Randomness

Randomness is the perfect word to describe my mood of late. Suitably vague. I have messed up two Wee Wonderfuls Stitchette embroideries so to take a break from those I ironed a heart onto some felt and just took it from there. No clue what it will become.



I want to come up with a good phrase to stitch in the middle. Or maybe a drawing?


I tried sewing a hot pink felt teddy bear but my machine tension crapped out for the second time in less than a month. It doesn't like felt I guess. Which is a shame because a hot pink teddy? Who wouldn't want one???

I have figured out the problem now though, something odd about the way the bobbin works. So maybe we'll have a hot pink teddy soon. But before that I think it's time the old catnip toys around here went to the 'farm' where old pets usually go and we had a few new ones around. Ginga still loves this but it turns my stomach to see him licking it:


He's fine today but some marauding neighbourhood tom got a chunk of his back end. I found a chunk of black fur under his claw so I hope he gave as good as he got. He definitely needs some new catnip to relax with. It's the weekend after all.

Grrrrrrr

Please excuse the typos etc. It's been a longer than long day. Ginga, the cuter but more annoying cat (extremely deaf when he wants to be) woke us at 4am and 5.30am. Why? Was he busting to go out? No. House on fire and he's heroically warning us? No. Just wanted to wipe cat snot on us and claw our faces until we patted him. Cats apparently produce a lot of snot at night too. Just so you know too now.

And this evening Dave comes inside to say that Ginga has been in a huge cat fight with a feline intruder, and is bleeding and covered in mud. We spent nearly an hour doctoring his wound, removing the other cats fur from his claws and coaxing him to drink warm milk. Now I could do with a stiff and preferably flammable drink.

My Pay It Forward things are all finished, just got to find the money to send them out. It costs a small fortune to mail anything. To change the pace around here I am embroidering something on felt. I'm making it up as I go along so who knows what it will be when I finish with it. I also have more felt for teddy bears including one piece so bright I bet you can see it in the dark.


I bought this at the thrift store today. It's got age marks on the edges and I can just imagine this being a prized possession in WWII.

Anniversary time

9 months ago (November 29th - it was a Wednesday then and it is today) I found myself hiding in a nook in the museum lobby waiting for him to walk through the door. He did and my first thought was "Wow". His first word, once I plucked up the courage to come out of hiding, was "Wow". My memory may be embellishing that but wow was said and the way I tell it, it was the first word said.

It was a wonderful day, we met again the next day, we were living together within a week and were madly in love long before that week was up. He tells me he loves me every morning, every evening, every night. He rings me in the middle of the day to say it. I never ever go to sleep at night without making sure he knows I love him.



His anniversary present to me is a hard drive and network card for his old laptop so I can be mobile. My anniversary present (since I don't get 40% work discounts on hard drives) to him is a freshly baked double batch of e-nour-mous cookies. The way to a mans heart after all.....

Ugh

You know the story. Mondayitis...on a Tuesday. Someones coming to pick something up in 90 minutes but you have to pop down to the shops real quick for something important. Which is where the mission starts. Go to the bank, the teller is new...and slow. Go to the haby store...son of a...new sales assistant too, even slower and usually theres not even any other customers and today theres a queue. Go to the library, theres a queue. Go to the post office. That went fine actually. What didn't go fine was stepping out of the post office and seeing that the heavens have opened rather spectacularly and I have to walk home in the rain. Oh joy. Made it home with dreams of a nice hot shower after the person picked up their stuff (Dave sold a PC online yay!! Less crap!!) but on my way to the shower I detoured to lie in bed for like 2 minutes, I swear. 2.5 hours later....

I'm hoping to get the crafting bug back tomorrow. I have a couple of things to make still. I am also going to try using my embroidery transfer pencil for the first time.

Excessive recycling?

Yep. Apparently you can recycle excessively. If you live within our city councils area anyway. They left part of our recycling today with a notice saying there was TOO MUCH OF IT!! Since when has helping the environment been a bad thing?

Last night I let my lovely interfere with my PC. I should know better. He may be an IT guy but he never has much luck with my PC. Before I defragged he said "oh, run ccleaner". So I did, making sure to untick the things he said to so it wouldn't remove my mozilla settings. Not only did it completely remove them anyway it ATE my bookmarks. My blog list, the sites I visit daily, the lot. Grrrrr!!! Luckily I have learnt from the past and regularly save my bookmarks to my documents. But he is now completely banned from any improvements to my PC.

Signs of summer

How can you tell summer is coming? When the cats play 'that warm grassy patch is mine!' of course!!


Might be time to buy me a pair of these beauties!!


One thing it was time for today was crafting!! I am doing a Wee Wonderfuls Stitchette (toe tapping Tilly) and on days like this I want to be able to sit outside with my scissors, flosses etc on hand while I get some colour on my pasty white self. I remembered saving this picture off Flickr a while ago so decided to try my own.


Smaller than the one above but I am thrilled with it. It's just the right size for my embroidery stuff and I can even just put it on the couch arm with my embroidery or sewing bits in it without it getting in the way. I'm ready for summer now! Oh, and best of all it only took 1/4 of a fat quarter for each side plus a piece of flannel to pad it inside.

Simple pleasures of home

The simple pleasures of a Saturday spent at home:

Moved on from the artsy clutch in Bend-The-Rules Sewing to the simple bib. My gran once gave me a bunch of snaps but I never thought I'd use them. So I kept them but threw out the instructions. Yeah, smart. I know. No idea if I set them right (and I definitely didn't do it well if it is right) but they are set and I can brag about that to everyone who will listen. And I will.


There was something on TV this morning about meerkats and Rastus was *hypnotised* by them. He could not take his eyes off them.


The sleeping beauties Dave and Ginga. Ginga keeps waking us up at 4am with cute little 'I want a smooch' antics and as cute as it is it's not as cute as it was a week ago. We end up needing major nana naps in the afternoons. He doesn't know I took this photo and is going to kill me for taking it let alone posting it. Simple pleasures baby.

Oh damn it

I failed at Computer Free Friday on Thursday evening. Thats how damn good I am at that sort of thing. So I'm *limiting* todays usage instead. Can you tell? I'm hoping to get these Computer Free Friday's into my routine eventually though, a whole internet free day? I'd get so much sewing done! As it is I have fabric ironed and waiting to become another clutch. Guess what my family is getting for Christmas? Lots and lots of Bend-The-Rules artsy clutches. Even the boys probably.

Too tired to title this today

It may still be the end of winter but it was sunny all day, heavenly, and I got a good dose of it. As a result I am completely tired tonight. No crafting today like I had planned. In fact a nana nap sounds good. I'll be up until 2am as a result but hey I'll be ready to sew then.

Can you spot the bird?


Spring is coming...


Gettin arty farty...


This was yesterdays lesson. When you have a cat who will automatically hop into ANY open drawer or cupboard you have to shut them ALL. Even the high ones. He jumped on the bench and walked over a keyboard balanced on a monitor (precariously) to stick his nose into the cupboard.

Artsy clutch

I finally made something from Amy Karols Bend-The-Rules Sewing. I absolutely should have made this earlier! It was the easiest bag I have ever made!! And it came out SO beautiful!! It won't be the last one I make!

Crafting karma

All my good deeds, giving catnip toys away and doing the PayIt Forward thing etc must be giving me major karma points. I mean how else do you account for the Japanese embroidery book I found at the thrift store today? $4 is about twice what they'd normally price a book like this at, they obviously realised its beauty. But considering I have one of these books that I bought from Superbuzzy for a heck of a lot more....$4 is like pennies for this.

Hooverpuss

I dropped the cat treats and almost had to get the vacuum out to clean them up. Luckily Hooverpuss saved the day by swooping in and clearing the floor in no time.




The reason I reached for the treats in the first place was to distract him so I could finish this:

Teddy time

The last couple of bears have been cuddly (washable) flannel ones for two little girls. Now its for two little boys but this time I decided to go back to felt. Especially since all my flannel is rather...girly. I doubt they'd appreciate purple swirls. The time I embroidered the muzzle before I sewed it on, which led to a much tidier face and I added french knot eyes because I love doing french knots.

Now he just needs a name...Dave is going for Herbert. I love Dave but I doubt it baby.

Snail mail sweetness

I wasn't expecting this for a couple of days and had pretty much forgotten I ordered it. Just when I was trying to decide what to embroider I decided to check the mail. Problem solved!

Walkmans in World War 2

Did you know they had walkmans in WW2? I sure as hell didn't. They were called mikiphones, and were a very small gramophone, the size of a cheese tin. Pretend you know how small a cheese tin was. As small as a large pocketwatch apparently. You couldn't exactly tuck it in your pocket and go for a run but it was small enough to put in your pack and I absolutely want one.

karma and catnip

Today marks the end of my little 'Me Time' break. I got busy crafting last night, spend many of my boyfriends hard earned dollars at Craft 2.0 this morning (that'll be the next blog entry probably) but I think the best part was taking the catnip to the shelter.

I also took several large cans of cat food cos showing up with only treats is a bit rude. When we walked in with the catnip toys and started the handout there was about 8 cats visible. Within a minute there was about 25 sniffing around. They LOVED the treats. It was especially nice to see some of them rolling around cos it turns out that some are quite....porky. Some of them take to grazing in other cats bowls so...

This is Miss Muffit, you can't tell from this cell phone photo but shes a gorgeous and headstrong wee lass. I'd have adopted her on the spot if I could.



Crookshanks, a tom cat currently causing chaos amongst the shelter residents, goobing on a catnip toy


Other goobing catterpusses

This behemoth was collecting the toys to bogart the catnip, one paw on each toy.


Gratuitous cat porn photo....and this is only the second biggest cat there!


Apparently they have about 40 residents. I only bought 20 cat nip toys and probably saw 25 cats at most but they have their little hidey holes. Next time I have to make more!

Theodore

His name is Theodore and every lopsided embroidery stitch (note to self: next time DO NOT sew it together before you embroider it when you're a hopeless beginner!!) is stitched with love. His flannel body is made for cuddles from little arms and soon he's off to a new home where I hope he'll be loved. And of course he can't go anywhere undressed so he's wearing a dashing felt waistcoat.

Progress

Well for a break where I meant to sew and create like crazy I don't know if it's turning into the frenzy I hoped. We finally have clean laundry and I have watched Little Women and the BBC version of Pride And Prejudice (oh Mr Darcy....*growl* Colin Firth) but not much beyond that. My sewing machine has been moved to on top of my desk to tease me for not using it as much as you should be using a $500+ machine- daily!! That does at least mean the desk is tidy enough that the papers no longer threaten to eat my keyboard . I have also spent today doing an embroidery while swooning over Mr Darcy's saucy smile and those curls. Although thanks to him the stitches aren't great...yeah blame it on Colin Firth, thats right.

I still have to bake some cookies and sew something, anything, before my break can be considered over. On Saturday I am going to Craft 2.0 and taking the catnip toys to the shelter...finally. They stink!! I hate the smell of catnip but I hope I get to give a few out to the kitties to play with. Also on Saturday I get to pull the names out of a hat for the first swap on my flickr ribbon and button swap group. If you belong to flickr and would like to swap with us please join!!

Running in circles

I am heavily bogged down right now and I think the rest of this week is Me Time. Craft 2.0 is this Saturday and I was so disorganised I didn't even get around to applying to be in it. So this week is going to be spent selling, donating, chucking anything I don't want or need. Our 'house' is something like 50 square feet. So making room for us to move around would probably be appreciated by Dave too. I *might* even be able to put my sewing machine on TOP of the desk!! Oh it makes me almost giddy to think that! The mess has begun to 'eat' the keyboard.


See you in a couple of days!

Spiderpig, spiderpig...

After 8.5 months of being a couple Dave and I went on our second date tonight, our first time going to a movie together. We saw The Simpsons Movie which...well after 18 yrs of them I enjoyed it but didn't laugh that hard. 3 out of 5 from me. However if I get the Spiderpig song out of my head anytime in the next week I'll be surprised!

It wasn't until this evening though so this afternoon I sat down and did my first complete embroidery. I got real linen in a fat quarter swap recently so I cut off a piece, ironed on a Sublime Stitching transfer from my brilliant book and spent several lovely hours sitting on the floor in front of the heater creating this:

Finally!!

We have crafting!! I finally got my hands on some catnip, fixed the tension on my machine before I smashed it to bits and was able to finish the catnip toys I am donating to the cat shelter. The fruit loop at the health food store told me the organics store has it. The capital city and we have one organics store and one health food store. It's a boom town people. Anyway...I did my mental arithmetic about how many bags I would need - I failed high school maths pretty spectacularly. I used less than 2 bags so I have 3 left and I HATE the smell. I will never get through that much left over cat nip for toys for my own br...cats, so I have to pluck up the stomach to make more pouches for homeless cats. Maybe I'll just donate the 3 bags to Health Food Store Fruit Loop for catnip tea.

Photo fest

The buying of the contents of these photos tired me out I had to rest the whole next day. I'm getting old!

First I had to buy some new fabrics. I was forced to really, because I needed some really amazing fabric to offset the bags I intend to make from my new book. I love the black fabric, I shoulda got more.



My new book! My Amazon order finally came. Speedy they are not. Unfortunately my sewing machine tension is out of whack so before I can even start sewing things I need to fix that. The one part of my machine I hate fiddling with.


The Wee Wonderfuls autumn stitchettes (didn't even know I could get them in NZ) and a sublime stitching pattern!





Not to mention more fat quarters last night, which I am just going to ease into my stash quietly so as to feel less guilty about the fact that I will probably never use any of them. Far too pretty to cut into.

And at this point I am going to stop buying craft supplies and MAKE SOMETHING.

Flickr swap group

I am so so busy (translation: running behind) doing things right now that I have no idea what to do first. So my next post will be chock full of photos and things that I have bought/received. Lovely things at that! But until I get my head together I only have time to say that I have started a new flickr group! If you're a flickr member interested in a ribbon and button swap please come join us and have fun!

Signs you may be an IT widow

I am an IT widow. I'm not married but thats not the point. Dave works in IT, and at last count 7 PC's and 2 laptops plus a laptop he's selling for a customer are all in my kitchen. We don't have room for a dining table.

Some of the signs that indicate I am an IT widow:
- The side or top of the PC/PC's are never on. Either because theres parts to add or remove or just because 'somethings playing up'. 'I need to clean out the dust' is also valid for lid removal for up to 2 weeks. In case the dust comes back.



- There's cords strung between PC's (they HAVE to be networked), PC to TV, inter-room, dangling for no reason, ready to be hooked up at a seconds notice. Notice the nice white light cover? Not original. Dave had to buy a new one online after the cords made the original fall off and smash.


- Free bench space? Not in this house. And you can't give these old monitors away now(Except to my pack rat lovely) so they just multiply.


When the IT addict runs out of bench space thats ok cos theres floors too!!

Fabric bandit struck again

Dave obligingly and rather foolishly drove me up to a quilting shop I recently discovered. Oh my. He sat in the car and read the paper while I shopped. The pink and green ones at the back are for my first quilt. The red ones in the front are for my second quilt. The polka dot ones and the fat eighths are flannel and I have my secret devious plans ready for them. Basically I intend to let them sit there for a while while I stress myself into a stomach ulcer that they cost a fortune and I should be using them. Then I'll use them.

Playing tag

Yay! I have my Pay It Forward people! Leslie, Poppy & Mei and Celtic Mommy. Ladies, please email me (in my profile) your addresses so I can get crafting for you!

And Lisa has tagged me! 7 random fascinating facts about me may be a bit of a stretch but here's my turn:
1. I find it incredibly hard to learn almost anything. Guitar, languages, installing lining in a tote, all beyond me.
2. I can't drive. I sat my learners license when I was 16, I renewed it sporadically and here I am, 28 with my 12 yr old learners license. The world is safer this way, trust me.
3. I have my motorbike license. Don't worry, again its just my learners permit. I'm entirely legal to drive a motorbike on the road on my own but after falling off the bike during the test day I don't see it happening. (seriously, it is HARD work riding for the first time)
4. I have a teeny tiny shopping addiction. Honestly I can quit anytime I want to...I just don't want to.
5. I have a large pile of uncut fabric and unread magazines as a result. One day....
6. Officially I can't cook. If you've eaten my cooking you'd agree. Unless you're Dave and then "mmm, it's delicious sweetie".
7. I'm extremely clucky/broody. I'm totally ready for the adventure that is parenting. However my lovely has ED so I don't hold out much hope.

Now I'm supposed to tag 7 people, but I have no idea who hasn't been tagged yet so I'll just tag 3. Oh yeah, I should have written #8. I'm a bit lazy! So I'm tagging Leslie , Kate and Blue Yonder who I realised AFTER has been tagged already. It's hard to find someone who hasn't now.

Teddy With Waistcoat

It was all about priorities today. I found myself at breakfast buttering my toast with a paring knife, eating my toast off a dinner plate and drinking my coke out of a coffee cup. Time to do the dishes? Yep. However, as I said it's all about priorities. Craft inspiration called out loudly from my new Toys To Sew book.

THIS is what the Teddys with Waistcoats look like in the book:



And THIS is what it looks like when I try make the toy featured in the book. Yep, I made a toy that looks like it should!!!


I'm not a handsewer at all, it's a skill I never bothered with it. So after sewing the sideseam shut, the muzzle on, the face and eyes I decided that sewing all the way around the face and ears was not vital, and so I gave up after hand stitching the ears so they stand out. It actually really works too.

It took me hours to make, but I am so so proud of it!! Next on the list: cat and mouse skittles!

female maths: spending on discount = profit

Firstly, a point to note. The catnip is for cats, I didn't get any so yes I will have to brave the loopy lala's at that shop again soon (trying to find another local source if I can) and no, I do not drink catnip tea. I didn't know you could and having smelt catnip I have no idea why anyone would want to drink it. It's like cat food, it must smell good to them cos they always want more but it does NOT smell good to a sane human.

Dave's gone to work so the new additions to my stash have been brought out to be inspected and projects assigned to the favourite pieces.
The reason I actually went into the shop:


The reason I spent so long in there (other than the slooooowwww sales assistant):


I walked in and they had SO MANY good patterns that I was just scooping them all up. And they had 30% off! I actually SAVED money by shopping. Over $20 saved on the fats, which I woulda bought even if they weren't on special and another $5 saved on the felt.

Men don't understand female maths. It works like this. I saved $25 by shopping. So by shopping I was saving money. Very shrewd. The point we don't tell men that would help them understand is that I saved $25 by shopping when I did. Because I would have bought that stuff on special or not. It just woulda cost me $25 more at another time. And so that $25 saved is a profit. Not only did I save money but I earned $25. It's technically a fragile branch of maths and no man has ever accepted that I walked out of the store with a bag of stuff and made a profit but men also don't understand that those shoes don't go with that outfit. Which proves that we know more and therefore it really was a profit I made last night. Duh! Easy!