jangle, jangle

what up homeslices. i am graduating in less than a month, which means things are getting pretty strange around here and i haven’t read much of anything lately except for collection development policies. which i am not going to review here.

so, a while back when i did that felt ipod case program i was helping one girl do a skull & crossbones. skulls are all the rage these days, and i still have enough of that teenage mentality that when i see high school girls wearing them i think, omg, that is so cool. so i whipped up this little heart/skull patch at the program. and then didn’t really know what to do with it, because let’s be honest: i am just too old to pull off florescent skulls.

so i put it on jammies. i sometimes sleep in my beloved’s undershirts, because on me they fit like comfy, stretchy dresses.

when i wear it, i dream about being hip and youthful.

handwarmers

(from l-r) me, ms. s, & seester rae. because i was trying to think up some last minute christmas gifts that i could embroider in front of ugly betty, but without having to leave the house and go buy any supplies. when i get tired of my clothes, i often hack the sleeves off shirts to explore different lengths, so i had a bunch of orphan sleeves, and learned a few new edging stitches, and voila! warm hands, free fingers. easy-peasy.

inner teen.

when i was 13, i got a terrible haircut. i then spent the next 11 years with an easy and safe shoulder-length do in order to prevent it from ever happening again.

today, for research purposes, i got 5 inches cut off from someone who was not my regular hair dude. it did not come out the way i expected it to. all afternoon at work, i felt hypersensitive, like people were laughing at my hair.  even the bearded investor who almost ALWAYS comments on my appearance said nothing, probably because he was shocked by the awkwardness of my new coif.

so, my inner teen is alive and well.

on a more cheerful note, here is a tea towel i made for my mum a couple of christmases ago. design my own.

krickstitch: the totes with birds on.

most of y’all know that one of my sisters is a knitter…(thanks for all the knitterly love, by the way. v. sweet!)

and that my other sister sews things. and paints. and crochets. AND raises a child. if you think this is easy, take another think. we took on little nephew e for 12 hours yesterday and then had to sleep for nearly the same amount of hours afterwards to recover.

but i turned 21 with no sign of picking up any crafty hobbies. my sisters began to worry. it really became a problem when i started bringing my beloved to family events. he and mr. rae and mr. elli would go off to play videogames. whereas i used to sometimes join them, now i was expected to stay with the womenfolk and do things with my hands. be useful. produce things.

so, for my 22nd birthday i was given an embroidery starter kit, 6 embroidery hoops, a stitch dictionary, and a whole mess of thread. happy birthday, krick!

this is the first thing i made. it is a tote bag given me by public library #1. i adapted a design i found in a book of indian embroidery at the library.

i also used it on a tea towel for my then future mummy-in-law, because it was so fun to work with all the colors. forgot to take a picture of that one, though. my darling grad school friend anne had always admired my tote, so when she moved to paris over the holidays, i whipped a similar one up to keep her company:

tah-dah. if i had known i would be starting a blog, i would have taken better photos, like anne stylishly hoisting hers over her shoulder as she runs to catch her flight, or my tote straining to hold all of my library books. maybe next time.