It’s a horse dancing with another horse. Under a disco ball. You wanna make something of it?
I so very wish I had art that I made when I was a kid. Ari actually handed this over the second she saw me after school the other day, she knew how much I’d like it. And it’s true, I DO like it, it’s hilarious!
Shannon cast a bunch of Ari’s Barbie faces the other day so I got to work painting the smallest one as a zombie. The eyes were drilled out and I sewed it onto my jacket and I think it looks totally adorbz.
It’s scary AND cute. Just the way I like everything in my life.
Speaking of which, I was recently looking at various cross stitch samplers and thought, really? What the hell! I think I could do that! So, inspired again by my favourite 8-bit artist, I came up with this:
I have NO good idea for what to do with it, it’s small, like the actual sewn part is about 3″ square. Blah.
Blah!
Ooh, and guess what I found at Walmart!??!?
I know, right? Not perfect but still!
I read a post on thehairpin about nails a couple weeks ago and was inspired. I’ve always liked nail polish (despite the normal, raggedy state of my fingernails) and already had a decent collection but decided to buy some of the skinny bottles and do some experimentation.
Let’s just say that it wasn’t easy at first. I’m right handed, almost comically so, and my right hand (painted by my left) looked like shit. My left hand may as well belong to a different person as far as my brain commanding it is concerned. I’m getting better.
Here’s my small collection of skinny bottles (they have a long, skinny brush). I love the sparkly ones. I don’t remember where I got them (I think Walmart and Guardian) but I know it wasn’t Shopper’s. They have a crap selection of nail polish: too highbrow a store I guess!
And here is today’s nails:
I know they’re not perfect, I’m practicing. But I get tons of compliments (oddly, mostly from teenage girls who work cash at the grocery store) and that’s nice. My last attempt was light purple with green at my cuticles and fuschia on the tips. Lovely!
I’m heading to Target in less than 2 weeks and my only real goal there is to get a ton of the Sally Hanson nail strips. I can’t find them anywhere here, wahhh! I want ALL of them!
But mostly sewing. I mean only sewing.
What I am willing to reveal:
Mug rug (it’s cutesy-poo, I know, but nicer than the coffee stains that were beginning to get a little out of control on the armrest beside me):
So it’s quilted by hand, did that during the Oscars. Yes, I love Heather Ross. I’d use her fabrics exclusively if I could afford to.
Then there’s this:
They’re all sewn now, all 90 of them (!), flags for bunting for Jana’s upcoming wedding. I can’t actually go so I did some work for her instead. Almost as good as being there? Well, no, but my blood, sweat and tears will be. And she gave me all the leftovers so I made yet another quilt top with them.
But. But but but. I’m not willing to reveal-yet-that quilt. Nor the other three quilt tops (one’s finished but it’s small) that I made in the last 2 weeks. A preview though:
Doesn’t tell you much of anything, right? Once I figure out who’s getting what (or not, maybe I’ll try to SELL something!) I’ll post proper pictures.
So it looks like it’s been 2 weeks since my last update, sorry. Where does the time go? Frankly, I don’t know. I mean, I have made 4 quilt tops (and finished one completely including binding), sewn 90 triangle flags for a bunting (they are 6″ across, 9″ long and not quite finished yet) had work meetings and seen a bunch of movies.
Ok. I loved Rango. I know I’ve been going on about it on twitter and Facebook, but for everyone else in the world? Go see it. Don’t worry about if you have a kid to go with or not, they won’t enjoy it as much as you anyway. I took Ari yesterday and practically gave myself a hernia I was laughing so hard. Maybe it was stress related, I don’t know, but I’m going to see it again, hopefully in the theatre. And it’s NOT in 3D! Woo!
And I also loved The Adjustment Bureau. It’s a smart movie about love. About waiting for love and being true.
We watch Bob’s Burgers each Sunday and I just said to Shannon how much I like it because it’s odd and funny and very silly. The voices are great, it’s a good show. Especially compared to the rest of the crap you get to watch on Sunday night. I haven’t enjoyed an episode of The Simpsons in at least 8 years. And I don’t like Family Guy and I loathe Cleveland. It’s awful.
I’m still going to the gym twice a week but I think I’ve lost the fever for it. My legs hurt when I use the treadmill and it makes the rest of my workout pointless. So yeah, I use the elliptical (or cross trainer as it were) and that hurts way less but still. And swimming is hard. I love the swimming part but I hate the wet hair afterwards part. And swimming caps don’t help. In fact, I don’t really know what a swimming cap is for.
Ok, so other than sewing like crazy (like, literally, CRAZY) I still do knit sometimes and I’m working on a couple other things.
I’ve also been enjoying cooking more lately, I often find myself thinking about how delicious roasted cauliflower is (very!) and what goes well with quinoa (almost anything). Shannon and I ate at Rawlicious last weekend while Ari was at her Oma’s house and I’ve been thinking about going back soon. I had this zuchetti thing, zucchini spiral shredded with tomato sauce all raw and I loved it. And then we shared a piece of ‘cheesecake’ and died and went to the moon. So very delicious, wow. So I’ve been thinking abut making that and then thinking that it’s the type of food best left to the professionals. Like sushi. And pad thai.
On top of everything I haven’t been sleeping much lately. Every night I go to bed and sleep for a couple hours then wake up at about 3:30 and stay awake for about 2 hours. Or longer. Then when I wake up for real for work or…sewing, I’m exhausted. I feel dead. I know why. But I feel more secure if I have my ipad in bed with me. RAH. It’s the IPAD’s FAULT!! But you know? When you’re like, ok, sleep time, good night pillow, good night duvet, good night ipad. Oh, what? Did someone tweet something witty? Is there an email for me? Grr.
Technology will clearly be the death of me.
Ok. I love you all. I’ll post real pictures soon.
So after months of bugging Shannon, I have finally gained control of thispeanutlookslikeaduck. I feel somewhat bad, it hadn’t been updated since October of 2009, haha, so there is considerable catching up to do. Not to mention the foolish assertion that we’d mail out stickers, gosh, forget about it. It triples the work and considering how old the emails are, lots of people would have moved by now.
Not to mention the expense.
So I’ve posted 10 new ducks. That’s about all I can manage in one evening, even if it is pleasurable work, full of me laughing at various pictures of things that look like ducks. And things that don’t. And spam galore. Please remember that I am no Shannon Larratt-I don’t possess his writing or photo editing skills. Nor his dry and silly sense of humour. But I do my best.
Also funny, this tweet from Nikki Sixx the other day made me laugh:
Shannon has dealt with this problem a lot in his lifetime, it’s the curse of having a gender neutral name. This tweet is funny on more than one level, insult and injury, poor old Mr. Sixx. I’m reading his book right now, The Heroin Diaries. Should be called The Harrowing Diaries, it’s so brutal. I find I can only read a couple pages at a time, it’s so excruciating. His survival is pretty amazing!
ps I’m Oprah’s half sister!
I don’t have basting pins (or I don’t until tomorrow when I head to DFO) so I’ve finished sewing the backs of both parental quilts, but haven’t started the quilting process yet. It will happen, I’m feeling motivated.
Until then, I’ve been drooling over amazing quilts on flickr to try to figure out how to piece my own quilt. I think I’ve kind of figured it out, at least for now, here’s my mock up, using scraps I had.
The largest square is 6″, mid size are 4″ and smallest are 2″. It makes a 10″ square (duh). Plus seam allowance, 1/4″ per side. Then I am planning on 2″ sashing between each block. I think I can get away with making 36 blocks, then the sashing, then a 4″ border, then binding, it should be big enough to snuggle with Shannon under.
And, unless it’s not super obvious, I’m using fabrics previously blogged. And a couple more rarities I found and bought on etsy last night. Oops!
When I am done-completely done including binding-both of my parent’s quilts, I’m going to move on and start one for Shannon and I. It hadn’t really occurred to me to make one for us until he said something a couple weeks ago. So the fabric collecting started, but I didn’t really know where I was going with it (colour wise) until I went to The Workroom and saw the dark brown Castle Peeps. I love it. There are greens and golds and purples, so I went largely with green.
It’s going to be green with smatterings of brown and purple. Here is what I have to work with, so far:
I can’t name everything, but other than Castle Peeps I got It’s a Hoot by Moda, Parisville by Tula Pink (if you quilt, get this, it’s gorgeous and the spotty colourway I got is already sold out-RUN), Far Far Away 2 by Heather Ross, a huge stack of Libs’ destash, and lots of other loveliness abounding. When I get to Target in the spring (and to Joanne’s Fabrics) hopefully the top will be finished and I’ll figure out the back/binding.
And no, I have no idea what pattern I’m doing. I like pinwheels and I love a good, old fashioned log cabin, but I’m thinking about doing a sampler type quilt with a bunch of different blocks all tied together. We’ll see!
I started working on these quilts in the summer but couldn’t post anything about them until now. I know my dad doesn’t read my blog (he’s only really recently aware of computers at all) but my mom does (hi mumma!) so I had to keep it all on the dl. Until now.
The first one is for my dad, it’s a design by Boo Davis. Her work is amazing, buy her book now. NOW. Can you tell it’s a tree? Once this one is finished (I had a minor setback, ahem) I will have a hard time handing it over. It’s going to have a navy back and straight quilting.
The second on is for my mom and is my own design. It looks a lot more complicated than it actually is. Well. It took a lot of work, to be fair, but I simplified my life by buying solid colour jelly rolls, sewing strips of colour to strips of white, and on and on until I got this. The back of it will be red and I’m planning on doing a diagonal quilting pattern. Libs says it’s hard but we’ll see!
These pictures suck, sorry. I’ll take better ones when they’re finished.
Here’s an idea of what the beginning of my mom’s looked like:
On Shannon’s request.
Darn iphone, I’m hopeless at self portraiture with a regular camera, iphones make it nearly impossible. The makeup looked way better in my mind and a little better before I tried to use one of last year’s contact lenses. That was a mistake, my eye still hurts.
Thanks to Gillian too, for the inspiration.