Earrings

I'll be pretty honest, these are pendants I found in the beading clearance at Michaels. I just tossed them onto the earring wires and called them beautiful.

I've learned my lesson about cheap earring wires though. The pack I bought most recently, I don't think they were clipped very well. They have sharp ends on one side of the wire, where they would have been clipped. I'm going to have to file them out.

I was also bad. I bought 12 balls of sock yarn. I've never made a pair of socks in my life, but it was 79 cents a ball, and that's hard to pass up.

Knowing me, I would probably lose the first sock by the time I finished the second, so I'm going to try two at a time knitting on one circular needle. I've told myself that I'm going to donate some of the socks somewhere or other.

Wish me luck!

Good luck? Card

Another 'feeling uncreative' card.

A thank you card

I'm not nuts about this card. I made it while feeling uncreative.

I stamped the stamp in brown on white and added the decorative brads.

Ah well, we all need an Aunty Betty card once in a while. :p

Tidying!!

Clean ALL the things!

Yeah, that's my mood today. I'm all optimistic and stuff because I'm tidying up. I found a whole bunch of receipts I have to turn in to Girl Guides, and some to turn in to my insurance so I can get money back and that has made me a very happy camper. Or rather, it will make me even happier once I have it. I'm going to put it towards the Iceland trip. :)

I also found receipts for how much I spent on craft stuff in the past year, but we won't dwell on that....

I'm actually dealing with most of what I find, so it's taking me longer than I'd like, but I've already gotten a bag of just garbage out of my room. It's getting there, it really is. I just need to keep plugging away at it, then I'll feel more like working on craft projects when I have a space that I can work in.

I'm a little disappointed that I haven't gotten more done this month. The fleece blanket and six cards. But I've been working on the Elf Blanket, I'm currently putting together rows 7&8 out of 10. Then I have to attach all the double rows together and the fill-in edge pieces. It's getting there. I also started another knitting project for when I can't stand to look at the leaves anymore. It's a seed stitch blanket in neutral colours. I'm going to donate it somewhere when it's finished. I'm hoping I don't have to buy more yarn at the moment. It's about 5 feet wide, but 3 balls of yarn have only made it 8 or ten inches long. I have 6 more balls. I'm hoping it will be enough. We'll see how it goes. If it's not long enough, I'll shelve it and wait for the yarn to go on sale again. I know, it's creating an unfinished project, but I started it with yarn I already had so it's already an unfinished project to begin with.

That's all I know for now. See you next time!

Brownie cards

My mum is a Brown Owl and has some amazing parents helping her. She asked me to make some thank you cards for a particularly awesome act of unasked for assistance they provided. But she wanted me to use this punch she got that makes an owl template.

So obviously, if I want three colours, it's easiest to do it with six owls. ;)

A lot of fiddly gluing and swearing later, I finished them! But lost some pupils along the way. Oh well. They still look cute!

I'm counting this as a minor project completed because I didn't buy a single thing to complete these. I used materials I already had on hand. It feels good. :)

Cake Decorating

I took a basic cake decorating course this weekend and wow was it fun!

I learned a lot of things, and now I'm telling myself not to buy cake decorating supplies. :p

I was smart and borrowed a kit from a friend for the course. That way, I wouldn't feel obligated to get my money's worth out of the items I bought. :D

I can't believe I made such a beautiful cake all on my own!

Credit goes to Boyfriend for the photo. He is a much better photographer than I am. :)

An update

I've been procrastinating. Finishing up a project in the first week of the month gave me a sense of accomplishment and has made me pass on working on the big projects.

So last night, Boyfriend and I watched some Farscape and I finished sewing rows 3&4 together. I even got a little way into rows 5&6.

And that's when I found out I messed up my layout. The pattern didn't come with a layout, which for a novice knitter like me who tries to follow instructions to the letter, is tantamount to being thrown to the wolves. I wanted a random pattern, but didn't want the same colours touching. I spent a long time with diagrams and markers creating a layout for my blanket that would have not only the leaves not touching a leaf of the same colour on the sides, but on the corners as well. In fact, they had to be two leaves away from a leaf of the same colour. I was possessed! Boyfriend called me crazy. People asked why I didn't just pull them out of a bag randomly if I wanted a random pattern. I was hardpressed to explain why I wanted a random pattern with stipulations. I think I finally explained to someone using the random function for playlists. It's not random either. If it were truly random, you would have the possibility of the same song playing twice or more in a row. Or never hearing a song. But because it takes all the songs and puts them in a random order with no duplications, we're happy. And that's the same for me and my blanket layout.

However, it would be way too much work to try and take it apart enough to fix. So I'm going to have to glare at my blanket everytime I see this mistake. Damn it.