Going on a blog holiday

Toboggan party (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

Off for a bit of fun in the snow - back next week!

Undies attempt 1

Effort: A
Achievement: F

I took a pattern off my favourite pair of underwear and made some up today. I cut it out of an old black tshirt, being clever with the placement so as to be witty while being crafty and all that. They went together beautifully, beautifully. Seriously, I was so impressed with how darn easy it was, and how great they looked when I was done.

I followed the construction technique they used for the originals: sew crotch seam, sew lace around both legs incorporating gussety lining bit, sew up one side seam, sew lace around waist, sew up final side seam. It's quite good because it minimises how often you need to sew seams in the lace.

But. BUT. (or should I say butt?) I forgot to allow for the lack of two-way stretch in this tshirt so while they looked pretty much exactly the same as the originals, when I put them on they were, how shall I say, not quite extensive enough in the vertical sense. They stretched side to side fine, the lace looks great! but yeah, a lot of plumbers crack kind of means they're not going to go into high rotation like I'd been hoping. I'm not sure if I've got any tshirts with the requisite amount of stretch, so may have to go and buy some more appropriate fabric. Still, yay on doing it and showing myself that it's possible to get a good result on my first attempt. Plus the pattern is fine to continue on with. An artist doesn't blame her materials I know but I totally do in this case!

Too cold!

It's too cold to sit in the spare room and sew and I'm too lazy cheap to turn on the heater and do anything. So first off a recommendation:

You really owe it to yourselves to go and check out The Toymaker's free paper toys, cards, puzzles, games, boxes and really just everything! The stuff is beautiful and whimsical, and more than a little bit old-fashioned and sweet. While it has things for both boys and girls (and grownups!) I'd say its strength probably lies on the female end of the spectrum, with some delightful toys designed around fairies and stuffed toys. I'm going to print off a few things for Hazel for the car trip down to Taumaranui this coming week.

The last of the pencil rolls went off today, I finished the second two up with lovely pink spotty ribbons for Hazel and Chloe, so I hope they get well-used! The adults seem to be more enamoured of them than the kids to be honest :) Apparently I could have sold several to the graphics folks at my council after they saw one, flattering but oh boy I can't imagine doing any more in the near future! It's not a hard project, just fiddly - but like all things I do I really can't do them more than once or twice before I get bored to the point where I dislike making them. Even if I really really love the outcome. Now I must admit that over the last couple years I've toyed with having an Etsy shop, or a Felt one, but have never done more than that. I think now I know what I probably suspected all along, I'd be hopeless! At least if I kept up my current mindset about doing the same items over and over again. Perhaps if you're doing it commercially you look on it more as a job - just for interests sake I'd be interested to hear from anyone who does sell their wares on how much of a factor repetition and boredom is?

Simuliidae larvae

Simuliidae larvae, originally uploaded by weirdbuglady.

My dad's an entomologist and sent along this link to a softie blackfly (sandfly) larvae which is what he specialises in. Go and check out the rest of her stuff, it's really quite brilliant! I just wish I'd thought of doing something like this first :) The fans look just right, although I'd have to defer to him on how anatomically accurate it is exactly.

Wowsers!

When I very nervously sent off links to my tutorials to a couple of crafty sites I never expected to get this many visitors! To be honest I wasn't even sure if they'd get posted up, but it has really exceeded my wildest bloggosphere-domination dreams (and they're pretty huge let me tell you). The neat part about it is that I get to give back a little of what I've gained over the last year or so, namely heaps of fabulous ideas and great tutorials that didn't cost me a cent. I like the idea of other kids running around wearing a felt mask and saving the universe or clutching a beloved little rabbit and their mums getting all the credit because that's how it should be. So hi to everyone who has decided to follow me, or put me on their Reader or Bloglines - I'm really flattered and I'll try and keep it at least moderately interesting around here. :)

Ok, Hazel is having a moment in her bedroom after getting into the stretch lace I bought yesterday to make some undies and cutting off a bit to staple to a piece of paper and she's crying up a storm. I should go and see if she has an apology for me so we can both have cuddles. The incident did make me measure to see how much I really needed (just estimated at the shop yesterday) and I'm way WAY under what I need so a snippet off it isn't a big deal in the end (luckily for Hazel!). That awful child at creche yesterday may have been right about me needing to lose some weight. Out of the mouths of babes and all that! Who knew that two thighs and a waist could add up to so much. :P

Aierbazzi font

Rhymes With Orange posted a link to Font Squirrel and I found the most gorgeous font ever - Aierbazzi! It's not actually a font in the traditional sense, because it gives you something like this:



This was just done by pressing keys semi-randomly, but if you had the character map you could get pretty specific with your placements. If anyone does a cool one let me know! Hey, you could actually just send the list of keystrokes couldn't you, like abytvg, and then people could generate their own. Mine was done at 700pt in Photoshop, I couldn't get Word to recognise the font, not sure if that's because it's a Windows font and I'm on a Mac. Next time I'll try in Illustrator because I reckon you could get all fancy with kerning and orientation...

Birthday Invitations

Birthday Invitations, originally uploaded by Ansis68.

I finally got around to distributing Hazel's birthday invitations I created from Go Make Me's .pdf - took an embarrassingly long time but I make the excuse that I was busy discovering that my printer won't print on any paper heavier than 200gsm. An expensive lesson to learn! I think they turned out really well even on that weight paper. I just realised that the swings are facing the wrong way to the camera on the two front trees, you can see on the back one that they actually look quite 3-D and sit-on-able. I also had some 'issues' with my printer scaling things, so some of the trees ended up being smaller than they had to be! So printables aren't all sunshine and roses, there can be "technical difficulties" in producing them :P