new place, I have been in search of new restaurants where I can get my favorite foods, that my husband doesn't like, that is. Last week and this week it was: Where to find good Chicken Tikka Masala. That's an indian curry, tomato, delicious dish with chunks of chicken in it. Often served with rice or naan.

Found and tried two places within about 10-15 minutes of home.

First: India Cafe on 377

Cafe was light and bright, modern decor. Full mostly of table and one small stand in the center to place and pick up your order. No fountain drinks. Food arrived promptly and there was a spicy smell in the air that made my eyes sting a bit. A good sign if you like it spicy. Tikka Masala is often less spicy than most of the food commonly thought of as Indian which is in part why I like it. I'm not too big on spicy things, I do not like jalapenos, but I do like this dish. A lot! So I was not really surprised to see that the masala that came out was more red in color than I am used to. Suggesting either more spiciness, more curry or more tomato. The chicken was a little strange since it was in tiny pieces. The "Chicken Tikka" part refers to a different dish where chicken is on sticks and grilled, the "Masala" part is the creamy sauce that they then put the chicken tikka into. So the tiny pieces suggested it was not chicken tikka per se. The presentation was very nice though. The naan was wrapped in foil to keep it warm, and the rice was elegantly plated with a small vegetable salad on the side. That salad was deceiving, it was by far the spiciest thing I have tasted in a while. Rice was OK. Naan was standard. Masala was... well you guessed it. Spicy, but also some how not as flavorful as I have had in the past. Less creamy, less velvety. Much more tomatoey and watery. I took half to go. All in all, it was ok, but not the best I have ever had. And seeing as the next place I tried is closer, I will not be returning.

Second: Sana Indian Restaurant and Grocery

This is the standard hole in the wall shop. In a strip mall, and clearly at one time much smaller. They have expanded their grocery to the next door space and now have a larger eating area. Again no fountain drinks, but a lot of coolers with many options. Also they have coolers with Kulfi (indian ice creams), which I will have to try next time. Again there is a small bar at the back where you place your order. A simple menu, no lunch vs. dinner pricing or anything like that. I again ordered Chicken Tikka Masala since it is my fave. Came with rice or naan, but an extra naan is only $1. Cheaper than the last place for the meal by almost half. The naan was huge and satisfying. The masala was warm with large chunks of chicken that you could see the places where the skewer ran through. Rich and creamy and just a little spicy. Very very good!! I ate it all. I will be back.

.................

This brings me to my point about lunch and coworkers though... Being a girl, a young girl, going to lunch alone is weird enough when you go to McD's, but when you drive into a somewhat empty parking lot and go into a place with a culture clearly not the one you are from, you get some looks. The clientele of both stores seemed to be people who knew the owners or are at least part of that community. Both places seemed to be family run.

It's not to say that it is so strange that I won't go, but it's a bit like going where you are not sure you are wanted. Or the same feeling that you get when going to a comic book store as a girl.