Oh well.

I completely forgot to take photos of the Christmas presents I made this year, and I was so excited to show them off. I guess you can read that as "show them off IN THEORY" since I don't think anyone is reading this.

Anyway, notes to self: I made a scarf for my mom with the lace pattern here, I think it's called Feathers and Fan or something similar. I gave her a pair of earrings and a jar of lilac and lavender bath salts too. I made my brother a tuxedo t-shirt that I did with cardboard stencils and bleach sprayed onto a black shirt. He's also getting something else that I was too drunk to work on on Christmas Eve. My dad got two jars of marinated olives (recipe not on the internet) and a coffee liqueur that I made by reducing coffee, sugar, and water to a syrup and adding it to brandy.

I got some very nice crafty stuff for Christmas this year, including some canvases, a palette knife, some acrylics, beads, and The Guerilla Art Kit by Keri Smith, which is really cool. I also got a basket to keep my knitting in my living room, some great sock yarn, and a knitting book (do I dare attempt cabling?). My mom gave me a metric buttload of needles, too, so I'm totally stocked. The only thing I'm missing is yarn for all the things I want to do, and that will have to wait. My Christmas money is going straight to my bank account. I have a few projects planned for myself (hooray), like the Shalom cardigan on Ravelry and my long-awaited Noro scarf. I have to finish the dog blanket, too.

In other news, yesterday I ruined my own birthday surprise and discovered that I'm going to get a new digital camera (I have never owned a brand-new one). It turns out well because my old camera got knocked over and broken on Christmas Eve. It was taking really weird photos, too, maybe it was time. Anyway, I'm stoked. I'm going to head down to Future Shop tomorrow and check them out.

I'm finding myself with tons of projects planned, both crafty and otherwise, and I literally don't know where to start! Good thing I have a lot of time on my hands right now.

UGH!

Okay, so I can't give any details here because this is a Christmas present we're talking about, but holy crap, knitting can SUCK sometimes! I knitted last night for roughly 4 hours and when midnight rolled around, what did I have? Nothing. Really. Nothing. Literally zero. I ripped my little heart out. I restarted this morning and things are going much better but JESUS.

Word to my future self: do not jump into a pattern before making sure that you know exactly what everything on the chart means. Even that red box around certain stitches which you completely ignored. And OH YEAH, don't forget to maybe find a photo of a stitch before attempting it!

In short: yarn-overs can bite me!

Anyway, I'll be working on Christmas stuff for the next little while so I'll be adding photos and whatnot after the gifts are given. I'd love to rant and rave some more, but it would ruin the surprise. Also, I couldn't digital-photo-take my way out of paper bag. I have to play with the settings on my camera.

Simple jewelry

I played around with my jewelry stuff tonight. I made a few pairs of earrings, really quick and easy ones. Hopefully I'll wear them a few times. I'd like to improve my jewelry-making techniques - all I can really do is bead and attach things with jump rings. I'd love to pull off complex designs, but... I've got a list of hobby-related "things to do" up to here. I have to pick and choose. As an interesting contrast to the homemade-ness of my jewelry, I've drooling over the jewelry here. My favourite is this pair of earrings. Nerdy, but not obvious! Also - thirty dollars. But beautiful.

Anyway, I finally got my camera back but don't really know how to use it, so I can't figure out how to get my photos any less blurry than these. Onto the jewelry!



Pretty much the easiest earrings ever. Add beads, make a loop at the top of the straight wire, attach hooks. Done.



Slightly more "labour"-intensive, but not by much! Still, looks good.



Wacky picture frame earrings! They don't match! Zany! I like these. The picture frames are actually meant for scrapbooking. They came with these little pointy things to stick them into paper. Dollar store, baby!



Memory wire bracelet. Again with the same beads. I like doing memory wire stuff, it always looks good at the end and it's so easy.



This is a weird little lariat necklace I made awhile ago. You'll notice I have pretty limited supplies - that's the same picture frame-y pendant as the earrings. Plus I have only one type of bead. I don't wear this very often, I haven't quite figured out the best way to.

I have plans for some sea glass jewelry, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to mount/attach/secure the glass. I'm not crazy about wire wrapping, I'd like something more polished. I don't really have the tools for anything else more metalwork-ish. I have some really great pieces that would make an awesome necklace.

I started my first doggie blanket too.



You probably can't see in this tiny photo, but I'm doing a seed stitch border and garter stitch for the rest (I was going to do all seed stitch, but I kept getting distracted and making mistakes and I'd like this to be as quick a knit as possible). The colour looks pretty yellow in the photo, but it's really a bright, not-quite-neon orange. I have about 12 skeins of the stuff, which is good because it will probably take me several more to finish this. Also, it's my first time using circular needles, which is great. I'm not knitting in the round, but it's great to have everything attached and all. My next project will probably be something in the round, once I finish my Christmas stuff.

Oh, the plaid backdrop on some of the photos? My couch. Yeah, I know.

Yay!

The SPCA person emailed me back and seemed really excited. So I'm going to start with some truly heinous orange stuff that my mom gave me and which I never make into anything that anybody will ever want to wear. Hopefully I'll get to start this weekend.

An interesting idea...

So when I started knitting, I got a bunch of yarn from family members that had been lying around. Some of the colours are, well, ugly. And it's good yarn, but mostly acrylic, which I don't really like the feel of. Also, I'm low on cash right now and I can't really afford to buy yarn to work on my other planned projects, stuff that I'll be wearing and so would rather do in wool.

But today I came across a great suggestion - use the yarn you don't want to wear to knit small blankets to donate to a local animal shelter! They're washable, warm, free, and good practice for me! So I emailed my local SPCA branch to see if they'd be interested in a couple of blankets. I might also make some ipod "socks" and other small projects with it. That way I can use the crazy colours.

Anyway, I'd really like to get some practice with circular needles in AND help keep some kitty warm!

New projects in mind

Okay, so it's been a little while since I posted. I'm working on a couple of knitting projects right now, one of which is the Noro scarf you can find here. The others are Christmas-related and so I can't post anything right now, since my "fan base" is made up of mostly family members. Anyway, I'd like to post some better photos of projects when I get my camera back. I've also got some photo-related things I'd like to work on. 

My main crafty time right now is spent on knitting and reviving my journal, which used to be noting more than a place for whining but which I'm trying to make more interesting. 

I started by gathering a bunch of odds and ends that I've been saving and gluing them in, scrapbook-ishly. Heather, if you're reading, can you spot the thing you wrote (hint: it's backwards, it's blurry, and it's in German).

There's also the Great Wall of Movies, spanning 1999-2003, otherwise known as the Era of Cheap Tickets.

Anyway, that's it for now. Hope to get the camera back soon.

And the hits just keep on coming

I've been extremely productive this weekend. I took a break from homework this afternoon to put these things that I wrote about yesterday:

I glued them to cardboard backings (thank you Amazon.ca!), glued on picture-hanging things, and put them up above my dining table, where there were already three nails. I have a couple more of these things that I might do something with later.

I just need to find something poster-sized for my poster frame and paint the second canvas and my walls will be interesting again! I wanted to put up some chalk and charcoal nudes that I did in my art class, but they're way too small for the poster frame and the one that I really liked is almost ruined anyway. Plus it was done on crappy newsprint. Anyway, I'm thinking maybe a Rasputina poster for the other frame.

On a roll of some kind

I actually got those photo print things cropped this evening and thought I'd post some pictures of them so my mom could admire them (hi Mom!).

These are done by placing various objects (the Love thing is an earring) on photo paper on an enlarger in a darkroom, then exposing the paper so the images of the objects is left behind. We developed them with chemicals and everything, they still kind of smell. Plus something spilled on them, so there are little brownish patches. Luckily it's not too noticeable. 

I wish I had permanent darkroom access, these were a lot of fun to make and I can only imagine how often I would do it if I could!

Lots of crazy crap on the walls

I recently found myself with nearly bare walls in my living room. I hate painting rooms, and I'm reluctant to do it when I'll just be moving in less than a year. So I figured I'd better buy, make, or steal something to make my place look less I just moved in and more like I've been living here for two years (which I have).

I stopped by an art store and bought two medium-sized canvases. I painted one today with some acrylics I had from my studio art class a few semesters ago. I really enjoy painting, but I'm not that skilled and I'm hopeless at painting anything realistic (everything tends to look cartoonish), so I thought I'd go with something very simple.

First, it has to be said that simple design does not equal easy. I didn't realize how difficult it is to get a good sharp line or do small details. As a result the edge of the red portion is not quite straight. Also, the big fields of colour show brushstrokes really clearly, and it was hard to get the colour opaque and an even shade. Looking at the photo I can still see some streaks, which I may touch up later.

It was a lot of fun to do though. Painting, for me, takes so much careful planning and preparation, from coming up with the design to mixing colours to choosing brushes, that it's not quite a spontaneous expression like drawing or writing can be. It's more like doing a craft, like making jewelry or knitting. In any case, at least I have something decent to break up the white expanse above my TV.

I also wanted to add that I did something with some of the neon yarn I posted already. I made a scarf out of the neon yellow, neon green, and a navy blue. I knitted 3 strands together in a big giant garter stitch with orange pony beads. It took me about two hours, it's bright, and it's long.

Good way to do a project when you don't want to put in too much time or effort. I think I did this while watching a couple of episodes of the X-Files.

Still to do: get my digital camera back so I can stop using Photo Booth to show off my stuff, and frame some photo-lab-black-and-white-objects-type photos I did ages ago in my art class. Results to follow, I hope.

My first knitted thing - and a drawing

So I neglected this blog pretty consistently since early May, partly because I have no digital camera, and partly because I was waiting for my preciousssss sewing machine (which still isn't fixed). 

But recently I decided to take up knitting, and I've gone hog-wild (in terms of enthusiasm, not productivity). I even joined Ravelry, where I've enthusiastically made up a list of projects that are still way out of my (enthusiastic) league. In any case, today I finished my first knitted thing, a purple scarf. I forget the brand of wool, but it's a pretty basic not-too-chunky kind of thing. I promise to read the labels more in the future. Anyway, because I still have no digital camera I took some photos with my Macbook. They're not going to win any Pulitzers, but since this is ostensibly a blog that's mostly for my own records, that should be okay.

Here it is. It turned out pretty evenly, the only holes, mistakes and general wonkiness came toward the beginning when I was still learning. I did a few accidental yarnovers and added two stitches (I originally intended to have only twenty, but that changed after only a few rows!), but really I'm very pleased. The only thing left is to add fringe, although I'm out of the yarn. 

Interesting note: I taught myself the basic using the videos on knittinghelp.com, where I chose continental over English because it was the easiest for me to follow. This amazed both my grandmothers and my friend, who all knit English. I've gone through the English style quickly now, and it's hard! One of my grandmothers is adamant that I won't be able to follow patterns knitting continental, but I haven't quite reached that point yet.

 

In other knitting related news, my mom dug out this garbage bag full of yarn that was sitting in the attic. The highlights are several balls of these colours, which don't look so crazy on my Macbook camera, but let me assure you, they are of the most DayGlo-ingly neon persuasion. Like the colours we used to wear before we cared about clothes. I'm not sure yet what to do with it... I might use one of the colours for the fringe on my purple scarf... but I have to wait for the perfect idea. These colours are too incredible to be wasted.

The other thing I have to show off is this. Apologies for the reflection. It's an ink drawing that I started last summer while in Gaspe, but put off for awhile. I finally finished it a few weeks ago. I took an art class a couple of semesters ago and a girl there was doing these drawings, really intricate, lots of little shapes and designs, and she just sort of did it and let the final shape form itself. This is inspired by her stuff. The photo is reversed, but if you look closely you might see the words "Must not sleep, must warn others", taken from Commencement at the Obedience Academy by Aesop Rock. The letters formed a sort of framework and I went from there. It was fun, very soothing. Plus, it looks really neat. I hope I can post a nicer photo sometime.

Coming soon, maybe: I really want to get into screen printing. The build-it-yourself tutorials seems pretty daunting, though, and I'm the type of person who really likes to get a preassembled kit for the first time I try something, just so I can get a feel for it. Problem is, screen printing kits run about $60 and I've heard that they're not such good quality anyway. I might make a foray into Omer Deserres and see what they have, but I may end up attempting to build my own screen. Either way, I'll be documenting the results, for better or for worse.

Post Le Premier

So I was flipping through my various DIY and crafty-type books yesterday afternoon. I've just gotten into this stuff, starting with refashioning and making over old clothes, and I was thinking that I'd love to be able to document and keep track of my projects and their processes and also get to show them off (or display them with shame, depending on well they turned out). 

Now, when I was a young teen, I had a number of blogs and online diaries, both here and at Diaryland, which were full of drama and carryings-on and heartfelt guestbook postings. 

Then I grew up. I promise that this blog is 100% teen-drama-free and 100% full of DIY goodness!

I'll probably post anything I make, since I do a little "regular" artwork as well (paintings and drawings), but mostly this is aimed at craftiness. My major projects for the summer will all be clothing, so I can only get started on that when I get my sewing machine. 

Also, when I get ahold of a camera, I'll put up some pictures of stuff I've already done (some of it is collecting dust around my apartment, but some more of it is even wearable!).