Month: October 2012

coral update :D

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image

Soon it’s going to be big­ger than what my one hand can hold.

Was cro­chet­ing anoth­er bub­ble coral last night while lis­ten­ing to the wind beat­ing on the win­dows. I hope every­one has emerged out of the dark clouds and heavy rain of the hur­ri­cane safely.

mini shop update and many thanks! :D

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Thank you so much for your enthu­si­asm and sup­port for the craft-along par­ty! I’m so excit­ed :D Will post more details in the first week of Novem­ber — stay tuned! :D

Had an idea for mak­ing but­ton ear­rings. I have a mixed bag of vin­tage but­tons, many of them make inter­est­ing ear­rings (I think) but there was only one of each. So I made a pile of sin­gle studs for the shop. I often wear dif­fer­ent ear­rings on each ear, so I hope there will be peo­ple who like them as much as I do. But I also would­n’t be too upset if I get to keep all of them. Espe­cial­ly the sweet orange rose. I was so tempt­ed to keep it for myself.

 

And I made pairs of but­ton ear­rings. Very simple.

 

Have a great start to the week, every­one! :D

 

 

sky sweater update, and an idea :D

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First, a few inter­est­ing sky pho­tos from the past few weeks :D

Def­i­nite­ly a grey stripe that day.

 

Caught the rain­bow right when I was com­ing out of class that day. It was just fad­ing. And quite a few peo­ple were tak­ing pho­tos of it with their phones with a smile on their faces. Joy was in the atmosphere.

 

Bril­liant sun­set with a cross­hatch­ing pattern.

 

And an update pho­to for the sky sweater tak­en a few days ago. I divid­ed the front and back with the neck open­ing, so it’s over half way done :D

 

And now, an idea, inspired by all of you :D

After I wrote the weave par­ty post and read all the encour­ag­ing com­ments I real­ized how fun it would be if we have a craft­ing par­ty. It remind­ed me of a make-along I par­tic­i­pat­ed in two years ago and the year before, host­ed by the awe­some Leethal.

In the make-along’s every­one who par­tic­i­pat­ed made some­thing (crafts, cook­ing, gar­den­ing, etc.) with­in the same 24-hour peri­od, dur­ing which peo­ple also post­ed their progress on Twit­ter and a Face­book page. After­wards peo­ple shared what they’ve made either on their blogs, linked on Leethal’s blog, or in a Flickr pool. Â 

So I thought, why don’t we have a craft-along par­ty? :D

I don’t use Twit­ter and set­ting up anoth­er Face­book account or Flickr pool seems like a bit too much to han­dle, but craft­ing togeth­er can be very simple.

My idea is just to set a 24-hour peri­od in which we all make some­thing — maybe a craft that we’ve been want­i­ng to try for a while, maybe start­ing on some Christ­mas gifts, maybe craft­ing some­thing for our­selves, maybe con­tin­u­ing on a project that has been hiber­nat­ing, maybe just set­ting aside an hour to be spon­ta­neous and make some­thing unplanned and free-formed, maybe bak­ing a cake for the sake of bak­ing a cake, maybe writ­ing a poem/haiku/song… just spend­ing some time with our cre­ativ­i­ty :D

And then, with­in a week, if peo­ple can send me a pho­to or any doc­u­men­ta­tion of what’s been made and, if peo­ple wish, a description/statement about it, I can post them right here on the good ol’ blog and it can be a like mini gallery exhi­bi­tion! :D

(I might even be able to ask Mike to help me install a fan­cy wid­get for the gallery viewing!) 

Maybe some­times in the sec­ond week of Novem­ber… (that’s just because I have midterms until then :S)

What do you think about this idea? Would you be inter­est­ed in join­ing the craft-along party?

 

Have a hap­py weekend!

 

 

 

 

 

growing corals

Posted on by trish

Ever since I bought this book on knit­ting and cro­chet­ing seashells, fish and corals I stud­ied it almost every night. It’s on my bed­side table. Like bed­time reading.

So final­ly I start­ed mak­ing the bul­lion corals. It was a great way to prac­tice the bul­lion stitch, which I’ve been want­i­ng to learn for a long time but is very tricky, like every­one says on the interwebs. 

I was maybe going to make a brooch with it, but then it looked kind of odd­ly shaped and did­n’t quite look like corals. So I thought I’d try adding a few of oth­er kinds of corals in the book…

 

When I looked at it I thought, this could use a bit of yel­low. And it was get­ting too big to be a brooch any­way. So maybe I’ll just keep adding to it, and maybe it will turn into a minia­ture coral reef! :D

So almost every night I study the book to pick a coral that I want to make. I don’t always have time to add some­thing to it every night, but I still like to read the pat­terns. It’s a bit dorky, or even strange. But then Mike just told me that when he was a teenag­er he read the entire Pho­to­shop man­u­al cov­er to cov­er. And he still likes to read soft­ware man­u­als. I guess that’s why we get along :D

I wish I can make the knit­ted ones. That will take some prac­tic­ing. For now I will go through all of the cro­chet pat­terns first.

About a week lat­er I added the brain corals (yel­low) and some bub­ble corals (pale green).

 

I’m also adding patch­es of the aqua-colour “seabed” as I make more corals. I love how free-formed this project is.

Will keep post­ing pho­tos as it grows! :D

 

Have a love­ly Tues­day, everyone! 

 

 

 

weave party

Posted on by trish

 

It would be so much fun to orga­nize a weav­ing par­ty! :D

A com­ment from a blog vis­i­tor, Kate, has moti­vat­ed me to just pick up some yarn and start weav­ing. Thanks, Kate! :D

I found a paper plate and cut notch­es all around it, about 1″ apart, and then taped lengths of cot­ton string across, like so…

Here’s the back of this make-shift loom…

Then I just tied a length of yarn to one of the strings in the mid­dle and start­ed weav­ing between the strings, over and under, over and under, over and under… Until I ran out of the colour of yarn I was using, then I tied a dif­fer­ent colour of yarn to the yarn tail, and con­tin­ued weaving…

When I’ve got­ten a big enough cir­cle (I decid­ed that I want­ed to make a coast­er half way through), I cut the strings near where they’re taped to the plate, one at a time, and tied each loose end to the last round of weaved yarn.

I hid all the loose ends and yarn tails under a piece of felt, which I cut to the size of the fin­ished weav­ing and sewed onto the weav­ing around the edge.

And this is the front!

A fun par­ty coast­er :D

 

Did it all while watch­ing TV. Very relax­ing. I think it would so much fun to orga­nize a weav­ing par­ty, where every­one can weave and chat.

Have a great evening, everyone!

 

 

 

fun at harbourfront!

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Hey that sort of rhymes :D

 

It was Thanks­giv­ing day and a day full of kids’ craft activ­i­ties at the Har­bourfront! 

I think I’m real­ly going to give the weav­ing a try in the near future. It was in my new year yarn­craft­ing res­o­lu­tion but I nev­er got around to it. I think it would make a great sky project! :D

We actu­al­ly did­n’t know that there was so much fun stuff going on, we went main­ly to see the float­ing chop­stick noo­dle bowl my friend Jenn and I made in the sum­mer for Wise Daugh­ters’ com­mu­ni­ty yarn­bomb­ing project :D! It was exhib­it­ed at the Junc­tion Design Crawl and moved to Har­bourfront for the week­end :D Â 

We also learned to make pom­poms under the pom­pom tree (Learned how to use the donut-shaped tem­plate! Mag­i­cal how it works!).

 

We did­n’t make paper quilts, but I thought it looked so beau­ti­ful sway­ing in the wind.

 

Then there was the Lego mosa­ic project. In con­junc­tion to that there was an exhi­bi­tion about cross stitch and cross stitch-inspired Lego art.

Here’s the cross stitch.

 

Here’s the cross stitch-inspired Lego art :D

 

Mike’s Lego mosa­ic masterpieces.

 

Then my friend inspired us to try some­thing new — canoe­ing! (okay, it was only new to me, Mike’s learned to canoe before and I think my friend has too) Despite the canoe­ing site being a 3‑feet deep man-made pond, it was a pret­ty big deal for me because I’ve nev­er canoed before. 

I even man­aged to snap a pho­to with­out drop­ping my phone into the water :D

 

After that I felt so good about myself I thought I could start dragonboating!

(Maybe… some­times in the future.)

 

Have a great start to the week, everyone! 

 

 

 

sky sweater update!

Posted on by trish

 

The sky sweater should prob­a­bly be more pre­cise­ly called the morn­ing-sky-from-the-west-fac­ing-win­dows-sweater. Because that’s the time of the day and area of sky that I base my colour of the day on. 

As you can see, recent­ly there’s been quite a long stretch of over­cast white/grey days, with a day of sun­ny break in between. That was Thanks­giv­ing day, we went to the Har­bourfront with a friend and did some canoe­ing (just in a man-made pond) and oth­er fun stuff! (pic­tures to come)

The sky project is a pret­ty cool record of his­to­ry that way.

Struc­tural­ly I think I made it a bit too wide :S But I think it will fall nice­ly over the shoul­ders once it’s all done (it’s kind of like a square top).

Have a great day, everyone! 

 

 

 

shop update — the shrink plastic edition!

Posted on by trish

Shrink plas­tic is so much fun. I had long been think­ing about mak­ing some stuff with it for my shop. Final­ly got around to it :D

I like draw­ing cir­cles con­nect­ed to one anoth­er. This par­tic­u­lar shape reminds me of the abalone shells my grand­par­ents gave me when I vis­it­ed them in Hong Kong.

 

More neck­laces. The one on the far left was a bit of an exper­i­ment of plas­tic fus­ing. Accord­ing to the list of “Mind-shrink­ing Ideas” (that’s what it says on the pack­age of shrink plas­tic I have), I can fuse lay­ers of shrunk plas­tic togeth­er under high­er tem­per­a­ture in the oven. The round shapes are actu­al­ly cir­cles from the hole punch. 

The mid­dle one is a fire­fly that glows in the dark! :D And I’ve always been fas­ci­nat­ed by seahorses.

 

More glow in the dark fire­flies, aster­isks, and abalones.

 

Had fun com­ing up with things to draw for the stud ear­rings :D Actu­al­ly, as I’m look­ing at this pic­ture I real­ize that all of these are my favourite things… let’s hope the shop vis­i­tors like them as much as I do. And the starfish glows in the dark too!

Alright, enough of this talk about glow­ing in the dark — wan­na see them in action? :D

That’s the best my point-and-shoot cam­era can do for cap­tur­ing images in the dark, but they real­ly do glow! I was quite impressed. 

(I found out that the emis­sion of light by a liv­ing organ­ism is called bio­lu­mi­nes­cence — isn’t that such a cool word?)

Any­way. And then I thought it would be cool to make a plas­tic feath­er. Kind of like those leather feath­er ear­rings that I’ve seen a lot on craft blogs. But they turned out so much more beau­ti­ful than I thought because of the way the plas­tic twists and turns as it shrinks in the oven…

So I did what most craft sell­ers often do.

I kept it. For myself. 

Ha!

The sin­gle ear­ring goes with my hair­cut :D

 

But of course I made anoth­er set for the shop. Even added a glit­tery but­ton stud ear­ring to make a funky asym­met­ri­cal set! :D

 

I’m hop­ing that this will keep the shop full for a month or two before anoth­er school break. But I’ve got to say that I real­ly, real­ly, real­ly enjoy the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make my favourite things with­out hav­ing to keep (and find place in the apart­ment for) all of it. And mak­ing a bit of mon­ey is always a bonus.

 

Have an awe­some evening! :D

 

 

this week’s awesome finds

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Intrigu­ing spiro­graph neck­laces by Vli­jtig.

 

This was sent to me by a blog vis­i­tor! :D Thank you so much for shar­ing this — it’s the loveli­est yarn-bomb­ing project ever!

 

Love­ly way to enliv­en embroi­dery with water­colour, from Wild Olive.

 

Inge­nious hot glue glit­ter snowflake orna­ment, spot­ted on Under the Table and Dream­ing.

 

Most hip­ster bib ever! Sewing instruc­tion for ban­dana bib from The Purl Bee.

 

Guess what this pat­tern is made from? Toi­let paper rolls! Or, as Neil would call it (which is also my pre­ferred way of call­ing it), loo rolls! :D Sim­ply awe­some, from Lime Riot.

 

Log slice table, all you need is a slice of log and an Ikea stool! From Seaket­tle.

 

Knit an army of can­dy corns! :D They look so cud­dly. Pat­tern from The Purl Bee.

 

I’ve got to say, this beats every­thing else I’ve seen in terms of the most awe­some cos­tume. A fluffy lit­tle cloud! XD From Oh Hap­py Day.

 

A sim­ple lit­tle project that will make toast­ing sliced bread a par­ty in itself and those sun­less ear­ly win­ter morn­ings so much brighter! :D From Inner Child Fun (we all need to hang out with our inner child every so often).

 

Did not know that bleach can turn black t‑shirts orange! And anoth­er project with freez­er paper! Have got to get myself to a Metro soon. From Chaos Served Dai­ly.

 

Anoth­er bril­liant idea from Inner Child Fun — a plush donut made with a sock! And sew-free! Maybe some tan socks for a few hon­ey crullers or sour dough…

 

Wish­ing you an awe­some week filled with cre­ative, colour­ful, fun things!

 

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