into February

My project for the Apartment Therapy January Cure was to make this little unused corner into something more, well useful.

It was really just a catch all for random stuff that I would carry upstairs to the bedroom. It was also a favorite place of the cats to sit at the window.

I didn't paint anything as it always takes me forever to pick out colors. That and I'm trying to talk HT into just getting rid of the carpet upstairs. 

I moved my old laptop desk up and took out the "hidden" desk part to use as another surface  It was pretty easy to use the tables stop bracket as an anchor for the wall. 

 I had some Ikea hanging bits that were origionaly for the guest room, but I love the storage they give me here. 

I now have a nice little spot to get ready in the morning. Accessories, make-up, hair bits all in one place. And when I'm not using it, the seat goes back by the window for the kitties. 

We mustn't make them grumpy. 

We had a quiet V-day. HT and I don't normally do much to celebrate that day.

But I did find him some strawberry peeps with dark chocolate butts. We kept meaning to get out and see Skyfall in the theaters, but it just never happened. We almost didn't get to watch it that night too. HT's original X-Box 360 (a red ring of death era Xbox that never had to be replaced) no longer likes to open its tray. Sherlock Holmes and the Game of Shadows is stuck in there and didn't want to give up its place for Bond I guess.

We just ended up setting up his work laptop and watching it on that. Not sure if it is my favorite Bond, but I really enjoyed it. Mr. Craig is my favorite Bond.

I've also started playing my first RPG with dice in a long, long time. It is Star Wars Edge of the Empire. I'm playing along with the Geek Dad's Pod Cast guys. They are letting me play long distance with them. I'm a Twi'Lek thief escape artist/hacker/chick with 2 knifes. So far it has been fun. 

Enjoy the rest of your Feb and I'll maybe post something up in March. 

   

Getting Art on the Walls

We have been living in our home for at least 3 years now. And I have only started putting artwork up on the walls in this last 6 months.

I guess I have always been worried that I would do it wrong, or it wouldn't look right, or some other thought of failure.

But the nice thing about the times we live in is the 3M command strips.

I don't have to put holes in the wall to hang things up. I don't have to fill and repaint when I put them up weirdly. 

Sometimes the hardest part is finding a frame. This screen print is from our friend Robert Pflaum. (Check out his work here)

It had been languishing in our art closet for some time.
I thought it would go nicely with our Adam Truman screen print and finally fount a frame at Blick (which will always be Dick-Blick to me) and wham, there she is, on the wall in all her bike glory. 

The only part that bugs me is the 2 frames are different depths.
The Truman was framed years ago as a gift to HT. The frame for the Plfaum was just purchased and I could only find the 2" deep kind for it. 

I like the 2" though, it gives the print more gravitas. 

This wobbly collection of photographs, prints and canvas needs some work.

But until I repaint the living room where it is house, it will just get randomly added to. No point taking it all down and starting over when I'm just going to have to repaint. (the 3M things are easy to use with out planing, but my pocket book would get a little thin if I started over here) 

There are 2 new things on the console there. One is a jar where i'm going to write down happy little random things for the year to look at on New Years at the end. The other is a vase of flowers. For the January Cure one of the tasks is to buy flowers for your house every week. This is the first week I have done it and the little $5 bouquet from Byerls' split up into 2 nice little arrangements. 

I have one of them in the bedroom on my nightstand. 

These 3 prints are also in the living room on the long barren wall. 

It isn't their final home I don't think, but I like having them up to look at. 

They are buy Etsy artist Elly MacKay. She makes 3D illustrations and photographs them. I love the depth they have because of this. 

Check out her shop and get one of her amazing prints for yourself. 

I have gotten a few other things started this week too.

The avocado plant that we started from a pit last year has been put in soil. 

We'll see if it stays alive.  

And I've started washing up some sample wool that I purchsed from Etsy seller Catawampus Farms. They are coming very clean and there is only a tiny amount of VM in them. (VM means veggie matter).The house only smells a little sheepy now.

I'm getting very good use out of the drying frames my friend Jillian made me for my birthday some years back. They fit perfectly over the sink and I don't have to worry about clogging the drains with wool. 

I don't think it would be much fun to clean the pipes after that ;)

As for now, it's off to knit a few things for my shop and stay warm inside. 

2013

 There may or may not be a plan for this year.

It started off well enough art and creativity wise on New Years day with home made scones and a well styled photograph

And I have been spinning and am planing on learning how to core-spin in the next few days.

But then I thought I should organize the guestroom/my work room.

These are the before pictures.

As you can see, there is a bit of... well everything that has to be done. After an hour and a half, well I've picked up a bit, then taken everything out of the closets so I pretty much have to start all over again. 

One thing I did get done was to add another spot to stick things over my monitor.

They are just 2 Ikea trivets stuck to the wall with the 3m command things. 

But they will free up some desk space for me. Which is need. 

I'm fallowing along with Apartment Therapy's January Cure. It is to help get the house organize. So far so good. I have made a list of things in each room that need taken care of (though i bit off to much today) and I set up a box that will be a garage sale/out box.

So there is a plan for the house.
I'm working on a plan for making something everyday. I may post them, I may not.

I'm also working on a plan for me. The kind of  food/budget/job plan that can sometime make people feel overwhelmed.

Crossing my fingers that I can stay on track. 

photos of the summer

this is my summer. pretty good so far. looking forward to fall. 

Been a while

So its been a while.

What have I been up to?

Sewing things mostly.

I made this nice square Pom Pom scarf and a few hair-scarfs/headbands. 

I also convinced 2 of my friends to model them for my etsy shop. Don't they look cute. 

I've been doing art/craft fairs. The next one will be in July on the 22nd. Uptown has a market every Sunday and my friend Tiffany and I have done one so far. 

This is a photo of my half of the booth. 

Lots of cute stuff. 

You may be wondering what happened to the sweater that I was trying to make in a month.

Well it turns out that I really should have done the Large. 

While the medium, seen here, is pretty and my floats aren't too tight... its just too small.

I'm going to finish it. It is to pretty not to. But it looks like it may have to be given to one of my smaller friends/family. I hope they love it. 

Progress

I've been trying to work on personal and shop stuff resently.

Here you see the progress I've made on the March sweater.

Though as I was working on it I noticed something.

A, that I had a helper and really need to keep my papers up.

(the yellow arrow)

B, that the written pattern and the photo on the pattern don't match up. It seems that the auther changed the pattern a bit after the sample was made. 

(green arrow)

I get that some times you rethink things, but if you are selling a pattern, please make the photographs match the written pattern. People buy patterns because of the photograph. If you change a chunk of it, retake the damn photograph. 

(hopping off soap box)

I finally started spinning Hoppers fluff. 

It would seem that the "long draw" method is the best for his shorter cut 100% angora stuff. I think it will have a really nice halo when plied up.  

 Though i was thinking of plying it with some white Alpaca.

I've been continuing with the quilt block of the month too. 

These are hexagon blocks. I think they turned out quiet well.  

Also it would seem that blogger has fixed some of the things that annoy me about working with it. So i'll stick around for now. 

Though there wont be much time for blogging. Art-A-Whirl is coming up and I'm going to be in a booth at the 331 club here in Minneapolis for 3 days. I need to make a lot more ties, handspun yarn, batts and maybe some knit toys before I'm ready to just sell my stuff for 3 days. 

Wish me luck, or better yet, come and see me. 

shop-hop-day2- ColdWater

shop-hop-day2-8, a photo by ikisti on Flickr.

Here is stop 13's kit. Love those buttons.