Sorry to keep ALL of you waiting! ^_^

Oh, I know, all of the devoted readers of my four-post-long blog have been missing me so much over the last several months! I guess I probably should have mentioned that my interest in things like blogging waxes and wanes with the moon (kinda) and I will almost certainly spend very long periods of time gone without a trace. But since I suppose this blog is more for myself than for others, that probably doesn't matter too much. Blogger didn't delete it, so it must be fate that I'm here again today!

One thing I want to do though is fashion this blog so that I actually maintain interest, even when my interest in the subject matter at hand (crafting) is not at its peak.

So let me update you on all the fun stuff I've been up to lately!

Remember the hat I made for my brother for Christmas? Yeah, I said I wanted to make one for myself, and shortly after Christmas I did just that. I was sitting near the window, knitting a sweater or something (pictures of that later I suppose), when I noticed that it was freezing. In particular, my head was cold, and well, that's just unacceptable. So I switched gears, pulled out some chunky wool and t-yarn and my size 10 needles and in two hours I went from this:



To this!



This hat became my security blanket for the rest of the winter. Of course, it's June now, so I have no idea where the hat is, but there you go. My new lovely hat.

In other news, a little over a week ago Chuck and I returned from A-Kon 21 in Dallas, TX, a delightful and mega-crowded anime convention that's been running for 21 years consecutively in North Texas. It was my 10th year in a row, and to celebrate (ha ha) I opted to help out my mother-in-law, who had scored an Artist's Alley table to sell little handmade goods. Since the theme of the convention this year was "Revenge of the Penguins," I decided to make...little crocheted penguins!

I used Lion Brand's Amigurumi Penguin (sorry for the log-in screen, they're really cute, I promise!). Lion Brand has this remarkable little bit of language in their license agreement that states that anybody can sell items made using their patterns, provided it's not in a massive, worldwide kind of corporate way, which this was not.

On the contrary, I only made 20, and I gave them each little accessories and named them. I threw together a "Certificate of Authenticity" which gave the date, the occasion, and the penguin's name, and I was able to sell them all out by the end of the weekend! It was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. ^_^

Here is a very blurry picture of my penguins ready for sale:



Finally, the vast majority of the last six months was spent on this monstrosity:



This, for those of you not in the anime know, is PenPen, a very popular character from the series Neon Genesis Evangelion. Inside that costume is our friend Justin. He is not terribly happy right now, actually, because the costume is hot and he can't sit in it. But nonetheless, there it is. $1000+ worth of styrofoam, plastic tubing, foam padding, expandable soft foam, felt and fur. I'd love to say I did it, but that would be wrong and mean. My husband is responsible for this craziness. I think it looks amazing. It didn't win any contests, but that's okay, because it was definitely a successful endeavor.

Next time we do something like this though, it'll be much smaller, haha.

So I guess that's all I have for now. I'm afraid much of my time over the last several months was taken up by crocheted penguins, the penguin costume, and watching all six seasons of Lost in a row (that was a trip). But I'm back in the saddle now, and back to making things that I want to make. Next on the crafting board is a quilt made from scraps I found in my closet and my garage. Should be pretty interesting, as I've never made a full-size quilt before, and I'm giving myself until the end of June to finish it. I like a challenge.