Purchases

Recently, I have purchased many things for arts and crafting that are outside the realm of my typical interests.

These include, in no particular order:

3 fat quarters of fabric, from the etsy-ers precioussewingbox and rainbowfabrics.

The Christmas birds and the Virgin of Guadalupe are for quilted pillows, but the other one is a spur-of-the-moment piece that I have no real plans for. Perhaps it will be an art panel for the wall? I don't know yet, but we shall see.


2 skeins of Patons wool in charcoal grey, for the making of a cloche. Winter is coming far too fast, and my ears are already cringing. Granted, that may be due to the fact that I am allergic to wool, and the idea of wearing a solid wool hat for any time at all is making my eyes water and my ears turn red in anticipation. But as I plan to line the stupid thing, I doubt that's really the issue.



A red and white striped tablecloth/sheet (of obviously unknown use), c/o Goodwill, intended to be shredded into a gigantically long strip and turned into a rag rug for the kitchen I don't yet have. (More on rag-rugging in a later post. Prepare yourself.)





3 spools of 100% spun polyester thread, which, when held together, might turn out to be lace-weight (maybe. if I squint), and will hopefully turn in to some yet-to-be-determined lacy and attractive something.




A black bar bead from the wonderful folks at Fresh. What it will get used for, I have no idea. But it was 50% off and beautiful, so I had to get it. Maybe I'll make a bag or a camera case or something with it.




And I also bought, not for crafting, but just because, a canvas hamper with a bird screenprint and a cotton rug printed to look like a peacock's tail, both from urban. While I'm not usually such an indie hipster, I couldn't help myself this time. I've been looking for a nice hamper since I moved, and both things were surprisingly reasonably priced for urban, so I don't feel as bad as I might otherwise. But when I have money, I'm gonna have to avoid that webstore the same way I avoid the Pottery Barn.

Faster-Finish Liners (TM)

In high school, I was convinced that if I didn't make it as a recording engineer, I could always become a graphic designer. Both of those dreams having the same realism and staying power as your average five-year-old's desire to be an astronaut, I haven't spent a whole lot of time messing around in Photoshop since I hit college (which, considering the job market for historians, was maybe a mistake on my part), except to make desktop and the occasional livejournal backgrounds. That said, my parents commissioned a logo from me the other day, so I sat down with my drawing tablet and a couple pictures of the thing they wanted (it's a liner-tray. which means a tray of baby-plants, for the uninitiated), and went to town. Five hours later, I had this
which ain't too shabby, considering. There are some things I think I should have done differently (namely, the leaves aren't vectored, and are only on two layers, which makes it hard to selectively prune. oops), but overall, I'm very happy with how it turned out, and I had a blast doing it. Oh graphic design, how I missed thee.

What I'm listening to: "Glow Worm" by The Mills Brothers

Home

Recently posted across the street from my parents' house:

Eva Elizabeth

There are a few things that all the knowledge and faith in the world can't prepare you to deal with, and losing a baby is one of them. On April 8, 2009, our little bitty Evie-face, aged twenty months, died of complications from leukemia. Putting it that way makes it such a stark, cold fact, an emotional void, when in fact there's so much more tied up with it than just the facts of what happened and why. There's months of fear and prayer and hope, of the elation when they said she was in remission, of worry when she didn't seem to be improving, and then certainty that putting her on the ECMO machine (for more info) would give her the time to get better, because our little girl was such a fighter. And then the misery that came when they said her lungs weren't improving, and there wasn't anything more they could do. I will never know how her mom made the choice to take her off the machines, and held her while she left us. I can't imagine how painful that must have been.

Saying goodbye to someone you loved that much is never easy, but I think it's that much harder when they're so young, and you think about all the things they didn't get to do, all the fun they never got to have, and the information they never got to learn. I never truly understood the purpose of those gorgeous, fancy layettes that nineteenth-century babies were so often buried in until now. Because making something for a dying child is, in many ways, a cathartic process. It lets you put all your love and good memories into a piece of fabric that you know they will have with them forever. It is the last gift you can give them, and you are wrapping them up in something that has your hopes and dreams for them woven into every stitch. Though you can't go with them, this piece of clothing can, and it represents your desire to stay with them and keep them safe forever. And it is a process, too, because as you knit you're having to come to terms with what is happening to your baby, and what it means to your life. I'm not saying that as you knit the last stitch you somehow miraculously find acceptance and closure - that's not possible in a situation like this, not even remotely. But you do begin to deal with the idea that you're not going to be able to be with the child and keep it safe, and you spend so much time thinking about your love for them and all the good memories you have of them that it maybe hurts a tiny bit less, knowing that you've at least been able to do this much for them when you couldn't do anything more.




So basically all I can say, the only thing that really needs to be said, is we love you, Evie Liz, and we miss you very much.

Recipe: Sweet Potato Stew

Ingredients:

3 tsp. Worcestershire Sauce
3 tbsp. Light Brown Sugar
1 lb. Stew Beef
4 c. water
1 c. beef broth
2 Sweet Potatoes, peeled and chopped
1 bag frozen peas and carrots
1 bag frozen lima beans

Brown stew meat in brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce. Add water and beef broth, and let simmer for 30 minutes. Add sweet potatoes, reduce heat, and cook for ten-fifteen minutes. Add frozen veggies and let simmer until cooked, about fifteen-twenty more minutes, or until it thickens. Salt to taste. Serves 4.

All measurements are, of course, approximate, as I come from the Justin Wilson school of cooking and cannot be bothered to get out measuring utensils when I could just pour.

Enternamente

New project. Or, rather, finished old project. Back in September, I saw the Eternamente project over at Anticraft, and fell in love with it, as I am wont to do with things involving skeletons and/or the Spanish language. (I never claimed to be normal, okay?) It being close to Halloween, I went to my local AC Moore and picked up all the supplies I needed for the project, and spent the first couple Sundays of the semester indulging myself.

The only wooden skeletons they had were sadly misshapen things, with heads that more closely resembled the gourd family than a human skull. So I took an exato-knife to them, and helped them out a little. I was glad I'd gotten three of them, as the first one ended up splitting in a couple rather unattractive places. When I was done, they looked a little something like this:
Certainly not the most realistic skeletons, ever, but that's okay. I reattached the heads very carefully by punching holes through their chins with a brass tack, and then threading the wire through the hole.

After that, I painted them with two coats of black paint. I outlined the bones with silver, and used red and yellow to give them flaming hearts, which are actually relatively realistically shaped. I was proud of myself. I used sparkle paint leftover from my Carnivale mask two years ago to paint the eye-flowers (turquoise for the man, purple for the woman).

I knitted the woman a shawl of three strands of white thread held together, and cut the man a turquoise vest out of leftover material from my Carnivale skirt. At first it looked a lot like his day-job must have been as a convenience-store clerk, but I think I've reshaped it enough that it looks better now.

For the backing, I sliced the piece of styrofoam backing that came with the shadowbox in half with a hacksaw (that was messy, let me tell you. Little bitty balls of styrofoam went everywhere, and refused to leave. Tenacious little suckers. In future, will do this outside, or in shop, or somewhere other than upstairs, in the studio, surrounded by fiber that can't wait to mate for life with little particles of white, spongy stuff). I glued the thin piece to the back of the shadowbox, and then glued a piece of purple scrapbooking paper, to which I had affixed a bunch of black rhinestones in a random pattern, to the front of the styrofoam. I balled up a length of pretty turquoise ribbon at the bottom of the box. The message is written on a piece of cream-colored paper, which I crumpled up and then unrolled several times before I wrote on it. It is taped to their legs on the back, while they are taped to the top of the box.



At some point I will probably attempt to tack them to the top of the box with small staples, and I'm still working out how to get them to hold hands (glue, probably, but that feels awfully unfair to them). But I'm quite happy with how it turned out, otherwise.

Recipe: Cayenne Chili

I promised that if the chili turned out well I'd post the recipe. It's super easy, and really tasty, so here it is:

Ingredients:
1 lg can dark Kidney beans
1 lg can chili hot beans
1 can crushed stewed tomatoes (use fire roasted if you want it even hotter)
1 lb ground beef
5-6 tsp. Chili powder
3-4 tsp. Cayenne pepper
Texas Pete to taste

Brown ground beef in large pot with 3 tsp of Chili powder. Pour in contents of all three cans, remainder of Chili powder, and Cayenne pepper. Bring to boil, then reduce to medium heat and simmer for 1 1/2 hours, or until thickened, stirring occasionally. Add Texas Pete to taste and serve with cornbread.

Super easy, and spicy enough to warm you up on even the coldest days. I think next time I'm going to add some black beans and a little bit of hot salsa, too, just to give it a little more solidity.

Moss Grid Handtowels

I don't complain about my knitting a lot. Partly this is because I love it with the kind of unhealthy passion that makes even the most annoying aspects of the process fun, and partly this is because I'm not enough of a perfectionist to be devastated and annoyed by every mistake. I figure, knitting is a hobby that's supposed to help me relax; if I have to complain about it, it's not doing its job. That said, I'm now going to complain about my knitting.

Christmas knitting is always worse than knitting the rest of the year, because let's be honest, you knit things for your relatives that you would never knit for yourself. I have absolutely no desire for a green, brown, and white dishcloth with tiny v-shaped eyelets, but I know my aunt Teri will love it. Thus, it is possible to be less than enamored of the things that you are knitting as Christmas gifts. But rarely does it happen that you end up working on a project that you loathe.

I have found that project. The "Moss Grid Handtowel" from Mason-Dixon Knitting.

(I'm about 5 pattern repeats farther along now)

It's a beautiful once it's worked up - very classic, delicate, and likely to be useful for a long time. I love the yarn I'm using (Dragon Tale 4/2 Cotton from Earth Guild in Asheville, which works up like a dream). But oh, my Lord, is it ever tedious. It's one of those patterns with just enough variation that you can't quite memorize it all, or work on it while you're doing anything else that requires attention, but not enough variation to be interesting. The kind where someone calling out random numbers at you as you're knitting has the potential to ruin the whole damn thing. It can't be knit in class, it can't be knit while watching House or Bones, or any other show where visual attention is necessary for understanding the plotline. It is mind-numbingly boring, and I've got at least three and a half more of the suckers to go.

Argh.

Also, I realized this morning that I've completely forgotten the patterns for both my waffle-rib socks and the scallop-afghan I was working on earlier in the summer. The afghan isn't a problem, because I remember what stitch-dictionary I pulled from, but the socks? Oh well. This will teach me to keep better notes.

Crafty Links

It was only a matter of time before my mom and her fiber-mania finally got to me. I suppose I should be thrilled I held out the four or five years I lasted, but now things have gotten crazy. In my free time (admittedly slim as it is), I check knitting websites and etsy instead of the music and fiction sites I used to look at. So, here are some of my current favorite crafty-type links.

The AntiCraft. It's Knitty for anarchists! or southern non-conformist psuedo-punks. Whatever. It's still like it was made for me. Skulls, knitting, and spicy food, what more do you want out of a website? I'm currently working on Eternemente, and will probably be making several other projects from the site over the next few months.

Whedoncraft. People inspired by the Joss-verses make stuff and then post about it. You can knit your own Firefly or get a WWBD (What would Buffy do?) shirt. Tell me your life wasn't missing something before this. (don't ask where I found the site, I honestly couldn't tell you how I got there...)

Lime'n'Violet Daily. Their podcasts get super annoying, but their blog has all kinds of nifty knitting-related stuff, like free patterns and Etsy of the week links.

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Speaking of Etsy, here are some of my favorite things I've discovered on that site:

Glowworm and Virgen de Guadalupe stitch markers. I'd probably be more inclined to use the damn things if they were all this cute.

Pretty dyed roving. I link to this not because I want to knit with yarn made from it, but because I want to dye my hair those colors very badly.

Fort Awesome Studios. He does really cool interpretations of Nintendo characters, and the word-geek in me loves that he does it on old textbooks.

ShySiren. Jewelry-makers out of Charlotte. If I weren't a broke Grad Student, they would be getting a lot more of my money.

And finally, WoolandWood. It's my mom's etsy, and she's got some Christmas bags up, along with a couple of our stuffed animals.

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I have ideas for all this yarn I want to dye, inspired by things like Babylonian mosaics and Straylight Run songs, but dying yarn is teh suck, so for now I'm just keeping notes of my ideas. I'll post pictures if I ever do manage to make it happen.

"You're not made for this"

This summer did not go exactly according to plan. It was fine up until the middle of July, when my kidneys all of a sudden decided that they hated me and wanted me to die, but after that point, everything sort of fell apart. I've never experienced anything quite like that before, where you're so wrapped up in the thing that's going wrong inside you that you just can't muster the energy to answer the phone, let alone go out and be friendly. There were times this summer when even answering a text message seemed too much. Having your organs revolt really turns your attention inward. I have a new appreciation for why Jeremy was such an ass for all those months; when you feel like that, you just want to be left alone, for people to understand that you're sick, dammit, you can't handle being social right now. But then I feel guilty, because I recognize how very lucky I am to have the awesome friends I have, and there's only so long people can tolerate that kind of behavior and still remain your friend. But I just wanted to put it out there that it wasn't intentional, and I ignored pretty much everybody equally. I even ended up not going to the Hush Sound/Cab show, which was supposed to be the highlight of my summer, that's how horrible I felt.

I am trying to grow up this semester, in all senses of the word. I'm accepting certain truths, including the one about me deserving better than what I've received from the boys I've dated. I'm cooking dinner every night and balancing my own checkbook . I'm getting all my work done early enough in the week that I can take Sunday off, and I'm not partying every night. I'm exercising (when I'm not feeling nauseous, anyway), and making sure I take my vitamins every morning.

I've also had to come to terms with the fact that my dream of doing something in the music industry has to die. It's time to grow up. I'm twenty-three, not nineteen, and if I'm honest with myself, I was never really going to be that girl. So it's time to be realistic about things, and recognize that when I finish Grad school, I'm going to get a real job and have a real life, and I'm going to be okay with that. Music is always going to be a vital part of my life, but I can't structure my life around it any more. Which is painful to have to admit. I actually thought it would hurt more, to be honest, the day the expiration date came on my childhood dreams. But the truth is, it's okay, because now there's so much more in my life than just those dreams. It's easier knowing that so many of my friends are going through this at the same time and making the same decisions - Cade quit the band, Jon's gone off to work as a sound-guy, Ryan's going back to school. It's the time for quarter-life crises, and we're trying to be thoughtful in our choices. I'm not going to treat this like all the rest of my relationships and cling to it long after it's died; I love music wholeheartedly, but I'm meant for something else.

There's still a tiny, redheaded man in Chicago that owns my heart, though. Every damn time, Patrick gets to me, despite politics, mediocre lyrics, and Pete. Folie a Deux is going to be awesome, and I don't even care what that says about me.

What I'm Listening to: "I'm Actual" by the Format