Gett Off aka I >>HEART<< MY Ipod

Directions:
1. Put your iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.


1 Are you a male or female?

Safety Dance - Men Without Hats

2 Describe yourself?

Smoke It - The Dandy Warhols

3 How do you feel about yourself?

Mothership Reconnected (Daft Punk Remix) - Scott Grooves

4 Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend:

My Hump - Black Eyed Peas

5 Describe your current partner.

Ringo - Custard

6 Describe your current location

Tainted Love (Extended Mix) - Soft Cell

7 Describe what you want to be:

Flawless - The Ones

8 Describe your best friend:

Song Formerly Known As - Regurgitator

9 Your favorite color is:

Love Comes Quickly - Pet Shop Boys

10 You know that:

Shining Star - Earth, Wind & Fire

11 What is the weather like?

Come On Eileen - Dexy's Midnight Runners

12 If your life was a television show, what would it be called?

Crash - Gwen Stefani

13 What is life to you?

Barbie Girl - Aqua

14 What is the best advice you have to give?

Fucken Awesome - Spiderbait

15 Describe your love life:

Song 2 - Blur

16 How are you going to die?

Do What You Wanna (Verve Remix) - Ramsay Lewis

17 If you could change your name, what would you change it to?

Crystal - New Order

18 What do your friends think of you?

When I Come Around - Green Day

19 What is your funeral song going to be?

Mary - Supergrass

20 What are you going to repost this as?

Gett Off - Prince

Back to work for you!

Play time is over, kiddies! It's back to work for me. After a couple of days of nail-biting after signing up for a temp agency, the lovely lady called me - about once every five minutes! (Not complaining, though!) Apparently I'm hot stuff, and I have a pretty good-sounding gig to keep me going full-time for at least the next month.

I wasn't sitting around twiddling my thumbs on my time off though, oh no! I was furiously knitting and crocheting and sewing and drawing away. I made this on Cup Day:

Don't worry, I stopped to watch the race!

I also finished the Creamy Scarf on the same day:

So fluffy!

Then I felt like more of a challenge, so I worked for a while on the Heirloom Baby Blanket:

Bad, bad, evil picture!

I know it's hard to make out, but I think it'll be wonderful in the end. I'm making it for Sarah and Adrian. I decided that I wanted to make something a bit more special, well, heirloom, basically, instead of churning out acrylic gew-gaws all the time. I started it a while ago, but it was in the back of the cupboard for a while. I get it out when I feel like something a little more brain-worthy.
The stitch markers on it are from an amazing Etsy shop called Hide and Sheep. It has beautiful accessories for knitting; I wanted to use something special instead of just bits of wool like I normally do.

Then, I got out my sewing machine and whipped up some pouch-type things to keep my knitting in:

So much nicer than a plastic bag, no?

I also started a couple that are more like handbags, with handles at the top, in blue corduroy. Then the light bulb on the sewing machine conked out, and it started chewing up the fabric, which I took as a sign to do some crocheting instead.

I got inspired by the sequins that I'd crocheted onto the pouch, and I decided I wanted to do a wool embroidery. I'm not showing it here because I can't decide if it's naive and quirky, or just plain hideous. It does have a crocheted 'frame' which is actually quite good though. Maybe next post.

Then, I felt like amigurumi-ing it up, so I started a creature. I wanted to make it as unsymmetrical and strange as possible, and I may have just succeeded. I call him The Deformedest Little Monster. He's almost finished, so I think I might wait until I've gone all the way (ahem) before I take a photo.

Speaking of finishing stuff, I have a real problem. I always told myself that I'd have no more than 12 projects on the go at any one time. I currently have 17. And that doesn't include the AIDS Baby Vest which I decided not to count as it's a charity project. (Sneaky, huh?) So I had a look at my projects, and I vow to finish the following projects within the next week:

- iPod Cozy
- Skinny Nature Scarf
- The Deformedest Little Monster
- Boo-tay & Mi-Uh
- Firey Scarf (It just needs the fringe trimmed, for fuck's sake!!)
- Flower Facewashers (This one might kill me - all the weaving in.... nooooo!)

- Not to mention the two bags that I'm half-way through sewing
- and the embroidery which I still have to neaten up

Aieeeee!

SHOP STUFF - Knitting Machine

SHOP STUFF

All right! Yesterday I churned out not one, but two items!
Here they are in progress (finished pics later):

Hat made with Katrine pure wool.

I made this because I wanted to work with a wool that's interesting, and I think this fits the bill!

Creamy, sparkly scarf.

I had been planning to make a neutral-coloured version of the firey scarf for a while, and I thought, what the heck! It's narrower than Firey, but I didn't have as many matching colours to work with. I think that's fine, though.

I'm, like, a knitting machine! No, hang on, somebody already thought of that.

I'm going to sell both of these in my shop. When it opens. Don't ask.
Boy downloaded a pirated copy of MYOB for me, so I can just generally teach myself how to use it (for my own betterment and stuff), as well as seeing if it'll be good to use for the shop. I think it's too complicated. Why do I need a payroll?? I'm not gonna have staff! Actually, a masseur might be good.....

A whole lotta thinking

THINGS I HAVE LOST
- my nephew
- my job


THINGS I HAVE GAINED
- freedom
- determination
- about 15kgs*


Still trying to figure out if it balances...

Everything got put on hold for a while - a few things happened that needed all my attention, and I had to make a few decisions. Even knitting just didn't seem the right thing to do to calm me down and help me think. Some things were way more important - like comforting my family after the premature birth of our AJ. Other things seemed an unimportant 'no-brainer' decision - like weighing up whether to keep putting up with the stresses of my job, or quit and face uncertainty, but also freedom to follow my goals.

I knew this was the right decision the day after I handed in my resignation letter, when I realised that I'd spent the whole evening drawing and painting, and I'd slept better than I have in about 6 months. My boyfriend had to wake me up! Whereas normally I would wake up at about 5.30am and just lie there with my eyes shut for a couple of hours, trying not to think about work.

Yeah, I know, I used the 'G' word up there - scary huh? Just a few years ago, "goals" was a dirty word to me. Who had time to think about the future? I spent all my time doing as little work as possible and trying to be content with having as little money as possible. :)
I always had goals, really, I just told myself they were 'things I wanted to do one day'. Over time, as I got more confidence, they slowly started turning into, 'things I'm going to do one day', and then 'things I'm going to do soon'.

Anyhoo, the upshot of all this is that I'm going to open an online shop on Etsy. Now, I know that when I read a blog, and they wang on all the time about their online shop and try and get you to buy stuff from it, it's unbelievably boring and just makes you want to never read it again. So I'm going to try and keep that to a minimum. Perhaps I'll put it in a separate section at the bottom of my posts so you can just click off it if your eyes start to glaze over.

I did start making a little thing last night however:

It's an iPod cozy! I just got some cotton out and started working away with not much plan. I'm thinking I might embroider it with some yellow flowers or something once it's done. Only one snag however - before I got a chance to finish it, I broke my crochet hook!!
Guess I don't know my own strength! Before you start thinking I have superpowers all of a sudden, it was actually a bamboo one, not metal. I now have a new rule for the purchase of crafting tools though -

CRAFTING RULE #239:
Don't buy any bamboo tools unless they are thicker than your little finger.
Otherwise - SNAP!

---

* that's 15kgs I've gained since the start of the year, not since my last post!!

"A" Bear

I'm making 'A' Bear for my nephew:

Adrian Joseph George

He was born 5 months too soon, and left us the same day.

His mother Sarah and father Adrian wanted to give him a teddy bear to keep him company where he's going. So I'm making one for him.
I wish I could do more.


RIP

I'm finally back!

That's how long it took me to get my internet back. On supposedly one of the better telcos in Australia. *suppresses rage*

I haven't been knitting or crafting much anyway, so you haven't missed much. I've only been working on what I've decided to call Ocean Girl, because of its colour:

This is the dress before I ripped it completely back to the beginning because I realised I wouldn't have enough wool. My calculations are in the background. Thankfully that was a couple of weeks ago - I'm over the pain now. This is what the original looks like:

I figure the frill is entirely optional!

So the dress has been shortened to a tunic. I had to rip it back entirely, because it was designed to flare at the bottom and it was knitted from the bottom up. I've finished the front now, and almost finished one sleeve. I have until October 30th. I may be screwed. We'll see.

More in a few days maybe, I'm very tired now. Good night!

Craft Progress ... Or Lack Of?

I was going to wait until I had finished more stuff before I posted again (procrastination being the better part of my weekend), but I'm having ex-flatmate server problems at the moment, and it seems I'll be losing internet access in a few days, and might not have it back again for up to a week. It's fairly usual for me to not post for a week anyway, but you never know. Someone out there might think I've died or something...

Anyhoo.

I have a confession to make. In my last post, I said that I had finished the Berry Bonce hat. It wasn't true. I still had the ends to weave in. I'm actually not really ashamed. I don't care one little bit. You see, I've lost my motivation for making things for other people. I just can't get up the motivation to keep on plowing away if it's not me that gets to wear it or use it afterwards! Sure, I have these high-handed notions of making excruciatingly fine and details baby shawls and bootees and jackets, but am I really going to finish them?
I sometimes wonder if the things I make for other people actually get used. Do they think they're too precious to use and they don't want to ruin them? Do they not wear them because they're fugly? Do they (e.g. Boy) wear them out of a sense of loyalty and not wanting to hurt my feelings? I'm just paranoiding again. Sorry. I really have to snap out of that if I want to start selling my works! Here's the Berry Bonce:

Mmm, yummy!
I now feel like I can start on something else. Will it be the heirloom baby blanket? Or the Elizabeth Zimmermann Baby Surprise Jacket? Or something totally mean and selfish?

I'm well along on the Baby Bum pants:

I'm really quite happy with the fair aisle bit just after the ribbing, and the colours. too. I actually managed to find some pure wool in my stash in gorgeous colours that co-ordinate well. I couldn't have asked for more! I don't want to give the darn thing away! I'll probably ruin the end part with the leg-holes though, and then I'll be quite content to give them away. Hmmm, is this why I'm such a bad knitter???

Last but not least, the piece de resistance - I finished the Happy Baby Grassy Feet!

Groovin' in the grass
They turned out much better than I had hoped for. I was really worried about the sewing up, but I just followed the instructions in Elizabeth Zimmermann's book, and they look almost perfect! The cords were a bit of a pain to make. Boy helped me with them - he's a gem! I was hoping to have the rest of the bootees and mittens made by now, but I've found that, not havin much spare time, I'd rather just do whatever I feel like than forcing myself to do something I don't want to do at the time. Ravelry has helped immensely with that actually. Instead of a situation where I'm moaning about the thought of trawling through all my stash for a ball of wool that I thought I remembered I had, I can just look it up online, even from work, note down the location and go straight to it! My motivation to knit and start new projects has been so much higher since I joined. Or got in, I should say. As it's still in beta testing, there are only a limited number of users (first in, first served.) There are over 19,000 people on the waiting list, apparently. I hope they won't have to wait too long.

Enough of wool. Spring is in the air and I'm branching out to new things. On the weekend I went to Polyester and bought some zines:

It's pretty much a random selection of stuff that looked appealing. I'm really liking reading them, and learning a lot. I think it's great that people are sharing their personal stories, their writing and art. Speaking of art *sniggers*, here's my second LOLcat:

The knack seems to be not in thinking of a funny caption, but actually getting a decent picture of the damned cat!!