To the Batcave, Robin!

After much gnashing of teeth from Aunty Carol, here are some pictures of the (now warmer) basement. Mom and Dad have set up a little heater between the couches and as long as the door to the upstairs is close it can actually be quite toasty.The main room. Jessie has a futon just to the left outside of the picture that she sleeps on when she's home. The infamous dirt room is behind that door and Monty's bachelor pad is right in front of the sliding door so that he can guard the house against the neighborhood cats.

The doorway into Hannahland, you must be this tall to enter. Epic, no?

The land of make-believe. This is where all that crafty magic happens, more or less (really that magic happens all over the house... a needle in the arm of this chair, a wad of yarn on this table, some fabric in the kitchen. It's all good.) Oh, and you can see the little shelf Dad built for all of my books along the ceiling there. I think that's my favorite thing in the whole room!

The place for to be sleeping and snuggling (Monty is banned).

More crafty action happening this corner too. There are little things tucked into every feasible cranny and bits of thread clinging to everything else. Anyway, that's the tour of the downstairs.

Doodlie-Doodlie Dooo...

Ah, the rain. It's been pouring the last couple of days and this morning everything frosted over. Between class and work I've been doing things. Like watch a movie here and there, or read a book, or even something crafty if I feel like swathing myself in blankies while I'm downstairs in the meat locker (now, to be fair it's no where near freezing in my basement lair. However, it is at least three degrees colder and I do not do well in arctic climates so I tend to bundle up when I go down into the bat cave). So, here are some of the products (more to come when I get around to it).
Felted nesting bowls. Infinitely useful as long as you don't want to put liquids in them. Like cereal. And even then it is possible to use them for cereal, it would just be a bit messy and soggy. These are going to Twelve Mile this afternoon when I go to work for foodstuffs.
And then here is the horse. A few weeks ago Dad, Lisa and I went to check out this little used bookstore in Sandy called "Some Bookstore in Sandy" (which made me want to check it out so badly! With a name like that, how can it not be wonderful?). I dug up a couple of books, among them "60 Great Horror Stories" (or some such thing), "The Herb Bible" and, best of all, a book of sewing patterns. The patterns were from the 90's but that didn't even matter because they were all plush toy patterns! There were horsies, penguins, foxes, chickens... a really good assortment.

I can do some 2-d things on my own, but when it comes to actual shaping or anything my skills just aren't there so this book was perfect for showing the construction of stuffed animals. Very complicated, I would never have been able to brain storm these things up myself without a TON of wasted fabric and frustration. Anywho, a few weeks later Chachi was born. After I took the pictures and started writing this I realized that he looks eerily like something from Charlie the Unicorn, a happy accident I guess because otherwise he just looks like a retarded clown horse. At least now I can say "Why of course he looks slightly retarded, I meant to do that. Haven't you seen Charlie the Unicorn?" with a bit of a condescending-holier-than-thou tone. Right?

Now that he's done I love him very much because of all the time it took to make him, and how huge he turned out (he's about 14 inches tall, if I could get his back legs to stop collapsing in this mincing sort of crouch). Plus he fits very nicely under my arm, especially since he's about the size of a new baby lamb and those are always adorable.

Henny

So, I made some chickens. Two to be precise. They have an open bottom which hides a little chick and an egg (or any such thing, but those two are what actually come with them). These, like just about everything else, are available in the shop now-ish.

Felty McFelty-Pants

My hands are sort of pink these days. I've been felting rocks to try to sell at Twelve Mile and all that hot water and dish soap is making my hands grumpy. I thought I'd share before I take them in tomorrow.

What do YOU do when Unemployed?

I make things. Here are some of them from the past week and a half:

Lupin, who is currently in my etsy shop.
One of the squares for my quilt (still soooo in progress...)

A mole, not quite done but also one of the squares for the quilt.

Some random embroidery I finished today. I think I'll make a series of them and either make them into little three-finger-puppets or turn them into iron-on patches and put them up in etsy.

Ditto.

It Appears that I'm Still Unemployed...

because I'm still making things while I sit eating toast and playing Spore in my jammies at noon. Sigh...

In any case, this little guy is in the etsy shop,
and this one now has a new home on my shelf. I like him too much to sell!

Ah the peril of crafting things...

Happy Birthday Mummy!

>Peep eep<

Busy Busy Finger-Bees

Sooo.... I haven't completely been sitting around twiddling my thumbs the last two weeks. I've been puttering around the new house attempting to be an extra pair of hands, I braved the dreaded DMV for my brand-spakin'-new license, I struggled through the hours at the bank to change my washington account to the (apparently) alien Oregon account in the SAME bank. Oh, and I made this little fellas who'll be making an appearance in the etsy shop shortly. I'm going to be making them some little fabric houses to go with whatever of them don't sell before I get around to it. Anyway, enjoy:

Bun bun

I think perhaps Spore has been influencing this one.... but that's only mostly likely.
Bird bird... bird in a tree.And finally another Spore-esque hand-holdable.

Too Cool for School!

Thanks to the swissmiss blog I read with increasing regularity I found this gem:

Felted Wool Stones! For a second I thought they were enormous felted rocks, because I've seen small felted pebbles which are small rocks with wool felted around them, or even felted soaps, but these Viva Terra creations looked outta this world. So cool!

Two-Legged

I know I already posted about this little guy (I'm keeping him because I really like how he turned out) but now he's got a couple of friends.

I made an otter oh... maybe a week ago? I think... or just about then.

The pile of carnage in the background is pretty great. Oops..
And then I made this guy while Peter, Katherine and I played Risk last night. I won AND had enough time to make a big bunny-man while we played.
Well... biggER. It's about three inches tall or something. He was going to be a llama, but that obviously didn't go anywhere near as planned, but it still works. I think I abandoned the llama idea pretty early, so it's not like I was trying to make a llama and then it just wound up looking like a bunny.

New Buddy

My newest little felty friend.

Busy Busy Busy

I've been busy making birdies.

I'm thinking they'll make a good mobile.

Homework

This, clearly, isn't homework. Instead, it's what I do to avoid homework at all costs. I finished my pony thing. I think I liked it better blank, but I decided to try to embroider things on it and see how it turned out.

Another one for the collection.
And here's my little craft buddy.

He's grown pretty fond of those bags of stuffing.

Sigh...

I'm Scheming...

up an idea that has only one possible outcome: complete success! I'm trying to lure people into helping me because I think I'll need to feed off of other people's ability to focus on a project long enough to finish it. I'm still 1/3 of the way done with my second glove... I haven't touched it in almost a week. Also, I made whipped up a shirt a while ago but never got around to putting a zipper in the back. Yesterday, I decided to wear such shirt because even though I thought it was hideous when I initially put it aside, it was calling to me yesterday. So I decided to pin the back. Not with safety pins, mind you, but the kind of pin you use to take things in place when you're sewing. You know.... of the infinitely sharp variety. So I did that, and it worked until I got to Jessie's when I hear a muffled *pop!* and all of the sudden my chest was freer than everything was supposed to be. I pinned it back but quickly changed out of it when I got home. Luckily I have little whale buttons I'm going to use on it. The only remaining problem is that I don't know how to sew button holes. So right now the shirt is relegated to my new "in progress" bin in my brand new craft room (I shifted all of Paul's crap out of his old room and into Katherine's old room so that I could appropriate his bachelor-hole for crafty biz-nass and I'm imagining a Monty palace in the corner). The project I have in mind for the mean time, however, is A CARDBOARD RHINOCEROS HEAD! I found this kit online but I'm very sure that I could do it on my own with a little help and a lotta cardboard. I'm pretty excited.

Oh and this is my little friend-in-progress. I don't know how to finish it. All I have is the beginnings of a boring, white body. I think it'll either be a llama or a horsey. I was thinking camel, but I didn't think about it soon enough to build the humps into the basic body structure. Lemme know what ya'll think he should become or what colors! I have dark brown, bright green, tan, this off-white and a brown/grey combination.

And the tree in our front yard bloomed today! I don't know what it is but between it and the plum tree next to it everything smells heavenly outside.

Tuesday

I walked to the transit center again today, and then took the bus to campus, had class and then came home. I found these flowers on my walk and I thought they were beautiful. I have no idea what kind they are, but they were so tiny and perfect that someday I'm going to have a yard full of them.

These and poppies.

I just enhaled some salad and some cheese on crackers and I thought I'd put a picture of my newest little creation thing up.

I just discovered a place called Canvas Works in Olympia and I picked up some wool roving to doodle around with. I have these felting needles I got this summer but never used and now that I had the roving I finally tried out this whole "needle felting" idea. I really like it once I stopped stabbing myself in the fingers. This is my little long-necked pony. It's a good 3-4 inches long and 2-3 inches high. He looks a little dorky but I'm pretty happy with him, especially because he's my first try. I don't usually put my first attempts up here, but he's cute enough that I thought I'd share.