Complications and Completions.

I shall start off with saying it hasn't been too good of a week for crafting. Mostly with crocheting. I became very discouraged and haven't picked up my crocheting in a few days - almost my hand has been swollen a bit for some reason.

So, remember that overzealous attempt? Well, I tried stuffing it. And that didn't work out. Eventually I just gave up, cut my losses and started over. On a much smaller scale. I still have the piece I worked so hard on, but nothing to do with it. Oh well. I suppose that's my own fault.

In between letting my - swollen - hand rest from the abuse of crochet and the daily activities of life, I have been working on some plastic canvas. :)

Remember those ! block panels? Well, now one is a block! And I even took a couple pictures of the progress.

I decided it would be easier on my sanity if I did all the boarders first - trust me, after a total of nine, it's maddening. Those five boarders took me about two days to really do - mostly because I was having difficulties focusing for long periods of time.

Here is a picture of all the panels complete, and Buddy decided to come model for us. Isn't he cute? So, in retrospect, I probably should have taken pictures of the exclamation marks before I filled in the background. Oh well. Maybe next time.

It's really starting to come together! I even managed to alternate colours while sewing the panels together, it wasn't nearly as tricky as I thought it would be, even when I was sealing off the top.

And there you have it. A completed ! block, of the Vanish Cap variety.

I think the next one I'm going to work on will be the Metal Cap - green. But, I mustn't be too distracted by making these, as I now only have 12 days left to finish my amigurumi. I really don't think it'll take too much longer; I just need to sit down and work on it. My hand is feeling better now. It's odd, though, that only my own hand is swollen and stiff. I think I just overworked it when I was trying to stuff the big failure. Pregnancy probably doesn't help.

That's all I really have to post about for now. So, I shall leave you with these adorable pictures of Dinah and Buddy. :)

Current Projects

After a long week of slaving away on the project for the Woodland Creatures amigurumi challenge, I'm close to done - the body, that is. So, I ended up getting overzealous at the start of this project. I didn't want to make it too small, and in the process, I ended up making it bigger than I intended.

Here, it doesn't look too big, right? Well, I didn't think so either. And as I kept crocheting and crocheting, I realized that I may have been a bit too ambitious. Sure, I wanted to make a bigger than usual amigurumi, but I think I over did it! After days of crocheting - off and on - this is where I'm at!

Just ignore the lumps and odd shape, it's not properly stuffed yet. As you can see, it's quite big. I'm hoping that I'll be finished making the length within the next day or so - I'm hoping I only have a few more rows left. I also decided to do something I little different with my stuffing. I used beige nylon - pantyhouse. I figured, it's a BIG project, and I don't want to risk any mistakes of stuffing showing through, even though I'm using quite a small hook.

I think it's going to be quite the adventure stuffing this in the end, however I have my trusty STUFFING STICK!

It's not really a stuffing stick, I'm just using it as one. In fact, I'm not even sure what it's intended for. It was in a collection of crochet hooks and knitting needles I received from a friend of mine a while back. Hopefully it'll work well in assisting me with stuffing this monster.

On another note, I've acquired wire. Yes, wire. This is going to be a fully poseable project!

The one on the left I purchased at my local craft store, the one on the right, Wal-Mart. The price difference, almost five dollars. But, oh well. Wal-Mart didn't carry as thick of wire. So, it's all good. I'm so excited to finish the body, just to work on the rest of him and make him as poseable as possible!

I've been working so hard on him, this happened.

It's not the first time this has happened to me, however, this was a relatively new hook - luckily I had a spare one! Hopefully it holds out until the end of the project - and many more! - but, if not, I bought another one. :)

And in the meantime, I've been needing to take breaks in between crocheting - a day off here and there. And in that time, I couldn't just sit around and do nothing. So, I figured I would start working on some of those plastic canvas ideas I had a while back - I hadn't forgotten about them! They are awesome.

It starts off looking like this.

Now, I bet you're all wondering, what the heck is that going to be? (It kind of reminds me of something from Harry Potter - Ravenclaw, even though it's blue and black) Before I show the next progress picture, I'm going to share what behind this looks like, because I think it's super cool!

Neato, right? And now, maybe this will answer your question of what the heck I'm making!

Looking familiar? I hope so! I've been keeping to a theme of plastic canvas projects - with the piggy bank, the book ends, and the pencil holder.

TADA!! Pretty sweet, amiright? It's the ! block (panel in this case) from the Mario 64 games! I did one for each colour. If anybody played these games as much as I did, then hopefully you'll remember which each colour did. Blue gave you the Vanishing Cap.

Green gave you the Metal Cap.

 Red gave you the Wing Cap.

And yellow gave you coins and other objects!

Now, let me tell you, these aren't small, at all. But, it's the only way I could work the pattern without it looking awkward.

See, pretty big. Now, I'm not sure if I'm going to just leave them as a single panel, or turn them all in to cubes. I'd love to make them into cubes, but, I'm sure we all know how tedious repeating the same project can be. At the very least, I want to make one into a cube - probably the blue one. I guess we'll see how I feel about doing the project over and over again from there - though, I do have enough of the sturdy plastic canvas to complete them all!!

Oh, I should probably share this.

This is the pattern I used to make the question mark, the rest I had to figure out on my own.

Now, on a new note, this Friday was Michele's last day with us at TADA. We had a small gathering for her, said words of praise and all that. Then, somehow, she throws me in to the spotlight on her special day. That lady is crafty, let me tell you.

And now that she's gone - though she will come back periodically for visits and whatnot - the group and associates want me to take over. I told them, as long as someone else is liaison between the clinic and the group, I can try my best to take over for the art courses. Until the baby is born. We'll be meeting this Friday as a group to discuss what we want to do. Michele is willing to stay in contact with the group until we're all back on our feet in terms of plans. I was thinking, as I've been gone for two years, that surely there are activities the group wouldn't mind repeating.

So, I'm going to look in to that, see if I can make a lesson plan that's a couple months of repeats until I get back in the swing of things myself. It's not a bad idea. But, we'll see on Friday.

And now, I leave you all with this.

Here I am! Exciting New Things!

Hey everyone, I know it's been a while since I've posted. But, I have a pretty good reason for that. We'll go in order.

First, that Thursday, I was out with a friend of mine all day, she was teaching me the torture of using a sewing machine. See, my boyfriend - Alex - and I have a bunch of nice, nerdy shirts we just don't wear anymore, so I figured, why not turn them into pillows?! It's a good idea. I didn't manage to get all of the shirts we had into pillows, but I can go back when she's free again!

These are the four shirts I did - out of the six I brought over.

These are the shirts Alex and I got at our first Fan Expo together. :) We never wear them, and we couldn't figure out what to do with them, since we didn't want to throw them out - sentimental value, and all. I didn't make these ones into pillows, my friend, Amy, did. I asked her to because I'd never used a sewing machine before and I really didn't want to mess them up. We decided to leave Alex's as almost the full shirt size - he's not a small man - and to scale mine down a bit so we know whose is whose. Though, the smaller one is still pretty much the size of the shirt. Haha

Here is my Fan Expo shirt stuffed, though it could use a bit more, I ran out - I had tried stuffing Alex's first, just because I wanted to surprise him when he got home, but there was not nearly enough! I didn't have too much left to begin with, but I didn't think it was so little. I used it all here - which puts a halt to any amigurumi ideas I've had running around my head - which were quite a few!

Here is just a side/bottom picture of the pillow, just to show how the zipper looks - Amy called it a hidden zipper. I really love how it turned out, and I can't wait to get more stuffing - I was told of this place, it's a bit of a ride away - we don't drive, so we have to take the bus, and the bus we take, it's like the Lion King, everywhere the light touches is good, and the light doesn't touch this street. haha!

But, I've been buying my stuffing at Wal-Mart. 32 oz - I think - for $20. Apparently, this other place is a lot more for the same price, so I really want to check it out. I'm going to need a lot, with all the shirt-pillows we'll be making!

These are two shirts that I love, but I never really wear, a friend of mine that used to work at EB got them for me. :) I figure, why throw away perfectly awesome nerd shirts - I really love Batman and Assassin's Creed - when I can accessorize with them?! I did these two, as you can probably tell, before I've even posted the close ups.

This was my first attempt. Oh, and I forgot to mention, Amy had the brilliant idea of adding zippers to the bottoms, to make it easier to wash and if they get too flat - Alex likes to sit on things and not realize. XD - I can take out the stuffing and fix it. But, anyway, the top stitching going across the zipper was my very first try with the sewing machine. And then bottom part, I have no idea what happened. But, apparently I'm a pretty quick learner, as I didn't break the needle or even mess up too badly. :)

From there, we used her machine called a Serger. It was pretty scary at first, but it was so easy and so much more fun than the sewing machine - I still think their evil. >.>

This is the second shirt I did, it turned out pretty good at the zipper. :) I'm really happy with it, even if I was panicking a bit while doing these. In the end, I was getting the hang of it. I was sad, though, I had one of those pregnancy headaches kick in, and it wouldn't go away. So, I ended up having to go home, instead of finishing the other two shirts that I brought with me. But, next time! And I will bring Tylenol - it's the only thing for pain I can take during pregnancy, not that I take it very often to begin with.

I would also like to take a moment to let you all know that my friend Amy has her own Facebook page for her sewing - she usually makes corsets, but you can commission her for most anything. :) Check her out - Ravin Apparel.

And now, this was all on Thursday. On Saturday I was working on a bookmark with a Robin Williams quote, the first attempted didn't turn out so well.

I thought it would be easier to read once the background was filled in. Nope. Not only that, I forgot an E in bee. >.> So, I scrapped that pretty quick, however, I didn't start again until Tuesday. And this is why.

This cute little fellow is a kitten that we rescued from a not so good situation. There are a few areas in my city - as I'm sure there is with all cities - that have a very bad reputation. I follow this group on Facebook, a buy and sell group that I'm in for my crafts. Anyway, there was this guy, he only had the kitten for two months, and didn't want it anymore. So, you know, I decided to check out his profile, see what sort of person he appeared to be. Almost instantly I decided that we needed to go get the kitten. At first, I just knew that he was the "thug life" kind of guy, so that probably didn't bode well for the little kitten. Then, after I said I'd take the kitten and we found out the address, we had to rush over their immediately! It was in a very bad, bug infested area of the city.

We knew, before we even left to pick him up, that he didn't come with a carrier. And when we got there, he didn't come with anything. No bag of food, food dishes, toys, nothing. He was so shaky, and timid. When we got back to our apartment, before we even went back inside, we checked him for fleas, he had those. And we noticed he was quite under weight. So, I spent the night in the bathroom with this little guy, with a flea comb, making him clean. After first giving him a bath - the water didn't bother him at all, I hadn't cut his claws yet and they were long, but I got no scratches. :)

Anyway, I managed to get rid of all the fleas and eggs before we introduced him to my other cat, Dinah. This is her and I, in our usual morning snuggle pose - as soon as I wake up, she instantly goes to my chest and assumes the little spoon position, she always has.

Anyway, Dinah and the little kitten didn't really get along at first - but I don't think most cats do, initially. And Dinah has always been Mama's girl, so she was getting jealous of the kitten. From Sunday morning, until Tuesday night, we tried so hard to find the little kitten a forever home, but nobody wanted him - the prospect of kittens that are six to eight weeks seemed so much better to people than an almost four month old kitten - it actually pissed me off, the messed up priorities of people. "Oh, let's get a kitten, we can give it a home." Yet, when there is a kitten - he's only 14 weeks, according to the vet - in dire need of rescuing, nobody wants it. It's stupid.

So, we decided to be that forever home for him. :) We just couldn't bear the idea of putting him in a shelter. And we wanted to know he'd go to a good home, he's been through so much already! We are a good home. Dinah is a good influence on him, and he's helped Dinah out a lot. Dinah has a mild case of Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome. It's not bad, it's just had to deal with some times, especially when she starts twitching, or gets aggressively hyper. But, those episodes have really died down since we got the kitten.

We really weren't going to keep him. And then this happened.

The first happenings of attachment on Dinah's part - we knew it might be hard to separate them at this point. So, we took him to the vet yesterday to get him checked out. He's perfectly healthy, just underweight, which we've been trying to get him to eat - he won't really touch hard food, though, only soft, so we think that's all his last owners fed him, which would be why he's so skinny, there is no nutrients in soft food, really. Not enough to sustain life, at least. Anyway, the vet double checked that he didn't have ear mites or worms - though he did get a deworming just to be safe. I have been raising and rescuing animals most of my life - I lived in the country before moving to the city. I know how to nurse an animal that is only a few days old, to what to look for in terms of infections, bugs, parasites, mood problems. :) So, I was pretty dead on with this kitten - it even surprised Alex!

So, yesterday, he got his first booster shot and is scheduled for his next one in three weeks, and after that, a couple of weeks and we get him fixed - I don't want him spraying everywhere, that stuff smells so bad!

We had issues figuring out what to call him - before we decided to keep him, we didn't want to call him anything, because it creates attachment, so we had just been calling him buddy. Which turned in to Buddy. We tried calling him something else - Ash - but it just didn't seem right, Buddy did. Even though it's more common in dogs to be called that. haha.

Here is when we knew we couldn't let him go, at all. :)

He was sleeping next ti Dinah, went to get up, and she didn't let him. Put her paw on him and pinned him so she could clean him, and clean she did! It was the cutest thing ever!

Now, moving on, I have restarted the bookmark, and it's coming along pretty good now.

I outlined the B because I was trying different ways of making it, but how it is now is the best way. :)

I couldn't decide which colour to use, so I decided that the one on the left will be the inside background, and the one of the right will be the border. :)

Here is how it started to look after filling it in. I rather like it!

I ran into a minor set back here, I didn't realize that I had placed the E over one line, it was no big deal, I was able to fix it in a heartbeat.

Now, here I was left with a little bit of blank canvas, and I didn't want to just fill it in with blue, I don't think it would have looked good. So, I this, instead!

I've been told you can tell it's supposed to be a bumble bee, but, it just looks like a striped square to me. lol From here, all I did is fill in the rest and add the border - I had doing that part, so much. >.>

Voila! The lighting is kind of crap in the picture, but it's enough that you can see the difference in colour between the background and the border. :) I think I will be taking a better picture of this before I post it on my DeviantArt, though.

And I think that is all I have to post for now. Hopefully I'll be back in a few days with something new and exciting to post about! Until then, I leave you with this awesome picture my boyfriend took. :)

Just ignore the kitty litter and boxes - we're still not fully unpacked yet. Anyway, in this picture, I am 19 weeks and two days along. :) And I already feel the baby kick. It's magical. <3