Dragons and Skulls equal happy crafters

     While I'm crafty there are skills that I just can't seem to master. Crochet is a big one of those. I want to learn, I've tried to learn, it's just a skill that doesn't stick in my brain apparently.

     However it really stinks when I see things that I'd love to create and
know that not only can I not make it, but that if I attempted to, it would be a huge, lumpy pile of yarn with eyes.
      When I saw the free pattern on Facebook for a Night Fury, I threw out an offer to my entire friends list that I'd be more then willing to barter a purse of their choice for the little guy.
     I was really pleasantly surprised when in minutes someone took me up on my offer.
     The wife of a high school friend is a crochet artist. Anna of Custom Crochet By Anna and in a few emails we had a deal!
   



     When asked what she wanted in return, she wanted something with a flap, in black and purple with skulls.
     I had all those colors and patterns in my stash, however I didn't have a pattern for a purse with a front flap. I adapted my tee-shirt purse pattern to add a flap and ran up a prototype in a muslin. I really wasn't sure that the flap would work correctly at all.
   Construction went well after the prototype, well with a bit of a hiccup (get it Toothless/Hiccup How to Train Your Dragon).
     I had an idea of stripes when I was in the planning stages. So I cut and stitched 3 inch strips the purple and the black and sliver together, about 6 of them. Perfect,...until I went to press the seems flat. There was melting and smoke, gunk to clean off the iron, and finally a new iron, so not defeat but a minor set back. *the old iron was OLD and on it's last legs. Once it was turned on it went straight to nuclear, even though it was set on the lowest setting and then wouldn't turn off and had to be unplugged and set outside for saftey,*


     I finally came up with something that I really liked  that had a stripe. It had an interior of skulls and great pockets.
     It also had an adjustable strap.

     I love how this came out, it's a seriously good thing that Anna mailed out Toothless and the hubby feel in love with him so quick, cause I was all about keeping this baby.

     So after all this, I ended up with a
 a present for the hubby that I couldn't do myself, and a great new pattern to put into my rotation.

     I'm working on a color
    combo right now that I'm not sure of but in this style just is really working for me.

I'm also deep into my revamp of my workroom. I'm loving it. It's already seeming lighter and brighter and I'm feeling very good about how it's all coming together.

     *Rory & Amy Auction update*
My auction for the One Fund Boston (found here) went well, the stuffies sold for $31.01 and the lovely winner asked that I round things up to $50.00
The lovely winner, who has asked to remain nameless, then contacted me and asked me to donate the pair to a "good cause", so we haven't seen the last of Rory & Amy.

Doctor Who Auction

So, after showing everyone my envy of beautiful serene craft spaces I got obsessive about finishing a project I'm auction for the One Fund Boston. It was really hard to stay focused on getting Amy done cause I figured out a way to brighten up my own area a color palette and was ready to start working right away. I do not stay focused easily I've found. However they're both done and up for auction today!

     You can find the auction here: 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330916015704

     It's been up for 24 minutes as I write this and it's already at $15, I'd love to see it go for at least $100 but I'm truly happy for any amount.

     I have a fantastic group of friends who are helping spread the word about the auction and I can not thank them enough. 

I am currently working on a tutorial how to make a stuffie and will have that up soon. As well as my craft room upgrade, the current Iron Craft challenge using notions, and a birthday present for my BFF that I'm not going to be sharing publicly until the big day!

    
    
    

Crafting Space envy

     I have been massively obsessed as of late, not with panatone's color of the year Emerald, not with Anthony Bourdain who is the original asshole chef, and not even with Kevin Bacon  in the creepy-as-hell watch-with-the-lights-on "The Following".
     Nope, I have become addicted at checking out other people's craft rooms.Seeing these beautifully put together rooms, with islands to craft on, beautiful cabinets for storage, fabric storage that is color-coded and wonderful, and generally feeling like I need to completely revamp my work space.

     Check out Beckie's from Infarrantly Creative new space. All that light is just amazing. Not to mention she built it all herself. That's right she built the cabinets!
 All the storage you could dream of, custom for what she needed.






           This is seriously something that I could get behind, I could spend hours figuring out the right way to fit everything in. 

     Then we have this lovely, and peaceful looking spot from JDS Designs. As my dogs are barking their heads off trying to get to the squirrel that's teasing them on the other side of the slider door, all I can think about is trying to crawl into this space.
     I love the peg board and the glass topped workspace, don't get me started on the light.

I do really love this room, but I'm not sure that I could ever be comfortable in it. I am the uber-klutz, hence my Jinxy nickname, and can stain just about everything. I would live in fear about painting or dying or dropping a chocolate cupcake, or anytime it rains and the dogs get muddy.

       Then we have Vicki Boutin's Creative Spaces I just love the table and the chandler. I am a recovering goth, but honestly even if I was all about the pastels, those two pieces would catch my eye.

     So there you have it, beautiful rooms that inspire me to get my act together. Soon (after I clean the hell out of it) I'll show you the space I'm working in and the plans I have for pulling it together.  Unfortunately at the moment this is what I should be doing instead of blogging.

     I'll have a post about my current crafting space up soon, along with my inspiration and plans for what I'm going to do.

Iron Craft Toy Challenge

     I was thrilled that this challenge was a toy challenge, mostly because I'm about 12 at heart.  I knew  right off the bat it was going to be a stuffie, but not sure what to make. Then I looked at the date the challenge was due and realized that it was The Day of the Tally Marks. So it had to be Doctor Who.
   

      This is Rory Williams, he's been dead,...a lot, and no longer dead,...a lot. I really like him and thought that he needed to be made into a stuffie.

     I watch Doctor Who, I have since I was 11 when my Dad showed it to me. It was on a PBS station out of Boston and Tom Baker (#4) was my first Doctor. So Boston and Doctor Who are tied together in my mind.
     About halfway into making Rory, I thought about making him an Amy and auctioning off both for the The One Fund Boston.

     So instead of a long tute on how to make a Rory stuffie, I'm going to draw it out a bit until I finish Amy and get the auction set up.

     I am torn on what outfit to do for Amy, her Kiss-o-gram one, or maybe what she wore in in The Wedding of River Song.

I do know what's next, I'm going to do The Doctor, River, Rory and Amy from The Impossible Astronaut.
 

The Boogieman

I don't know who created this, if you do please let me know so I can give proper credit.

     The Boogieman to some has been someone that doesn’t look like them. If you weren’t what they saw when they looked in the mirror, you were The Boogieman. Male or female, or black or white, it didn’t matter, different = bad.

After 9/11, The Boogieman had a new face for some; he was a terrorist, Middle Eastern looking and wanted to kill all Americans.

Neither example is 100% correct for the vast majority of people I know, however most of the people I know have experienced something similar.

We expect The Boogieman to look evil, we expect him to be frightening and scary, we don't expect him to look like he's a baby face child, we don't expect them to be clean cut people that we would see at the grocery store, and we don't expect him to look normal.

Jason wore a mask, Freddy Kruger had a scarred face, The KKK wore hoods, Jim Jones, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, the guy who shot up the movie theater in Colorado,  we want our crazy to look frightening and scary when we finally see them.

We don't want to believe that our neighbors, our friends, people we pass on the street could be evil. We don't want the face of evil to be the face of the boy next door or the girl next door or your teacher or your nurse or your doctor.

That is the comforting thought that gets us through the days and the nights, that we would know that we could see who the bad person was. We would know if somebody was crazy.

This is how we rationalize events like this.

Watching horrible events unfold in real-time brings this to the forefront of conversations. There is no normal, everyone is different and no one can tell who is crazy, damaged, out to get them, or harmless.

I have said crazy is crazy, way too many times in the past year. We have collectively watched a series of events unfold that have left children dead, families torn apart and all of it played out on tv.  These things do not happen because of movies, or bad parenting, or tv shows, or video games, or gun laws, or music. These things happen because The Boogieman has something not right in their brain. There is a damage somewhere that leaves The Boogieman without compassion, or a sense of right and wrong, or a sense of entitlement that they are the only person that matters on the planet.  The Boogieman is a broken person, a selfish asshole, a deluded zealot, or an arrogant fuck that wants attention.

I not only mourn for the people that have lost their lives, I mourn for the loss of our hard earned sense of security.

But I will not fear The Boogieman

The Ides of March kicked my butt!

     It's been to long since I sat down to type anything but it's been a really hard month. When last I left off I was all excited about the next Iron Craft Challenge. It was a "green" challenge and I had the perfect idea.
 I'm a huge up cycle girl and an even bigger purse girl so I combined the two and made a sweater bag.

      I took a sweater that I never wore but was reluctant to donate and up-cycled it into something that I would not only use but love so much more.
 This was one of the first things that my Hubby ever bought for me and it's just not really appropriate for living below the Mason-Dixon line. It becomes hot and itchy in a heartbeat.
    Now it's a great size and perfect for the season that just ended with a vengeance down here. However it'll be perfect when the cooler months return. I'll have a how-to up later this afternoon.
     

     So this was the first Iron Craft Challenge that I was done within the first 2 days and I was so excited to be on time! Then my nickname came into play once again. I have a medical thing that reared it's ugly head

and I was knocked off my feet for a week or two. Perfect time to blog you'd think, but the last thing I want to do when I feel awful is to post it for the entire world to see.
So after I dug my house out of the piles of housework that had occurred when I'm ill, I was taking laundry down to the laundry room and did something to my ankle that resulted in tendon damage.


     So March pretty much kicked my butt, and I've been digging out of the hole since.
I missed the Iron Craft Easter craft, working with Peeps and that'll be one of my two "free passes" that I've given myself. I did manage to pull something out for the Ethnic Challenge with Swedish Hearts that I used to make with my Dad at Christmas time. I whipped up a mobile that helps cover my ugly slider door in my workroom. I used the other hearts for some more coverage and it's nice an spring-like now. Not to mention, it's a great distraction from the pollen drifts that are accumulating outside of the door.

     The next challenge is due on 4/23 and it's the Playtime Challenge. "Let’s embrace the child in all of us. Make a toy, something using toys, or something inspired by a toy" I'm so into this one, mostly because I'm nothing but a 10 year old at heart.

 

Iron Craft Challenge 4 or How Monty Python holds my heart

     I couldn't tell you when I started to love Monty Python, it's always been on my radar. I spent several rainy weekends watching Monty Python's Flying Circus on Boston PBS WGBH, struggling to get through endless fundraisers and wondering why anyone would pay $50 for a tote bag.
     They introduced me to Silly Walks, and that "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" They earnestly sang about cross-dressing in "The Lumberjack Song" and taught all about Dead Parrots but the Galaxy Song has got to be my all-time favorite. 

     When I saw that the 4th Iron Craft Challenge was to create something inspired by a movie or tv show or something to wear on the red carpet, I knew right then what I was going to make.

Monty Python's Galaxy Song Apron

    I needed an apron and am so in love with this universe fabric that it all came together about 10 minutes.  I read about the challenge, had the idea, and  and was off to the fabric store, coupons in hand.\

    Now I have added some personal rules for my Iron Craft Challenges in order to reduce my stash and in

• I have to use something from my (vast) stash
• I can not spend more then $10 if I have to buy something.
• It has to be something that I can use or gift.
• At least 1 project a month needs to be something new to me, a new pattern, material or technique.
• I have to do things that scare me. (This is a rule that is across the board for me for 2013)

Materials

     I went to my local Hobby Lobby for the galaxy print fabric and found this really great teal-y blue. I had all the trim already in my stash and after checking out pinterest for some apron styles went to work.

     I started off by measuring my waist(A), and then how long I wanted the apron to hang(B). I then cut a rectangle using 1/2A for the width, and B for the length.
     I folded it in half width wise and rounded off the corners. In fact I rounded off the corners a few times until I go the shape I wanted.

Adding the ruffle

     I cut 2.5 inch strips for the ruffle, stitched them together, and then edged it with royal blue double fold bias tape from my stash.

Using my three fingers as a guide I pleated the fabric every 2-ish inches, pinning it as I went. I will admit to pleating a the first few inches at least 3 times, working out how big they should look.
 Once I had it adjusted to my liking, I stitched it, and then pressed it down.
    

I took the trim (also from the stash), and lined it up on the seam and top-stitched it all down together.

     The ties were surprisingly the easiest part, I took a very long 3 1/2 inch strip and folded it in half with the right sides together, stitched it down and using a safety pin flipped it inside out.
A quick press with the seam in the back and I had a very long tube.
I centered the tube with the middle of the apron, right sides together about an inch from the top, and stitched it down.
Another quick press and then I top stitched it all down and added a embellished 5x6 pocket.

Oliver

     I loved this project, it came together really quickly. I think it took about 2 hours tops and that's with running herd on Oliver, the cutest monster puppy ever.
     As for my self-imposed rules,
I used up my stash, tried something new, and it's something that I needed but didn't have. While I did have to buy the fabric, using a coupon it cost under $5.00 for both half yards. So I made it under budget as well.
I have enough of that fantastic universe print to do something small, maybe a potholder?

     The only regret I have, (and it's very minor,) is that I wish when I'd attached the ties I'd put in a few pleats, just to give it a bit more shape. Other then that, I couldn't be happier with how it turned out.
Of course I've had the Galaxy song stuck in my head since I finished last week, but it's a small price to pay.

Peace & Happy!