a quick blizzard

Actually, this isn't about the blizzard.
It's a quest... to stop music on blogs.

To be more specific, music on blogs is fine... but I think it shouldn't play automatically.

Players should start IF the person looking at the blog wants to listen and hit the play button.

I know, one point of a blog is that you can do whatever you want and if someone doesn't like it, they don't have to read it - or in this case, listen to it - but I'll be surfing along quietly and all of a sudden music will start blasting out of my computer.
And no, I don't want to turn off the sound just in case I come across music. I keep it on for notifications and stuff.

So this makes me sound old and grouchy - but from a web design perspective, it's amateur-ish to have music playing for no reason... and you can keep the players, just use ones that don't start until the reader wants them to.

Come on, I know someone else feels like this - can't we start a movement?

I don't want to seem grumpy, so I will also give you this picture of a blizzard I was caught in the other day while walking the dog.

entry formatting...?!!!

I am SO confused - in my browser, different entries of mine have different amounts of spacing between the lines of type.
I think it happens when I post an entry from flickr, vs posting through blogger, but I'm looking at the page source, and the html & css, and I see NOTHING that would explain it!
In case anyone reads this blog and is better at that stuff than me, can you tell me where that code is?

grr.
thank you.
xox

Remains of the Day Book

Here's one of the pages from the book I made in the Remains of the Day class I talked about in the last entry. If you look at it on flickr you can see all of the pages. These are just the background for adding photos and writing... I like to write a lot in my books, so I'm sticking in more envelopes for me to fill with writing on cards and notebook pages.

The idea of these journals is that the pages are made up of things you've collected and never used, or pieces of junk mail that would get recycled, or just your pile of SCRAPS.

Now that I've made this one, I feel like I got the hang of using my stuff that's just sitting around and I'm collecting a pile of stuff to make more pages. I have too many journals I'm working with already, so who out there needs a scrappy journal? Maybe I'll give it away when I make the next one...

Creative Experiments!

I don't believe in making resolutions, but I want to start updating my blog more, because I've been making lots of art that isn't getting shown to anyone.

I've also been spending too many hours looking at other people's blogs and their art - which sometimes leads to happy discoveries like this one.
Daisy Yellow is AWESOME. There are so many great ideas, inspiring art, links to follow, etc. that you could spend weeks just looking at everything there.
One thing Tammy does is post lists of Creative Experiments. List #8 has just been posted for January and I am going to get the hell off the computer right now and get to work!
(My current project - ok, one of zillions - is the online journal-creating class I am taking with Mary Ann Moss, Remains of the Day. I'm about to bind the signatures into the cover so I can start filling up my book and I am SO EXCITED.)

Abundance Totem

I need to update more frequently! Sorry about that. Is there some easier process than the eight-million-steps that I need to do to get things from my camera to blogger?

Anyway. I made this Abundance totem several years ago now, when I discovered the Connecticut quarter. That's it, on her abdomen, that big, beautiful tree.

This is to remind me that Abundance comes in many forms.

And also, that every time I start a long bead embroidery project, by the end I swear I will never do another one.

They say it's my birthday/Good Dreams Angel

...and I'm getting a new CAMERA! So I will now be able to take pictures of my new stuff. But in the mean time, I thought I would start posting some of my older work that hasn't been blogged.

(I've been knitting a lot this winter, and haven't taken very good pictures, but I will eventually make an entire knitting post.)

So this doll is the first doll I made when I discovered that there were people selling doll patterns on the internet. When I was in high school I used to make dolls from the 1950s sewing books in the library, and corny patterns in Family Circle, but then I found that there were these awesome patterns online. I think this was probably in the mid-to-late 1990s? I discovered the mother-of-all interesting doll makers, elinor peace bailey.
This pattern is elinor's "Retro Guardian Angel". From the first doll I made starting then, I knew I wanted them to have a purpose, not be merely decorative or play-things, and this doll is my Angel of Good Dreams - she guards against nightmares. Her little bag is full of herbs for good dreams. I made her little slippers to go with her flannel sheep pajamas.

unfinished doll

This doll is in progress. It was meant to be a valentines doll, then I gave it green hair and decided it was a christmas doll, but now I'm thinking I might make it pink and go back to the original idea.

And it will get arms, which aren't there yet.
An original pattern by ME.

lellerphant bag

for the meedle seester's birthday, made from a felted sweater. Sorry for the dark photo.

Felted flower (a separate pin) directions from Betz White.
Purse directions here: dabbled.org

i'm alive! ALIVE! and here are some pictures.

Two presents from patterns from other blogs!
I like that little blog connection even if these people don't know me.

These were presents for my friend Megan
who I've known online for ages and ages and who I first wrote to because I was so in awe of her beadwork.

The gingerbread man pattern is from Elsie Marley. I painted the icing on with acrylic because I didn't have rickrack.
The thread holder pattern is from The Stitching Room. It's so adorable! I thought it would end up being smaller than it was, because said it was for holding the cut off ends of your threads when you're sewing, but it ends up being several inches across.

This one was an experiment in color for me. I wanted to use the gold fabric because it reminded me of something Megan would use, but it is *absolutely* not something I would normally use and I didn't know what to mix with it, so it was the perfect opportunity to use my 3-in-1 Color Tool. I'm really happy with the final color combination, which I NEVER would have come up with by myself!

Suddenly I saw it.

Every time I do a craft show, someone (or several someones) comes up to me and says "do you know that all of the dolls you make look like you?"
Sometimes I am offended if they are particularly ugly.
I never mean them to look like me.
This one, when it was done, I kept looking at its face and thinking, MAN, I am so sick of this face I keep drawing.
Then I held it up to the camera - it had to be my webcam because the other camera was broken - and there it was...
um.
I saw it.
Yikes.

Anyway, this doll, which you are seeing backwards in my webcam, says "Bon Appetit" and is my Aunt Beast's 2007 Christmas present in honor of her redecorated kitchen. I would have liked it to have crazy wooly hair but I'm housesitting and there is no crazy wooliness to be found unless I shave the dog.

Busy busy busy

There is a lot of crafting going on over here, but I can't really SHOW it yet! Here is an older doll, I think from last year, for your holiday blog enjoyment.

Ok, I really have to get back to work. Things happening today are all coming from Instructables, for The Boy, things like a bike seat cover for protecting it from the rain, and a Cholula Holster (that one is sort of a joke, but only sort of), and maybe boxers made out of Patriots fabric I found at a tag sale, and I don't know what-all else.

And I want to decorate! And make little houses out of old cards!

All I want for Christmas is...

A Ravelry for sewing and crafting. Can't someone programming literate make a Ravelry-type website for sewing project organizing, pretty please? I have soooo many projects I want to do and I can't keep track! I like it that all the things I want to knit and crochet are at least in a list now, even if that list is, um, over a hundred things long.

Here's a picture to keep this post from being boring, even though she's from last year or the year before, I can't remember.

The next thing to work on with this blog is a list of links to other blogs, but there are so many that I read, it's hard to begin and I don't want to forget people I love.

too cute to poke!

This here doggie is a pattern from the awesome book Art Doll Adventures by Li Hertzi. He's a pincushion, but how could I possibly stick anything in this smiley guy?

I love this book - the idea behind it is to take images from other cultures and build them into new creations.... and do lots of playing and experimenting. This dog has beading, embroidery, fun fur yarn, an old dog license tag around his neck, and general wackiness.

I think (I don't have the book in front of me) that Li got the idea for the pattern from an African sculpture, and I just noticed that the yellow eye beads are beads that my uncle sent to me when he was stationed in Togo with the state department - how perfect!

A couple more views of him at my flickr.

This Little Piggy

Greetings if you are visiting me from Sewmama! My blog has never had very many readers and it is my goal for next year to build up some online blog community.

The Boy(friend) is obsessed with pigs - he told me that the only thing he wants for Christmas is a real live pig, which sadly wouldn't work out very well in our apartment. However, I made this one for him from the adorable (and free!) Wee Wonderfuls Pattern. He didn't want the whole pig-on-wheels-ornament, because he wants to pretend that it's his pet pig, so I'll just let him keep it like this. Although I think it need some embroidered nostrils, because the pig nose is my favorite part of the pig. Cute waving nostrils!

Believe Angel

I sincerely apologize that my camera isn't working, only my webcam, so you're not getting any nicely focused and bee-yew-tee-ful pictures right now, just whatever I can hold up.
I made this angel for my Boy's mom Jo Ann. It looks huge in the picture but it's maybe five inches tall. It has a little hanger on the back so it could be a tree ornament or hang on the wall or I guess even get pinned to her clothes or whatever - she's an angel fiend!

Snow Day! And Handmade Holidays!

I didn't want to do this because I haven't decorated my blog like all the people who have been featured, so I feel a little silly. but I'm celebrating that it's snowing right now and I'm lighting my pine-scented proud-locally-made Yankee Candle and lighting all my light strings and answering some of these questions to get me in the right mood.

It's funny, I was a little grumpy about the whole Handmade Pledge thing, because when you're an artist and you don't have money, you always make presents, without thinking about it. I can't remember the last time I bought someone something - oh, yes, I can, actually - but it was from another artist.
After a long time of being poor, you've given everyone all the handmade pincushions, aprons, eyepillows, stuffed animals, dolls, fabric boxes, record bowls, etc., their houses can take. This year I happen to have more money than usual and I was so excited to NOT have to make all of my own presents.

And then... I started seeing tutorials. And suddenly I have these lists a mile long of things I want to make in the next, oh, TWENTY TWO DAYS!
So I'll tell you some of them, but try not to say any of them where people who might actually read this might learn anything they shouldn't know yet!

My mom is getting a painting, which I have sketched out but not started because I haven't painted anything in years! It's called OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL DOG BISCUITS, because a thing we do together is walk her dog, and as we walk, all the dogs in the neighborhood come along and look into her pockets for treats. One day a few years ago, I had decided to start naming all of my dolls as saints, although she didn't know that, and that same day as we were walking, she proclaimed, I AM OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL DOG BISCUITS. So I'm going to paint her with all the dogs surrounding her looking for snacks.

My two obsessive fisher"man" cousins are getting scarves made out of old t-shirts (green crafting?!) for keeping them warm while they are obsessively fishing at all hours of the day and all months of the year, like this:

(they kiss the fish before they put them back in the water.) (My cousins are SO awesome and I miss them all the time and wish they lived closer to me, they are the funniest, cutest little boys! - even though now they are LARGE)

One sister who I hope won't read this is getting boots for her delicate dog and a front door organizer made up in some kind of fancy, Moroccan-style fabrics with mirrors and stuff for the way she wants to decorate her new apartment.

I have a lot of other things I'm making, but starting to read through this list, I'm thinking that I should stop blogging and thinking about all the cute ideas I have for decorating my blog that I haven't gotten around to yet and actually start WORKING! :)

I'll also tell you a couple of my traditions: I've been trying to START some new ones because even though we always get together and hang out, I feel like we don't have any actual traditions, so the two I've started so far are:
1. Watch the movie Elf which I love.
2. Make Espresso Shortbread. I made a recipe card as a present for anyone who is actually reading this... here it is! Open your present!

and here's a countown for beader-types...

Every day in December a new thing at http://www.suzannecooper.com/christmas/calendar.html

holiday clipart downloads

If you're a paper-arts-type, you might be interested: starting tomorrow Lisa Vollrath will post a new printable-thing-a-day over here. They'll be gone at the end of the month, so get 'em while they're hot!

Mei's Mouse.

I made this mouse for Mei's birthday. The pattern is from ottobredesign.com somewhere, but I made it in velvet - NOT a good idea, which I knew, but I hoped to overcome... and managed in some parts. In others, well, Mei, he may need some patches eventually! :)

anemoi palms

and, the palms!