le sock monkey(s)

il finito! excuse the bad photos - i had to use the work camera and lou is sort of holding the sock monkey bum through the boards of the bench to keep them sitting upright so they look a bit awkward. i made these two using instructions found through the marvelous kiddley and a photo tutorial here. the only thing i did differently was to sew the limbs, ears and mouth on using the machine (cut slits in the body sock and sewed them in from the wrong side before stuffing the body) instead of sewing them onto the outside by hand. my hand sewing skills are substandard at best and i'm lazy to boot so...

anyway, they were quite easy overall, a bit of a struggle to work with the stretchy material and i ran out of polyfill so had to use my good wool stuffing for the green one, resulting in little white woolen tendrils now peeking out from the sock material. he's sort of shedding perpetually. hmm.

finally, some works in progress!

christmas sewing has begun! i'm near completion of the two sock monkeys i have been promising my adorable nephews for almost a year now, ever since i bought one of them a sock monkey story book last christmas. they both LOVED the book and have been requesting their own little monkeys ever since. they will be soooooo happy, wish i could see their reactions but, alas, these will be flying over to them in Perth via the suitcase of my father-in-law.

so. busy.

can't. write. much. must get. back. to. endless. (crappy) work.

BUT tony's site is pretty much done so go feast your eyes at www.tonybaker.ca!

i still need to add a one bit of art to the painting page (tones, you got one more? i thought i did but they're just duplicates with slightly different names) and update a few of the images but other than that, done! woo hoo! now i just have to concentrate on surviving this work week (huge presentation due monday), bidding on a house all by my myself on saturday (shane has a fishing trip planned. i will have a small posse of girlfriends to back me up.), and then starting on another portfolio site for my other good artist pal, sandy imeson. crazy times. i'm hoping december will give me a bit more blogging time and some much needed hours at the sewing machine.

in response to tiel's question in my last posts comments: i first learned on flash 4 about a million years ago (well, at least 5 or 6) and was a bit of a flash nerd for awhile there. then i started doing a few sites for corporate clients and discovered what a pain in the ass it was to make changes, compared to the print design i was used to. i sort of just stopped doing web altogether, then built myself a site about 3 years ago and haven't touched it since. i'm working in mx 2004 now and really did have to reteach myself the most basic things but am feeling pretty comfortable with it again and, with a few tips from our IT fella at work, have learned a few new tricks.

carpal tunnel setting in

between work (which is CRAZY at the moment and looks to be that way for at least a few more weeks) and working on my pal, tony's, website in the evenings i'm feeling a bit computered-out and also a bit bad because i owe heaps of people emails and haven't posted much on ANY of my blogs. it's fun work, at least, which helps quite a bit - building a site in flash again after so many years has made me brush up on almost forgotten skills and learn a pile of new ones. makes me feel oh-so smaht when i discover a new bit of code and actually make it work. the tonester's website is almost done, i'll be posting the big reveal over the weekend once it's all finished but, in the meantime, here are a few previews of his fabulous art:


constant sadness


rustbucket


the isolation of workgroup 17

mittens for kitten (or kat)

i'm feeling a bit badly about not posting all week, especially due to the fact that thanks to links from whip up and tania of chocolate a chuva, i've had quite an increase of visitors here. unfortunately i've been immersed in web design this past week and haven't been up to much craft-wise but last wednesday i did throw together a quick little present for a work pal who is heading over to our canadian office for a year.



along with a cd of canadian tunes (various wainwrights, great lake swimmers, hayden, sarah harmer, tegan and sara, young & sexy, and stars, among others) i made her these cozy, grey, wool mittens to see her through the torontonian winter. the thick, ribbed grey knit came within a huge bag of the grey wool yarn that i found at an op shop last fall, someone's knitting project that ran out of steam. i kept the knitted pieces, thinking they would be handy for something one day, maybe an oobee. when i found out kat was heading over (at very short notice) i quickly schemed up a plan to use them to make mittens. basically i traced a wide outline of my hand onto newspaper, used that as a guide for cutting the pieces and then used an overlock stitch to sew them together. once i steam/iron blocked them, i was pretty happy with the shape - held sideways they look like little grey whales!

days off

man, i'm soooooooo enjoying my days off from work. i've lived up to most things on my to do list except for the fishing (we had it planned for tuesday but shane has to take the day off work on wednesday to go to a family funeral so he's going to work the holiday instead) and the complete lack of any sewing so far.

friday i had a lovely day of sleeping in, snuggling with baxter, walking around my neighbourhood taking photos, then a short drive down to glenferrie road where i parked at one end, grabbed the first starbucks coffee i've had in oz (i'm sorry, i love the vanilla misto, can't help it) and manged to hit 4 thrift shops as i meandered my way to the other end. it was really great to just walk, something that i don't do enough of in melbourne. i miss walking to work and stopping in at shops on my way home in vancouver, i used to walk over an hour each day and really loved it. now that i drive to work, i just don't seem to be able to fit enough walking in. when i got home the light in the kitchen was just good enough to set up a little still life and take some macro shots of my new vintage sewing goodies. i'm really happy with the way they turned out, check out more at my flickr site if you're interested.

the rest of the weekend was spent dining on a turkish feast with pals, looking at houses (a few new good options, we'll see), cooking up some comforty type food (braised lamb shanks on saturday and a lemon rosemary roast chicken on sunday - yum!), watching movies (office space and prozac nation so far, annie hall, sylvia and the tv series carnivale to go.), and working on a portfolio website for an artist friend in toronto. classic, i've been putting off working on my own website for almost a year now but jumped at the chance to trade some art for a site and now that i'm in the thick of it, i'm really enjoying the web design again. i made a feeble attempt to do the site in dreamweaver but, after flipping wildly through my EIGHT HUNDRED page manual, decided that i should stick with flash - i now have the site half finished in the same amount of time i spent just trying to figure out how to navigate dreamweaver. more details on this later in the week when i get something up!

to dos

i've taken friday and monday off and with tuesday being a public holiday (melbourne cup = horse racing = day off work??? bring it on!), it all works out to a lovely 5 day weekend for moi. reading over lara's list of to dos inspired me to make up my own little list of how i can fill in aaaaalllllll these wonderful days off. here's my plan:

• snooze in with baxter until i'm good and ready to get up
• visit one of the big camera shops downtown to buy some sensor cleaner
• finish sewing shirt that is cut out and attempt a new pattern
• take a bunch of photos for istock
• photograph the three pillow covers i finished up last weekend (the two patchwork and another one)
• make one more pillow cover
• hit a few op shops, either on friday or monday morning
• dutifully drive around and look at a few houses on saturday morning, ones we had not bothered with but will consider now that we're defeated by the search
• spend a day fishing off a pier somewhere with shane if the weather permits
• rent a bunch of dvds to entertain me whilst crafting
• go for birthday dinner with friends on friday or saturday night