Wonderful Weekend

We had beautiful weather here this past weekend. Neither I, nor my husband had to work, which is rare, so we enjoyed some family time. We went to a nearby park we enjoy that has a lot of pokestops, duck ponds, and a dog park. It's a fun place to walk. As we pulled into the parking lot, it was clear there was something more than normal going on, and it was our daughter who first caught made the deduction that there were an unusual number of people playing Pokemon Go, so there must be something special happening in the game.

She was right. There were large-ish groups of people standing together in areas we knew to be Pokemon Go gyms. Then we started spotting groups and families all wearing pokemon t-shirts, or hats, and even a kid dressed as pikachu. Maybe it's just the unusually beautiful January weather calling folks to get outside while they have the chance, I thought. My husband, however, Googled to find out what was happening, and sure enough there was some sort of special Pokemon Go event with special pokemon available to be caught only that day.

While we aren't the type to chat with strangers, it was still fun to be around so many other people playing while we walked and hunted pokemon. There were also slightly more folks out with there dogs then we usually see there - those ones probably really were just taking the opportunity to get out on a nice day. So we were surrounded with dog walkers and pokemon players. Our kind of people. It was a nice day.

As a side note - and a request for advice: my youngest has a fire tablet that we tethered to my phone via making my phone a wi-fi hotspot so that she could also play. Her tablet requires wi-fi to play Pokemon Go. But it didn't work very well. It kept either claiming no GPS signal, or placing her somewhere strange on the map that didn't look like anywhere we actually were. She got frustrated enough to give up playing. If anyone has tips on how to get that system to work better, I'd love suggestions. Thanks!

This Year's Christmas Pokemon

It has become a bit of a tradition over the past few years for me to crochet Pokemon for my girls. This year is Pachirisu and Oshawott. I think they turned out cute and the girls seem to love them.

I always get the Pokemon crochet patterns I use from WolfDreamer 
Someday I'd like to try to create my own pattern, but that day is not today.

The Twelve Days of Crochet

With a little less than 2 weeks until Christmas, I got it into my head to make some Amigurumi dolls for my kids. By some, I mean 4. I don't know why I thought this was a good idea, or that I'd be able to do it in the time I had available (which was late at night so they didn't see me working). But I did. Maybe it was to fight some of the icky feeling I get when I spend too much time in malls and superstores. Maybe it was left over NaNoWriMo, I-can-do-anything feelings, Maybe it was just getting home from the hospital with my kiddo that had her appendix out and feeling all maternal and protective. Making cute things from yarn helps with those types of feeling, you know.

So, anyway, I didn't finish in time. In fact, I'm still not finished, but the last one is almost done. For my oldest, I made a Pokemon with a poke ball. For the younger kiddo, I wanted a Scooby Doo, but could only find a knitting pattern, so I went with Little Red Riding Hood and wolf instead.

For the Mew Pokemon and poke ball amigurumi, I found both patterns at the WolfDreamer: Off the Hook blog. She has a ton of free Pokemon amigurumi patterns as well as some Mario Brothers ones and other cute characters. She also has a WolfDreamer Zibbet shop.

The wolf I found at the Lion Yarn website. They have some free patterns too, but you have to sign up for a free account to get access to them. Yes, I know he doesn't look exactly like a wolf. Something went wrong with the ears I think. So far, most people think he's an aardvark or a mouse. Some see him as a sort of generic quadruped and one could argue convincingly that he is any number of little creatures. Even so, I still think he's cute, darn it! And I believe when he is standing next to a Little red Riding Hood doll, it will be clear he is a wolf. It's all about the context.

I broke down a bought a pattern for Little Red Riding Hood, since the free ones I found weren't quite what I was looking for. That's the one I don't have finished yet, although she is coming along nicely and I'll post my finished doll here when I get done. (Which, if my wrist holds out will be very soon.) To see what she will hopefully look like, the pattern is here.

Hope everyone had a great holiday, and is ready for 2011 to get here.

Go make something!