crafty mcgee

Chamomilla, Flora and Herb

Since I am filling in as administrator for the Month of Softies group over on Flickr while Amy is on a maternity break, and I called the theme, I thought I should participate. The theme is "Plant Life" and here are three of my little plant pals. In the individual portraits below (which you can see larger versions of by clicking), Chamomilla relaxes with a cuppa tea, Flora spends some time in the sun with her cousins, and Herb is hanging out with his buddies from the Italian cooking class.

      

I had originally planned for four, but they took longer than I expected and I wanted to spend more time on my "Midsummer Night's Dream" stuff. You may have noticed a theme of little armed and legged non-animal or person things lately. I think it all started with this impulse purchase from superbuzzy:

Which I bought with absolutely no idea of what I'll ever do with it because it reminded me of one of my all-time favorite videos, Blur's Coffee and TV. What do you think the dude with the square blue head is? My current theory is an ice cube to help with the fire. I've been getting inspired by so many odd things lately that I'm beginning to feel a bit overloaded. I can't work that fast! 

Miike

Next up in my Asian directors series is Miike (pronounced 'Me YEK ee'), named for the Japanese director Takeshi Miike . Known primarily for gore fests and prodigious output (he once directed five feature films in one year!) I've never actually seen any of his ultra-violent films. In the horror trilogy film Three...Extremes his contribution "Box" was the only one I could get through, and wasn't the least bit gory...Anyway, it's a couple of his quirkier films that put him on my tribute list. The Happiness of the Kataruris  is a zombie musical - the stand out song being "Don't Be Discouraged 'Cause You're Dead" (sung to the zombies, of course). It's got lots of humor, and even claymation! Another of my faves is a lovely little film called The Bird People in China, a fantasy about a group of Chinese descendants of Scottish ancestors high in the mountains. I would recommended these two highly to anyone who likes unusual movies. He's even made a good J-Horror (what I refer to as "ghost girl" movies) called One Missed Call. The other films of his I've seen like Gozu, Audition, and Andromeda can best be described as "David Lynch meets Quentin Tarantino".  I don't think Miike is a great filmmaker. Not surprisingly, most of his films seem unfinished. But he's prolific, and always interesting. I tried to make the little monster reflect all of that.

Arbor weekend

Saturday was Arbor Day, so I celebrated by both creating and planting a tree. The made one was created with pipe cleaners, ribbon, embroidery thread, copper wire, beads, and tiny fabric flowers and leaves. I was inspired by the movie The Science of Sleep. In it, two misfit crafters, Stefan (played by Gael Garcia Bernal - yay!) and Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) ultimately create their own world based on Stephanie's story of a forest that sets out in a boat to find its mother. I was good! Parts of it (the creative bits) were great.

Here's the purchased tree. It doesn't look so impressive yet, but it will grow up to be a fine hawthorne. I couldn't find a decent picture of a grown one, but it has berries and thorns and birds love it. I've been looking for one for years, and finally found it at what was billed as "Seattle's Biggest Plant Sale".

Also on Saturday, as if to honor its day, the dogwood burst into bloom! It didn't flower last year, so I take this as a sign that it's happy here. Trees...a good thing.

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 hedgehog for St Patrick's Day

Only a day late! My apologies for my lack of posts lately. I had a very cool stuffie almost completed for the latest in my "Asian directors" series, when my cat unraveled it. Then she chewed up a couple of my vignette figures. So my swell toy collection, one of my favorite things in my house, has been packed away. I've been grumpy, to say the least, and not in the mood to work. Add to that some late winter health problems, a ton of work at my day job, and you have no blogging or answering emails from me. Sorry to everyone who left me messages! I do sincerely appreciate all comments. Then my grandma died last week, two days after turning 90. My cousin has blogged very eloquently about it over the last couple of days, and said almost everything I'd like to say. Thanks, Di.

Strange as it may seem, this event seems to have kicked me out of my funk, and I was almost able to finish this picture by yesterday. It still had to go into the box, though.

Year of the Golden Fire Pig!

Happy 4704! I knitted this guy based on a pattern in this book, out of some out of some yarn in a fiery colorway that just showed up in my stash. I added the wings because not only is this a Fire Pig year, it is also a Golden Year, a most auspicious event that turns up every 600 years or so (like, when pigs fly). I learned this from a commenter on Stephanie's pig post about a month ago. I did a little research on Golden years, and there seems to be a bit of controversy as to whether this is actually one or not. I guess it's easy to lose track after 4500+ years, but it still sounds dramatic! The Pig  force is strong in my family - I am an Earth Pig, my brother Craig is a Metal Pig, and our dad was a Wood Pig. In yet another series of cosmic coincidences, our mom, our brother, Craig's wife, and my son are all Tigers.  It's supposedly going to be a great year for them. Hope so, and hope you all have a great one, too!

Taking out the dog(s)

I've been thinking of a boy & his dog vignette for a while. I thought it would be appropriate to post it today for the last weekend of the Year of the Dog. The other dogs are from my grandma's collection of stuff that she passed on to me a few years ago. She had a dog, but I don't think she was ever particularly fond of them. She just had a bunch of small ones.

This is the first piece that I used Stitch Witchery reprodepot carries it) and it works great! Much better than glue, the edges don't fray anymore. I remember having this stuff around as a kid, but I thought they had stopped making it.

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.

Sprout

It's this week's Illustration Friday topic, but it is also the first piece I've made for an idea I have. I have some old embroidered hankies, some pieces of my grandmothers, some  things I've gotten in swaps, as well as some interesting old iron on patterns (which I'll show on a different day), all with a botanical theme. I would like to put them altogether in a hybrid crazy/pieced quilt. I've never seen anything quite like what I'm imagining, but that's never stopped me before. Right now it's just a sprout of a plan.