Meet our Newest Critter Creations

I am pleased to announce that we have recently added our own line of sock critters. From left to right are Mojo the monkey, Harley the moose with a 'tude, and Poco the pony. These cuties will be available at both our JustPokingInFun Etsy and ArtFire stores. I refer to these as our signature line and they will be continually offered. Each will come with an adoption certification that will include the number (of the animal made in the series) and date each animal was created. The adoption certification will be signed by the critter's creator, LVS.

Mojo the monkey is a variation using the traditional sock monkey pattern. Harley the moose and Poco the pony are my originals and there is no pattern for them. Please respect the artist and do not copy them.

Each one is made by hand. I only keep a small quantity on hand. I prefer to take orders if you are requesting more than one of each. I also sell my sock critters at local craft fairs and shows so I am kept pretty busy with orders. I do my very best to ship all orders out within 48 hours, unless it is a large order. In this instance I will send you a convo or email and give you an estimated time on when I can ship your order off to you.

I also make traditional sock monkeys as well as traditional sock stick horse heads. I have a link on my blog that has detailed instructions on how to make the stick horses. I also have the pattern for the traditional sock monkeys available to anyone who wants them or you can click on this link and print it.

In the future I may be adding additional sock critter creations but for now my plate is full. I am thinking perhaps after the first of the year. The holiday season is a very busy time of year for me and Christmas is fast approaching. Less than 8 weeks of Christmas shopping everyone..... Ho Ho Ho!

If you have any questions please send me an email. Thanks for stopping in and visiting us.


Ciao,


LVS

Making a Traditional Red Heel Sock Stick Horse

I tend to prefer the more traditional sock animals that were made years ago. Maybe it's because I am older than dirt and I remember them as a kid? I like to use the original Rockford red heeled socks or boot socks for the majority of my sock animal projects. I have friends that use bright and colorful socks with strips and designs. You can use the whatever type of socks, colors, yarn, and materials that you prefer. These are fast and fairly easy to make and take between 1 - 2 hours to complete, depending on how much yarn you use for the mane. Attaching the mane is what took me the longest. The rest of the sock horse goes together very quickly.

For my stick horse I used:

1 Original Rockford Red Heel Sock (You can make 2 stick horse heads with a pair of socks)

Brown felt for the ears

2 black buttons for the eyes

beige or off white thread to sew horse together

Brick colored embroidery floss for the mouth

Black permanent marker for the nostrils (or you can glue on felt nose)

1/2 skein of white yard for the mane (more or less will be used depending on thickness desired)

Polyfil craft/doll/pillow stuffing

Jute (leather, ribbon) for the bridle and reins

Note: Because I wanted a traditional look I used a sanded and varnished tree branch for the stick but you can use a wooden dowel.

I took pics as I completed the steps so that anyone can easily follow and make your own to give as Christmas, Birthday or any day gifts for kids, Grand kids, loved ones.

Putting it together:

1. Stuff the sock with polyfil stuffing and place rubberband around the bottom to keep the stuffing from falling out. Push the nose of the horse towards the neck until the head and neck are at about a 45 degree angle. Hand stitch sock at the newly created bend so the head stays at this angle (similar to what mine looks like in the first picture.) You can click on the 2nd photo to enlarge it and see the stitching that I am referring to if you need more detailed instructions.

2. Cut ears from felt in the shape as shown in my picture, fold in half at the bottom and attach by stitching the bottom of the ears to the horse using thread or glue gun. I prefer thread myself. If you are using red heel socks they attach at the bottom front of the white around the red heel.

3. Take the embroidery floss and tie a knot in one end and attach it to the end of the sock outwards and slightly below center at the outter edge of the white toe on red heeled socks. Pull the embroidery thread across the front to form a mouth and pull slightly taut so the sides pucker a bit. Secure the embroidery thread and trim off.

5. Sew on your button eyes (or embroider, make felt eyes.) Draw (permanent marker) or paste on felt nostrils.

6. Attach a yarn or rag mane. I used white yarn. The mane is about 2 1/2 - 3" long in the front and 4 - 4/12 " on the sides that come down the horses neck. I stop about 2" before the b0ttom of the sock and before the ribbing. Now I am sure that there are lots of ways to attach a yarn mane, but the easiest and most secure method for me is to take the yarn (on a darning needle) and draw the needle and yarn through the sock. Leave the desired length hanging out on one side of the neck, come through the sock and out the other side, form a loop (making sure it is the loop hanging is the same size as the piece of yarn that you have left hanging out on the other side. Repeat and again, come out the other side, coming back and forth and leaving loops until I have about a half dozen or so. I then snip the loops at the end, bring up two pieces of yarn at a time and tie a square knot. This keeps the yarn secure and it will not pull out. I do repeat this process until I have knotted all of my trimmed loops, and then I repeat this process until I have the desired length and thickness of mane.

A second method is to take a group of 10-12 pieces of yarn that have been cut the same length. Tightly wrap a piece of matching yarn around the center of the bundle, then tie a tight knot to secure. Attach your thread bundle (where you have tied the knot) to the neck of the horse. Start at the top of the head and continue adding additional yarn bundles down the neck until you have the desired amount. This method is faster and works better if you want a thicker mane.

7. Attach a bridle and reins made out of ribbon, leather, jute, rope, or whatever you want to use for rein/bridle materials.

8. Slip your horse head over a piece of wooden dowel (I use 2 3/4 - 3' stick) You can secure the head with a glue gun, rope, yarn or leather strip. If you use yarn or a leather strip cut a notch in the wooden stick or dowel for the yarn/leather strip to fit into. This will keep your horse head from falling off of the stick.

There you have it. Your completed stick horse. I hope you had fun making it. If you have any questions please feel free to email me.

Is this amazing or what!

I found this picture on the internet last night while doing a Google search for Moose pics. The caption on the picture was "Alaskan Clydesdale." ROFLMFO. Only in Alaska! Unreal.

What's new Pussy Cat?

Egads, I will be humming that tune now all night. Tom Jones! Remember him? My Mom had the biggest crush on him. I will have to remind her when I talk to her tomorrow. Well that was then and this is now, lol.

Oh my, what's new? Life has been so busy and full. With huskies, puppies, craft shows, the Earth Mart, and recently our local OctoberFest, I was pretty busy creating, and happy to say that I almost sold out on everything that I had made (and I thought I had lots!) There is one more Christmas craft show at the end of November, but truthfully I don't think I have enough stuff left to sell and not enough time to make up mass quantities, but I'm not too worried if I don't make it this year. My local sales have picked up and I've been doing pretty well. I hope that's a sign that the economy is turning around? I sure hope so.

What's new with the huskies? Aleutia is in a motherly way and should be having pups within the next two weeks. That means cute little cuddly Christmas puppies! Sweet! I love having puppies and puppy squeels filling the house. I can't wait!

Winter is fast approaching. The weather sure changed suddenly.... like overnight! One day it was sunny and warm. The next day it was cold and they were talking snow. Wow! I thought winter gradually settled in. I have a feeling it's going to be another cold winter here... UGH.

The kids are good. My Grand kids are growing like weeds. Steve, Kiersa and Cohen came down and spent the day with me at the Priest River Octoberfest. We had a blast! Good food, good beer, great band, good company! It just doesn't get any better than that.

In a nutshell that sums up what's been going on around here. Things will slow down now that summer has ended. The craft shows are done. Soon I will be snowed in. I will have 3 or 4 months to build up my jewelry and craft supply to get ready for next years Earth Mart. I did really well with my sales there this year.

Ok, I guess it is time to call it a night and shut down the computer. I hope everyone is happy and well and enjoying all that life brings. Until next time,

Ciao.
~LVS

Surviving a hack attack!

Have you ever had your computer hacked? Someone, an unknown person, hacks into your computer and completely takes it over. They change all of your settings, you can't even turn your computer off (except to unplug it.) All of your configurations and settings are changed. They now have access to all of your files, your passwords, personal information... anything that you have saved on your computer is there for them to see (and use!)

It started out simply enough. One of my Etsy girlfriends asked me to join her Mafia on Facebook.com. Now I am not an online game player. Years ago I used to play games at Pogo.com with my Son and Daughter-in-law, but since I opened my Etsy stores I found I didn't have time for that anymore so I let my Pogo subscription run out.

Facebook was different though. It was a social network. A perfect way to meet new friends and share my Etsy stores with, or so I thought at the time I joined it. Little did I know it would turn into one of the worst nightmares of my life. I thoroughly enjoyed playing "Mafia Wars." I built up my character over the course of a month and I put in a lot of time and effort in doing so. I was getting by on little or no sleep, wacking other Mafia families, having friends and family join my Mafia family and by the end of a month I had over 1000 people in my happy family.

Perhaps that is where I got in to trouble? I didn't know 90% of these people. I didn't really know anyone other than by their Mafia Family screen names. I joined a couple of Mafia Wars groups and before long I had more Mafia Family friends than I could shake a stick at.

My Mafia Wars character was hijacked, as well as my Facebook account. Try as I might to report this to Facebook I wasn't having any success. I was locked out of my account so I couldn't access it to tell anyone. I created a second Facebook account and reported that my friends account had been hijacked. I tried sending them emails to no avail. I finally reported it to the FBI. In the course of the hack/hijack I was hit with numerous viruses and I am sure it was "their" (whoever took over my account and character) way of ensuring I couldn't get back online for awhile. While I was knocked offline my back account was drained. This person was playing Mafia Wars (as though it was me) and paying to play! It went through my PayPal account and although I reported it to PayPal, paypal treated it as a "household" problem. Although I told them I live alone, with 3 huskies, I couldn't make them understand or listen, but perhaps they didn't want to? I was small potatoes compared to the gaming company and owner of this Mafia Wars game. I am sure PayPal made some hefty revenues off of others who played this Mafia Wars game, both on Facebook and my Space and Twitter too.

I could go on and on and on and explain my month of turmoil and personal H*LL. Once you are a victim of identity theft life doesn't feel the same. You feel victimized, violated, unsafe, terrorized. I had nightmares for almost a month. It cost me almost $500.00 in repairs to fix both of my computers, not to mention the money that was drained from my account. I haven't seen my credit cards statements yet.... yikes!

My word of warning to all of you out there who have joined one (or more) social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, My Space and others, be careful what you share. Only share within your private network of friends. Be sure you have all of the latest Windows updates and patches. Use a good Antivirus program and run regular scans. Be sure your antivirus program is updated daily. Use several good (free) malware programs, like Malwarebytes, Search and Destroy, Ad-Aware, etc. Run these regularly and search for any unsuspecting malware and spyware that has infected your computer, and DO use a good Firewall to block intruders.

I thought I was well protected. The first thing they did when they took control over my computer was disable my firewall, antivirus program and disable system restore.

If you have any questions please feel free to email me.

Ciao,

LVS

Trojan Vundo and 360 Virus

I just spent 4 days, (IM'ing, emailing and phone conversations,) trying to help my Mother remove Trojan Vundo (virtumonde) and the 360 virus from her computer. I researched online and found lots of suggestions..... and I think we tried most all of them. I will tell you what they suggest does NOT work. Symantec's virus removal tool will not delete it. Nor will all of the other programs that they tell you have free downloads. We actually bought one, webroots SpySweeper. It will find them sure enough and tell you to delete them you need to register the program. Once you buy it, run it, it finds the virus, when you try to delete them it says that the files can not be deleted. You just bought a program and are still left with the Virus. Both my Mom and I have requested refunds, which they have yet to do, so buyer beware!

Now before you spend days of needless downloads and try this, that, and all of the things that we tried, there was only ONE thing that I tried (and it is FREE!) It will not cost you a dime to get rid of both Trojan Vundo and the 360 virus. It is called Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. It can be downloaded from here:

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

Download this program and save it to desktop. You do not have to be in safemode. I turned off System Restore when I ran it.

Run the program to install it. Update the program to make sure you have the latest spyware definitions. Run "quick" scan. Once it finds the files, select "delete." It will remove all of the files it finds there.

After I ran Malware Byte I also ran Spybot's Search and Destroy. http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-amp-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10122137.html
Again, update this program before doing the scan. Also "quarantine" your system after doing the updates and run their scan to pick up any other unwanted cookies and tracking software. When finished run a full virus scan. I suggest doing this for a few days just in case. It is better to be safe than sorry. Then set these programs to run on a regular schedule.

I use AVG's Free antivirus and I swear by it. http://free.avg.com/ Although it didn't catch all of the Vundo and 360 virus files it did find most of them and put them in the vault. Neither Norton or McAfee's Anti-virus programs found these viruses either. This trojan and it's variants seems to have slid under the nose of all of the anti-virus programs.

For years I have run my computers with AVG Free (Anti-virus,) System Mechanic (keeps your computer running smooth,) Spybot Search and Destroy (Spyware removal,) and will now add malwarebytes.

Happy Bug FREE computing!

Ciao,
LV