| I know I just got this blog going again, but ... |
[03 Feb 2008|01:02am] |
Well, I have to say that the name of my blog is not so amusing to me anymore. But, Becky and I have embarked on a venture I have wanted to pursue for a while! Our own multi-poster craft blog! Our Beck is responsible for the very droll name, an homage to a local hardware store that is amusing for all the right reasons. So far I'm the only one to post, but I hopefully have gotten the ball rolling! I may still post here from time to time, but since I'm such a sucky blogger anyway, well, I don't think you'll miss much.
Come check us out!
http://thecraftybeaver.blogspot.com/
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| Daisy stitch handwarmers |
[13 Jan 2008|03:01am] |
Here's one half of the daisy stitch handwarmers.
I'd been reluctant to join the handwarmer/armwarmer/wristwarmer/pulsewarmer (barf*) craze as I've always thought they were a bit precious, but I liked the look of these enough to do it. I really hate the thumb on them though, as it's a bit too tight around the base of my thumb. Either I have a massive thumb (I don't ... I have unusually small fingers for someone of my size) or I need to make the hole bigger or add some shaping or something.
The model's hands in the picture on the website look so delicate and feminine with them on I rather thought my hands would look that way. But something about my gnarled digits just make it look sort of hobo-ish. Oh well!
*IT'S A GODDAMN WRISTBAND
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| Vintage buttons |
[30 Dec 2007|02:04pm] |
While at home in Indiana I went through some old stuff stored in what used to be my bedroom (still is, but it's more closet/storage now). I found a tin of old sewing stuff that was either my mother's or my mother's aunt's. A lot of thread on wooden spools, some fun needle packagings, and a tin full of buttons! She said I could take what I wanted, and so I did.
( Button cut )
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| knucks |
[30 Dec 2007|11:56am] |
Well, I started making some knucks for Ben on the way to Indiana ... I wanted something small and easy to take with me. The men's size says the palm should be 2.75 inches, which I thought was a bit long, and turns out, it was. But for whatever reason, I frogged it all the way to the fingers instead of just taking off the bit that wasn't needed. Oh well. I had Ben try it on and all he could say was that it was "wonky," which doesn't help. ( Pix behind the cut. )
Ah well! Onward progress!
Besides some knitting books, I also got a cute pile of knitting goodies:
Part of the fun of using LJ again is remembering how to do html.
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| A bit of fun |
[28 Dec 2007|06:56pm] |
If my right hand hadn't been cold and stiff, it would have been faster.
87 wordsTouchtyping
Found at ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7) thedee
I can't seem to get the lj user tag to work right.
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| Hi! |
[28 Dec 2007|06:14pm] |
Well, a digital camera and increased knitting and sewing means the craft blog (what this sort of was meant to be) is back on-line! At least until I get tired of it! I have a ravelry account that I am all excited about, and several projects in mind that I can't wait to start, as soon as I finish the ones I'm working on now (oh, the anticipation -- I can't wait to start a project just to let it linger ...)
Though I may doom myself Rincewind-like, I do feel this is my year. I am unusually optimistic about 2008, but maybe once election season really gets rolling (be afraid, be very afraid) I will change that tune with a vengeance.
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| isolation |
[05 Apr 2007|08:31pm] |
I sort of hate my days off, I feel like I am on my own island, and that the world ended and I didn't know it. I don't have many friends and rarely receive any phone calls on my days off. Sometimes my boss calls me, but she hasn't the past few days and so I worry that my phone is broken or something. But generally I sort of feel forgotten and isolated. I didn't go out the past two days because the weather has turned cold and I have a cold and I don't want it to turn into something nasty. I wanted to go walking around today, and it was sunny to boot, but alas too chilly. So I stayed at home, by myself, and no one's on IRC or on dumbrella ....
SO EMO
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| A day in pictures |
[21 Mar 2007|11:17pm] |
I have found two pictures that describe how I'm feeling today:
1. 
From i can has cheezburger?, which, together with Cute Overload, make said bad days go away a little bit.
2. And today's Cat and Girl, which has basically summed up my feelings lately. Not sad, just kind of empty, yet I like to look at my hands cause I think they look neat.
I'm all emo'd out for the day.
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[14 Mar 2007|12:21pm] |
I had a strange dream that I had inherited* my grandmother's "sewing cabinet," which was this huge, silver painted construct-it-yourself system of cabinets and desks (on all sides) that was filled with fabric, notions, thread and tools of all types, plus a huge sewing machine (two feet tall, three feet across, one foot deep). I was just walking around the thing, saying to myself, "I'm not going to keep it, but I'm going to rape it of every notion I can get." I remember using the actual word "rape" and I think it's funny that I was using that in relation to sewing notions.
My grandmother really did leave quite a lot of sewing materials behind when she died. I don't know what possessed me to keep a lot of it as I didn't sew at all back then (but I think I knew I'd want to someday). Grandma got a bit wacky at the end and so bought a lot of duplicates of things, so now I have a wide assortment of sharps and strange craft needles, like for rugs and upholstery. Too bad she didn't seem to invest in nice shears and rotary mats and stuff I actually want now. Oh well. I remember she had a dremel, too, which my dad snatched up while shouting "The Dremel's mine." And I thought, "Who cares, it's a drill!" Now I keep replaying the scene my in mind and wishing I'd knocked the old man down and taken it for myself! :)
*I originally spelled that "interheted," wtf
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| Three months of work gone in an instant |
[10 Mar 2007|06:50pm] |
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So I updated you last time on my first self-designed sweater. I was knitting it in the round, seamless. Unfortunately, due to my odd style of knitting, it twisted to the left and all of the stitches looked odd. Much like "fix it in post," i figured it would work itself out during blocking. Then when I split for the armholes, and went to regular row-by-row, k and p knitting, my stitches evened out and I realized just how bad the twisting was. I still thought it would work out, but alas, last night I decided to frog the whole thing and start over again. Weep! But I'd rather that than some twisty half and half thing. I'm not going to do circular this time, but I think it will save me many headaches when it comes to doing the armholes. I'm going to work on it extra hard to see if I can get it done by the end of the month and still wear it while it's cool enough. Ha ha! Optimism!
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| His Dark Materials |
[01 Mar 2007|11:13am] |
I recently downloaded the His Dark Materials audiobooks and listened to them all the way through. I was obsessed with it for a good week or so. The audiobooks have a cast and are narrated by the author, and they are really good! I had read the series before, but the audiobook made me love it more. And the movie is set to come out late this year. I was looking at the pictures on imdb and so far the movie looks wonderful. Although I sort of feel they should have done a Lord of the Rings on it and made all three at the same time, because that little girl (playing Lyra) is going to be a lot older by the time to they do The Subtle Knife (yeah, it's scheduled for 2009). I like the choice of Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter, but Mrs. Coulter is supposed to have dark hair. And Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel is interesting. I wonder who they'll get to play Will?
None of the pictures on imdb show Pantalaimon in any way, I imagine that's all part of post-production. I hope he doesn't look totally fake, but they're awfully good with that sort of thing these days. I guess Iorek will be cg as well ... I am so excited for this movie!
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[28 Feb 2007|07:27pm] |
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dumbrella, where have you gone? And crafster is down for maintenance. Does this mean I might have to go do something else?
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| Feh |
[24 Feb 2007|09:26pm] |
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Man, New York Comicon, San Diego Comicon, etc. etc. and we have ... Wizard World? I wish Chicago had a cool comix convention! We just don't get a lot of visitors~!
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| nothing changes |
[20 Feb 2007|11:17pm] |
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We are mostly moved in. There is still piles of stuff left at the house. Where did all of this come from? I honestly thought we wouldn't have enough to fill the closets here, but now, i'm not so sure. There's to be a yard sale this summer, but still. I'm loving the closeness of work and the train and overall city life, though.
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| I feel sort of disappointed |
[31 Jan 2007|09:42am] |
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Man I just discovered that a song I've had stuck in my head the past few days isn't from the new Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album, but is in fact by another band entirely. I was happy to have latched on to a song from "Some Loud Thunder" so quickly as this is a band that takes some effort to get into (like the Fiery Furnaces, I work at it and am rewarded in the future) and now am kind of sad to discover that is not what happened. Ah well.
Today is the first stage of moving day. We are getting the truck this afternoon and loading that bitch up. Tomorrow Chicago!
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| spam ... FROM THE PAST |
[30 Jan 2007|11:20pm] |
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Man, spammers are going to even greater lengths to get their messages out (highlights my own):
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| Knit blog update |
[30 Jan 2007|11:18pm] |
So, here's the sweater I finished on my birthday last year (November, not that long ago). It took me about four months. There are so many mistakes. I would definitely make another one, maybe a little bigger, and in a different color. Please ignore gut and horrible old T-shirt:
This is my current sweater. It's a hoodie based off of one I wear all of the time, except instead of a zip-up, this is a traditional pull over. So the one I wear a lot is a sweatshirt, and I based the pattern for the sweater off of it. We will see! It's actually a bit longer than this, I worked on it a lot more during the football games a couple of weeks ago. I'm sure I'll put some mileage on it during the Super Bowl (go colts).
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| holy shit! |
[27 Jan 2007|08:20pm] |
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well ben and i are finally moving out of his parents' house and becoming Real People with our own apartment. We'll be moving off to Edgewater this Thursday. I can't wait. Just a few short red line stops from all of the things i like to do (and one thing I don't). Here's to friends! Here's to entertainment! Here's to city life! Here's to living like adults again! hi^5
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| New year, time to try something new |
[03 Jan 2007|09:58pm] |
So I am going all crafty. I am sewing, finally, with the machine my moms bought me last May. I made one of the Built By Wendy patterns (4111), except I'm not so good at sewing yet and my shirt is uneven and has really bad stitching and I accidentally cut a hole in one of the sleeves and it doesn't fit well and ... well, I'm going to try again and maybe buy a new pattern to go up a size. Everyone said the sizing ran large on these patterns and so I scaled down one size (going also by the finished garment size) but it came out too small (just barely too small, though, the size up should be perfect). I also have a BBW pants pattern (4110, not shown on that page) but I'm a bit afraid that it's not going to fit. Oh well, that's what muslin's for.
I also am trying my first knitting design! I have an H&M zip up hoodie that I wear literally every day and I wanted to make a sweater out of it (regular hoodie). So far I've only cast on for the ribbing, but I will post on my progress. The math was the hardest thing to do (decreases and the shoulder/neckline combo especially) but if it works out, the sky's the limit!
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