crafty mcgee

taken with my iPhone!

OK, it wasn't a few days, but you have to admit it's more timely than three months! After hemming and hawing about it forever, I decide to get an iPhone with part of my tax refund. It's the first cell phone I've ever had (pretty amazing for a technology geek like me), and in about a month I'll take the final leap and dump my 15-year-old land line number. Yeehaw!

The picture isn't that great, of course, considering it was taken through a 1/8" lens, but it gives a good impression of the general fuzziness of the garden. I think my grandma made the little toadstool.

I was going to show the fabric design I was working on, but I decided to scrap it. It was birds, and I'm kind of birded out. I'm going to stick with under appreciated animals. I should have something by next week.

Thanks for all of the nice comments, it's good to be back!

extra bits

I have lots of fabric critters left over from the ornaments, due to the way I set up my gocco screen:

Being a big fan of fabric patches (one of these days I'm going to make something with my collection - stay tuned), I noticed a perfect opportunity when I saw it. I was going to do some plain circles, but when I saw Mimi's  tutorial on her ornaments (I'm getting one - yay!!), I decided to go freeform. I love the color combos. I also printed these tags:

I carved a nice eraser image, but it went a tad wonky when I tried to stamp it onto the tag. I should have carefully removed the wire, stamped, then even more carefully replaced the wire. Yes, that's definitely what I should have done. (If you listen closely, you can hear the voice in my brain saying "Ha! Fat chance!") They needed a little more hand-drawn embellishment than I planned, but I still think that they are not without charm.

This time I have an excuse

To start this post, I'm showing a picture of the kind of place I wish I had been in for the last month. I went to the cotton yarn sale at a local knitting store, and found a new reprint of Jan Messent's Knitted Gardens a book previously available for $100 up used. Look at all the little animals, the knitted veggies, the beehives! Such an inspirational book.

But why, you ask, have I wished I was in a monastery? Well, August has never been my favorite month, and this year didn't change my mind. The first half was helping my son get shipped off to college across the state. A little sad, but mostly just hectic (and financially stressful - never good). I took the day off to help pack the truck and see him off. When I came back inside from my child moving away more or less permanently, I checked my email and learned that my high school/college sweetheart, to whom I was engaged, and who I've kept in touch with over the years, had died of a heart attack the very same day. Attached to that sad message was a photo of all of us in college. Well, the juxtaposition really threw me for a loop, and I've been a bit out of it the last few weeks. When I told my cousin the news, part of what she said was "maybe you should paint a room". Little did she know I had been doing just that! In the midst of the launch, I finally got around to refurnishing and repainting my bedroom, the very last holdover from my whole-house remodel four years ago. Yes, when things get chaotic, I'm the type that likes to push it to the very limit. And since Hunter's been gone, I've been converting his room into a craft room, with a closing door to restrict access to naughty cats. I could post some work-in-progress pictures, but I'm creating some special bits, and I think I'll save it for my next post.

I did receive some amazing things in the mail.

The fabric from Bethany's swap. I think that ALL of the pieces were truly exceptional (check them out), and I got all of my favorites! The cacti is Bethany's, Dorathy's pitcher plants, and Mimi's sweet little flowers. AND one of Michelle's batiked dolls:

A Halloween one! Yay!! I am going to very carefully craft it into a feature of this year's decorations.

I also received a pretty quilt from bekka, who is blogless.

Great colors! My near-disaster quilt was well received by my swapee, who found the story funny (in a good way). In addition to room decoration, a have promised a couple more pieces for various things. So I should at least post sporadically this month. Thanks for sticking around!

Say hello to my little friend

I suppose you were thinking you'd never hear from me again? Nope, I'm back. How long will I stick around this time? A day, a week? Nobody knows.....not even me. I do have a few lame excuses for why I haven't been posting. The big one is that I finally got a new computer! Yay! It's that tiny box in the picture and I love it. I've spent the last couple of weekends (in addition to lots of gardening) getting my old computer organized so I could do a clean transfer. It took forever - it's amazing how cluttered a computer can get in just seven years.

The little gals are from the fairy vending machine(!) at Uwajimaya. Speaking of fairies, remember way back at the beginning of the year when I got inspired by The Princess and the Pea and decided I was going to illustrate a story with my vignettes? Well, I've decided to do A Midsummer Night's Dream. I already have most of the scenes storyboarded out, a couple of the characters sewn, and some sets in the works. I'm trying to get far enough ahead that I can at least guarantee a scene a week. Look for the first around mid-May. Uwajimaya seemed to be full of more treasures than usual last week. I also found this amazing thing -

a pink kitty bottle filled with wine! Now, I'm allergic to wine, so I've got no idea if it's any good or not, but how could I resist? I need to invite some wine-drinking friends over so I can fill it with different color liquid (like red, or blue) to see how it looks.

I haven't been completely slacking on the craftiness front. I made a holder for my moo cards using this incredible tutorial from splatgirl. I can get a little antsy sewing tiny things - and she had a warning about that - but it was really fun and easy. The ribbon is from superbuzzy.

Did you see who got a great big picture at the top of the latest Craftzine? Congratulations futuregirl! be sure to head over to Alice's place and pick up your very own octopus pattern, if you haven't already.

That's it for today. You've heard it before, but I shall return!

A Garden's Octopus

It's Stormar, Scourge of the Slugs! If this guy looks familiar, it's because his incredibleness is all due to futuregirl. In addition to the amazing Sigmund, there are also a bunch of happy Octophrost Christmas ornaments about in the world. She is going to be selling the pattern on her blog, and asked me to test out the pattern. I highly recommend checking it out for yourself. Not only is it a great looking pattern, I guarantee you'll learn an extra trick or two to use in your own crafting. Thanks for the opportunity, Alice!

It's Saturday!

This picture has nothing to do with anything, it just seems like a Saturday type of scene. Saturday is usually my "no computer" day, but I had a couple of things to take care of and I did promise I would post every other day, so I'll just give a little internet update of the things I've found this week.

I live in the city of Seattle, and I've actually been to the store, but I consider it a blessing that I always completely forget about Velocity until other folks post about things like this.

It's not really my style but Forest Rogers' dolls are so pretty. Thanks for the link, Mimi.

I recently saw a really interesting animated movie called Blood Tea and Red String. I won't even try to describe the film, and it's not for everyone (there is NO dialog, and the story can be alternately too slow or too confusing), but the artist who made the film Christiane Cevaske, made all the dolls and set pieces herself, and that alone made it great for me.

I'm working on several projects right now, so I'm back to work. I'll leave you with this picture.  It just makes me smile.

Back to Crafting

Right back to business with no real vacation update, except to say I had a marvelous time. You'll just have to take my word for it, because I forgot my camera!!!! I couldn't believe it either, but c'est la vie. While vacationing I worked on these eight tiny reindeer that I printed with my gocco before I left:

They are embellished with embroidery, and can either be hung, or stand (my preference) with the aid of the little cards. Five of them were sent of to Amy's fabulous ornament swap. I've got a couple left to trade for other ornaments, so drop me an email if you're interested. Gone already! You guys are fast! Amy was concurrently running a Christmas ATC swap, and here's my contribution:

I like to refer to them as "how to turn felt into cardboard". After I embroidered them, I printed the swap info on inkjet fabric, and glued them together with some watery glue. After a night on the heater vent they were nice and stiff. I should have tested it first, because I actually didn't know if it would work, but they turned out fine.

Thanks to everyone involved in and visited during our trip. It truly was a wonderful time.

Just when I thought...

...my patience couldn't wear any thinner, it looks like it's finally starting to pay off.

(This quote has been on my fridge for a long time. It was an epigraph in the book Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire, his follow up to Wicked. Owl magnet from ferdinand.)

secret identity

I got all of the printing done that I wanted to do this week. The piece on the bottom is some fabric I hand stamped for Moki's swap. I'm happy with the design, but the thin vinyl that I used had drastically unpredictable ink retention properties. As you can tell, some of it came out fine, and other spots faded away to nothing, all with the same ink application to the stamp itself. I like this technique, but I'll try to find something a bit more porous to use in the future.

The other items are some labels for my knitted items, and my fall calling cards that I use for swaps and such, both done with my trusty gocco. (This is the standby ribbon. The ribbon I bought special never showed up.) I thought this would be an appropriate post to talk about my "logo". It's been on my banner the last few times, it was on my spring/summer cards, and I use it for my Flickr badge. It's part of this image:

It comes from an old children's book compilation that I bought in England many years ago. Unfortunately, even though the artist's initials are on the drawing, their name is not listed anywhere that I can find. Too bad, because I'd love to give them credit. I use this picture because it reminds me of me when I was a kid.

the best laid plans....

If this page looks a little shaky, it's just because I'm still jumping up and down because it's finally fall!! Yaaay!

   
I had big plans to do lots of printing this weekend, but I made the - um - strategic decision to attend a local plant sale instead, so I ended up gardening most of the time. The sorry little tree on the right succumbed to the summer sun and heat, and needed to be replaced. So I found the tree on the left. It's called a rams horn willow. It's so "rare and unusual" that I couldn't even find a picture of a full-size one after googling it! So now I'm hosting a Mystery Tree in my own front yard. I hope it lasts, I can't wait to see what it looks like.

When I planted my garden last fall, I couldn't find an oak tree, I got a dogwood instead (no problem, I love them too). Yesterday I found an oak shrub, called a Brewer's Oak. It's already gamely starting it's fall color, I think that's why I decided to bring it home.

The other large portion of the weekend was spent looking for ribbon I bought a few months ago to make name labels. It's not where it should be, and it's not where it might be. Damn fairies! They always take my stuff just when I need it. I do have backup ribbon, but it's not as good as the stuff I bought special. Grrrr. Oh well, the printing will still get done, and I'll show it to you later this week.