Wild.Unfolded

Whatever the time stamp may say on this post, I am writing it at 11:56pm, therefore it’s still Wednesday. I know I skipped last week. The reason for that was I has just frogged attempt #1 at this project, and therefore had nothing to show. NOTHING! Nothing but a pile of crinkly crochet cotton. Oh the humanity.

What am I working on? Well, this:

Okay so that kind of looks like Muppet Surgery. What you can see there are the legs of a doll I am making for Jane. I’ve had SO many tries at every part of this doll I am no longer stressing if it doesn’t look like the picture. Right now I just want to get it done. Once it’s finished, it’ll be a nurse in a black dress holding a syringe behind her back. If it sucks, well I’ll just give her a gift card or something.

I had to actually BUY pink yarn for this, btw. I thought I could get away with using what I’d found at Savers, but the thicknesses were too variable. Dammit, now I have three balls of pink yarn.

Crochet, Handmade

Yup, still with the trees. The one on the right is done but for the decorations and the base, the one on the left needs a few more rounds, then the base. You can see on the left one I got smart and added the yarn decorations as I went. This is because it’s SUCKING to do them on the other one, getting the knots tied in the pointy bit is unfun.

Neither of these are the one I posted last week, that was frogged once the new pattern started to work well. These are a little thinner, and I think I’ve figured out a way to give them a nice rounded base.

SO, I have to finish these, then whip up the littler ones, then felt them all, which I hope to be able to do this weekend to get Evie’s out to her on Monday.

Crochet

I posted it to Crafster, but it never made it to the blog proper. My bad! Anywhoo, remember the Eiffel Tower I was working on a couple of weeks ago? Reminder:

Well I finally got it finished (I say finally, but it’s not like I worked on it for 9 years or anything.) It’s been handed over to the new owner, Miss Di, who loves it to tiny bits. Phew! Always hard to know if a handmade thing is going to be the RIGHT thing to give, but she was pretty thrilled with it. So was I.  Here it be:

Looking at it I can see at least 19 different places I’d like to redo, but it’s gone now so I must let it go. LET IT GO.

In other news, the tree from the last WIP post has been frogged since the second draft of the pattern worked so much better. Racing to get them done and felted in time to mail one set is kinda fun!

Crochet, Needlework

Recently on a tour of the internets, I found the pattern for some ay-DORE-able felted Christmas trees.  They are, however, knitted and I do not knit.  I no longer say I can’t knit, because if I put my mind to it, I probably could. I just prefer not to, being way more comfortable with crochet. Hence the dilemma. I seriously wanted to make these trees, so figuring they’re a basic cone shape, I dove right in.

The first version was a fail. The cone instructions I’d hunted up online gave me a square shape, more like a pyramid than a cone. I moved the increases to different places and here we go, a cone shape. A HUGE cone shape. Once this one is done, I’ll alter the pattern again and make it smaller for other gifts, partly because it’s close to christmas and partly because this is going on forever. FOR EVAH!

I have the pattern written out, once I figure out the best way to do the base I’ll post that pattern on here so other people can leap in. I’m going to felt it in my new handy camping washing machine. Felting in the electric machine is complicated because we use cold for washing, and felting requires hot hot water. Doing it by hand does work, but takes ages, so I’m hoping my little camper washer will speed the process up some.

Crochet

At what point does a gentleman wake in the morning and decide that the only course of action with his balding head is to create a combover? Combovers are the great male delusion. The idea that if you plaster four lines of hair over the top of your head, no one can possibly notice that you’re balding. The fact that the back of your head remains hairless, and sometimes the points of the combover don’t quite reach the other side are lost on the gentleman carefully brillcreaming his hair into place.

I had the mixed hilarity and misfortune to be talking to a chap I knew outside on a breezy day. As he discussed his career options, his combover lifted in the wind, dancing like a tamed snake on top of his head before giving in to the product used to hold it in place and falling back. I am proud to say I didn’t laugh until the chap in question was well out of ear shot, but laugh I did. Hard. To this day if I think back on it.

In my 10 years of customer service, I have seen some epic combovers. I’ve also seen combforwards and comb ups (where two sides of longish hair are pulled up to meet at the middle of the head). Interesting thing about these combovers is that they were all spottable as just that. Not a single one looked like a natural head of hair.

I am far more a fan of either clipping the whole lot short, or maintaining what’s left with a neat cut rather than a combover or baldmullet. I know I know, to a man his hair is his youth and vitality, but honestly, guys. Seriously. If the thought of combing it over crosses your mind for even a moment, please have a lie down until reason prevails. You’ll be much more handsome if you’re less funnylookin’.

So remember the circle from yesterday? What do you mean you didn’t read this blog yesterday? Get out. OUT.

Those of you who DID read me yesterday may remember the yellow circle I claimed was a star. Well here’s the finished piece:

It’s considerably less tidy than the one by the original pattern lady, but it’s.. uh. .. homespun charm. Yeah. That’d be it.

Again, if you’d like to make one, you can find the pattern here.

Crochet

Okay bear with me here, well don’t actually because the pain in the bum behind the scenes stuff doesn’t bother you I suppose. I can’t upload from wordpress at the moment, because someone broke the doovalaki, so I’ve had to do these manually. It is a terrible strain, but I am sure I can cope.

So. Welcome to a thing I’m doing now. YAY! It’s called WIP Wednesday and since in theory I will always have a WIP I will yak about it here, on Wednesdays. For those who don’t know, a WIP is a Work In Progress. Things that are currently being worked on, but are not yet finished (this is not at all like a UFO – Unfinished Object. These are usually somewhere along the line to finished, but have been abandoned due to boredom or other more exciting projects).

Let’s get cracking, shall we? Okay first up we have the Eiffel Tower:

This is being done in freeformish embroidery on cotton. It’s a leaving present for Di at work who has found herself a brilliant new job and is therefore running as fast as she can from the building. Since she loves all things French I thought I’d go the iconic Tower. It was a bit of a rush, but I’ve just realised I have a week longer to finish it than I thought, which is pure bonus. It’s nothing like as neat and tidy as I would like, but then again at least it looks handmade, right? (Work with me here)

Part two of Di’s leaving pressie is shaping up:

I only started it last night when I realised there was NO way I’d get the tower finished by Friday. What is it you ask? It’s a star, dur.  Okay you have a point, right now it’s a circle, but it WILL be a star once I’ve done some more circle and added some points. The reason is that Di and I always demand gold stars when we do a good job, so when I found this pattern I had to make one for Di.  I freely admit my crochet is wonky. I have given up demanding perfection from myself on the basis that I’m improving naturally, and it’s easier to woodge and hide mistakes than start over

Crochet, Needlework

Mama and I went to Greensborough Plaza today in order to leap about at the Millers sale, because Millers sales are awesome. Came away with lots of goodness to wear – new with tags! This Savers girl doesn’t know how to feel about that… anywhoo, as we were paying, the lights flickered and thunder rolled. Then thunder rolled. Once we’d left the store, we noticed all the internal lights that weren’t in stores were off, and through the big skylight we saw heavy rain. Heavy, heavy rain. The storm didn’t last particularly long, but it hit with power, dumping vast amounts of wonderous wet stuff.

We stopped off to see Katie at her bauble stand and she said she could feel water hitting her, but figured she was just being paranoid. Apparently not, quite a lot of the plaza had incoming water issues.

Okay sure, there’s been issues. Someone in Eltham came home to find the contents of their garage, including a double deep freeze, floating down the road.  Greensborough Plaza had some MAJOR issues themselves:

As well as multiple stores flooding, they had a cave in of the ceiling near the main street doors. Quite a few shops closed up till the waters were out, and the shops near this cave in were closed pretty much till that’s fixed I think.

In Diamond Creek, the supermarket was dealing with a rising tide of water coming in, and recovering from a power failure which left a few registers out of action. Again, more shops closed.

Pretty wild old day for weather. Came home to find my desk covered in water from an old roof leak, but we’ve only had 1 leak in the whole house, which is a record for us.

Photos, Weather

I went to the mall today to pick up some final giftings for people who need their giftings posted. The DVD I wanted for my mother was no where to be seen in JB, but as I poked around in the bargain bin (you must NEVER skip the bargain bin at JB HiFi. I got “To Kill a Mockingbird” for $2 once) I found a DVD we’ve had at work for a while and I pondered buying. Sesame Street Old School.

It’s volume 2, so covers 1974-1979 and oh my god I love it so much I could weep. I parked myself on my bed with my crochet hook and my little DVD player thing and watched the first two discs as I worked on a thing. This was preElmo people, how could it be bad?

I love Grover. Grover brings the sunshine. I just read a review on the DVD that stated it was grey and miserable and depressing. Uh. What? It’s certainly not the frantic rainbow of today, and there’s things that wouldn’t pass muster in the current paranoid climate but it’s far far from miserable. Some of my favourite bits are the bits like this:

I loved those as a kid, and I do now. I don’t know if Sesame Street still includes little snippets like that, but I hope they do. It’s simple but it’s interesting and educational.

Grover is still my favourite, but it’s a close call.

Television