Grown-Up Sweetie Slippers: Free Crochet Pattern

The Toddler Sweetie Slipper was such a hit in our house, it’s been necessary to adjust the pattern to an adult size! I love mine because they don’t slide around or slouch at the ankle, and they’re just thick and cozy!  When we were in Alaska, my sweet husband got me my silver fox and beaver pelt slippers that are SUPER warm and soft!  I wore the often up there, though they are a tad big.  But I just found out that I can wear these crocheted slippers inside them if, you know, it’s -20 and the power goes out.  My feet would still be warm.  These whip up really fast and are gender-neutral, so they make great gifts, too!   There may or may not be a few of my family members receiving these for Christmas =)

You may not choose to do it exactly like this and that’s GREAT!  This is just a good starting point, but feel free to adjust, tweak, and embellish to your heart’s content!  You may notice in some of my photos that one of the yarn colors will change seemingly sporadically.  Some of these are intentional (adding the fluffy navy around the cuff of the blue pair) and some are for the simple reason that I was using this project to whittle down my ever increasing yarn stash and it WORKED!  Using two yarn s at a time makes these slippers thick and warm, but it’s also a great stash buster for all those odd leftover pieces.  If you don’t mind a new color halfway down your foot.  Maybe you’ll chose to switch colors there intentionally!

Note: To get the texture I wanted, I only crocheted into the back loop of each space.  You could do a regular stitch, but may have to adjust the sizing a little.  This pattern fits a women's size 7-10

With two yarns of choice for foot:

Magic Ring of 6 sc.  Join with sl st and tighten ends.  Ch2

Round 2: 2dc in each st around.  Join with sl st.  Ch2

Round 3:  (dc in next sp, 2dc in next sp) around.  Join with sl st.  Ch2

This is about five stitches into round 4

Round 4: (dc in next 2 sp, 2 dc in next sp) around.  Join with sl st.  Ch2

Round 4 complete

Round 5: (dc in next 3 sp, 2 dc in next sp) aroud.  Join with sl st.  Ch2

Rounds 6-8: Dc in each sp around.  Join with sl st. Ch 2

Rounds 9: (dc in next 7, dc2tog) around.  Join with sl st.  ch 2

Rounds 10-11: Dc in each sp around.  Join with sl st. Ch 2 

*Note:  This is one place you can add a couple more rounds for individuals with particularly long feet.

Row 1:  Ch2 2, Dc in each of next 10 sp.  2Dc in next sp.  Dc in next 10 sp (should be about ¾ of the way around).  Turn.

Row 1 complete

Rows 2-7:  Ch2 2, Dc in each of next 10 sp.  2Dc in next sp.  Dc in each sp to end.  Turn.

Row 7 complete

*Note: This is another place you can add more rows for a larger size.

Turn the heel inside out and slip stitch seam down the back.  Turn right side out.

Still open  along the back before seam.  Excuse my little helper's arm =)



Still inside out after having finished the seam

With two yarns of choice for ankle:

Round 1: Join with sl st to top of heel in the back.  Ch 2.  Dc in each sp across to corner where the side meets the top of foot.  Dc2 tog.  Dc in each sp across top of foot.  DC 2 tog at opposite corner.  DC in each sp around ankle and sl st to join with start.  Ch2.

Round 2-3: (Dc in each of the next 5 sp.  2 Dc in next sp) around.  Join with sl st.  Ch2

Round 4: Dc in each sp around.  Join with sl st and finish off.

 

*Note: Rounds 3-4 are optional depending on how high you want your ankle.  If you want it higher, keep repeating round 4 until you’ve reached your desired height.

Done!  Well, you might want to start from the beginning again so you end up with a pair. =)  But you get the idea.  Now your toes will be ready for the cold (or holiday) season!  If you have any questions or notice any problems with the pattern, please shoot me a message.  Thanks!  Happy creating!

Spontaneous Adventures: Pros, Cons, and Tips

A friend and I were just laughing earlier this week about being spontaneous when it comes to planning outings.  Instead of specifically setting aside a time in the future to do a specific thing I’ve researched and want to do, I tend to just be going along with life and happen across a patch of time.  Time that maybe should be used doing something productive, but, sometimes we just need to get out there and adventure!  So I’ll say, “Hey!  Let’s go somewhere!” And I’ll either quickly google what’s close or pile the kids in the car and just see where the road takes us.

 

Usually this ends up with awesomeness.  But sometimes we strike out.

We had several strike outs this week as we traveled the central section of the Oregon Coast.  But also had a whole lot of awesome!  While my husband was working out there, we got to join up with him and at least share evenings together.  My parents came down for those couple days, too, and we had such a great time just being together, despite any surrounding circumstances. 

Pros:

1.       Unexpected Treasures: this is how I felt the first day of our trip when we had a little extra time and randomly pulled off at a botanical area.  It turned out that right off the highway was a cobra-lilly (pitcher plant) bog!  The concept of an insect-eating plant was so foreign to the little ones and our eldest thought these gorgeous plants a highlight of our trip!  We also accidently found a great rocky beach, Whale and marine life museum, and pirate village!

2.       Save time planning

3.       No pressure to keep a rigid schedule (Unless that’s your thing.  Then this might be a con!  =))

Eaten by a shark at the Whale Museum in Depoe Bay

Cons:

1.       Really, the main down-side and that is that sometimes things don’t work out.  We drove for miles down a road for there to be nothing there.  My parents nearly couldn’t find a campsite one night. The map apps for phones are great, but often have inaccurate information.  We didn’t make it to a couple places until after they had closed or simply ran out of time to cram all the sights in.

What was down that path?

2.       Wondering what you might have possibly missed

My advice from our experiences would be to plan out where you will be sleeping each night and make reservations if possible for multiple-day trips.  That takes the pressure off so you can just explore the day away.  Look for the brown signs (parks, natural or cultural areas) or quirky shops for a more unique experience.  If you have time, look up what might be around, or grab a tourist map once there.  If there’s something that’s really important for you to see, plan how and when it will fit into your adventures. Veer off the main highways as much as possible.  Don’t stress about what you might have missed and focus on all the good things that you got to experience as well as just the time together.  Even on our dud detours we saw things we’d never seen before and traveled roads we’d never been on before! 

In some ways I feel that spontaneous adventures are more difficult than in the past.  So much has been regulated with specific hours and tolls.  Certain places have become so popular you have to fight the crowds.  As far as camping, you can’t just pull off any old place to stop, it has to be designated and paid for.  But then, there are many benefits to exploring today.  Especially having the internet at our fingertips (so long as you have signal!) and well-marked interest areas.

Hollow log slide at the falls

Can I just share with you what we did end up doing?  Then if you ever get a chance to visit the area, you might remember some things you might want to check out!

1.       Sweet Creek Falls: about 10 miles off the highway on an ever narrowing road.  Perhaps a mile hike in to a lovely little falls.  There are many more surrounding, but we chose to only go to the one. 

2.       Darlingtonia Botanical Area: This was right off 101 and was a very short walk to the carnivorous plant bog.

3.       Bob Creek: small, sandy beach I loved because of how misty it was.  Rocky tide pools to the south were void of much sea life.

4.       Newport Pirate Village: We arrived in town too late for the aquarium, but this pirate village next door was right up our little ones’ alley.

5.       Newport Docks: Our son had been asking to see boats, and I knew we’d find some when I saw the docks sign past the aquarium.  So fun to explore, read ship names, and learn about the different types of boats.  Once (on a past adventure) the captain of a fishing boat let my husband and son on board to explore!  There are often many marine birds around, too.

6.       Echo Falls Detour: this was our major strike out.  Even when we circled back a couple times to see if we could find what the map was trying to show us, the falls (or any type of trailhead) was nowhere to be found.  So we just followed to road to 10 miles to see what was there.  Lovely drive in the fog.

7.       Depoe Bay Whale Museum:  I was surprised how much my kids enjoyed this!  We were the only ones there and the hostess totally catered to the little ones, asked them questions and really got them involved.

8.       Yaquina Head Light House and Tide Pool Beach: this is the only place we ended up going to that had a fee ($7 for a vehicle) to get in.  They have a nice interpretive center, but we moved through there rather quickly since it was nearing nap time.  Before we explored, we parked where we could look out over the ocean while we ate a quick lunch.  While we were sitting there, a pod of grey whales swam past! It was so amazing and the kids were so excited!  Our little guy was trying to tell everyone and exclaimed to me incredulously, “Mom!  All those people over there don’t even see the whales!  They’re not looking around!  They don’t even know what a wonderful thing they’re missing!”  I love it when he just gets it like that!

All this to say, I highly recommend the spontaneous exploration mentality!  I hope this will encourage you to give it a try sometime and take a chance that might result in you discovering a hidden treasure of a location!

 

The Procrastinator's Picnic: 3 Things You Really Need

Oh, there are some lovely picnics out there!  If you get on pintrest you know what a magical thing a perfectly planned picnic can be!  Would you just look at this woodland set up on Kha Do's page or basically Janice Johnston’s whole board!  Granted, most of these were well planned and positioned for proposals or photo shoots, but how romantic! 

...and this is us! =)

I don’t know about you, but our kids love the idea of a picnic as well.  Truthfully, they were not deterred at all by basically having picnics every night for a couple months until our table arrived.  And now that it’s here I’ve been asked countless times if we can go to the neighboring arboretum for a picnic.  I kept putting it off because I needed to plan and prepare, get a perfect basket and containers, and figure out a way to haul a tiny vase of flowers into the middle of nowhere with two younglings and a moose of a dog in tow.  It didn’t take me too long to realize that might not be realistic for us at this stage in our lives!  But my brain is always trying to find a way to make things work, to get creative with the situation, and I started to whittle down these perfect picnics into something more practical for us right now.  I started to ask myself what we’d really need.

1.       Something edible: chances are, you’re going to be eating anyway, and, at least for us, lunches are often cold.  Sandwiches are great, but we were slightly pressed for time, so I just started throwing in what we had.  This is what I ended up with: a cucumber, sliced cheese, salami, crackers, guacamole, and an apple.  The only prep I did once we got there and that was just to cut the fruit and veggie with my pocket knife

2.       Somewhere to sit: we have an awesome place to visit down the road, and I’m super grateful for that.  But it’s really not necessary.  When we first moved down here, we would go out in our yard or even in our living room.  We once even had a snow picnic in Alaska!  A blanket to sit on is great but, again, not absolutely necessary.

3.       Someone to break bread (or whatever you have) with: Okay, technically you could have a picnic by yourself, but I feel the fun thing about picnics is being able to share them (and ideally the outdoors) with others. 

Finding Tiny Wonders Together

After a stressful morning of running all around town, this was such a perfect way to refocus and connect!  We looked for nature treasures on the way and tucked them in our bag.  We found a cozy place down by the river and settled in for our meal.  My little son said, “Mama, look!  It’s so nice to just sit here and look at how pretty the river is going down hill!”  Yes!  I love it when he gets it like that!

Views from our hike out

Their highlight was finding these two great dirt hills and sliding (or scooting, rather) all the way down!

 

All this to say that it was wonderful, refreshing, and imperfectly perfect. But we grew together which is much more important than my tiny vase of flowers! =)  I hope this might encourage you to take a picnic with the ones you love and just enjoy it without letting it be a huge inconvenience.  Hope you have a great week!  Oh, on that note, we may not have internet this week, but I shall return!

Autumn Trio: Printable Nature Art

Quick post today because my kids want to go on a picnic and, well, priorities.  I wanted to give you some free autumn printables should you so desire.  If all goes as planned, high quality prints will soon be available at my Etsy shop's grand re-opening!  Click on the photo to open the larger version. I hope you enjoy and cherish this day!

Rendered Useful: Adventures in Making Lard

As promised!  LARD!  Ugh, that isn’t even a fun word to say.  Not unlike BLOG, actually.  I really don’t like that word and my kids and I laugh every time we say it.  In fact, we’ve been trying to think of another name for it.  Blog is a mix of, what, basic log?  Back log?  So if I were Jean Luc I would call it a clog (captain’s log)?  I think I’d replace log with journal or even record.  Maybe combine with web?  Wernal?  Wecord? Hm…I’ll have to work on that a bit.

When Josh came out of our neighbor’s cooler with a packet of pig fat, my first thought was, “Gross, why?”  But he was all excited, “Look!  You can make lard!”  Okay, I was sure there were instructions out there in the interwebs somewhere, but I had never used lard before.  Even if I did figure out how to make it, I had no idea what to use it in!

So there it sat in our freezer for about a month and I didn’t want to see it go to waste, so I rummaged up some instructions from Faulk Farmstead to render lard in my crock pot.  Pretty simple, really.  You just cut the fat into smallish cubes (mine were a little bigger than dice size), discarding the large portions of muscle, ligaments, and blood vessels.  But don’t get too particular, the remnants just get used  for cracklins.  In the pot add a cup of water so it doesn’t burn before it melts, set it to medium and let it melt!

I feel like now would be a much better time to try this, at least if you are rendering indoors, because it was pushing 100 degrees the day I did this and the added heat (though not a lot) was noticeable unpleasant.  And though I didn’t notice a strong smell, it was detectable at close proximity.  I wish I would have done it outside!  It took the better part of a day, maybe 6 hours?  But I had my pot packed full, too!  As the lard melted set a strainer atop a mason jar and poured out the liquid until all the fat had liquefied. 

I saved the remnants for cracklins, later frying them up until they “crackle”.  This was the first time I had ever had cracklins, but they reminded me of bacon bits.  We had them with our scrambled eggs in the morning, but the Food and Wine page cooks it into a tasty-sounding pasta, though I have yet to try it, and I’ve seen many recipes out there for crackling chicken.  I’m really curious what else you have used them for? 

Anyway, after the mason jar was full, I just sealed, labeled and allowed it to cool.  I try not to do a ton of baking, so I kept it in the fridge, though I know many will just keep it in the cupboard.  The very next day, the little ones wanted us to make cookies together, quite specifically, snickerdoodles!  I realized the recipe I had called for shortening and that this would be a perfect time to substitute the lard.  They turned out amazing!  Slightly crisp on the very outside, but soft and almost chewy. 

The more I read about lard the more I find it’s ideal for baking, especially pie crusts.  I can’t wait to try my own!  And someone mentioned making soap with it, also.  So many possibilities!

I don’t know about you, but for so long we were told that lard is so unhealthy, but now we’re learning that isn’t so true.  Happy meets Healthy has a great article about the benefits of eating lard.  The most notable in my mind was that it has super high vitamin D content (which doesn’t occur naturally in a lot of foods).  This is great news for my Alaskan friends!  Our pediatrician in Fairbanks told us that even in the summer we didn’t get vitamin D because of the extreme angle of the sunbeams.  So all year we had to supplement to avoid the deficiency we all had. 

Well, I’ll sign off with that little tid bit and hope you have some new ideas that you’ll experiment with as well!