sew-n-so’s

This was a depressing week. One of the interesting things about this commitment to 52 projects is that normally moods or life happenings will make you set things aside and make excuses. But with the 52 projects there are no excuses.

This little guy is from a pattern by Theresa Levy. I picked this pattern because mostly my own creations are just two pieces of fabric sewn together, where this pattern makes more of a 3-d shape.  However, I used baby fleece which is a little bit unforgiving and doesn’t mold nicely when stuffed. I may give this pattern another try with different fabric.

This week I participated in my first plush swap. Since I opened a flickr account, I have discovered many interesting flickr groups. The needle flickr group put on a swap based on your favorite color. I sent in my color choice, and I received someone else’s color choice of sky blue.  So this little guy was packaged up on Monday and sent to his new home in Tennessee. I hope he gets to visit here.

ack I forgot something!

his kidneys!!! This poor fella will need dialysis…stat

At work this week, we lost two very valuable players to the team. Josh and Sarah. One of the banes of their existence was the outlook email feature that allows anyone to add a nice little red exclamation point to outgoing emails to signify their importance. This feature was often abused and misused by all of us! Thereby rendering its intended purpose, completely useless.

Please sign up for sensitivity training! Remember to turn off your monitors before leaving for the night! OMG did you see what Erin bought at Target! We need new toilet paper! The old toilet paper is unsatisfactory! Take my wife, please!

You get the picture ! !

The designers and some of the un-designers at work constructed survival kits for Josh and Sarah so they would be able to survive without us at their new jobs. I made these little red fellas to help them get the point across to their new co-workers.

I miss you guys already!!!!!!!!!

Remember a few weeks ago when, what I thought was a fabulous idea, was really a stupid idea - week 4? Well the inspiration for that was all the paper craft I had been seeing. While I was perusing the other crafty photos on flickr, I ended up seeing someone who I had briefly seen at a store where a craft magazine party was being held. I know I know- freaky. Well I went to her blog, a little harmless internet stalking, we all do it, right? Anyways, on her blog was this.  A call to anyone to send postcards to a bunch of kids. Email her if you want to participate too!

Well this week I thought what better way to satisfy my papercraft cravings as well as hopefully make some kids smile. Anyway, belowis a picture of the postcard I am sending, I found the template here. I won’t show you what I wrote on the back. It is also inspired by the new branding by sandstrom for the portland beavers. And beavers are kind of a cool animal - even if they have been commandeered, the fate of so many cute fuzzy animals are, as slang for U NO WOT!

You can’t really see the hairy chest I gave him, so here is a clearer gif, if you’re interested. I’ll post the assembled postcard, once I get a good picture of it.

Wow 2 months already. I can tell you that this week was one of those weeks where you finish the project and you just aren’t that happy with your creation. But I kind of knew that would happen going into this thing. At least I can now empathize with the people who wrote “Made of Honor”, and I now have a deeper understanding of Keanu Reeves’s mother.

This week’s inspiration sprung from the tornado that blew through my neighborhood back in January. Tornadoes are very rare in these here parts. The last one was in 1972. It was quite the scare watching the news from work and seeing landmarks near my house destroyed. Luckily for me, my house was spared. The tornado missed my house by about two blocks. But while I was rejoicing that my home was still intact, I found out that my good friend Steph’s house didn’t fair so well. This week’s project is a mini tribute to her fallen home… a commemoration so to speak.When I think of tornadoes, I don’t usually think of mass destruction I usually think of The Wizard of Oz, and what really kind of freaked me out about that movie, was the way the wicked witch of the east’s legs shriveled up when Glenda took her shoes. It was like burning hair with a match.

Since my sister, Aisling, recommended using ‘puns’, well I had to oblige her with this one. This was already in the works as a tribute to my irish roots, but Aisling had the bright idea of heinie-izing it.

So Aisling “this butts for you”…. now I am kicking myself that I didn’t do a “buttweiser” one.

I won’t be doing more of these for a while. It takes for dogdamn ever to sew each letter on, and I can’t kern worth a poop when it comes to sewing these down. If I do more I may experiment with silkscreening the letter on.

well not the camera, but the battery is dead. And there is a guest in the room where the charger is… yep that’s you STAN!.  Because of you,  I can’t take a picture of the project that you were making fun of me for working on to meet my arbitrary personal imposed deadline.

For those of you who are familiar with my bathroom, ( a better description would be water closet, because it is about the size of a closet) then you know very well how limited the storage is. There are no cabinets or shelves. No baskets or crates. There literally is no storage - The only place for storage is a small cove in the wall and that is housed by my shrine to St. Anthony. Even though there is a statue of Joseph and a picture of the boy jesus - The grotto belongs to St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things - to whom I am indebted to. I invoke him daily.

So those who have used the bathroom in my house may be very aware that there is a real risk for getting stranded while you are in there. In the past, I thought I was very clever by teaching my dog to run and get replacement T.P. when I would be in one of those unfortunate situations of sitting down and discovering that the cardboard roll is hanging there in front of me when it is FAR too late. But while teaching a dog to run and get you toilet paper sounds genius… there are some ramifications. For one, my dog doesn’t have opposable thumbs. Which means that he can not open the door to the bathroom. So that means that if you happen to get stranded, you also must have happened to have left the bathroom door wide open as well.

Not having opposable thumbs also means that my dog MUST grab the T.P with his mouth. This may not sound that bad. Well to train my dog to do this and to reinforce this wonderful trick - I had to reward him with treats. Remember Pavlov? By the time the T.P. is delivered the outer layer of the roll will be soaked in drool, rendering it almost useless. But when you find yourself in a pinch - it’s better than nothing, and it is definitely better than the waddle.

I may or may not have gotten stranded this week….

When you need to wipe your warhol

This was a rough week.

One of the things I am learning, is that because of my technical skills I have to be careful of what I take on. This week I struggled with what to make, even though I had a long list.

I had a lot going on, so late last night…knowing I was up against my own personal deadline, I picked an obvious thing… a bunny… because it’s easter. I really wanted to do a crucifix, but I didn’t have the right cloth that would do a crown of thorns and INRI justice. A floppsy stripped bunny is the best I can do to celebrate the washing away of all of our sins. Thank you mr. jesus.

happy easter !

Again I am a day late. BUT I had this finished on wednesday.

Last night, one of my dogs was invited to model with my beautiful friend Stephanie at Boutiques Unleashed. Tater is a great ambassador for jack russells as she has nerves of steel and is still pretty calm, cool and collect. But she still is a jack russell and that could mean that she could, at any moment, scream bloody murder if she sees an animal that she thinks should be chased down a hole… which means anything NON-dog that has four legs and breathes air, such as an elephant. She handled herself well, she strutted her stuff, and she didn’t eat the llama.

She modeled a cute little cookie monster shirt from a local boutique, Bentley B’s. So that’s what I was doing instead of blogging. All two of you can understand that, right?

This week’s project was inspired by my (who I like to call best -she needn’t return the favor) friend Jessica. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t call, I don’t email, I don’t write…. it’s a character flaw that I have been working on for the better part of this century. Jessica turned 30 a few weekends ago. She made the trip down here for my 30th, but did I get in a car and go to her birthday party on a monday night? <— LAME. NOOOOoooo ooooo. She totally believed me when I told her I couldn’t make it because I got run over by a car (which is the truth), I just can’t believe she believed me! And there is the other tid-bit, that I thought it was on the weekend but later realized it was on a Monday, so that put the kibosh on my plans as well.

This project is a belated birthday gift. A gift that will hopefully resurrect her memories of her birthday party that she probably thought were long put to rest. I mean who wants to remember the death of their twenties? Speaking of death, this project is also inspired by my close brush with death and bad cooking. One thing that has been freaking me out lately is that almost every picture of me post-accident, my face is blurred out, even when other people’s are in focus. Here is an example. But what is really freaking me out is what happened when this picture was taken. Look closely and tell me if you see what I see?

Enough about me, back to Jessica…. Jessica spelled backwards and forwards spells fun — in some foriegn language - I am sure of it. Jessica is one of the funniest and most creative people I know, and I know a lot. She is also really good at board games, and collecting things. This year her birthday was themed around cupcakes. I am not sure why, maybe it is because they are becoming trendy right now, and Jessica is a trend setter. Or maybe it’s because it makes sense to have a variety of flavors of cakes at your party so there isn’t a person, like me, who is hoping when that knife breaks through the icing surface that the cake is BROWN with gooey runny BROWN in it instead of white with red in it. Jessica is like that. I bet her name, even spells empathy in some foreign language, too.

So death and cupcakes (and the re-release of THRILLER) brings me to…

Zombie CUPCAKE!