5-Minute Obsessions - #1

Right now I have an obsession with hand-spinning yarn on a drop spindle. Brenda of the Cast On podcast has been increasingly turning to spinning lately (she was on weaving thing for a while, too), which is a bit strange for a knitting podcast, but hey, I love her! I'm attributing my current obsession to her.

I'm swooning over this:


New Spindle, originally uploaded by Shunklies.

Let's face it though, I will probably end up with one like this:


spindle, originally uploaded by CUBIST LITERATURE!.

It was made at home using materials from the local hardware shop. I'm pretty impressed by it actually. I'm on a making-everything-yourself,-even-stuff-that-you-use-to-make-things-with kick at the moment. Hence the spindles I guess! Spinning raw material into yarn to weave into a cloth using the cardboard loom I got in Craft Zine a few issues ago, to cut and hand-sew into a [insert item here] seems really appealing to me right now. I just need a sheep to start the process off! They're so cute!:


sheep:Suffolk, originally uploaded by aikawarino.

It might be worth making my own spindle, not only for the money it saves, but because by the time it takes for me to actually decide to buy one of the other spindles, and for it to arrive in the mail, my mini-obsession might be over. I just can't take that risk!

Hmmm, what to do?

Unfortunately... Meme

Ok, I couldn't resist this meme, which I saw on the Meet Me At Mike's Blog:

What you do is google "unfortunately [your name]" and cut and paste the sentences that come up. The fact that most of them are going to be fragmentary in the description of the search results makes some of them quite intriguing. Here are some of mine!

Unfortunately Katie does not live anywhere near Toronto ...
Unfortunately Katie wasn't able to share her real feelings with Mike ...
Unfortunately Katie isn't a titan, she's an anchor miniature ...
Unfortunately Katie was not shown again in the States until she was three and half ...
Unfortunately Katie is nothing compared to the ultimate hotness, Michelle Pfeiffer ...
Unfortunately Katie is a different style and therein lies the problem ...
Unfortunately Katie and those around her come across as sanitized versions of people ...
unfortunately Katie has reached understanding of life that most ...
Unfortunately Katie's best efforts to gets flowers seems to go wrong somehow and she ends up hopping in and out of several paintings in her search for a ...
Unfortunately Katie's face is completely obscured by an "ectoplasmic" ...

P.S. I have a new banner for my blog! I spent a couple of hours faffing around on Picture2Life.com over the long weekend, and that was the result.

P.P.S. Boy has a blog now too! He's documenting his 18-month drawing course, so if you're into drawing, learning, looking at pictures or just all around self-improvement, check it out!.

Finish A Project Month

I've declared this month Finish A Project Month!
(It was nearly going to be No-Buy Supplies Month, but I'm just not that strong.)

I noticed that I was cycling through new projects pretty regularly, while the old ones lie, languishing in the back of the cupboard. They really need to be dusted off and given some love.

Here we have my set of three embroidered Art Cards which I finished yesterday:

flowery
(A new project, I know, but I haven't gotten started dusting yet!) Some are for swaps on Swap-bot, and I'll probably chuck the spare one on Etsy if I can get a good photo of it. I've already started a new set of 2. I also made these bookmarks for another swap:

Bookmarky goodness
The idea was to make them with stuff you have lying around the house. Materials include paint, a patterned paper bag, a brochure for the Bell Shakespeare Company, and a copy of National Trust magazine. I'm quite proud of some of them.

Yesterday we all left work early due to the possibility of the trains being cancelled due to a storm (I work for the Government, okay??) and I was a bit bored. I was listening to some craft podcasts and got inspired by what I perceived at that moment as a lack of receptacles in my bedroom. So I made these:

They're crocheted bowls (not quite finished yet). I made them to keep bobby pins in. The taller one falls over when I put bobby pins in it, so I made the wider one as well. They're OK. Now I have an (even more) insane amount of projects on the go.

More in progress means more to finish! Yay!

Friend Floggin

Black Rock Sunset, originally uploaded by ugbug7.

My friend is a photographer (as much as he says he's not! :P ) and his work is now available on redbubble.