Electric Run

One day last year while looking for fun things to do on Pinterest, I came across the Electric Run.  I'm not a runner, but it looked like something I'd want to do because of the "bumpin'" music and the neon lights.  Unfortunately, I came across it after it had already occurred in Seattle so I signed up to be notified about it next year and pinned it to my "fun things to do" board.  I got an email about it in early 2015 and signed up with a few friends.  Excitement kept building in my group of friends and the event finally took place last weekend.  Outside of being annoyed that the event took place in Puyallup, we had a pretty good time.  Here are some pictures (kind of blurry cam):

Random, but I was also proud of the braids I managed to do in my hair:

I was happy that most people walked and didn't run since I'm out of shape.  On another level, I felt the event was over hyped with fun marketing material that the event in Puyallup didn't quite live up to.  For this reason, I think this was a do-it-once activity for me unless they really change it up for future events.

Crochet Settlers of Catan Pillow

Well, I finally finished it!  This creation started out as a blanket for Baby M made from a pattern by Amber of Cthulu Crochet.  I thought it would be pretty easy to put together until I actually started making the hexagons.  I must be dense because I absolutely could not get the hexes to work out the way the pattern was written.  In typical me style, I altered the pattern a bit and the hexes worked out just fine.  Little did I know, joining them together was going to be even more difficult.  Luckily, I found the zipper method on Pinterest and it worked quite well.

At this point, I had all the land hexes joined and was not impressed with the size.  It was way too small for a cat, let alone a growing baby.  Jeff suggested that it would be a good size for a pillow, which could still be useful.  I liked the idea, so I went with it.  I didn't want to deal with more hexes and joining them together, so I decided to creatively crochet around the outside to make the water part of the board.  I ended up with a big hex that I was fairly happy with.

I made one ginormous hex in a darker blue for the back, but realized I didn't want to crochet the two giant hexes together and stuff them for fear the stuffing would come out the holes.  Instead, I bought some blue fabric and did my best to sew a pillow to crochet the two hexes around (because I'm terrible at sewing). It all worked out in the end, and I came out with a pretty good (thought slightly lumpy) looking pillow.

I left all my notes in my Catan pillow project on Ravelry if anyone is interested in making a pillow also!

Ceramic Painting!

My lady friends and I decided we wanted to do a crafty outing that was different from Palettes & Pairings.  We ended up trying out ceramic painting at Paint Away.  They had a ton of adorable ceramics to choose from.  The process is simple.  After the trying decision of choosing what you want to paint, you let the helper write it down, paint it, put it on the shelf to await firing, and check out at the front counter.  So easy!

I chose a little snowman and painted him in an Illini theme(surprise, surprise).  My friends painted everything from baby dragons to mugs and bowls.  We spent about two hours chatting and painting and had a really nice time.  We painted on a Sunday afternoon and our ceramics were available to pick up after 5pm on Friday.  I was very pleased when I picked mine up.  Mr. Snowman is just adorable.  There's a very good chance that I'll be back to paint some more.