Awesome Haul

Oh man. So Cassie and I went to Michaels to spend all our money at the yarn sale.

You will be glad to know that we were successful.

My excuse was that I got most of it to make hats to sell. (I did get some Lion Brand Homespun in a lovely teal colour that I'd been eyeing for a while...it's awful to knit with, but the fibre is nice! I'm prolly going to end up taking it apart ftw.)

On the way home we stopped off at the dumpster, which was suuuuuuuper full of lovely things. Check this out:

Sooooooooo much stuff! We had to ...borrow.... a shopping cart to get it all home. I'm super excited about all those plastic shelves, finally a proper way to organise my fibre! Plus lots of random shinies! This is my absolute favourite:

GOD YES.

It's squishy and has a multicoloured flashing LED inside it! I almost bought one of these a couple months ago, so I was soooooo excited to find it!!! Dumpster diving ftw.

Making a case

Until today, my knitting needles, crochet hooks and miscellaneous bits have been kept in a drawer that gets put wherever there's space for it. It has been VERY DIFFICULT to find anything, and I've been meaning to make a case for ages, but haven't gotten around to it. Well, yesterday I finally go around it it! Here is before:

And after:

It's so exciting! I haven't sewn anything in AGES, so it's a little wonky, but it works and is colourful, and that is what counts. My sewing machine got jammed half way through, and wasn't sure what was wrong, and I got rather upset. But then I went to THE INTERNET, found this site, which had the manual for my machine to download (for free!), and it told me what to clean. And it worked after cleaning! Who would have guessed! So I made that first container, but it didn't have space for my circular needles, so I made this as well:

And after:

It's a bit too long, but better too long than too short. I'm going to embroider needle sizes on each section, but it's going to take a while since I haven't done any embroidery since I was about ...twelve? I've already had to unpick one number.

My hat is progressing! I've had to frog bits of it, but I really like how the colours work together.

If you ever have to do colourwork, I thoroughly recommend a colourwork thimble:

It keeps everything so much less tangled! It is really quite wonderful.

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.

Storage Solutions Make Me Feel Good In My Pants

Mmmmmmmmm, storage solutions. I am planning an ikea expedition sometime this week, after getting sudden untameable ikea urges. I need better things to put stuff in on my desk; as is, debris gradually builds up on it until I don't have space to do anything. A second desk might be nice, I could have a craft desk and a school desk. A craft room would be nice too, while I'm dreaming.

Being a student sucks. When I have a job that actually pays me money, I'm gonna rent TWO rooms and use one for crafts/books AND IT'S GONNA BE SICK.

Anyway, this started because I spend a while today reorganising my unmounted stamps, they are now in trading card binder sheets in my old ATC binder. Check this shit out:



I would feel accomplished, except I only did this to avoid working on my essay which was due last thursday. Ditto this blog post.

Recently I decided I wanted to have an art journal, so I ...have one...now...

Here's a page from it:


Printed image I got from a swap, buttons I cut off a shirt then spray-painted.

In retrospect, I should probably have chosen a book that wasn't lined. But whatevs, I'll make do. I have my sketchbook for flat stuff anyway? Which is unlined. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to differentiate my sketchbook and art journal. So far, art journal is random crap I like that I've done random crap with, and sketchbook is sketches. So far, so good.