Holy eff, it's been awhile.

So yeah, it's been awhile eh? I've been keeping myself busy but I have admit that I haven't really done a lot of crafts in the past few months. I've done the odd project here and there but nothing substantial or even terribly interesting. I knit a few dish clothes and crocheted a couple of amigurumi pears, which I've done in the past a few times before. Fall is just around the corner though and that's usually when I bring out of my crafting guns. We shall see.

Although I haven't been crafting, I have kept myself busy this summer. I joined a dodgeball team with a league here in Halifax. We play every Monday night and it's a lot of fun. I forgot how much I enjoyed being on a sports team....and throwing balls at strangers. In July I went camping in PEI which ended my ten year streak of not being on a boat and a whooping 12 year no swimming streak. I went to my family reunion where a ridiculous amount of good food and alcohol was consumed. Got a couple of sunburns and doubled my freckle count. Took a road trip with two of my favourite friends to Montreal just to go to Ikea. Oh yes, it's been a good summer.

One thing I have been doing this summer is bake. Oh yes, I love to bake and lately I've made things that have even impressed myself. Last week I made pecan cinnamon buns. They were seriously one of the best tasting things I have ever made myself. They were that good. I have to hold back from making them everyday though.

Drool....


















And if those aren't enough, today I think I made the best chocolate chips cookies that I have ever created as well. I know it sounds like I'm full of myself and my baking skills but seriously, mad skillz, I suddenly have them.



Well hopefully this gets me posting again!

**** Come visit my new site at www.thecraftinista.com ****

Time for a change....and new shelves...and a new scarf......

I'm such a neglectful blogger but it's for a good reason, I promise! Although I've been crafting, I haven't been spending much time around the computer as of late. At the beginning of the year I decided that I needed to make a change in my life and it needed to be drastic. I eat horribly and do little to no exercise whatsoever. I was lazy and I did not care. And then one day in January something clicked in my head and I decided that I was done with that. I've stopped gorging on my favourite, yet very unhealthy foods (I miss you poutine and ice cream) and decided to get up off my lazy fat ass. I eat healthy balanced meals and make smart snack choices. I walk between 5-15 kilometres a day and try to do pilates or something similar about twice a week. It's not really as hard as I expected as I don't think of this as a diet but rather a lifestyle change and apparently I have waaaaaay more willpower than I could have ever imagined. I'm not counting calories or spending hours each day in a gym. I just eat much better than I once did and try to be more active and so far it's paid off. I've lost at least 30lbs to date and I fit into the size of jeans that I wore in high school! I don't have a goal set and I'm totally okay with that. Yay!

Now back to the crafting...

Last week my Dad came to visit and brought new shelves for my bedroom that he was going to help me put up. He picked out some pretty rad silver brackets and had the wood pre-cut for me.



Good choice, Sir, good choice.

Once the brackets were hung, the fun part began. Anyone who knows me, knows that I like to have each room of my home be perfectly colour co-ordinated so it wasn't a surprise that I was going to make these shelves black, purple and silver - just like everything else in my bedroom.

I started by covering the wood with purple and silver paint and just swirled it together.



Once this was done, I covered with with a crackling medium and followed it up with a layer of black paint.





Groovy eh? I gotta say, I like how it turned out. They match purrrfectly with my bedding.



Obviously I still need to fill the shelves with stuff, but you get the picture.



Cupcake encouraged me while I worked on these. And by encouraged I mean she slept and made purr noises every now and then.

Let's see, I know I've done a few other projects recently as well. Oh yeah, I frogged the noro scarf and started a new one. I much prefer the new one as I used the smaller needles so the stitches weren't so huge.



Unfortunately as Spring has seemed to arrive in Nova Scotia already, I don't have much more time to even wear scarves without dying of heat exhaustion. But because it turned out super colourful, I don't care, I'll wear it anyway!



Time for bed. Peace out!

Greg & Lil' Greg

It's all about the hair. And the smirk.

Lil' Greg is complete!

Another project where I designed the pattern is complete! Man, writing patterns can be bloody frustrating. I probably made the head three or four times before I was happy with it. The shoes, I totally guessed how to make as I couldn't find a pattern for tiny shoes online. Luckily, I wrote the whole thing down so if I ever need to make another, it would be so time consuming. When my brother is in the city next time, I will have to get a picture of the two Gregs!

Also, yesterday was my birthday! I am now 27 years old. Eeeek! I went to visit my family down in the Valley and had a great time and got some awesome presents. Plus, it was Canadian Thanksgiving so I gorged on turchicken and all the fixings. It was also my parent's 25th wedding anniversary as well. Needless to say, it was a busy weekend. Luckily, I am on vacation all week so I plan on getting started on making Christmas presents while I have the time.

Greg & the Cobra

So my brother asked me to crochet him a doll in his likeness for his girlfriend. Generally when I crochet amigurumi dolls, they are animal shaped so I wasn't quite sure how to go about it. Well so far, so good. Obviously it still has a lot of go. A face would be nice. Oh, and limbs. Maybe some ears too. I'm creating the pattern myself as most of the amgurumi doll patterns that I found online were waaaaay larger than what I wanted or just didn't look quite right. And yeah, that's a bottle of whiskey with a cobra in it. My brother picked that up from a guy that makes it himself somewhere in France. So effing disturbing. Due to my immense fear of snakes, there is no way in hell that I will be drinking it!

Hello Polo!

I finally got around with finishing the amigurumi project that I mentioned earlier in the month for my friends birthday. And I did it with only hours to spare! His name is Polo the Platypus! Click here, here and here to see him in his original, yet adorable form. I think he turned out pretty well. There are a few things I'd change, mostly his eyes; I would have liked to have put them slighty lower and I was out of solid black safety eyes which I wanted to originally use. But considering it was my first amigurumi project that I wrote 100% of the pattern, not bad. I tend to take bits and pieces of other patterns to make my own but this time I knew I had to start from stratch. I'm going to try and write up the pattern if anyone wants to give him a whirl.

My Dad also came into the city last night for supper and a bit of shopping. Shopping with my mother consists of clothes shopping, household stuff, that sort of thing. Shopping with my father consisted of a quick stop at Costco for a shelf, looked for an air compressor at Home Depot and he got me a rad storage container at Canadian Tire, that was perfect for all of my little findings - sew on snaps, earring posts and backs, felting needles, etc. Awesome! Now everything is at hands reach.

Sometimes you are just like TV.

So unfortunately I didn't get to work on anything this weekend. *Single tear runs down Jennifer's face.* On the other hand, I had a good weekend at my parents place in Greenwood. And that's including the accident that occurred during a game of catch with my Dad. The following facebook conversation between Lamb and I, will explain.

Jennifer - is watching Shaun of the Dead. Rad.

Lamb likes this.

Jennifer - Sadly it is now over.
PS. I got whacked in the head with a baseball today. The stitching on the baseball left an awesome mark on my head.

Lamb - Sometimes you are just like TV. ♥

Awesome, right? And it was in the same spot as my sledding accident earlier this year.



No, this isn't my sledding accident. It wasn't captured on film or video and I thank my lucky stars for that because the video/photo would have gone viral by now. Instead the picture is of Brady's awesome face plant after trying to snowboard down a toboggan on the same day (as my accident). Awesome.

Oh, and I totally came across some of the most awesome polymer clay pieces I have ever seen. Holy bananas. I had posted a couple of pictures on my flickr account earlier this evening and someone commented on one of them. I went to their site and was amaaaaazed by the work that they do. I only hope one day I can get half as good with polymer clay as they do. For real. Check them out. SRLSY.

Yay! Long weekend!

So I came down to the Valley to visit my parents on my Memorial Day long weekend. I intended to start a blanket for my mum while I was down and I brought the yarn and my hooks - except for the larger hooks which I didn't realise that I would need for the project. Acks. I still had the urge to create something though. So instead I took a bunch of photos of flowers that are found all over my parents property. Plus, it was an excuse to use the macro setting on my camera. I seriously love the macro setting. I only wish I could use it for everything. But I have a feeling that people would not appreciate me putting a camera half an inch up to their face. Such poor sports.

If you want to check out the rest of the photos click here.

Happy Mother's Day to my Mummy!

Happy Mother's Day to the bestest mother in the entire world. Trust me, she is. She's the strongest woman I know and made me the person I am today. She's never doubted my abilities and has always been the biggest fan of the work that I do. If it wasn't for her, I probably wouldn't be as crafty (or stubborn) as I am today. We didn't have a lot of money growing up but I never realised it but she taught me to make do with what I had. I never felt like I was missing out on anything. When other little girls were getting dolls for Christmas, I got craft supplies. She may not be as crafty as I am but really, that's to be expected - I'm a freak of nature. I'm a craft freak. I live and breathe crafts - but it can all be attributed to her. She once knit a scarf when my brother was a baby. She said it took forever. Yet you put her in a kitchen and she can make some of the most amazing things in the world. My mum is a better cook than your mum. No lies. She's made me appreciate the ability to take raw materials and turn them into something amazing with nothing more than your own hands and a few tools. It's a skill that I cherise and cannot thank her enough for.

This year I made something small for her but I think it turned out pretty cute. A small amigurmi bear! I plan on making a matching (with reverse colours) for my father. And it has a magnet in it's hand so when the second one is complete, their hands will stick together. I'm such a sucker for cute things.

I love you mum!

Finally!

I finally finished the felted bag that I made for my sister with only 20 minutes to spare before we had to drive her to the airport so she should catch her flight to Newark (followed by a flight to Seattle followed by a flight to Anchorage and finally to Fairbanks, AK). The handles are no where close to what I wanted but I just wasn't able to find what I was looking for locally. I may need to look online and order some in for next time I make one. I ended up using a small knitting loom to make some rope and then just did a large chain stitch with my fingers and sewed it into the inside of the bag. Either way, she seemed happy with it (even if I wasn't 100% happy with it). And here she is with her bag in her new favourite pose (see here, here, here and here ) and her newly acquired Nova Scotian tartan beret tam (thanks for the correction Julie). What a a goofball. She is clearly related to me.

I had a fun last day with her in the city. We caught an early afternoon showing of Star Trek. My only complaint is that there wasn't enough Simon Pegg. Love that man. Then we did some shopping along the waterfront and then had drinks at a pub downtown where my friends met up with us so that they could meet her for the first time! We intended to also take a tour of Halifax Harbour on the Harbour Hopper, we had missed the last tour. Maybe they should update their website with the correct times. Oh well. It was great having her home and I hope that next time she can stay longer (or stay forever!).

A rather productive weekend AND I was out of town!

To be honest, I am quite awful at both reading and following patterns. I find that a lot of patterns look like they are written in Greek and the few that I do understand, tend to slow me down. I like getting caught up in a project and not have to constantly refer to a pattern to make sure I'm doing it right. But when I came across Alice's handbags over at Futuregirl.com, I had to make one. They are super cute and quite simple looking without looking boring. So when she was looking for people to be pattern testers before she released the pattern to the public, I jumped at the chance. I'm glad I did because her pattern was super easy to understand plus it forced me to learn the foundation single crochet stitch which is bloody amazing. There is nothing that I hate doing in crochet more than having to crochet into a chain. So painful. But no more! I ended up making two bags this weekend - both the small and medium sized bags that she wrote patterns for. I was also down in the Annapolis Valley this weekend visiting my parents and sister (she finally arrived from Alaska on Thursday) and found this adorable black, purple and pink (my favourite colours) fabric with guitars on it. Perfect for a bag lining! I stitched up a lining and finally attempted some needle felting on a finished product. Functional and cute. Two of my favourite things!