Craft Pledge 2013

With the completion of 2013 and the New Year's Party gift delivery success, my Craft Pledge 2013 is now finished and I get to post photos!

The faceybooks inspired Craft Pledge 2013 with the following post:

2013 Creative Pay-It-Forward!

The first five people to comment on this status will receive a surprise something from me, in the year ahead. It could be anything - a card, a print, a book, a photo, an invitation for a tasty cocoa... The catch? Those five people must make the same offer in their status. Three, two, one... Go

So I did. Here are the packaged fruits of my labour. 

I sent my Australian craft pledges first, because I knew I would be seeing the Americans at New Year's (Canadian friends, I do not know why, but none of you volunteered for Craft Pledge 2013). 

My plan for Craft Pledge 2013 was that for every craft I would learn/relearn a skill. So for Victor, I learnt to do colour swaping in crochet to design a cellphone holder in Horde Colours.

I found an ENORMOUS horde cross-stitch pattern, mucked about with it and came up with this. I even mocked up a tiny cardboard cellphone in the correct size so that it would fit. I super love how it looks, but I neglected to teach myself how to keep the insides from being a huge mass of yarn ends, so hopefully Victor has found some use for it. 

Tallulah saw my attempts at embroidery for the first time this decade. I now regret not doing a more exciting pattern, but at the time I was just pleased to have found a fabric that took embroidery thread well. 

With the Australian deliveries sent and received, I settled into the rest of the pledges. 

I did acrylic painting for Clara. The tiny incense cones have been called poo by one person already, but I'm still reasonably pleased with how this new medium turned out. 

I did a crochet rose for Christina, which was my first time working in crochet 3D. I really enjoy this pattern and have made SEVERAL of these suckers with odds and ends from other projects:

 http://www.mazkwok.com/2012/12/free-crochet-pattern-blooming-rose.html

The project that took the longest was this video game themed scarf. I found the symbol from Sid Meier's Alpha Centari, which has been Siard's chat icon for YEARS. I then had to design the pattern on graft paper, learn to do proper colour swapping so that it would look good from the front AND the back and then play with a BILLION different balls of yarn because what the hell crochet, you basically are the WORST at making diagonal lines. Plus scarves are actually really big!

Cheryl received an oriental ink brushwork triptych of birds and trees, but I COMPLETELY forgot to take photos of them before delivering them.

The Craft Pledge actually took me all year to complete, so I'm not planning on doing a 2014 version, but since I just learnt to knit, I can guarantee there will be more crafts in my future.

So Much Lace

So I bought about a mountain of lace at the Antrim flea market the other week (and a cedar chest, but that's a different story). 

Then, at Bluesfest, this woman from Funk my Junk was selling lace gloves. She didn't have the exact one I wanted, so I was going to go back the next day, and then I got home and remembered the GIANT PILE OF LACE that I had. Lace I spent so much time selecting that I acquired a sun burn on the back of my neck. Lace that is PERFECT for me. Perfect because it is exactly what I would have picked because I picked it. Lace that I realize I have ten to twelve bags of and just ONE of those bags contains 15 meters (I have already started using lace instead of string). 

So now I'm making lace gloves out of various trim. Without a pattern. Basically willy-nilly.

That obviously needs something more. Wait, I know, lace that has RIBBON.

Now I just need to make a second one AND a matching collar piece. Ok, and work out that whole thumbhole thing, but hey, I have lots of lace to practice with. So pleased.

Grrr! Arrr!

I have a huge fondness for zombies. Zombie Walks (I swear I will go this year), Zombie movies (Fido), Zombie spoofs (Shaun of the Dead), and Zombie video games (Hunter the Reckoning anyone?) are all equally adored. I even have truly epic Opinions about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (also, the movie is coming up! I look forward to having Opinions about that too).

So it should surprise no one that I have spent far too many hours over the past couple of days playing
Rebuild.

In this tiny flash game, you carefully direct your survivors so that you can reclaim a city and not be devoured by the ravening hoards outside your walls. Pure bliss. But like Mardek, don't click on it if you have something else you were planning on doing today. You've been warned.

Upcoming marathons: Walking Dead (I will almost be in time for season two)
Upcoming shows: TyLean and thOrN at the Avantgarde Bar
Upcoming craft shows: Originals at Landsdown

Important Puppet News

I went to a monster making party and have returned home with a new puppet!!

Allow me to introduce you to Jack!

Yes, I made a toilet paper roll, pipe cleaner armed Jack the Ripper. (He has Stabby Arm Action!)

And yes, I've put him in the same house as Puppet Napoleon Bonaparte.

I am a little worried that this means nothing but trouble! or maybe....

He's a megalomanic genius who nearly took over all of Europe. He's one of the most famous London murderers of all time and has never been caught. Together, They Fight Crime.

Bathroom Poetry Update: Still on Whitman. Ended up having to go find Song of Myself because the anthology was missing it.

Knit Neckpiece

One of the best things about my friend's New Year's Eve Event is... no, wait, let me start over. One of the many awesome things to come out of this year's New Year's Eve event was that my friend Cheryl was commissioned by my friend Pyrex to make me this glorious knit silk neckpiece.

The deal was that if I was to receive this lovely piece, I needed to take photos of it. So tada! I did.

Now, if I was going to take photos for a friend of a gift, I decided I needed to do it right. Which evidently means I needed to put on eight tons of make-up and mess around with the filters.

I'm very pleased with how the sepia with a touch of 'vintage' turned out, but am a touch disappointed that you can't tell I have Black Swan (such an awesome film, btw) inspired eye make-up. Oh well, the "me and my laptop" photoshoot turned out well enough that I may try something similar in the future. In the meantime, I need to try and put an outfit together that shows off my neckpiece but which is still cohesive as a whole.

If you want to visit Cheryl's website and commission something of your own, just follow the link.

Upcoming Events: Dr. Sketchy and Book Club