Bluhhhh

Eugh, I really want the term to be over, I am so fed up with school. I still have a couple assignments left, even thought there's only one day left of class. I had a final on thursday so I decided to not to any work, and made ATCs instead.

ATCs for trading

It had been ages since I made ATCs, so I got a little distracted from doing school last night, and made a bunch. These are all available for trade!

Handspun and WIPs

Today I've got some pictures of handspun yarn! Always exciting.

First, a couple small skeins of handdyed laceweight. The colours you can get with food colouring are really fantastic, I'm so pleased with how these came out. This was the first time I've dyed the roving and then spun it.

There isn't enough yarn to do much with, so I'm going to try making knitted jewellery with these. I really love the lace necklaces people make, and I've been meaning to try it myself for a while now.

As you may or may not know, I'm fond of taking yarn apart and respinning it. I had a bit of bulky yarn that was blue, green and two shades of purple. I separated it into colours, and respun it into two singles, a blue-green one and a purple-purple one, then plied those.

I like the yarn I spun much better than the original.

I tried to make a tam, but I ran out of yarn too quickly.

I really don't want to go buy more yarn. I think my options are to finish it with a contrasting colour (something plain though, maybe black? It's already pretty colourful.) or take it apart and make a toque instead. I'm leaning towards the second option, but I really don't know. Maybe it'll go into the unfinished projects bin and I'll forget about it for a couple months.

I mentioned a couple posts ago that I was going to try making socks.

Well, I'm trying. There are several things that have come up, and there's no way my socks are going to match now. First problem:

Wtf. There is no way these are the same dyelot. I feel so betrayed! The dyelot on the label was the same!

Second problem:

How did this happen? Dramatic tension change? Was I just really nervous for the first one? I just don't know. Maybe I can block them to the same size? (This seems unlikely but I'll try anyway.)

Sigh. I guess it will be sort of ok. Listening to the Robot Pirates helps a bit.

Good news though! I finished embroidering needle sizes onto my circular needle case! It's on my wall above my bed now, terribly satisfying.

For someone who is obsessed with knitting and yarn as much as I am, I appear to have a severe lack of scarves. This is madness!

I started a lace scarf last night. I've had this yarn forever, it's really lovely, I am so excited to be using it at last.

Many Exciting Things

I had a terribly productive day the other day. I made a hula hoop! A proper one that is appropriately heavy and large. I can already do a few things (none very well) but it is SO MUCH FUN.


It's (sadly) only black because I only had black electrical tape, and I couldn't get the duct tape to wrap evenly. BUT I found this site, which has all manner of wonderful shiny hoop tape! Yep.

If you want to make a hoop (and you should, it's super easy and they are so much fun), this was the tutorial I used.

Adhering *ahem*...closely to my "hat-a-week" goal, I have finished another hat. It looks like a pumpkin! A stripe-y pumpkin.

I know this picture is just dreadful, I'll take another one tomorrow in decent light, but I was just too excited!

Michael's store brand "Charisma" acrylic chunky, which is actually not bad! It's soft and has a nice stripy pattern. This is actually the first hat I've knitted, all the others have been crocheted. It didn't turn out perfectly, but I like it well enough.

I ran out of yarn two thirds of the way through, so I had to run to Michaels to get more, and (of course) couldn't resist peeking in their dumpster, even though it was raining. But it was worth it, because I found YARN (omg!), acrylic paint, a label punch, and a bunch of glue.

Speaking of yarn, I found this terribly dangerous website: Yarn Find. It is a buy/sell/trade site for yarn....ohhhhh my.

I guess I haven't posted stuff in a while, so here are some more ATCs:

I am in the midst of rediscovering how intensely wonderful Pop Rocks are. Like, oh man. I am actually having dreams that involve me buying massive amount of Pop Rocks. It would be slightly unsettling if it wasn't so AWESOME.

Also, I got asked for drugs the other day! We had to do projects for a class and I ended doing mine on harm reduction approaches to drug use (ie, I handed in TRIP flyers), and then we had to talk about them in class. Then after class a nerdy awkward frosh guy came up and said "Excuse me, do you have any marijuana?" It was really cute! I don't sell drugs, but lolz.

Exciting as this post had been, I have to end it now. Why, you may ask? Because I have to get my hoop on, bitches. And go tell the people who live above me to stop jumping on their floor.

Organization

I cleaned ALL DAY TODAY. FUCK. And I went through my gazillion bead containers and reorganised most of them. So I am accomplished, I guess?

We went for a bike ride to a dumpster (which had a disappointing lack of interesting stuff in it). I tried to jump a curb, but it did not work, and I fell off and scraped my knee. It was more lulz than painful, so I am going to try again in a bit, because I'm *sure* I could do it at some point.

I really want good software for organising my swaps, particularly ATC ones. I keep agreeing to trades, then forgetting to mark them as traded, and ending up making the same things again (which is LAME). A spreadsheet isn't bad, but it could definitely be improved on...hm. Maybe this could be a PROJECT I could work on to figure out how to program again. I vaguely intend to take another computer science class at some point, so this would be useful beyond just swap organization.

Anyway, I have been very good about actually managing to do things recently, so yaay!

And, because blog posts are boring without pictures, here are four jellyfish ATCs I made for a jellyfish ATC swap. I really like how these turned out, I made an extra one to keep. They are secret hidden jellyfish, can you spot them?

The background is washed inked background, the jellyfish are mod podge. In real life they are all the same-ish colour, but I had difficulty taking consistent pictures.

OH! Also! This guy is SO GOOD! I don't know what kind of music this is, but it's SO GOOD! We met him briefly at Harvest, because his music was SO GOOD! So yes, check it out, I ENDORSE it.

ATCs I guess?

I have been doing swaps ALL DAY. I am still NOT DONE. I think perhaps I need to cut back on the number of swaps I join, and ATCs I custom make for people. Ok, from now until I forget (or get bored), I am just going to make things, then find/make swaps for them afterwards.

Lots of ATCs:

>

I've been making ATCs in threes a lot recently. It just seems more efficient, since a lot of the time I get requests for cards I've made already. So wooo.

The first of these is for a swap on swap-bot where you have to combine two different animals. The other two are post-apocalyptic cards made on request for a trade.

What I did on my summer vacation

I just got back home after being away for about a month. Classes started today too, which was a little annoying; I'd have liked to have a bit of time to prepare, I had to use a shopping bag as a backpack today because my backpack was still full from camping. But at least there was only one class, and we didn't really do anything, so I'm not really sure what I'm complaining about.

I spun some yarn! I'm getting better at making it even-ish, which is nice, and I've also now made 3-ply:

From this top:

I made this yarn:

(The colour is more accurate in the second picture.) I split the top into three before I started spinning, but they didn't all end up the same length, so I made the single underneath with the leftovers. I quite like the way both bits turned out. No plans yet for what the yarn will be used for...ideas?

This yarn is made from recycled sari ends, which is my new favourite fibre! It's kind of tricky to spin since it isn't really prepared all that much, but you get a great texture from it, and I just love the colours! I ordered a bunch more sari ends off ebay, because I enjoyed making it so much!

I also finally got around to using my people stamps I got aaaaages ago. They're unmounted, so kind of annoying (I should really figure out mounting stamps), but I really like them!

I also finally used the silver pigment ink pad I've had for a while! It doesn't seem to like to dry, particularly since these two cards are coated in mod podge, so the ink had a tendency to rub off a little. But I really like how they turned out, so like whatevs, right?

In other news, Harvest was amazing! The property (which was huge) had all this really neat art, and they had made fantastic deco! It was spread out all over the place, so you could wander around and find random things in the middle of the woods. My favourite thing was the hammerhead sharks they made out of chicken wire and clingfilm. There were 3 stages, which all had really good music. I blew so many bubbles, decided I was part of a circus, wandering around, somehow ended up serving soup off a truck, and was eventually found by friends cuddling with people in the woods a couple hours later. It was wicked fun, but I burned out pretty fast, so I've decided that next year I will actually try to sleep more and eat regular meals instead of just when I remember. Everyone there was really friendly, there was a real sense of community. Oh, and I want to learn to hula hoop properly, because there were people with light up hula hoops and it was SO AWESOME! I can hoop around my waist, knees, and arms, and I can toss it from arm to arm, but that is it and I am UNSATISFIED.

Exciting Things

Look what I found at the Michael's dumpster this time! A gazillion dried flowers and random styrofoam balls with nature-y things on them. The dried flowers are gradually being passed out to people who can use them (I can't, they're scented and I'm allergic...I stole several peacock feathers out of them though!), and we have made MOST EXCELLENT use of the styrofoam balls, which I will talk about when I get pictures of it. But for now it's a SURPRISE!


I went back with my sister, and we found her a really awesome portfolio case! In perfect condition except for where the plastic got cracked a little, but that is easily fixed with duct tape! It's enough to make me go to Michael's and "accidentally" break things I want.

And now, for a bunch of ATCs!



Also, the following ATC, which is what I did with the background from my last post. I am...reasonably pleased with it.



In less exciting news, I sweated so much at a rave that my phone broke. :( It stealthily deletes texts now, and the camera WORKS, but exits before I can take any pictures.

WIPs

I have a couple cards I'm stuck on.

The first one has stamped flowers that were washed out on a foreign text. I really like how it's turned out so far, but it feels like just a background right now. I was thinking I might make a flower (or something) with wire, but I'm not sure!



The second one is layers of mushroom stamps in green ink. Again, I like it so far, but it still just feels background-y. No idea what to do with this one!

Suggestions?

FUCK!! ATC SWAP

RARG!

On swap-bot recently, there was a One Word ATC swap. This seemed interesting, so I looked, and yes, it was an ATC swap where you picked a word and your partner ATC'd it. Only thing was that most of the chosen words were along the lines of "Breathe," "Faith," "Bliss," etc. While I'm sure the lovely people who requested those lovely words will enjoy them, as a young, tough (grrr), secular, foul-mouthed, etc, student-person I don't really want to make any of those into an ATC.

Choosing to focus on the foul-mouthed aspect of myself, I've made a FUCK!! ATC swap. If you join, you get to make an ATC with (and this is key) the word FUCK in it! So exciting...

And just so everyone is well-informed and educated in preparation for this swap, wikipedia gives us this fine information:

The word "fuck" did not come from any of:

* "File Under Carnal Knowledge"
* "Fornication Under the Christian King"
* "Fornication Under the Command of the King"
* "Fornication Under Carnal/Cardinal Knowledge"
* "False Use of Carnal Knowledge"
* "Felonious Use of Carnal Knowledge"
* "Felonious Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
* "Full-On Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
* "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
* "Found Under Carnal Knowledge"
* "Found Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"
* "Forced Unlawful Carnal Knowledge"

Evolution

I know I've remarked on this before, but my style really has changed a lot in a few months. Consider the following: (remember Bill Nye?!)



These are my three "Steampunk Garden" cards. The second and third were made as requests for cards similar to the first one, 2 weeks and 4 months after the first one. They're all basically made the same way, with rubber stamps, flower punches and beads, but I feel like the mood is really different in all of them. Pretty sure I'm getting better at layering colours effectively? Feedback is always welcome.

Man, I really want to get some more ink. I have eight ink pads (5 dye, 3 pigment) and they just never seem to be enough for all the stuff I want to do. Ink and stamps are so *expensive* though, even unmounted. I've found some AWESOME stamp sites which have the bestest stamps, and unmounted too, but getting lots is expensive and I never have any money.

/rant>

This ink, by the way, is pretty great. I must find somewhere online to purchase it cheaply.

ATCs

Some new ATCs! This first one I made a while ago but only recently unfinished; it's crocheted, stiffened with mod podge, and has a wire guy climbing on it.




Next is a multimedia collage similar to a card I made a while ago.



The second collage is simpler (only a couple cut up images and some rubber stamps), but I really like the colours in it.