Christmas in...January.

Mood= omgthereisaspider!

Well my ornament in now complete. Hooray! Only one million things left to do before leaving on Saturday (as opposed to one million and one).

Bleh at this rate Noah is going to have to concentrate his efforts on teaching all the animals how to swim instead of building an Ark, cause this bookmark deal is taking forever. If I can find a little plastic needle I'm going to have to do some on the plane.

Reasons to Ban Embroidery Needles on Planes:

Useful for sewing lips together in protest against poor quality aeroplane food. Potential to cause cabin disturbance.

Essential equipment in running small-scale jail tattoo business from toilet area. Creates hygeine issues, especially in the case of running out of surgical alcohol. 5x100ml bottles can only go so far.

A Day in the Life of...

Mood= tired

Work-land aircon is still borked. I came in thismorning to find it had decided to dump its excess water on the floorboards. :(
Speaking of the floor, I think it is real Jarrah wood. Beautiful, but takes a terrible effort to maintain when bajillions of people scuff their grubby heels across it 58 hrs/week. Ho hum.

The Santa ornament is finished, save for the backstitched outline (yay!).
I'm a little stressed out about finishing (er.. and also starting) a cross stitched bookmark for my Grandmother in the next 5 days. I'm not very religious, but it has a cute Noah's ark design which I am sure she will appreciate. Sew, sew, sew!

Sickly

Mood= sick

Not so well today, which is sucky cause we have broken aircon in work-land (not to mention that said work has occurred on a Saturday).

Still stitching.

Oh. My. there is a lady dressed entirely in balloon animals standing in the doorway. Hello! Wait, she is wearing a jester hat also. I hope no one comes at her with a pin.

Pixels

Mood= thoughtful

The more counted cross stitch I do, the more I find myself thinking of it as up-scaled pixel art. For example, if I took one of my mood icons, stuck it in photoshop, changed it to a JPEG, cut & pasted the coloured bit onto a new layer, adjusted the opacity of said layer to about 80% so the grid underneath could show through, then zoomed in until one grid square looked to represent the width of the black outline, I would have a counted cross stitch pattern.

I think.

Robot Madness

Mood= frustrated

Trying to make my little 'Count Botula' icon resize correctly is driving me mental. I tried to work out a ratio between the smaller dimensions, then alter the size of the original so it would scale more easily, but now the little one seems to have changed again. RAWR!

Thanks to everyone who has given me comments so far. I honestly didn't think anyone would be visiting my little page without monetary (or at least chocolate)-based persuasion.

And finally, I cannot believe I am still making Xmas things halfway through January. January! This one is a little cross stitch tree ornament for my Grandma. I'm seeing her in NZ soon (less than 2 weeks to go!), so we skipped on mailing presents in December in favour of giving things in person. Apparently she is very good at embroidery, so maybe I will get some tips :)

Moody

Mood = happy

A couple of years back someone bought me a paid LiveJournal account. A feature granted to paid accounts was the ability to upload a customised set of mood icons. So I came up with a set of 26 based on what I would look like if I were considerably more adorable, with longer hair and uhm. Blue kitty ears. No sense letting them go to waste, so from now on I think I will slap one on each post. (see above)

I would be happy to email out the full set if anyone is particularly interested.

Bead-y Things

Necklace and some bracelets I threw in the scanner before my camera days. I think the issue with my bead collection is that I have a lot of materials, with little congruence. Sort of like my wardrobe.

First post

I have been (sneakily) checking out crafter's blogs in the ebbs between customers at work for some time now, and thought maybe it was time to try starting my own.

Project one: Fishing lure jewellery for a friend, inspired by the NatureGirl line from Stewart Jewelry Designs. Despite the help of a salesman (once he had finished ridiculing me - "I'm looking for some small, lightweight lures." "Lures, what sort? What are you looking to catch?" "Erm, boys?"), I couldn't find anything which wouldn't double as an African stretcher when hung from an ear. Instead I grabbed the smallest, shiniest pieces they had:

and made a necklace.

Hopefully after 6 months of uni camera work, I will learn not to photograph things on reflective surfaces.