Whew

A few weeks ago I managed to get off my lazy behind and jump into this swap:

Ohhhhh, fun cyberlove from other crafty gals!!! Racy. Today was the deadline to send out the package and I juuuuuust made it. Pretty lame of me because I work IN THE POST OFFICE BUILDING (not to yell or anything). I just hope Susan likes what I picked out. It should be making its way around the world to Kuwait, hope it doesn't take too too long.

By the way, happy uncommercial Valentine's Day! No actually I like the commercialness but only in the form of the fun candy and cookies and other special foods. The pricey flowers I can do without.

Postcard love

What a super surprise! Even though I was too late to sign up for the swap, Myra sent some postcard love my way--too sweet! Can't wait to see the rest of the wicked awesome postcards when they're...posted.

Blackberry daifuku

Before


After

My semi-failed experiment. I originally intended to attempt to make ichigo daifuku or strawberry rice cake (strawberry surrounded by an (sweet red bean paste) covered with sweetened mochi (rice cake)) but when I went to the supermarket blackberries were on sale--strawberry, blackberry, same same. Riiiiiiiiiight. Anyhoo, it was a very messy process thanks to the an and the sticky mochi. I didn't post pictures of the an covered blackberry balls because they were just too ugly (rhymes with loo). By the time I finished wrapping all the blackberries in the sticky mochi I ended up with only about three presentable ones. Awesome. We tasted tested them--survey says: sour. And I'm not a fan of the hard little blackberry seeds. Oh well. Maybe I should have tried the blueberries that were also on sale.

Look at the super fantastic stamps that are on sale at the Post Office! I'm not very familiar with Maisy and Olivia but the others--favorites! And I thought the Muppet* stamps were the bee's knees.

*Side note--old news but looks like there's a Dark Crystal sequel in the works. I think the original is a frickin' scary movie for little kids but maybe that's just me (it still creeps me out).

Midseason Hiatus

Super belated holiday greetings! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season--we're still enjoying it with our undying tinsel Christmas tree (which oddly sheds its "needles"). On a side note, why do manufacturers make the top branch of a fake tree so disproportionately long? Weird.

The only crafting I've done this season are two sweater ornaments from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Initially I'd hoped to make a bunch of sweaters as little gifts but I started them too late (I finished these two after Christmas) and almost killed my left ring finger in the process. Something about the way I hold the needles, thought the numbness in my finger would never go away.

As a present to myself I "accidentally" bought this piece of art right before Christmas. I got caught up in the excitement of the Amy Ruppel sale and I ended up getting Collision. This isn't the first time I got caught up in a money spending frenzy (the last time involved a tipsy me, ebay, and some pretty turquoise stones). But I'm so glad I bought it, it makes me happy even though it's tucked away until I can find it a proper home. Such a sweet chubby little bird.

Cookies

I jumped on the Christmas cookie bandwagon so spent this past Saturday baking and decorating some gingerbread babies! Actually I was supposed to help my mom bake and decorate but she was feeling under the weather so I decided to bake them for her. After I decided to do it I realized that the only Christmas cookie cutters I have are a couple of star ones circles and a tree...great. I did have a santa one but didn't feel like decorating Mr. Claus. Ended up making mostly snowflakes and trees, I like the trees because of the little star tree topper.

The boy's sister mentioned how she hates baking cookies and I can see why she feels that way. I haven't made cut-out cookies in FOREVER...probably because it feels like it takes FOREVER to roll and cut them out. In the end I figured out that rolling them thicker and a bit chewier was way easier than making gingersnaps.

Spherey

Hope everyone had a terrific Thanksgiving--we did! Fun times in sunny (and semi-chilly) SoCal--the OC to be exact. Got to visit the super cuddly, super adorable, super spit-uppy nephew!!! My favorite was when he spit up, rubbed his face in it and laughed--how did he know?!

As part of our thank you to our wonderful welcoming hosts (nephew and parents) I made Spherey from Jess Hutch's cute and kooky knitted toy book. Finally! A finished knitted thing other than a scarf, not that I don't love me a nice long scarfy knit. But there's something fun and so happy about a knitted toy...especially one that makes noise.

I wanted to put a squeaky thing in Spherey and crinkle stuff in the arms and legs but I couldn't figure out the crinkle stuff (stiff cellophane might have worked but that doesn't seem very baby safe). Plus I couldn't find a squeaky thing (does anyone know where to find noisemakers?) so I ended up taking apart another toy to get to its lemon sized tinkly noisemaker and stuffing it Spherey--hope it didn't hurt!

Spherey likes to hang out with his jabong friends--he almost blends in.

He's a little wonky and not at all symmetrical--just like his mama! If you look not that carefully you'll notice the scar on his forehead--he got it when he was running around the house and slipped on a comic book his mama told him to put away.

Guess there's a reason we're supposed to listen to our moms.

Wasting time

Last week at class the only thing I managed to finish was this pair of earrings--and just the wire part. How lame! It didn't take very long, I'm not sure what I'm doing the rest of the time. I added the beads when I came home. They might be a present but I'm not sure if she'd wear it. We'll see if I get more done tomorrow night.


Thought I'd throw in a random picture--this is what I would see on my walk to and from my work parking lot if I looked up more often. I just noticed the hole in the flag, kind of ratty tatty. The picture was taken during summer--the sky isn't so purdy now, recently it's been dark and overcasty when we go home.

Practicing for Thanksgiving...sort of

Recently I've been carving up some lino/rubber/silicon block thingamabobbers to make my own stamps. It's like taking a ride on an emotional kiddie rollercoaster--ridiculous, but that's me. Starting out I'm giddy, so full of hope and then those feelings come tumbling down when I realize--I carved too much here, there, everywhere. NUTS! Mostly I'm referring to the bird in the tree. The bird's eyeball is too far back, like an alien, and then I forgot to leave a wing somewhere on the bird. Ah well. The boy said the smaller stamps looks like Hieroglyphics but I'm guessing he meant just the bird one. The car and key not so much.

Even though it took me an absurd amount of time coming up with these images and I'm running out of ideas (and carving material), I'm really liking this carving thing (we'll see if I'm still into it after I nick myself).