Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Crafting? What crafting?

Super quick update! I hate to just let the blog sit here all un-updated when I had a couple months where I was good about doing it regularly. However, I have an excuse! The long and the short is...I haven't been crafting! I'm in the dead middle of a four week road trip, and even though I brought four projects with me, I haven't done a single moment of craft work since the second night of the trip. I've just been keeping busy spending time with my friends, and when I'm on my own, getting done moderator duties on Ravelry or working. However! There will be more to come, definitely...so stay tuned. :)

Friday, March 16, 2012

Finished Object Friday, 3/16/2012

Well, I'd hoped to have two finished objects for today - I'm sooo close to finishing the back stitching on that fall fairy I've been working on. I made a lot of progress on it Monday but haven't had the chance to work on it since then. Next week, that's the goal. :) Until then, though, I did finish some spinning right before I had to leave my wheel behind when I headed out on a road trip!


Five hundred yards of lovely blue sparkly DK. This is that cloud of fiber I bought a couple weeks ago. It took FOREVER to spin, and I have no idea, but I adore the finished project. I just wish all the sparkle showed in photographs.


Pretty much every where that looks white is actually silver.

I'm in the market for ideas of what to make with this! Cause I love it and want to make things. Note that it's not actually that soft. So...thoughts? :) Check out every one's fabulous work this Friday over on Finished Object Friday and Fiber Arts Friday.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

WIP Wednesday, 3/14/2012

Well...uh...I don't have any work in progress to share, really, though I do have a FO for Friday. :) I mostly am just tossing up a post to say, HI! And make it clear that it's not that I forgot, it's just that I don't have all that much to say. ;)

I'm currently on a road trip! The first stop is my dad's, where I'm sitting right now, but tomorrow I go up to Binghamton, NY, and from there I go to Rochester (With a stop-over in Syracuse to get breakfast with one of my dear friends who, because we're both kinda bad about e-mail, I feel like I'm always in relatively high danger of losing touch with, so it'll be awesome to see him). Then, I'll go to University Park in PA to visit Penn State, then next Tuesday I'll drive out to Columbus OH with a stop for dinner in Akron. It's so nice to just get away and I'm going to get to see so many of my friends and family throughout the trip. (There's more after that, but I think those are topics for next WIP Wednesday.

Anyway...super sleepy, and not much to share, but I decided I'd rather babble about completely non-craft related stuff than let a week go by without a post when I've been SO good about 3 posts a week for the past few weeks. :) Have a great Wednesday, everyone! OH! One thing, last night, I went back to working on this for the first time since the summer of 2008!



...but that's the pre-new stuff pic. Not that I added much, but what I did add actually would show. ;) Next week!

Sunday, March 11, 2012

At the Musee d'Orsay

As I'm labeling my way through the pictures I've taken the last few years that I'm behind on - primarily pictures from trips, I've mostly kept on top of the shots I've taken in NYC - I've got a developing issue. The sets that just random pictures of places are the easiest to label (I can label them all things like "Typical Istanbul Street Scene" or "Graffiti in Prague" and leave it at that) whereas the pictures I've taken at museums take a lot longer to label and tag as I transfer the information from the original museum label. Still, I'm trying to start tackling those sets. One of the first that I've finished is a set I took at the Musee d'Orsay in 2010. There are some really lovely things in their collection, though at times it's not an easy environment for photography - some of the corridors are narrow, and the lighting isn't always so great. Still, in two visit there (one in Februrary, 2010, the other in September, 2009) I did get some shots I think are pretty lovely, of amazing items.

The Adoration of the Magi, a tapestry by Sir Edward Burne-Jones


The Church of Auvers, by Vincent van Gogh

I'll admit, this is as much one of my "best" because of the episode of Dr. Who as for any other reason...

The Adulteress, by Jules Cambos


Art Nouveau Bowl


Detail from The Family, by Luc Olivier Merson


The Campaign of France, by Ernest Meissonier


Joan of Arc, by Henry Chapu


Well, that's all for now! :)

Friday, March 9, 2012

Finished Object Friday, 3/9/2012

This is a reconstruction of this original post, necessitated by some aggravation.

In 2009, my apartment got bed bugs. I had just been getting in to cross stitch again as a major relaxation tool, and when the bed bugs hit, the only time in my ENTIRE experience I actually SAW a bug was on my current WIP at the time. Needless to say, that sucked and was VERY upsetting. So I put that project in quarantine. However, I still wanted to cross stitch, and so while I was road tripping while they exterminated my apartment, I bought a new project - this project - and started it. I was still working on it when I got home, and discovered...more bed bugs. So it too went in to quarantine. In 2010, I pulled it out and worked on it a little, but I didn't ultimately end up finishing it until, well, until now! Still, I have some progress pics from along the way that I thought are worth sharing.

But first, the fun stuff! My finished Dragonfly and Water Lily cross stitch! After three years!!
IMG_7026





When I started working on it again in 2010, here's about where it was:

I worked on it a bit while on a vacation, but then it ended up put aside again until January. When I started working on it then, I got it to this point pretty quickly:


From there, I worked fast. By mid-February, I was well along the way!


Finally, about a week ago, here was it's status:


Cross stitch does take forever, but the results are worth it...at least I think so. And as to all my mistakes...we won't talk about those. ;)

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Work in Progress Wednesday, 3/7/2012

Whew, another week! I'm feeling pretty good about my crafting this week, actually. First, for the first time in AGES, I've met a personal expectation: last week, I said I expected to be done with the cross stitching on the Dragonfly and Lotus pattern by this week...and I AM. I'm still working on the back stitching, but I think THINK I can have to done by Friday, so I'm not gonna post the almost-but-not-quite-done pictures today. But there's plenty else. :)

Dyeing
Last week, I bought this fiber to dye:

It took going to three different grocery stores, but this week I managed to track down packets of Kool Aid!

I'm REALLY excited to try dyeing for the first time, though I'm not quite sure when I'm going to find the time. I'm HOPING I can do it before I leave on the road trip I'm planning - nearly a month on the road, starting next Tuesday - but I may not get to it. Still, his weekend, there is a chance... :)

Spinning the Cloud!

I've been spinning the lovely Loop Fiber Arts cloud that I bought last week.

I've got two singles almost ready to go, and maybe another ounce of fiber left. I'd really like to get this done sooner rather than later, but I'm so close to finishing the cross stitch that I've been doing that more. So hard to pick which project to focus on. ;) Still, I've got to finish this spinning before I leave, since I'm not bringing my wheel on the road trip (though it's tempting, very tempting...I'll probably bring my spindle...)

Using Old Spinning!
I've decided what I'm going to do with this:

...which I made a couple weeks ago. I'm going to make Eva's Shawl, which a friend pointed out to me. It'll be my first shawl, which is damn scary, but I think it's a really good project to bring on the already-repeatedly-mentioned road trip. ;)

Not a Work in Progress, But...
The most exciting, fun fiber related thing I've done this week was a meet up with other New York City Ravelry ladies! I've never met a group of folks in quite this situation, but we were all geeks, and we were all Ravelers, and we'd all participated in Nerd Wars at some point in the past. (In the foreground is my friend Jenny, who is also my neighbor, she taught me how to spin!)

We met at Panera, and they all knit, and I cross stitched, and indulged in a bread bowl, and it was great fun. :)

Check out what everyone else is up to over on Tami's Amis and Other Creations blog!

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Bali Bird and Reptile Park

It's been very nice to finally make some significant progress on labeling the pictures from some of my recent trips. Or less recent, as the case may be. The downside is, I still haven't really put in the effort to label any of the museum sets - I've mostly been tackling the sets that are easier to label and less time consuming than that. This is good, cause I've been getting a lot done. This is bad, because I'm starting to run out of these easy-to-label sets, and what's left will be much more time-consuming to get through and my progress will likely stall. Ah well, can't win them all, right?

This week, I labeled a bunch of pictures from the trip I took to Bali last May. They were primarily taken at three places: the Ubud Botanical Gardens, my hotel - the Sanur Beach Hotel, and the Bali Bird and Reptile Park, which is where the majority are from (read: all the ones of birds or reptiles). So, take a short trip to Bali with me!


I loved the patterns this duck-weed like plant formed. So geometric!


This was an offering and incense left in the garden.


There was a show at the hotel, with traditional drumming and dancing.


The grounds of the hotel were covered in sculptures and such, and they decked them all out with hibiscus blooms.


Owl!


There were lots of parrots at the Bird Park, many flying (relatively) free. This is one of the best shots I got.


I'm really proud of this shot of a Laughing Kookaburra.


This picture was taken about a minute after my friends and I spent $15 US to feed a chicken to this komodo dragon. It seemed to appreciate the meal.


Gecko!


The texture on the lizard skin is just amazing...

Friday, March 2, 2012

Fiber Arts Friday, 3/2/2011

No finished objects this week.

But...last night, I had a strange dream. I was on a road trip (not unlike one I'm planning for next month, leaving in just over a week, in fact...) and I discovered a warehouse dedicated to spinning and spinners! I was VERY excited, cause I've been in the mood to spin, and I thought, "hey, if I can go in there, surely I can buy some fiber, cause I won't have to spend on shipping..." so I went in. It was HUGE and crowded and it had displays of spinning wheels and looms and carders and all manner of other things. But all I wanted was a fun-colored braid of roving...and I couldn't find any! It was very frustrating! Finally down in the clearance section I found something I thought might suit...so I resolved to buy it, even though I thought there must be something wrong with it, because it was in clearance, and just...something seemed wrong about it. I even thought, "this will tie in well to Supernatural for Nerd Wars, too!"

If I'm at the point that I'm dreaming of buying fiber? It's clearly time to buy fiber. So I went to the Yarn Co. and bought some today! I'll be spinning it...oh, starting tonight.


First, I bought this fun green. 4 oz. total. I like that it's in two ounce balls, will make it easy to divide when I got two ply it. :)


I bought this lovely wool/silk mix so that I could play with dying it. I even stopped at the grocery store, but they didn't have any of the packets of kool-aid, so I'll have to try again.


Because of one of the NW challenges, I really wanted a cloud of fiber, and I was really glad to find they had some lovely stuff, all made by Loop Art Fibers. The price wasn't bad for her stuff, either (she runs pricey, but I knew that already, having been to her studio last year, and seen her at MSW also...). All in all, I'm thrilled with what I ended up with, though, it's perfect for my needs, and I LOVE how much it looks like a cloud.


Yeah...I'm gonna start spinning this tonight. ;)

See what everyone else is up to over on Tami's Ami and Other Creations blog and Wisdom Begins in Wonder.