A couple of new projects and a finished chicken coop.

My husband, the fantastic man he is, finished the chicken coop this week and put the whole flock in it.  We still need to paint it and put some nest boxes and wood chips in but otherwise it's done.

One little issue has cropped up.  The rhode island reds wont go in the coop at night.  Silly birds huddle together next to the fence of the enclosure and sleep there.  Also, one of the reds might be a rooster and not a hen.  I guess we will know if he/she begins to crow.  

I began a new crochet project (yes I know the tagline of the blog says I'm a knitter but I crochet, quilt, sew, draw, paint, ans sculpt to so let's not be picky now, shall we).  Sorry.  Ranty pants will get to the point.  The pattern of an owl basket has been hanging out in my favorites on Ravelry for some time so I finally broke down and bought it and some yarn to get started.  The pattern is by Deja Jetmir and can be found here.  I am using Lion Hometown U.S.A. super bulky yarn in Aspen Tweed.  You crochet two strands at once and it is turning out to be a quick project.  I might be crocheting at too loose a gauge and I might need to re-do it.  We shall see as I get further along. 

Speaking of quilting, I am getting ready to assemble a strip quilt for the baby made ot of some bright flannel.  The photo makes the orange a brighter shade than it is and the coral looks way more red than in life.  It will be a crib size quilt when I'm finished.

Lego Ninjago Cake and Crochet.

Sorry the blog has been quite lately.  It's been a busy time between work and home.  My son has recently discovered the Lego Ninjago cartoon series.  When he discovers something he goes all in for a while and watches the episodes on Netflix repeatedly.  He had a birthday recently so I attempted to make a ninja cake.  If you check out some of the google images results for a ninjago cake search you will see that the sky is the limit for making a complicated cake design.  I choose to do a more simple version.  I made a double layer, 10 inch round white cake using a box mix.  Some people may be able to make a cake from scratch, however I am not one of them.  The one time I tried to do that, it came out hard as a hockey puck.  Little dude loves the color green so it had to be the green ninja.  I used Wilton food coloring in leaf green to get his green.  I think the yellow was labeled lemon yellow.  I free handed the eyes so they are a bit wonky but overall the end result came out ok. 

Usually when he discovers something new (or in this case new to him since the series has been out for a few years) and doesn't have a toy related to the series and asks me to make him one.  He did this with oogey boogey from The Nightmare Before Christmas made from fleece (with a Velcro pocket to hide glow in the dark bugs), the lorax, a viking hat like Hicupp from How to Train Your Dragon, the little cheese curl guys that chase the veggie tales characters in the veggie tales Jonah movie...I could go on. 

I made up my own pattern to cut out oogey boogey and just crocheted a cylinder to make the cheesy guy from Jonah without following real patterns from someone else.

He hadn't expressly asked for a stuffed ninja but I knew he would like one.  I found a crochet pattern to use to make one. Even though I don't care much for crochet I attempted it anyway.  I have issues with loosing count of stitches and things coming out shaped completely wrong.

I did a Ravelry search and found a pattern for a ninja.  I finished him in about a week and surprised him with it right before bed (right after I finished off the last stitches on his black belt thingey he wears.  My son was very surprised when I presented it to him and asked for a couple modifications: to give him hair and to attach his hood to him so it doesn't fall off.  I will get right on that...