This has to be one of my favourite things.
What’s your irrational fear? I’m kind of repulsed by stickers, especially on fruit.
January 30, 2009
January 25, 2009
DIY macro ring light.
Just a quick one to post this awesome tutorial link that Mr Crumpet sent me yesterday.
January 23, 2009
Hand over.
The twitter365 week three round up.
Turns out taking decent photos of your own hands is a lot harder than you think it will be.
As I mentioned, I was at work for a lot of the week, so had the added burden of less than stellar* light for some of the pictures. Like this one, taken at 10:44pm, as soon as I got home from work one night.
I have a soft spot for this next one. It’s taken against my bathroom wall, in a patch where the morning sunlight shines through a textured glass brick, throwing up all sorts of fun overlapping, wrinkled light. Yes, greyhounds really do have necks that long. Again, I didn’t have much time with this… it was taken in the minutes between showering and leaving for work in the morning.
I’d tried taking some pictures of my hands in various poses, but it turns out that hands often look incredibly ugly and lifeless in photos. Well, the ones that I was taking, anyway. I promise I don’t have ugly hands. My solution to this problem was to pull out the macro lens.
This next one is the photo I tried to take at the start of the week. It was an incredibly difficult shot to capture, what with my moving hands, the self-timer and the problem of focussing. I’m making a gift for my new niece or nephew, due in February. I still haven’t started the second sock.
Handwork that fits in my palm. It’s less than the width of three fingers.
Finally, all week long I’ve been pondering Doubt, most notably the cleanliness and length of my fingernails.
*Quite literally, really.
January 22, 2009
Stars in her Button Eyes
A couple of weeks ago, Jenny Hart posted a challenge on the Sublime Stitching blog to make a micro-monogrammed cushion. As I was thinking about what thread I could use to make the Smallest Monogram Ever, I figured the finest available was my hair. So I pulled out the longest silver bits* I could find and got started. I was looking at the Coraline film website around the same time, getting inspired and simultaneously freaked out by all the ridiculously tiny knitting. I suddenly knew this had to be a Creepy Coraline Cushion. I like to think she made it from scavenged scraps while locked up by Other Mother.
(For size reference, see my Twitter365 pic from yesterday.)
*Oddly, for a 29 year old, finding hairs that were long enough was much harder than finding silver ones. I think I’m well over 50% grey at this point. Luckily it suits me well — sometimes customers at work ask me how I got my hair to look like this so that they can replicate it… I tell them I grew it.
January 21, 2009
January 20, 2009
Something about feet and forward movement.
Feeling a little worn and tired at the moment, and it’s only the third week of January. About the only thing I’ve been keeping up with online is my 365 days project. Last week the feet were in focus, despite Mr C’s protestations that if I kept posting pictures of my feet, all the internet weirdos would come after me.
I finished one sock.
I haven’t started the other one yet.
I blame work for my general level of exhaustion. I was rostered on for a grand total of three hours this week and last. By the end of the week I’ll have clocked up 63.5 hours for the fortnight. Most of my shifts were given at the last minute, the night before. I’ve done stocktake in two different departments already. My time off has been divided between applying for new jobs, stalking the letterbox and escaping the heat by watching things at the cinema.
So far this week I’ve seen Burn After Reading, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Doubt.
I’ve started thinking about my next series of work. Not deliberately. I think I’ve had enough of a break from finishing up last year and I’ve started to get interested and excited by things again. Or maybe the daily photography and random crafts I’ve started doing are getting me into a creative habit again. I still don’t know if I’m going back to school. We’ll see how it all goes from here.
January 16, 2009
Still waiting.
Yes, I’m still waiting to hear whether or not I’ve been accepted into Honours for either Printmaking or Media Arts. If I don’t get a letter today I’ll be starting to ask what’s up again. In the meantime…
I’ve made my first ever batch of soap! We had a severely blocked drain in the bathroom, and when I went to buy something to clean the drain with, I found a tub of caustic soda that said “perfect for making soap” on the label. How could I resist? I still don’t know if the soap I made is any good or not, because it has to sit for a few weeks before use. And if it is good, we won’t have to buy soap for about a year, because the recipe made a crapload of it.
After the soaps were done, I had to go buy a button for something and didn’t have any cash on me. So I used my card, and in order to get the purchase up to the $10 EFTPOS minimum, had to buy some yarn too. Just had to. There was no alternative. So I bought some bamboo and bamboo/cotton blend yarn and have started crocheting facecloths with it. Being a crochet newbie, I decided to use a pattern, and picked this potholder. The Patons Serenity yarn is lovely and soft, if a bit splitty, and I’m really happy with the end product. Rav details here.
And all of you who’ve been asking for new books in my Etsy Store? I’ve caught the bug again. Behold.
I read a review for How to Make Books: Fold, Cut & Stitch Your Way to a One-Of-A-Kind Book by Esther K. Smith on the CraftyPod blog the day before receiving a $10 off wishlist items coupon from Fishpond. So I ordered it and Magic Books & Paper Toys: Flip Books, E-Z Pop-Ups & Other Paper Playthings to Amaze & Delight and I couldn’t be happier. I’m so happy with these books that I’ve deleted every single other bookmaking book from all my wishlists. I have a couple of bookmaking books already, and have borrowed a few from libraries in my time, and on the whole they’re either so dry they could catch fire at any second, or they have that slight scrapbooking, “here’s how to make this exact project this way, look! pretty!” vibe. These two books are the perfect combination of whimsy and practical, and you can expect to see some new books from me here soon.
In the meantime, I’m off to work…