Friendship Headphones

I decided to explore my old embroidery thread collection the other day. I don't think I've opened this box for over 15 years!

It was exactly how I had left it. Including a whole mess of tiny little projects shoved in the bottom right compartment!

I knew I had to go through them. I was really impressed with what I found:

Tiny-tiny little knotty braid things, some chinese staircases, and really weird chevron pattern-ish thing.

A few more chevrons, a diagonal thing, and some twisty ones. It was so cool to look at these and think about all the time and patience I spent on some of them. I got inspired, and decided to do some colourful half-hitches around my computer* headphones.

Definitely not as interesting or patterned as my old stuff, but it's colourful and fun to wear! 

*I only wear these at the computer because these kinds of headphones do NOT stay in my ears if I move even a bit!

A Yummy Smelling Thing.

Hello friends!

I have for you today a quick and easy fun thing to do to make your house smell awesome. I remember doing this craft in elementary school, and I'm sure a lot of you have done it before too! It's very simple: get some clementines, and then stick whole cloves into it. Here are some pictures!
(I'm sorry about the colour- the lighting in my kitchen is awful, and I tried to fix the worst one using mac preview, but it kind of just made it blue)

Here are the supplies you may need: some ribbon, a clementine, whole cloves, scissors, a big yarn needle (or some sort of pokey thing), and something to protect your table from getting clementine stains all over it. Maybe your table doesn't stain, so you don't need that. My table does (you can see a stain underneath the scissors :(

Things I had as well: A cup of tea, a giant bowl of clementines, and a practice orange hiding behind that bowl. Tie the ribbon on first. I tied on my ribbon using the skills that I picked up from working at a chocolate shop. You can glue the ribbon on if you have glue. If I had glue, I would glue on a loop behind the bow so that I could hang it up!

Use the pokey thing to poke holes. Poke them in some sort of pattern. Mine's diamonds. It's easier to poke holes first, then stick in the clove. I found the cloves aren't strong enough to poke through the orange skin on their own.

Breathe in because it smells awesome! Heheh, this ribbon is all wonky because it was tied up to something else and had all these kinks. I think it's cute!

Stuff I Bought

Hello!

A couple of months ago I went shopping. I got some things from stores, but most of it I got from a friend who was selling a bunch of clothes she never wore. I was so excited about these new things, that I drew them all! I was happy with my garment drawing. Especially the dresses! If I were to make a paper doll of myself, I'd need to make two: one to fit the dresses (bigger) and one for the rest of the clothes. I was pretty close, overall! Now that I have a scanner to use, there will be more posts like this!

Mystery Science Theatre 3000

I have seen a handfull of MST3K episodes in my life, and a few of them many times. I think because of MST3K, I have learned to tolerate really bad B movies by making fun of them in my head. 

For those of you unfamiliar with this show, I stole this from Wikipedia: 

"The series features a man and his robot sidekicks who are trapped on a space station by an evil scientist and forced to watch a selection of bad movies, often (but not limited to) science fiction B-movies. To stay sane, the man and his robots provide a running commentary on each film, making fun of its flaws and wisecracking (or "riffing") their way through each reel in the style of a movie-theater peanut gallery. Each film is presented with a superimposition of the man and robots' silhouettes along the bottom of the screen."

Yesterday I was kind of bored, and decided to make my own silhouettes from MST3K and make the internet a bit more entertaining:

Here they are making japes at my facebook.

 

Potter Puppet Pals! (They're still making episodes, by the way. I had no idea. Now I'm all caught up)

 

Here they are making fun of my dirty windows thanks to the construction guys.

Of course, making fun of me in the bathroom mirror. (Nice hairdo, Katherine, by the way)

 

More Youtube.

I drew the outline freehand from a google image reference. Cut it out, and ta-da! I can put it anywhere.

(they're even watching me make this blog post!)

Hello! Shoes, internet, park, halloween.

Hello! I have had so many ideas for blog posts, and I just haven't uploaded pictures from my phone in ages! Well, here are some photos for you to browse! 

This is my black shoe collection. I have a lot of black shoes. In fact, all of my dress shoes are black. If you ever need to borrow some black shoes size 6-6.5, let me know!

I was feeling nostalgic a while ago, and here I am watching Strongbad emails.

I spent a morning documenting all of the clothes I had purchased/acquired this fall in little pictures. But, surprise! My scanner doesn't work. I'll be scanning this in as soon as I can get it working again! 

I had a very nice walk in the park before the big storm hit. It was such a nice day, perfect for taking pictures! In fact, the park was filled with couples doing photo shoots!

I'm all like "it's the weekend and I'm still sleepy!"

Bright red maple leafs.

This photo is from a really awesome gig I did. I performed a work by Debussy for two harps, two flutes, celesta and narrator. An artist drew this live as we were performing. Seriously cool!

Happy Halloween! Can you guess what game we were from?

One guy saw us on the subway and yelled "where's your pea-shooter!?"

And that's all for now! I have a few photos of something silly, it will be in a new blog post shortly!

Silly Hats!

Yup, just a bunch of silly hats and silly faces!

Happy September!

Not My Best Hat...

About a year ago, I started knitting a toque. I forgot about it for a while, but then I had some time to just finish it yesterday.  I've knitted some hats before, and they turned out pretty well except that they were kind of pointy at the top. I decided to go with a pattern that looked particularly un-pointy... at the top.

It's just so lumpy everywhere else!!

I think the yarn is to blame. I used the cheapest worsted-weight acrylic I could find. I'm hoping that once it stretches out and relaxes a bit, it won't be so lumpy. 

Any tips, knitters?

Inactive

Wow! I haven't made a blog post in quite some time. I think about this blog all the time, and I actually feel really guilty for not contributing more. I have been doodling some comics (that aren't funny) about things in my life. I want to scan and upload, but my scanner will not work unless I fork out lots of $$ for ink.

In exciting news, I got an iphone! (see my last blog post). It has a pretty decent camera, and I can add cool effects with instagram. You all probably know about that, but it's still kind of new to me! Well, I haven't yet figured out how to get my photos on to my computer and on to my blog, in a way that I like them, without using iphoto. I'm going to experiment right now....
Ok, I had to use iphoto. I don't like using iphoto because I like sorting my photos into my own albums, my own way. Oh well! Time to make a million (eleven) captions!

My first photo with my iphone. (I almost wrote "my phirst"!) In this photo you will find: my feet, my router box, my bike, my speakers, our christmas cactus, and my boyfriend who is composing.

I spent a good chunk of this month keeping this little guy from eating shoes. He was the best toddler I've ever babysat. He really liked me, and only cried once, and only for about thirty seconds. I'm a lucky one!

It took me two weeks to read the book on the left (about 900 pages) and it has been two years+ learning the one on the right (six pages)

Some lace from my trip home last month. I used to always think the seed in the middle was a bug, and I didn't understand why one bug would always find the centre of each flower. Then I stopped being afraid, and looked closer!

This is so crazy and awesome. That's all I can say in this caption.

Stage and CN tower, at Echo beach.

My new business cards!!

A little sketch from a weird comic.

Another frame of the same comic, using different "filters" with instagram.

Part of the comic title. This is part of the word "Adventure"

Comic and business card, back included.

     I can't wait to make more crafts. I've been surprisingly busy these last few weeks, and even on the days I have off, I need to leave my apartment because there is construction and it is too loud! 

Take care, and I will be back more often!

DIY iPhone case...

Tie Dye Tank Top

This week I had some time on my hands, so I decided to experiment with a craft. I'd seen DIYs about tie dying with permanent markers and rubbing alcohol, and I really wanted to try it. But first, I sewed this tank top from some white cotton stretch knit.

I didn't use a pattern; I litterally traced around a shirt I already own to get the shape. It was quick and easy!

I used my jumbo ruler to trace out some line guides, so that I had some sort of idea if I was drawing straight across or not for the stripes. 

Then, using permanent markers, I coloured in a random pattern of stripes. I have a plastic bag in the shirt, protecting the back from getting any marker that bleeds through. NOTE: Black markers don't bleed very well, and I should have used a different colour looking back now.

Using a big eye dropper, (I got mine at a pharmacy in the section where you can get things to help kids take medicine. It was cheap) squirted rubbing alcohol all over the shirt. As you can see, I have a bag between the two layers of shirt, as the ink will bleed right through to the back if you do not!  I also have a garbage bag underneath everything because I was doing this outside. (I would have used newspaper, but I didn't have one!)

The finished product! I used a blow dryer on "hot" to "heat set" the ink, so hopefully it won't fade away if I wash it. Other options for heat setting is to stick it in they dryer for a while. I don't have a free dryer, so hair dryer it was!

My computer took this picture by accident and I thought it was funny!

Here is the back: 

You can see on the bottom left that a bit of marker leaked through :(

A close up of the blended colours.

And that's it! What do you think of this DIY shirt? Does it look too homemade, or can I actually wear this out this summer? I like it, and I think I'm going to wear it to the beach this weekend!