Apologies, Technical Difficulties, and More!

It's been a while.  Actually, quite a while since I last posted.  I am sorry, but I was at least upfront and honest that I am lazy.

In other news, I completely forgot to bring my camera home with me after a delightful trip to my parent's house (for their birthdays, which happen in the same week in October) and so am unable to put up those delightful pictures you're all used to.  Luckily, I have a few pictures on my computer that can be used until I get my camera back over Thanksgiving.

Also, I went on a cookbook hunt recently, and procured a few rather inexpensive books from Amazon.com.  As I'm sure most of you know, I love old things.  So in addition to the Fanny Farmer Cookbook, I also got The First American Cookbook: A facsimile of "American Cookery," 1796 by Amelia Simmons.  It's fascinating!  I was reading last night "To Dress a Turtle."  I didn't even know that American's ate turtle!  And I am also amazed by just how much housewives had to know about anatomy!  It is written in an older font, which means that some of those letters that look like "f" are actually "s"... but it's definitely worth the $3.50 I paid for it.

On to the Birthday Gifts!
I made some rather silly things for my parents this year.  For my Dad, since he has a new Droid phone, I made the adorable little icon into an adorable little stuffed critter.

You know you want one of your very own!

That's florescent green swimsuit fabric, a little bamboo fiber fill for the antenna, arms and legs, and those tiny polyester beads filled the body.  I was really careful at first and didn't spill hardly any of the beads (though they stick like crazy to everything) but near the end of filling this little guy, I managed to spray little white beads everywhere!  I'm still finding them, every once in a while, but a swiffer and vacuum combo seemed to get most of the pesky things.
The pattern I made up entirely.  It took some "advanced math" to figure out how to make the rounded shape, but I got some assistance here.  Though, I did kind of end up just cutting until the paper shape looked right to me... and I did a lot of reshaping/folding under/top stitching by hand after it was sewn together.  At first the white strip in the middle was too wide, so after filling as much as I could, I stitched him closed and then folded the whole white strip thinner and stitched all the way around by hand. It made him pleasantly plump, I think.

For Mom, I knitted a dozen flowers using this pattern.  They turned out great!  That's them but with just the flowers on the wood skewers I used for the stems.  I then knitted a bunch of stems (pun intended).  Hopefully, when I have the camera back, I can get a better picture.  They were super quick to put together, and I usually completed one or two while watching a couple episodes of whatever cartoon I was watching at the time.
I also made a "villain" to be the rival of the Android... but unfortunately, I didn't download the pictures of him to my computer before I left my camera at my parent's house.  Oh well, you'll all have to wait and see him later.

(Cites: Amazon.com,  XWiki: To Sew a Sphere, Andrew Craig Williams Blog)