So many reasons

I'm sure there's some central list somewhere of all the reasons bloggers slow down or take hiatuses (haiti?) from blogging. Not knowing where that list is (read: I'm too lazy to look for it), I feel I owe you at least one of the reasons I've been so out of the loop for the last few months. By the way? I know you will find this mind-blowingly fascinating.

At a minimum, I think it may serve as a nice reminder that a change to the smallest thing can cause rather big and unexpected changes to other things.

So, I think it all changed when I started working out in the mornings.

Why would this have anything to do with it? Have I become so athletic that I don't care for crafting anymore, you're wondering? Ha! Hilarious. Don't be silly.

This had been the series of events that would lead to blogging: I would take photos of a crafty item, upload the photos, maybe tweak the photos, write about the item (and/or the photo), and post to the blog. Done. A critical ingredient in there, though, was the light. Nice light? Nice photo.

The best light of the day is in the mornings, in my living room. However! Now that I'm out of the house during the Good Light, taking photos has slowed waaaay down. That, in turn, means no fodder for the hilarious commentary. Sure, I could've been giving you some photo-less Overheard posts, but there just haven't been any that are up to snuff. (This one was so great, I don't know if anything will ever rate again.) So there you go - no light, no photos, no blog fodder. Boo.

I'm not sure how to remedy this. Maybe I'll set up a light box. Maybe I'll go back to making drawings to augment the posts. (My wasband did just give me this awesome drawing tablet that is pretty great.) Something.

I know that when I was feeling bad about not posting, I also felt bad going to other blogs (this makes no sense whatsoever, but it's true). So no posting, very little reading, all around steeeenky situation. I really miss being active in the community of awesome crafters, I can tell you that much.

I'm trying to stay close to the Blogging Without Obligation ideas, because they made me really happy when I read them. For those of you who blog, how do you negotiate your blogging time? I'd be interested to hear. For those of you who don't, aren't you happy to be free of this little dilemma?

Thank you so much for all of your comments and help with my crafting-related troubles recently. You've been super helpful and have kept me feeling connected. So, really, thank you. If you're ever in town, I hope you'll allow me to repay you with a nice cup of iron-brewed coffee and sewing machine-made waffles. It would be my pleasure.

Oh, the wadding.

Inspired by the completion of that Rail Fence baby quilt, I decided to pull Quiltie out again.

Always with the pulling Quiltie out again. I know. I know.

Did I mention that my Sidekick named one of his Guitar Hero bands "Sad Quiltie"? Or that out of the blue my wasband said to me, "Quiltie's never gonna get finished, huh?" in the spirit of, "You can level with me. I can take it." Quiltie isn't even for him. It's for me. God bless 'em.

So we're back to trying to see the lines I drew, using some masking tape here and there, and toying with the idea of using washable marker to re-draw the faded marks. (I must admit that even though I had success with those markers, I am reluctant to put ink to Quiltie.)

I am also fully expecting to hear from the Department of Neglected Crafts, Quilt-Wadding Division any day now. When I do, I will point out that Quiltie still has the best seat in the house, and that, at a minimum, he's got two non-crafting guys looking out for his well-being. It'll all be fine, I'm sure.

Quiltie!

Great minds

I got a phone call from my wasband a minute ago.

WASBAND: Have you seen boingboing today?
ME: No. Why.
WASBAND: Someone made a Darth Vader tea towel.
ME: No way.
WASBAND: Can you believe that?!

He was outraged.

ME: Was it embroidered?
WASBAND: Yes!
ME: It's probably bad manners to leave a comment and be all, "I made an R2D2 tea towel a long time ago."
WASBAND: "Check the date on it!" Yours was in color and way more detailed.
ME: Yeah, well. It was your idea to begin with.
WASBAND: Still!

Take-home lesson? There are only so many ideas a person can have, and embroidering Star Wars characters on tea towels is one of them. Now we know. Weird, huh?

Overheard at lunch today

My wasband and I were out at lunch today, eating delicious food and listening to the conversation behind us. (We both quite enjoy a good eavesdrop. Remind me to tell you the one about motorcycles sometime.) Anyway!

A young white dude was talking really assertively to someone across the table from him. He'd been going on for some time about himself, his career, his future plans, and in the middle of the whole thing, without missing a beat, dude says:

"Look. This is how it is. I am a songwriter-screenwriter-inventor. That's my hyphen."

My wasband and I found this particularly hilarious for about twelve reasons. Most of those reasons were related to his delivery. He said, "That's my hyphen" like everyone's got one. Like it's a given, and that's his.

The rest of the hilarious? He's a songwriter-screenwriter-inventor? Inventor of what?! What could a dude possibly be inventing in Los Angeles? I mean, come on. Really.

He went on to talk about how he needs to have his voice come through in his writing, and how he once had a dream of meeting Alan Menken and now he's having lunch with him next week, and that's how it is, man. He was that guy. (Oh! If you click on that link, the picture of Mr. Menken is SO perfect! So, so precious and so very perfect for this whole scenario! I love the internet so hard.)

Ok. So. Fine. The dude was pretty ridiculous, but he was young-ish, and whatever. It's LA.

Now is the part where I sheepishly admit that the whole "hyphen" idea stuck with us in spite of ourselves. We couldn't help it! We've kind of decided we're gonna require everyone to declare a hyphen from now on. Because everyone's got one!

I went with psychologist-crafter-blogger. We decided my wasband should go with dog lover-curmudgeon-raconteur. (While we both spontaneously said "curmudgeon", the raconteur was my idea, thank you very much.)

Hey! Should I start a "What's your hyphen" meme? No. That would be super lame.

But, you telling me your hyphen? Cool. Very, very cool. What is it?! I must know!

As a complete PS and aside: That dude would be shitting himself if he knew he'd been so promptly blogged. And by "shitting himself" I mean he'd be all, "Yeah. I invented the hyphen. So. ...Yeah."

Super cute wall decals

You know I generally prefer the handmade gift over the store-bought gift. On principle, I think doing a make, and then giving the make away are key to everything.

However.

Every now and again, I've gotta give props where props are due. And these Blik wall decals are so prop-worthy, it's not even funny.

My PIC and I saw some of these in person in Vancouver recently and just couldn't bring ourselves to buy them. Even though they are re-positionable, removable, and downright adorable, we couldn't justify the purchase.

But, let me tell you, they are not making it easy to resist. Go over there and see what I mean.

P.S. Don't miss the Rainbow Poops.

(I also highly recommend saying that P.S. as often as possible. It might just be the very thing your life has been missing. No? Just me? Ok, then. Just me. Well, me and probably my wasband.)

(via not martha)

My Wiikend

It's been all this, all the time since Friday.

Given that we've been trying since November to get one, it should be understandable that we've been playing into the wii hours of the morning.

Please add this to the growing list of things that are going to make me wonder where 2007 went.

How do you solve a problem like this paper?

There are lots of good things about having gone to school for twelve hundred and three years. Really. Lots.

Those things aren't coming to mind at the moment, because all I can think about right now is the debris that's been left behind. Seven years of graduate school makes for quite the mess -- binders, books, flashcards, articles... Oh, the articles.

While I was writing my dissertation, my wasband and I started referring to articles as my arch-nemesis Articles (pronounced ar'-ti-clees). And let me tell you something, I have got so many binders full of Articles, it's ridiculous.

As we sit here, those binders are occupying a large parcel of real estate in my home -- precious space that could be inhabited by yarn or fabric or other crafty items. How dare Articles continue to monopolize my life, lo these many years later!

I am going to gain the upper hand with my arch-nemesis once and for all. You'll see.

One small problem, though: It would seem like throwing perfectly good money away if I just got rid of them. Even if I recycled the paper, I would feel terrible about tossing thousands of dollars' worth of resources right out the proverbial window.

You know we have the internet now. You can just look stuff up if you needed to.

Sure. Yes. Ok. Maybe. But that's hardly the same. Does the internet have my very own highlighting and notes in the margins? Don't think so. Are the syllabi from courses I've taken on the internet? No. No, they're not. How about all my carefully-taken notes from classes? Not gonna be able to Google those.

Why would you need any of those things?

You never know. I might just... I don't know!

I'm thinking of scanning some of the more important articles, burning those to a CD, and recycling the rest. How does that sound? Space-saving at a minimum. Time-consuming at a maximum. But, I can't think of a better solution.

What have other people done with all their old school stuff? Do people mostly just chuck it?

I'll tell you what I will not do: get a storage unit. If Articles wants his own place, he can pay for it himself. I am not paying rent for Articles. That dude has cost me enough already.

Seriously. Any and all ideas (except for the aforementioned storage unit) are welcome. You'd think that with all that schooling I could figure this out. But you know what? It's always better to collaborate.

With the power of the internet and the pressure from my crafting supplies, together we will overthrow Articles once and for all! Who's with me? Huzzah!!

Oh, Artoo.

You know what's fun? Embroidery.

You know what's even more fun? Embroidering something pleasing.

But, what is pleasing? What what what... Oh yes, of course. Star Wars.


I have a friend who really appreciates hand-made gifts. Seeing as it was this friend's birthday, I was going to embroider some tea towels for him using the completely adorable patterns from Sublime Stitching. In particular, I thought spaceships with little creatures in them would be great.

Enter my wasband, who kindly accompanied me to the local needlecraft store to get more colors of embroidery floss.

WASBAND: It's too bad you don't have enough time to knit him that Star Wars hat.
ME: I'm gonna embroider these tea towels for him. They'll be great.
WASBAND: But he loves Star Wars.
ME: I know.
WASBAND: You should embroider C3PO and Darth Vader on those tea towels.
ME: What?
WASBAND: He'd love it!
ME: But I have these iron-on patterns --
WASBAND: We'll go on the internet and find a pattern. It'll be great! Come on! Here's some bright blue embroidery floss for R2D2 right here! Look!

My wasband loves to come up with things for me to make. Loves it. And when he locks on an idea, he gets really enthusiastic and kinda can't stop mentioning it and how awesome it is. He's all good ideas, my wasband; however, he rarely realizes what's involved. ("You should make a rocketship so we can go to the moon! The moon is awesome! You could totally do it! It'll be great! Do it!") There have been many times I've crafted into the wee hours of the night in order to finish one of Mister Big Ideas' projects. This was one of those times. (Proof? The wee-hours lighting in these photos.)

In all fairness, my wasband did help me find and re-size a drawing from the world wide web. I then traced the drawing onto the tea towel with a pencil and hand-embroidered it. Backstitch for all the outlining. Satin stitch for the colored-in parts. And a few french knots for the red and white dots on the front top part.

I also machine-sewed a little "Made with Love by Dr. B." cloth label on one of the edges (labels courtesy of my SIL).

I particularly like the back of the towel:


I think it looks like a cool drawing.

Hey! Wouldn't it be great to have a whole set of these towels? You know, with tie fighters, and the Death Star and all that stuff? That would look so great in a dude's kitchen!

Oh God. That last part sounded a lot like my wasband. Only it was me.

Huh. Well.

That was awkward.

Heating pad covers are the new scarves

Opening presents at my house this Christmas went a lot like this:

Family member (holding a wrapped gift): A present from Dr. B.! (unwraps gift. pulls out ball of yarn. looks puzzled.)
Me: That's gonna be a hat.
FM: Oh.
Me: Yeah!
FM: Um.
Me: Just give that back to me.
FM: So... it's a placeholder? Or... am I really getting a hat made of this yarn?
Me: I thought I'd use that yarn.
FM: Oh.
Me: No?
FM: I was hoping for a Star Wars hat.

Well. That was just my wasband. Other family members got other gifts in various states of completion. Sock tubes for some. Half-made heating pad covers for others. People really got the hang of it after a while, and I didn't even have to tell them to give the stuff back to me. They would just say, "Wow! A sock!" and hand it right back over, needles sticking out and all. I think it went swimmingly!

One of those gifts-in-progress was for my crafty SIL. I've been showing you bits and pieces of it for a little while. I can now reveal more, since she has kindly performed the requisite oohing-and-ahhhing-and-returning-it-to-me ritual.

Here's a full (pre-quilting, pre-applique) shot of the top:


This is my second "interpretation" of the Denyse Schmidt "Hold Me Close Heating Pad Cover" from her book. The last time I made one, I vowed not to wing it the next time. I think I said I'd be much better off just using the pattern.

You know what I rarely do? Learn.

A couple of months ago, on an episode of Simply Quilts, a genius lady was demonstrating how to make these log-cabin style flowers that are all wonky. No pattern. No measuring. Just easy. Addictive. And, if done well, the perfect heating pad cover.

(That last one was all me. She was making actual quilts.)

So, I went back to Denyse's basic specs for the size of the back. But, rather than follow her pattern for the top, I used that genius lady's technique and made a pink "flower" in the center and then surrounded it with "leaves." See that up there? Beautiful! I cut the top to size, per Denyse's instructions. And, so far so good.

But when it came to the quilting part, I was stumped. The customary stitch-in-the-ditch didn't seem right here. So, I poked around and came across this. See all the irregular circles in the stitching there? Well. I thought that'd be perfect. Uneven circles with maybe some leaf-type shapes would be awesome. If Denyse can do it, why can't I?

Oh, yes. I took another step that could've proved disastrous. Faced with indecision about what marking tool to use for said circles and leaves, I decided to quilt freehand. I stitched right into the quilt sandwich (in this case: pieced fabric top, batting, and muslin) without any lines drawn on to follow.


One woman's brave is another's lazy. Please don't be confused. This was all lazy.

Oh, and any real quilter will tell you that my stitches are about twelve hundred times too long. The real quilters make tiny little stitches that you don't even really see. But I'm not a real quilter. I'm but one woman.

My limitations aside, some of the circles didn't come out that uneven -- which freaked me out, frankly.


Ok. Let me be clear here. This project should've taken about three and a half seconds. But, with this kooky idea of quilting circles and leaves all freehand-like, it's taken a great deal longer. Look. Here's the back:

One piece of fabric. Marked with that Hera marking tool I told you about (which is great, by the way!). Hand-quilted along the lines. Super quick. You could very easily make the front and back simple, and you'd be cranking these things out fast, mister!

So, the next step for me is to sew the front to the back and see how I'm feeling about the applique part. That would be the part wherein I would use things I've never used like "Wonder Under" and "needle-turning" and who knows what, adding that extra cut-out flower and leaves to the top. I may skip that part. We'll see.

Here's what I'd say, though. Who doesn't need a nice new heating pad cover? Think of your own. Do you even have one? How does it look? Well.

I think it's the gift to give in '07. There. I said it.

Unless of course, everyone in your life wants Star Wars hats. In which case, I can't really help you with that one.

Dr. B.'s First Bout of Intarsia: A Moose Hat review

If you were going to try knitting with two colors for the first time, you'd start with this, right? Of course you would. Everyone knows the moose is best known for its gentle temperament and easily-knitted shape, no?

For the Knitting Olympics earlier this year, I decided it would be a fun challenge to try intarsia. Or stranding. Or whatever it's called when you knit holding two different yarns at the same time. I'll spare you the technical details and just say that the challenge is, if you don't know what you're doing, it's very easy to turn the whole thing into a mess of puckers. Ergo, one should start with a small project like a headband.

I have a problem choosing first-time projects (see: very large crocheted afghan and baby quilt made of triangles). We know this much. But do we remember what we know? Well, no. And even though we employ the help of other people to help us remember what we know (because that's how the sane ones do it), sometimes other people also forget.

Case in point: I was sitting at my computer, looking at the Bea Ellis site.

ME (to my wasband): I want to learn intarsia for the Knitting Olympics, so I think I'm gonna make a headband. Do you think that'll be hard?
WASBAND (looking over my shoulder): What else is there?
ME: Well, there are headbands, (scrolling) and these hats, and--
WASBAND (enthusiastically, pointing): MAKE ME THAT MOOSE HAT! (then, more restrained but serious, puts his hand on my shoulder) You have to make me that Moose Hat.

Even though it looked complicated, I figured, "I might as well try. It is the Olympics. And, they don't call me 'How Hard Can It Be' Dr. B. for nothing." So, I ordered the kit.

(Note to self: To keep up appearances, get people to start calling you "How Hard Can It Be" Dr. B.)

What I've posted above is the photo of the Moose Hat from Bea Ellis's site. It is not a photo of my creation. Because, while it is true that (1) I finished in time to get the gold medal that you see in the sidebar, and (2) the moose does indeed have an easily-knittable shape, the resulting product was definitely a first-timer's hat. There's no need for a photo of that, really. It just shames us all. I think we can just leave it at "mess of puckers" and move on.

(There will always be opportunities to make things dirty here, won't there? Yes. Always.)

Anyway, the following may only be of interest to knitters. If you are not a knitter, feel free to keep reading. I'm not stopping you, just warning you. That's all.

Hello Yarn recommended the kits from Bea Ellis because the charts are really easy to read, and the yarn you need is great quality and the exact right amount you need. For those reasons, and because the Bea Ellis people were prompt and very helpful, I also highly recommend them for a first-time project of this kind.

There are only two very tiny things I'd say I wished were different:
(1) You have to order your yarn by color number; and, if you want to make the item using the same colorway shown, there's no way to know the corresponding yarn numbers. But, if you send an e-mail to them, they'll take care of that right away for you.

(2) The wool for the hats is itchy, so they include cotton yarn for a soft hem part that's hidden and keeps a person's widdle head from itching to high heaven. I'd never made a hem on a garment before, so I didn't really know what it was or how to do it. This was not their fault. But, there weren't clear instructions about the hem, so I had to do a little extra research to figure it out.

I will say those twisty things at the top were very fun to make. It took a little testing out to get the right number of strands of yarn for optimal thickness. But once I did, fun twisty times were had by all. And then I considered putting them on everything.

So, there you have it: my first intarsia experience. Will I go back? Only time (and my wasband's requests) will tell.

You know what hurts?

My back.

You know why?

NO. REASON.

I was just sitting, minding my own godforsaken business, and my back went right out. Out! And then I cried and said the F-word a lot. And now I'm trying to figure out the best position to be in and what kinds of activities are do-able.

Washing dishes? Nope.
Making the bed? Nope.
Making a meal for myself? Not really, but that is kind of unrelated to my current back.
Knitting? Probably not the best idea, but I'm gonna give it a shot.

So, instead of some great knitting or crafting related post, I give you If-I'm-not-careful-this-will-be-Hobby-96:



Note: Thanks to my wasband, you'll find that this image is the first on my site to actually link to another site. Hooray for my wasband!

Where it all re-began

My great aunt taught me to crochet when I was little. I remember being at her house, watching Luke and Laura get married on General Hospital, and working on some crocheted item that I'm sure was GORGEOUS. And that was pretty much that.

Then, a few years ago, a woman at work mentioned in passing that she'd been crocheting. Having had fond memories of it, I accepted her offer to go over to her place for a crafting afternoon. It was very low-commitment, made better by the fact that my wasband had some supplies he was willing to give me. (He'd thought crocheting would be an easy thing to do on movie sets while waiting around, but it wasn't really his thing. Not enough quests or mana.)

At our crafting afternoon, my co-worker had a book of afghan patterns, and she encouraged me to try to make one. I'd never read a pattern and hadn't crocheted for decades, so naturally I thought following a pattern to make an afghan was a great idea. Because that's how I roll.

So, all I had to do was crochet 162 motifs (each one a six-sided piece with a flower in the middle) and 16 half-motifs (half-flowers). Then crochet all of those pieces together. Then crochet an edge around the whole thing.

I'm pretty sure I didn't see the 162 and the 16 until the project was well-underway. That's the only thing I can figure, because I just don't think I would've signed up for such a thing with that information. I made a spreadsheet. I watched a lot of bad movies with my wasband. I made an afghan.


Here's a picture of the afghan doing its best Quiltie imitation:


After finishing this afghan, it didn't take much research to realize that some of the coolest patterns were for knit items, and then that lots of knitters were also sewing, and that people sewing were also making quilts, and the quilters were also embroidering... you see how it got to 94 hobbies up in here?

Take-home lesson? Crochet is a very serious gateway craft, not to be undertaken lightly.