Oh la la

A lame title indeed but when I look at these two little creations of mine with their simplicity, their mostly neat and tiny stitches, all nice and neat I can't help but go "oh la la, you did good girly".

Crochet, I will conquer you!!

Oh yes, I will conquer you!!




I managed to cast on a slipknot with the instructions from a kids book (always learn from a kids book, they will give you much easier instructions on anything) but I am having trouble actually making a stitch. Yeah, so maybe this book isn't brilliant to learn from but it might just be that I'm too stupid. You can never tell with me. I will persevere though. Crochet, you will be mine!!

Oooohhh, something new...sort of.

Spring is well and truly here and the sun has been out in force today. What better activity than embroidery in the sunshine. I started my first piece of redowrk last night, a simple little flower. I altered my 'technique' if you could call it that, and it worked. I used white cotton and very, very small stitches, and tried Anchor instead of DMC. Overall it all came together beautifully.



I finished it out in the sunshine today and turned it into this:


I'll glue it into the ramekin as soon as I can find the faffing glue. It was a lot easier than I expected to make. A thrifted ramekin, a scrap of cotton, some stuffing and a gathering stitch to put it all together and voila, I have a new pincushion and finally have something to show off my embroidery on.

I copied the idea from here in case you thought I was being devilishly original. Alas, no.

Mail day!!

The 6 bags of baby gear was picked up this morning so now I get to use my half share of the profits to mail off my Pay It Forward parcels and some swaps. Yay! Not yay for the post office ladies though, hehehe.


edit: Blogger chopped off one of the parcels. Damn you blogger!!! I've been considering moving to wordpress and you make it so easy!!
5 parcels and 2 envelopes. Will my money or mail run out first? Who knows....

The envelopes have bookmarks in for a swapbot swap. Not my best work but the linen is getting easier to sew and I think the fabrics I chose are beautiful. I just wish I had gotten more than a scrap of the apples and pears one. I love it yet I'm giving it away. Selfless, I tell you, selfless. Or stupid, whichever.





Oh, and....after sulking yesterday about the bad job interview I read my email and there was one frm a guy who I have written for in the past givng me a writing gig. US$500!!! Converted into NZ$ and after tax (first time I will have ever declared my extra income, what a grown up) thats still over NZ$500 for 500 words. Y A Y ! ! !

When things turn out right yet look so so wrong

I'm having a few issues with this laptop. Namely the keys are smaller and closer together and my fingers aren't even a little bit small. I am making so many typos its driving me nuts. And I keep pressing the cAPS BUTTON INSTEAD OF THE A KEY. Not annoying at all.

I did a little crafting. I found a pattern in a book and thought it sounded cute. It turned out very unlike what its supposed to be. Look at the picture and leave me a comment on what your first guess was about what it is meant to be. I'm going to alter the pattern so the next one I make will be a totally different animal. Cos clearly this one ain't working but I do think it has potential.



Time for a little blatant begging to cheer me up. I'm hosting my first swap-bot swap. It's called Think pink!! If you like pink and are a member of swap-bot maybe you'd like to join the swap.

Web wierdness....and a crooked bookmark

First the funkiness that is my first fabric bookmark. Bear in mind that linen moves ALOT, or at least that my linen did plus the pattern lines were on the back, and so sewing the ribbon on the front was hard. I'm a brilliant sewer, it was just the plan that sucked. Yeah, thats it...



OK, I've had a lot of time lately thanks to my injury to surf the net. I have found some good stuff!! Here is some bad stuff though to make you laugh, and I hope it will make you never ever name your kid Jestaney Kalei or Jassity. Or Espn. Or pretty much any of the horrors listed on the site.

*floommpphh*

*floommpphh* you ask? Yes, *floommpphh*. Thats the sound of me flopping down on the couch after making the most horrendously hard bag ever. I thought my last bag 18 months ago was a nightmare but this was actually worse. Don't get me wrong, it turned out great and I LOVE it!!! It really tested me though. I altered it from the Bend-The-Rules Sewing pattern, changed the bottom to box corners which was a lot easier and the straps are sewn in rather than held in by casings which added hours to the making and yet probably took years off my life. All in all though....I LOVE IT. The fabric was the perfect choice and now I want to go somewhere and flaunt it.

Fabulousness

Last Monday was so bad that Tuesday was bad and Wednesday too. Pretty much the week over before it picked up. But today was such a good Monday that there is no way this week will be anything but fabulous my dahlings, fabulous!!

Fabulous fabrics, including this Paris Hilton concoction:



Fabulous things made by me:
The cat ball even came out in a ball shape! My whipstitch is pretty shit-stitch (groan) but it holds things together well enough. Just got to make about 4 more mice skittles.


Fabulous mail:
Vintage transfers from Jane, thank you so much!! Plenty of stitching to pass my time!


And more mail fabulousness: The Spring and Winter Stitchettes to complete my set. I owe my brother big bucks for them (his credit card) but pfffft he can wait. I'm far too busy right now!


And to round out the fabulousness I sold an auction on Trade Me so theres money in the bank this week. And what a week it's going to be!

Envy

Sometimes I don't know how they do it. You know who I mean, those bloggers who don't blog for what feels like a maximum of 36 hours but when they do it's to report that they have 'only' been away for a week somewhere devastatingly interesting, sewn 50 bags/toys for their shop, found more at their thrift store in day than I find in a month, homeschooled their kids and got some fabulous new book that I want madly. In that same amount of time I have fought with the cats for my share of the bed/chair, sewn 1.5 things, stuffed up one embroidery, and found 2 things at the thrift store and had more naps than is good for me. So I just have to ask...how do you people do it??? And get 36 comments about how fabulous your photos of it look!!

I am currently making the cat and mouse skittles from my Toys To Sew book. Yes, ladies and gentlemen (and if you are a gentleman you are probably seriously lost but welcome) I have so far managed most of a mouse. Well, it IS Sunday. And as soon as I sew the mouses ears on the right way I'll begin the cat.

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.

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:

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!!

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.

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!

Randomness

- I have a confession. I don't do cross stitch. It seems like I am sometimes the only crafter who doesn't. Most importantly because I am enjoying learning to embroider so much I have noticed all embroidery magazines seem to be 'cross stitch and embroidery' magazines. It seems like people think you must enjoy one if you enjoy the other and you're less of a crafter if you don't cross stitch. I tried cross stitch but stitching xxxxx repetitively made me want to poke my eyes out with the needle. I have much respect for those who can do it, some of the patterns are incredibly complex, but personally it's filed right next to Greek and guitar as things I will just never be good at.

- This is my 300th blog post in this blog. Thats as close to a blogiversary as I will ever get.

- It was Dave's and my 8 month anniversary yesterday. I'm always surprised when we make it to another month but I'm totally happy.

- I'm not big on punctuality at times. Yesterday I bought Dave his 6 month anniversary present. Around the 6 month mark I bought him his birthday present, also 2 months late. I get there in the end.

- I finally came up with something for my other swap partner. Don't look too closely, it's not my best work.

If anyone asks its meant to be that shape

I have my first swap-bot swap underway at the moment and I have two swap partners. The first is easier because her profile is very thorough. We have only got $5 to spend on each partner and so I decided I'd make a pincushion. Originally it was a circle but circle pincushions were not my best work at school. When I came back to sewing after 10 yrs I was 100x better, so I suppose I hoped that I could now magically make a circle pincushion. No, still can't. So it's offically "shaped like the flower". The linen holds up really well, it looks good.



It's when you turn it over to the cotton side that you start to really snigger and point. I cut little splits all the way around the inside seam to stop puckering, but alas. So I stuck a ribbon loop in the top to distract people. I bet all you can think is how it clashes with the cotton...see, distracted ya didn't I? My ribbon stash is only 5 months old, I only had 2 jars to choose from.


After I gave up on it last night I started fiddling with my sewing machines fancy stitches. I bought it 4 months ago for the fancy stitches, I kinda figured I better use them. Alas $600 doesn't buy you any fancy ducky or flower stitches though but this is one of the prettiest: