my new friend Oskar

I finished another Sven Scandinavian pattern. His name is Oskar. And, I love him! 

I have knit this pattern once previously to make Juergen and had planned to make him a wife with my next doll. But! I was on instagram and one of the knitting ladies I follow was making the pattern with a red beard and I knew I had to also make a ginger version!

While I am making a doll I usually start to think about their personality, their story in my mind. So, even though this guy was made second, he really feels more like Juergen's cool older brother.

I was knitting this doll while in San Diego for my father in law's funeral in July. I was working on the sweater while I was there. I took a list of perspective names and my nephew helped me pick one.  Such a small detail but it's special to me.

As with my previous iteration of the doll I altered the foot. Here's a bit of a close up of the boot. I forgot to to the sock part, so he's slightly shorter than Juergen. meh.

I also decided to make his hat more of a beanie style.  I followed the notes from lorix5 (Lori times 5) on Ravelry for her Bjorn.  I did the decreases from another hat pattern I have in my library and I really like how neatly it turned out! 

 For reals this time my next version will be a female companion for one of them! I have so many ideas on hair options and outfits.

Baked mini donuts

So, something you may not know about me is that I do not like donuts.  Mostly I don't like the taste left in my mouth after eating one and the heavy feeling I'm left with. It's great because whenever someone brings donuts to the office, it's easy for me to avoid them! I was on Pinterest, just checking stuff out and saw a recipe for Baked Apple Cider Donuts and I thought "hmmmm interesting". I really had never heard of such a thing and since they are baked I thought it might be good.  I was right!

As it happens, a friend of mine had just bought a mini donut pan and offered to let me borrow it to see if I'd want to purchase one of my own.  I've linked the recipe in case you'd like to give it a go as well.

One thing the recipe says to do is put the batter in a ziploc and cut off the tip - I thought this technique worked really well.  I also did one batch dipped in butter and regular sugar and one dipped in butter then stevia. Both were fantastic! But the stevia had slightly less calories so I tried to only eat those. I entered the recipe into myfitnesspal and it came up with 83 calories per mini donut on the stevia dipped version.

I kind of want to try another recipe without the buttermilk and reducing the apple cider. I saw another recipe that called for apple butter which would probably take care of that step.

Craft happenings

As you can imagine, since I've been busy busy outside I haven't been sewing as much as usual. But! I am still keeping in touch with my crafty side.  I am currently working on a pair of socks, which I have been keeping in my desk at work. I've been knitting 2-3 rows a day, so they are progressing nicely. 

I did get around to sewing up this small notions case, the pattern is by Leigh of ShopLouleigh. I have linked both her website and her etsy. Her website has all the links where you can find her content, which includes blog, podcast, ravelry, and etsy. Anyway, she had been making and selling these little notions pouches and decided to put out the pattern for it. 

I really like the way it came out. It is actually very compact, but does fit a number of sewing or knitting notions. It would also be useful in a purse for chapstick or that kind of thing.

The outer fabric is actually an old pair of pants that I won't be wearing anymore. It's a nice weight though so I chopped them up! The inside fabric is a fun vintage piece of fabric I've had in stash for awhile.

So, in other news I have been working on my diet and exercise. This year I think it really just made sense to me to lose some weight. I didn't have a huge epiphany or anything like that....more of a dawning realization.  I'm 41 and this is not going to get easier. "This" being health, weight loss, aging. I work in the medical field and seeing some of our elderly obese patients and the struggles they had was a big part of that. Thankfully I do not have any of the conditions that come from being overweight - diabetes, hypertension I'm looking at you!  So, I really have been paying attention to what I eat, quantity, hunger levels, cravings and such.

I've always known I have a sweet tooth. So I've been looking for ways to satisfy that craving without going overboard. I was having a little looky-loo on pinterest and found a recipe for baked spiralized apple chips - here is the link. I did substitute stevia and pumpkin pie spice instead of sugar and cinnamon. It makes a nice flavor. I used my food processor which made nice, even chips. The first time I made the recipe I used the spiralizer and they were very thin chips - which were also nice!

In the top left photo, those are peach slices. I would NOT recommend using peaches to make chips. Basically they were really brown dehydrated fruit pieces. Not my fav. But, the apples turned out wonderfully! Also, that aqua bowl was the bowl my Mom used all growing up while baking. She gifted it to me one of the last trips to see her.  I love it!

and we have grass!

This update might possibly be boring for people, but it's mostly to give my Mom an update on what's going on!  So, I've talked a bit about my back yard projects and you might remember that previously it was just a bunch of dead weeds. Well, it is now transformed!

A few weeks ago now, I had sod delivered to my house and a few friends helped me lay it out into the yard. We had prepped the dirt the weekend prior. We did not bring in any dirt, additives or fertilizers. When we were digging up the weeds we found that there had previously been sod here so we figured that the dirt would support grass. Honestly I didn't think about it much until after the sod was down and I was telling people (in my excitement) and people kept asking if I had pre-treated the soil - nope.

So, this first picture is the very first day! It already looks so, so much better. You can see in the forefront that there is still some dead weed matter. I have since cleaned that up and covered the edges with weed barrier. 

The picture below is a couple days ago. You can see how lush and green it is. Also, against the fence in the background you can see the angle of the slope towards the back. During the excavation process that slope was gone over a few times and so it is more gradual now than it had been.  Plus we raked over everything to try and even out the area so make it a nice home for the grass.

And, because this is George's home too, here she is enjoying the yard.  I imagine she likes how soft and cool the grass is.

Here's a little peek at the front flower bed, which I am just LOVING! I had planted rudbekia last year and this echinachea this year at the beginning of summer. The yellow rudbekia has been bloomed for like 2 weeks! I must remember to look out for more for the back yard. 

progress happening slowly but surely

Last time I checked in here we had started the back yard project. Well, life has sort of  gotten in the way a bit and it's on hold for now. I've been in an admitted funk about it because I let myself get super excited and then it kind of stalled out. But! It's still going to eventually happen and I'm feeling better about it. I thought I'd share the stuff that is making progress (mostly for my mom to see) 😀

I've been trying to keep track of what plants I put in so that down the line I'll know if I need to for some reason.  In the back yard I put in two bushes that I bought as bare root plants, lilac and forsythia. They are tiny now but in a few years will hopefully fill in the corner of the back yard I put them in!


This is one of the mauve-ish irises that I planted  last year. I think these were given to me by my realtor? She gave me some irises and peonies that she has thinned out from her yard. I just love the tigery pattern at the inside of the petals!

Yesterday (Saturday) I decided to clean up the front flower bed rose bushes. These were bushes that were here when I bought my house. I have trimmed them back several times which I think has just made them even more unruly! One of the bushes was right close to the front door and more than a few times I've come out the door and almost walked right into a branch! So I had been considering removing it. Which is exactly what happened yesterday!  Below is a pic of the branches one part of the bush I removed.  

And below is what it looked like right after I pulled the rose bush out. I planted all the daffodil and tulip bulbs I had left from last year, and more iris tubers. I put irises all along the back edge and the daffodils in the front. I added the salvia next to the rhubarb, then the next plant is veronica which I had planted last year. At the end is a spirea bush that I put in last year I think. I did buy more plants last night and put them in: lavender, columbine, pink veronica and something that looks like a daisy but I don't remember the name right now.  The porch looks so much more open!  In the future I'd like to put a railing along the back of the bed with a little gate. There are a couple houses in my subdivision that have done that and it's super cute!

Okay, in sewing news - I made a dress that I love and it is super comfy!  My Mom had given me this peach cotton that has little ducks on it.  I knew I'd want some kind of garment out of it.  I made this McCall's pattern M7115 and I made view D.  It was a super easy pattern.  I made it even easier by not putting in button holes. When I was trying it on before doing buttons it went over my head easily so I just sewed the buttons through the two layers of the bodice so it's fixed closed.  I used abalone pearl buttons.

And here's the finished product, with George of course!  She is such a photo ham!  She was in another room at then other end of the house and came running to get in the picture.  

So here in the US  it's a long weekend for Memorial day.  I made myself a list of things I want to get done and so far I'm doing good. This morning (Sunday) I went for a 2 mile hike with a friend. There's a little parking area off the side of the highway after the lake that has some nice trails. We got a bit off the trail at the beginning and did some "off roading" but it was still really pretty! I've got an okay sense of direction so we got back to the main trail eventually and it was smooth sailing after that.

We've had a good amount of rain in the last couple weeks so everything is really green and pretty. Morning are still brisk but it gets close to 70's in the afternoon which is nice! I love this time of year.

Today I am going to cut out another dress from the same pattern as above, except I'm going to modify the front bodice to not have the two pieces. I'm just going to cut it out on the fold. I'm thinking I might like to put in some pockets as well?  

I am almost done with the socks I've been knitting, I only have 14 rows of ribbing then bind off! So I'd like to finish that this weekend too. I also pulled out my cross stitch pattern that I had started forever ago!  Oh! and I am going to start reading a book. After my husband died I lost all concentration reading. But, I feel like I'd like to give it another go. So we'll see if I can stick with it!

I hope you're having a great weekend, whatever you're doing!

Saturday demo day

Aw, sweet Spring. I have been dreaming of Spring. At one point, I started to dread it. Last Fall I left off with my back yard as part dead weeds, part dirt, and small spaces of flowers and planted bulbs. I had planned to start attacking the weeds early this year.....which is the part I was really dreading.

Thankfully, I found someone willing to help me transform my back yard. The first step was to remove the stump from the tree my neighbor cut down for me.  Turns out, you can just go on down to the rental place and give them money and you get a very nice, expensive machine for a few hours! 

Saturday was the demo day. I woke up to snow and I was afraid that my helpers would not want to work in the cold. They were not daunted at all!  I am so thankful for that. Truly. 

Here is the stump grinder that I rented. I did not run the machine. It took no time at all (20 minutes) to grind up the stump!  You can see in the back corner of this photo the shed that also was removed on Saturday.

Here's the crater that was created by grinding down the stump. You can sort of see the wood down in there.  It's about 6-8 inches deep. The shavings and dirt will cover this up and once we get everything tilled and raked it will be leveled out.

Here is the view of my back yard now. Already it is so much more open!  So, the shed was taken apart and out. The shed base is still there for now but will be removed and dumped at a later date. To the left of the back gate there was a chain link dog run, which was removed.  On the left of the raised bed you can see some upset dirt clods. There had been a PVC pipe coming out of the ground with an electrical outlet on it - that was apparently ON!  Live electricity.  Oy vey!

So, that was removed as well, thank goodness!

After all this I was inspired to actually get up on a ladder (terrifying!) and tighten up my gutters and I removed some debris that was blocking the drain on one of the gutters.

This morning I woke up to oodles of fluffy snow everywhere!  It made yesterday's frosting of snow look like nothing.  I am so, so grateful that we tackled the demo yesterday!  

I have so many ideas, I am so very excited to get going on everything! The weather is, of course, a huge consideration up here. It's okay though, it just gives me more time to plan! Happy Spring everyone!