CrumpArt » General crafts

Reincarnation

March 19th, 2008 by Crumpet

Old prints on the road to becoming new paper. It’s a creation/destruction/renewal theory of life thing.

Posted in Universe, General crafts, Art | | 0 Comments

Presents all round!

March 1st, 2008 by Crumpet

I totally scored in regards to my birthday.

I already had my combined birthday/Christmas present (a shiny new iPod named Red Robot) from the Mister, and he also gave me the box of Tofutti Cuties (one of my favourite things). To extend the sugar rush, I received a bag of the Pashmak Fairy Floss in rose flavour that you can see at the top of this post. Every time I walked through the foodhall at work with my friends, we’d pass by this stuff and I always wanted to try it but could never justify the price. I can now say that the value for money is great, and it tastes delicious layered over mixed berries.

I got a bunch of other gifts from my party guests as well — a gift voucher to Melbourne Artist’s Supplies, an awesome t-shirt from Kym and Giz, an equally awesome handmade sketchbook from Vetti, a Stardust poster from m1k3y, some art supplies, an owl statue (from someone who didn’t get the emailed invite and had no idea that it featured owl cake!), money, a Sigur Rós CD, an IOU for a couple of books that are on order, a brooch, a cone of yarn and a bonsai tree! I wasn’t expecting people to bring anything, but I love it all — thank you!

I do have a favourite gift, though.

My new bookshelf! I’ve been planning this with my dad since before Christmas, while he was making the DVD shelf that I posted about a few weeks ago. I wanted something long and low to go in our bedroom, and this is just so perfect. I’d love it to pieces anyway, but it’s even more special because my dad made it.

We now have enough space and then some for all our books and DVDs, and I even have a couple of shelves big enough for all the few slightly oversized books in my collection.

Because my mum and dad are so awesome, and also because they accidentally left their camera at our house after the party, I made them a little case for it. Quite some time ago, Mr Crumpet accidentally felted the first pair of socks I ever made for myself in the washing machine. Sometimes these things work out for the best.

And now onto the presents for you! A couple of weeks ago I posted about the Pay It Forward dealio, and I’ve finally found some time to draw names of three commenters from a ~~hat~~ shoe. Michelle, Tally and Kate, please send me your addresses, and sometime it the next couple of months (I’d like it to be sooner, but I’m a realist!) I’ll send you your gifts, and then you can send some handmade goodness onto commenters from your blogs. Everyone wins!

Posted in General crafts, Swaps, Random | | 4 Comments

A blur.

February 25th, 2008 by Crumpet

I’ve found that after a big, long, emotionally in depth post, I tend to go MIA on the blog for a week or so. I like to let posts like that brew, and I also feel a little drained energy wise. Which is why you get a weeks worth of YouTube posts.

I did have something else big to prepare for this week though. You see, Wednesday the 27th is my birthday. You know, just incase I haven’t mentioned that already. And on Saturday night just gone I had a party. It was a fun party, with owl cake and friends and other yummy food and presents. But it turns out that if you’re going to have a party at your house, you have to clean said house. This task has gotten easier this year, as we’ve been shifting things around and keeping the place tidier in general, but certain areas of the house still looked like something had blown up there. My studio, for instance. And also the ironing basket.

I also had about half my yarn stash in quarantine, and decided this was as good a time as any to deal with that. I used to keep my yarn in the inside part of a wicker coffee table with a removable glass top. I decided recently that this wasn’t the best scenario, and pulled all the yarn out. Some of it was pretty dusty, and I was worried that moths and/or other creepy crawlies had made it their home. I also had a few WIPs in the newer part of the stash that needed frogging, and therefore re-skeining and washing. So I unwound half the balls of yarn in my stash, washed them, dried them, and organised it all into some new plastic buckets that now live on top of my plan drawers.

It felt so good.

Posted in photography, General crafts, Random | | 2 Comments

Better late than never.

February 10th, 2008 by Crumpet

That’s a personal philosophy. One that I’m extremely good at following.

A couple of days ago I gave Vetti her birthday present.

And while it was her birthday a couple of days ago (happy birthday!), this was actually the present I intended to give her last year…

It’s an artist’s book made up from the proofs I made while creating my r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r etching in first year uni, based upon the poem by e.e.cummings.

This year’s present is not finished yet. I had some technical difficulties the other day. I promise it won’t take me a year to resolve them this time around…

In other, similar news, I think the philosophy of lateness is hereditary. My parents dropped by today with this (along with a bunch of stuff to help with the crappy cold I’m currently nursing). Our Christmas present from 2007 — a new DVD shelf hand made by my dad. I loves it.

(Please note: since the photographing, the DVDs [this is the shelf for TV shows] have been arranged in their correct order, and the empty shelves have been prettyified. An important step.)

Posted in Geekery, Book making, General crafts, Whedon, Art | | 2 Comments

Pants, pants, pants, pants, sing the praise of pants.

February 6th, 2008 by Crumpet

I have one month of school holidays left. That means I’ve been on holidays for three whole months. I feel like I’ve barely had a break at all, and I have so many things left to finish before I go back…

I have made some headway though.

I finished these awesome, awesome, wonderfully comfortable pants for work the other night. We have to wear all black even behind the scenes now, and even though I’m from Melbourne, I have very little black in my wardrobe. Some simple fisherman style pants seemed the way to go. These are made from the Burda pattern 8315.

I love them very, very much and have plans to make several more pairs to wear to school.

For mindless knitting (my favourite kind — I use knitting as a way of zoning out) I’ve been working on Stefanie Japel’s Cozy V-Neck Sweater, re-mathematised to be made from stash DK weight instead of the chunkier weight the pattern calls for. One of the great things about top-down raglans knit in the round is that you can try them on for size during the knitting. I’ve started the ribbing for this now, and am about 5cm into it. I’ve put it aside for the minute because the yarn comes in massive 200 metre skeins, which I have to wind by hand into balls because I have no swift or ball winder (hint hint), and I didn’t have time the other day to prepare another skein before leaving the house. So I picked up this.

Free yarn.

20 balls of free yarn.

20 balls of the most beautiful, lovely, squishy, soft, green free yarn.

It was a thank you gift for attending an ideas/information night put on by Patons. I was going for the fun. I had no idea there would be free yarn. Score! It’s turning into Stefanie’s Puff-Sleeved Feminine Cardigan.

And finally, the birthday presents have already started rolling in! And this one is the best kind of present anyone can give me. A friend needed to buy a gift for someone else, so they specifically bought something from my Etsy store as a gift to me. Totally awesome and thoughtful and kind and lovely.

I sent this off to the unsuspecting recipient today.

Posted in Etsy, photography, Sewing, General crafts, Knitting | | 2 Comments

Things that lead to other things.

January 27th, 2008 by Crumpet

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this here already or not, but about a month ago Mr Crumpet was very naughty. He’d been talking about buying a projector, and when the secondhand one that we were going to buy fell through because of a technical fault, we agreed to wait and buy one when we’d saved enough money.

Apparently that was all a ruse.

And as angry as I was, I do really, really, really love it. It makes our front room look far neater and more spacious, and I can now watch David Boreanaz in bigger than life-size mode.

The next problem, though, was that I could only watch my favourite vampire after the sun had gone down (although that does make sense, in a way.) We have wooden venetian blinds on our windows, and while they look lovely, they don’t block out the light so much. So, we had some friends over for dinner and a movie, and they brought over their overlocker for an extended loan.

It’s a Husqvarna Huskylock 905, and after downloading a manual and spending a little quality time together, we’ve forged a happy relationship. This particular overlocker is very easy to thread and I have so many projects in mind to use it for. Plus it’s just fun to say Husqvarna.

But what does an overlocker have to do with a projector?

New curtains!

Not the greatest project in the world, though. Wrangling thick, heavy pieces of fabric bigger than the floor space in my studio is not so much fun. While they would have been better hand sewn, it was a project that needed to be done quickly, and I value my sanity. I did the whole thing on the overlocker using a “blind hem”. You’d actually have to be blind not to see some of the stitching that’s not supposed to be visible, but the job is done, looks relatively good and works well for us. Also, the front room is way cooler already, because the curtains are blocking out the excessive heat too. Bonus!

And now that’s over, I can work on things like this! (We can also finally have people like m1k3y over to watch a film. Hooray!)

Posted in Film, Sewing, General crafts, Art | | 4 Comments

Upcycling.

November 23rd, 2007 by Crumpet

I need help.

Around four years ago I started dismantling our old washing machine with the intent of making the drum into a coffee table. It’s been sitting in the backyard ever since, because I reached a point where I physically couldn’t remove any more of the casing.

Do you know how to take apart a front-loader washing machine?

Do you have tools that I could borrow?

Do you know people with tools I could borrow?

We’ve been on a bit of a cleanliness/house-proud kick here lately, and I’d really love to get this done. Google is offering me nothing but instructions on how to fix washing machines. It’s not helpful.

For more views, see The Washing Machine Project I’ve set up on Flickr.