My husband gave me a gift certificate to go skydiving for my birthday. I decided to make it a fun family adventure with Boogs and my husband.
It was about an hour drive to San Marcos to go to Skydive Spaceland. My husband went skydiving once about 30 years ago. I went for my first skydive in 2013 and once more in 2014. Boogs is now old enough to jump so we all went together.
When I last went, it was owned by someone else. The facility is still a well-run, friendly, professional place to skydive. It is now a skydiving training center owned by the Boyd family and is one of their 5 locations. There was definitely a bit of a different vibe. It was a lot more about learning how to skydive than just being along for the ride. For our tandem skydive they discussed the process more throughly, had you wear an altimeter, let you pull the chute, let you steer, and let you land (if you wanted to).
While we were suiting up, Boogs said he was not nervous. My husband said he was nervous. I was surprisingly calm but sweating profusely. Boogs jumped with Leo, my husband jumped with Vic, and I jumped with James. Vic said he had close to 30,000 skydives, James said he was right at 10,000, and Boogs did not ask Leo how many he had. Vic offered to take pics before hand for us and told us to pose in a few goofy ways.
Point where you are going.
Point this way.
Who is the most nervous? We all pointed to me.
Ready to go!
They saw us coming and knew we were suckers. We said we were not interested in purchasing photos or a video. A new videographer, Oscar, just happened to be practicing his skills and asked Samuel if he would let him follow his skydive journey. Samuel said yes and you know we absolutely caved and bought the video package after skydiving. I am so glad we did because the pictures and video are awesome.
Always the ham.
Ready to go.
The plane took us up to 14,000 feet for our jump. Boogs went first.
I was nervous for him. It was hard watching my baby boy jump out of that plane.
My husband landed himself standing up.
I gave the controls over to James and he had us come in for a sit down landing.
Here comes Boogs. He was first out of the plane and last to land.
Boogs helped land his parachute in a sit down landing.
We survived! What a great adventure and experience! After our skydive, we went in and purchased our next skydives at a discounted rate.
Because it is a training school, today's skydive was logged in our brand new skydive logs. For the mere cost of $4200 and 25 jumps, you can get certified to solo skydive. That is not on my bucket list. I think I am fine being a passenger on a tandem jump. Boogs and my husband seem a little more interested in it. I think I will stick with scuba diving for adventure.
Boogs was great today. I love his adventurous spirit. Here is his video:
I love the summer. It gives me time to work on projects. In-service days begin next week and students come back on August 13th. These are the last projects I had time to work on this summer - Chicken hat and Chris-moose.
I had the itch to work on something else. I dug through my printed pattern box and found the moose pattern from K's Crochet Critters. I modified the pattern a little bit to make my Chris-moose. It will carry a gift card and be part of my work's annual White Elephant Gift exchange at Christmas.
Then, I was randomly scrolling crochet patterns and came across the Chicken Hat pattern and the Angler Fish hat pattern by Crochetverse. I immediately bought both patterns on Etsy and decided to work on the chicken first.
The chicken pattern is made using a double strand of yarn. I looked through my yarn stash and found a skein the perfect yellow color. The only problem was that I needed 600 yards of yellow so I had to go buy another skein.
Luckily, Red Heart Super Saver yarn is pretty consistent. The yarn skein from my stash was from 1986. It felt a little bit rougher than the new yarn. I was surprised the Bright Yellow color was almost an exact match. I also had to buy Bernat Velvet red yarn. The rest of the yarn came from my yarn stash. Most of the other colors feel like they are Red Heart Super Saver Yarn. I have had several people give me collections of yarn so I don't have labels on a lot of my yarn stash skeins/balls.
I started working on the chicken pattern on Sunday and finished it around midnight on Thursday. I have no idea how many hours I spent making it but it was most of the week. My husband, son, and I went skydiving Thursday morning and I took the project to work on the one hour drive each way and in the lobby of the skydiving center. It helped calm my nerves before the big jump.
I forgot to take pictures while working on the chicken. The pattern was well written and easy to follow. I added a few extra feathers at the front and lengthened the collar by about two inches so it would sit on my shoulders. My version is not perfect but I love how it turned out.
I plan on wearing it for Book Character Day at my school on Halloween. I am pairing it with the book The Little Yellow Chicken by Joy Crowley.
Faces cannot be covered by masks at school so I am leaving the face hole open. but I am planning on adding a yellow piece of material, not sure what kind, to cover the hole from my nose down. I'll attach it with little hooks so it can be removed, if I want to wear it at places other than school.
I ordered several things from Amazon to add to the costume. I am having fun with it.
My friend and I were out shopping and came across this crochet kit at World Market.
We laughed about it because we have been talking about planning a Dollywood trip with our personal trainer KK. KK loves Dolly Parton so my friend said I should buy this kit and make it for her. I told her that kit was not very good and I could make a better Dolly Parton doll.
I searched for patterns and found two that I liked:
I used a mish-mash of both of these patterns to create my own Dolly Parton (ish) doll. This was the first time I have worked with cotton yarn. It took about 65 hours to complete the doll with a bling covered outfit, a hat, guitar, boots, and two wigs. Here are some pics of her creation:
Green eyes with lots of eyeliner
It took 6 hours just to make the straight hair wig. I cut 120 pieces of 10 inch yarn. Then I had to comb out each strand individually with a dog brush to separate the fibers and make it look like hair. I made a wig cap and individually attached each strand. Then, I used my flat iron hair straightener on its lowest temperature setting to smooth out the "hair" once it was on the wig cap.
I used 14 gauge spool wire and pipe cleaners to create a body frame. The Western Girl pattern said to use pipe cleaners, but it was not sturdy enough.
This is the torso from the Western Girl Pattern.
I added the breasts from the Country Singer pattern to make it look more like Dolly Parton.
For me, the arms were the hardest parts to make. They were sooooo tiny. I kept losing my stitch so I ended up using stitch markers for each round for the entire arm. I put a little neck brace on it because I was twisting it around so much while making the arms. I was worried about messing up the neck strength.
I took a break between the arms and added the pants. I love how they bell out at the bottom.
I made a guitar with a detachable guitar strap. Of course, I had to put bling on the strap.
I made a second wig cap and attached 24 curl strands to create the curly hair wig. This curly wig has a bit of weight to it at the back and would slip off of the doll's head.
I stitched in a pipe cleaner loop onto the inner wig cap to attach it to the doll's head.
The straight hair wig fit perfectly on the doll's head without slipping.
I think it really does look like Dolly Parton's hair.
I love the little boots. They turned out so cute. Of course I had to add a little bling.
I did not take pictures while making the vest shirt. I know that Dolly Parton does not like to have her arms showing. I went to Michael's and found this cute piece of lace to use for sleeves and a bustier. I am not good at sewing, but I gave it my best shot. I added a lot of stick-on bling to the top, scarf, and pants. There was a gap between the bottom of the shirt and the pants, so I bought some rhinestone ribbon and added it like a belt.
You can see the little shank button I attached to the doll's head for the curly wig to stay on more securely. The button does not affect how the straight hair wig fits on the head.
When I was making the back of the vest, I felt like adding stitches to fill in the hole would make it look bulky and lumpy. So, I left a hole and added a band at the bottom then used the lace to fill in the cutout. I think it turned out really cute.
I cut up a pair of fake eyelashes and attached them to her eyes. I am still not happy with the mouth. I made and attached 6 different mouths before I settled on this one. I later used some brown chalk to darken the eyebrows a little bit.
This is the completed doll. She looks ready to sing Jolene. I love how the curls turned out.
This shows the bling down the side of her pants and on the guitar strap.
I like the straight hair wig, too.
Dolly looks ready to hit the stage and wow an audience.
I did remember to put a mole, like Dolly Parton has, on the doll before I gave it away. I just did not get any pictures of it.
KK said she is going to give the doll to her daughter, who is a singer who lives in Nashville. KK thought of using it like Elf on A Shelf but calling it: Dolly on the Trolly, Dolly on the Dolly, Holly Dolly Christmas, and a few others I can't remember. KK said she wants to include little notes with the doll that say things like:
Get up and sparkle, honey!
What would Dolly do?
Pour yourself a cup of ambition!
In a world full of Kardashians, be a Dolly.
Dolly for President.
I had a lot of fun making this doll. What do you think about it?
