Finally, some pictures!

I'm always saying I'll post some pictures of something or other, and I never do. 

But I am so pleased with this current craft project that I feel the need to gush about it. So you get pictures. 

 I have spun up approximately 1.5oz. of bamboo silk that I won through the awesome Phat Fiber Sampler  Box blog, from Silver Sun Alpacas some time last year (or maybe late 2010?).

 I wanted to be able to make something out of it on its own, so I knew I had to spin very thin or I wouldn't get the yardage to make anything worthwhile.
I spun this to a fine lace weight, about 25 wraps per inch.
I got approximately 225 yards out of it, enough to make a nice lacey scarf thing.

 I chose the pattern Wisp published on Knitty back in 2007. This pattern alternates fishnet lace with garter stitch segments. There is also supposed to be eyelet rows in order to add buttons or ribbon so it can be worn optionally as a cowl or hood. I left those out and made some other slight mods-- fudging numbers.

 A close up of both the stitch pattern (the thin, more compacted areas are the garter stitch) and the one drastic stripe of deep pink that lined up so perfectly with the fishnet segment.

And one beauty shot of how this thing drapes. It is just amazing, I can't describe it.
I just can't believe I am making something so awesome.
I've never knit lace before (honestly never though I would), and even though this isn't the hardest of patterns (only two rows to know, one of which is straight knit) it works up to an amazing lace-- so the shock that I can do it might be what is getting me. I can't stop touching it and scrunching it and waving it and and and...

I hate pink, and yet I still love this project. The subtle(and not so subtle!) variations in colour are amazing.  I may just be becoming a lace knitter... which is insane, but hey...
(And considering my natural predilection for spinning  really thinly, maybe it is for the best.)

A more life-y update

As of the airing of this post (Which should be a Sunday, if I've set the advance thing right, and don't think of anything else to post between now and then) there will be three weeks until I head back to school.

As of the writing of this post, I am set to move in on the 4th of September.

Since I don't expect much of the life-changing nature to happen between now (last Sunday) and next (this) Sunday, I figure I'll make a post of what has happened since I left school in April. It's not much.

After exams my mum picked me up from residence. Long drive home, yeah. Once here I spent a few day relaxing, waiting for Queen's to tell me when they wanted me to start working. They didn't, so a week or so in I emailed, got some shifts, and the trudge of this summer began.

I had decided to come off my anti depressants in February, and was fully off them by the time I got home. Combine this with a bit of new-found confidence and self-esteem and a step-father who is... eh, less than all there, and we had problems.

We don't really get along well a lot of the time, through miscommunication and his abhorrence of being wrong. About anything. Ever.

Anyway, a few blow-ups later and things are kinda worked out on that front now. Sort of. As long as I don't say much.

Oh, and it didn't/doesn't help that every time I have an emotion other than cheerful I am told I am depressed and should go back on my meds. But whatevs, right?

I applied for OSAP later than I would have liked because, despite my nagging, my mum didn't remember/had no time to get the tax returns filled out. Yay.

That led to getting my fee deferral forms in at the last moment (Quite literally), raising panic and illness from stress in me.

Not to mention a $1000 fee from residences I overlooked.

But that's all worked out now too.

I saw my dad one weekend, and even got to see Lee and meet her new(not really, just haven't met him since she met him in January) boyfriend. Seems like a nice guy, I guess. Kinda hard to approve of someone in such oddball circumstances.

Upon coming home I was told I would be moving my room out of the basement as it would be becoming a spa for my mum to work out of.

My aunt was going to rent our family room once we made it into an apartment.

Then she was going to rent the basement, but we needed to put a bathroom in.

Then she decided to go move into a seniors apartment complex.

So we started the construction of the spa/clinic/massage therapy rooms in our family room.

There is now no one in the basement, as I moved upstairs in preparation for this kerfuffle.

Yay.

Work was/is boring and hot. I wake up every morning debating the worth of that extra $48 gross.

I missed a lot of work through illness, construction, transport issues and plain "idunwanna"s.

But I've still managed to make close to my goal for this summer.

Last weekend was the Verona Cattail Festival. It was also when a friend came down to Kingston. Brought one of her kids and her new(not really, just never met before) boyfriend (I see a trend here) from Australia. Nice guy for sure. Putting up with kids that aren't yours is a draining thing to do, and he seems to handle it well.

Now I'm practically counting the hours (not yet, though I am counting the days) until I can get back to my home port and be a bit freer to do things of interest.

I have been playing Minecraft (don't tell anyone, I'm still saving the money, so I'm being bad and illegal. Very soon though I will have the total and then I can stop the icky feeling in my gut) and reading. I should have a book review of one of the books up soonish.

Oh oh oh, and, a classmate contacted me about making some hats for her. She does baby (and probably other) photography and wanted cute newborn hats. So I have a bit of money coming my way from that, as well as a possible in to a market. If people ask her, they can buy sort-of through her. This could work out well. -nodnod-

I think that is all the excitement so far, but I have a week to add to this post (through the magic of delay~), and you'll never know the difference!

Still Alive

No, this isn't a post about Portal, though that song is quite catchy.
Just saying that I'm still alive, despite not posting here in over a month.

Haven't really been in the mood, and haven't really been doing anything worth talking about.

I am re-enrolled in classes for next year, yay. That went through at the very last moment of today.
I applied for my Gen-Eds, with Healthy Living as my first choice. Second is Reading for Recreation, third, Science Fiction.
My roommate to be and I are getting psyched. She and I are in the same class, so decided it would be mutually beneficial for us to share a room.
I just hope we don't end up hating each other.

I picked up bead spriting. Which is basically a means to bring my loves of pixel art and melting things with a clothes iron into one craft.

I have been, for a long time now, rather upset by the number of crafts/hobbies I have.
I can't afford all of them (obviously. I have the time but not the money for anything, really), and I can never really excel at any of them.
So I put a lot of effort into thinking about how to narrow my choices. I never really come up with any conclusions.

Paper making has to go. I know, I've talked about it here several times, and I realyl do enjoy it, but look at it this way:
Soon (in the next two years) I will be moving out into the world on my own (or, likely, with roommates) Probably into an apartment or small house. Where will I put a large 3x5' vat of water? Where will I let 11+ sheets of sopping paper dry?
It is a space thing, mostly.

Knitting and crochet are on a back burner. The wool I have now, I am confining myself to.
Spinning is allowed to continue, and I can then knit/crochet with that. It is a good solitary thing, and stick spinning is also good for doing around people. Transportable. A high Pleasure:Cost ratio, too.
Felting sticks with spinning. I like it too much to get rid of entirely, and the materials pack down into tight places when not in use.

Writing/conworlding/languaneering( I like this term. I may have just made it up >.>) stay, because they take up little to no space (except on a disk drive); because I don't think I can ever stop; because they keep my mind sharp and active; because if I abandon all I have created, in a hew weeks I'll want it again and I'll be cursing myself.

Pixeling and, by relation, bead spriting: I want these to become a forefront activity. Pixeling is art, and I like art. Bead sprites allow me to bring that art into something tangible. I like tangible.
Plus, if I get better, I can make 3D objects. (Better than the one 3D I've made so far, at least.)

My problem with video games is that I don't get enough enjoyment/use time out of them compared to cost. I love playing pokemon, but I don't want a DS just to play them. Some PS3 games interest me, but I know that compared to the cost, they aren't worth it.

What I really need from a hobby is something that is fun, I can do by myself for the most part, but engage in a social side of it from time to time as well.
I thought once that DnD or Heroscape would do this for me.
Then I realised that, while I have friends, I don't tend to have friends who want to do the same things I do, or for the same reasons, or at the same times or....

I don't work well in social mediums I guess is what I'm getting at.

Which is my task for this school year, according to my counselor.
Yay.


Tangent much?
yeah, you should get used to that around here.
Neseta usoma!

A week of no post. I know, unprofessional of me.

The deckle did not work as it was laid out to, however I think this is a fault of my inferior mold. I was able to pull a couple of test envelopes by covering the deckle in screening, thus making it into a shaped mold, but they are not of the quality I require. More thought must go into this.

I have been watch Star Trek. The Next Generation, not the original or any of the more recent ones.

I prefer Picard to the other captains, plus this one has Data, a much favoured character of mine. Perhaps because of a philosophy class in which (while discussing metaphysics) we watched "The Measure of a Man" an episode from the second season.

I started last Monday, and am now half-way through season three of seven.

I crafted some communicator pins out of sculpey, but I believe they are too brittle for the job I wish them for. I hope them to be costume pieces for a friend of mine. She has a greater interest in Star Trek than I, and I vaguely recall suggesting I make one for her.

I need to find a less brittle substitute, or perhaps bake the sculpey longer, I'm not sure.

The construction is coming along well. By then end of today I anticipate the drying of drywall mud precipitating the beginning of flooring.

I have been pixeling. I think that I have made some progress, and that my time away has allowed me the confidence to see that.

The other day (Thursday) I was waiting for the bus (it is to become a common occurrence as a way to bring me closer to home after work.) on the Queen's campus.

There were graduation ceremonies, I believe, going on.

I thought I saw someone who was once greatly important to me.

However this is unlikely, but it stirred feelings in me that I am evaluating. It is a good notch on a stick of reference.

Anyway, I tire of this entry. Another episode is in order.

More Paper stuff

Ugh, yes, yes, I've'nt posted anything since Thursday. Yes it's Sunday.

There just isn't much to say.

I got a piece of MDF-like board to make a deckle out of (A whopping 2.09$).

A deckle, for the uninitiated, is basically a mold for the paper pulp to follow (though there is something else called a mold, so it would be confusing to call them both that, ne?)

My mold (a frame with screen stretched over it instead of canvas) is about 11x14" on the inside, meaning that if I pull it straight (with no deckle on top) it give me sheets with a wavily-flurry-soft... uhm... not-straight/smooth edge that are about 11x14". Which is nice, there are a lot of things you can do with an 11x14" sheet of paper. (Folded in quarters it makes a nice size for a notebook sheet)

But sometimes I want something else. Like an 8 1/2 x 11" sheet (Letter) (Or 8 1/4 x 11 3/4" (A4) if you are not Canadian or American. Though I wonder why the International sizing of paper isn't in metric?)

Or, in my case, ENVELOPES. Yeppers, I'm making envelopes. I hope to be selling paper things, and past notebooks and plain paper, envelopes are a good start.

And for that major project I mentioned, I need about 100 of them.

Yup. Count em, 100.

And do you know how tedious it is to cut an envelope by hand?

Very.

That's all you need to know.

So doing 100 of them? No. Nuh-uh. Not happening.

So by using a deckle I can restrict the paper pulp from covering the whole mold, and pull envelopes out of the vat on their own. Yay.

Now if I could couch(lay out) more than 11 sheets at a time, this wouldn't take shy of a week to do.

I'm thinking I'll get two more boards and a bunch more fabrics (and possibly more clamps) so I can at least couch about 20-25 at a time.

I want to try out some textured fabrics, like canvas for drying on.

Add that to wanting to try denim paper, lint paper, plant dying, plant fibre paper, embossing, additives, and more notebook styles, and you've got a lot of things I hope to accomplish.

My main point of pursuit right now is colour. The way I've gotten colour before is by starting with colour papers.

Which is great.

If you have coloured recycling.

And right now I'm lucky to get any recycling that isn't box card or cardboard.

So I have a lot of brown going on.

But this project (which I swear I will go into more later) requires purple.

I've been trying to find ways of dying paper, and it's a hard thing to research for some reason.

Right now it is looking like I am going to be trying out a red cabbage dye.

I hope to find some kind of commercial dye, or at least something more reliable than my plant works.

I've got mum asking on Freecycle for recycling paper so I can at least have a good amount of pulp going.

I also just did a test of "fixing" paper (making it more water fast, so it won't run as much if you use inks on it) by adding a heap of cornstarch to the water. I don't know how much is needed, but it felt simultaneously like a lot and not much at all. (You use so little in most cooking things, but this vat is about 2 1/2' x 3 1/2' x 1 1/4', and half-full. So to make a mark in that much water?

Whatever.

Anyway, I've ranted enough for now, I've got books to read and a deckle to cut out.

Good luck, have fun, don't die, I'll miss you.

Life, update, yay?

I was trying to think of a witty portmanteau of "Life" and "Update" but I couldn't so you get what you got and you'll be thankful for it, dangit.

Anyway. Life is as life does around here. I've been going to work, coming home, dicking about, sleeping and starting over.

And I'm tired. Not excessively to the point of hypersomnia like I've hit before (46 hours of sleep is not normal, no matter how you justify it!)

Just, worn out from the day. I feel active and good while at work, and then after work rather quickly die down to kinda sore, kinda tired, before going to bed at a reasonable hour.

It's odd. It's so normal, it's odd.

And I'll tell you a secret. I kinda like it.

Now if it weren't for the drive to/from work, and the constant tension between family members, I'd be at a great place.

But as it is, I'm kinda just coasting. I feel good and strong, albeit a bit unhappy. But I'm not depressed like I was. I'm hoping that carries through the school year next year. Maybe I don't need to be on anti-depressants anymore. I'm doing well without them now.

Then again, maybe I just need more instant satisfaction like work can give me.

Oh, I pulled another eleven or twelve sheets of paper the other day; they're flattening out... somewhere. (Oh dear, where did I put them...). I've cleaned the vat out and frozen the pulp; I want to start a more major project... I don't know when. You'll get some updates on that when I know more. However I hope to put pictures of the love-note set I made up soon, I think they are nice.

But moving on; I've been to the library today after work, and picked up a few books. So I've reading. (I finished a shorter novel already- a teen fiction)

And I realised keeping the Books in My Arsenal blog going is silly; so, if I can work it, the old posts from there will be merging over here. If I can't, we'll be getting some updates here of those posts.

As for the conlanging series, don't expect that to be drifting into nothingness; I'm just taking a bit to figure how I want the next part to go.

I've been playing with pixels again, to the detriment of the conlanging work, I'll admit.

Whelp, with that, I'm tired and I have books and pixels to work on. I shall see you tomorrow!

The art of paper making

So some of you may know that I'm a crafty geek, and enjoy fibre arts the most.

How many of you have thought about paper making before? It is a fibre art too! Just, different fibre.

I got into making paper maybe five years and a house ago. Set up a vat, blender and screen in our basement laundry room and churned the stuff out for a few months. Then school, cold weather and depression put a kibosh on it.

Oh, and moving to a house that doesn't have a drain in the floor of the basement. And had a fully carpeted basement for a time.

So I slowly ditched all the made up pulp, cleaned the vat, stored the screen and pressing boards, ditched the old cloths.

I made journals for all my teachers in grade ten, cards, backings for poems and neat art paper. Even a box to hold 105 tiny paper stars (about 5mm or .20in across) for a very special person.

After stopping I got into writing, geofiction, conlanging, reading, crochet, knitting, spinning, weaving, braiding, sewing and more all over again. (The first three were more prevalent for the first two years while I dealt with the aforementioned depression.) So I'm happy I stopped, it opened the door to a lot of other things I had ignored.

Fast forward to about a month ago. First year of college was ending, and I was looking forward to a summer of boredom, work and boredom.

So I thought, hey, paper!

Well, that and I was thinking about things I could add to an Etsy shop or similar, and dying/spinning wool seemed to expensive/time consuming for a start up. (Plus I'm not sure I would be able to give up the things I made >.>) Then I remembered the paper, and how so many people fawned over it and wanted things made from it, and thought it would be a good idea.

So I tore the old screen off and got a new, tighter one. Found and washed my old vat. Spent days trying to find a second hand blender, and eventually my mum said I could use the house one. If she ever wants one, she'll get another. (She barely used this one. A nice new blender for me!)

The furnace room was stripped of carpeting last year after the oil spill. (Torn up by a friend and I), so I do most of the work there (Until I can convince mum to tear up the disgusting carpet in the laundry room.) I've made two posts of sheets in the last three or four days, and will probably pull another today (Though I may experiment with some other fibres. I never got too far into the experimental last time.)

I hope to make some pulp out of old blue jeans and dryer lint soon. Maybe next summer try out some plant fibres. (Probably have to wait longer than that. I'll be done school then. Looking for permanent employment and housing...) You will probably soon get sick of the flurry of paper-making posts I feel are to come. Pictures too, hopefully!

I hope to make gift/greeting cards, some finer stationary, envelopes, boxes... Things are looking crafty around here.

So tell me, intrepid reader, what kind of crafts do you do?

Craft Gawker

Another interesting website, CraftGawker seems to be a place where you can favourite crafts and art and the sites that host them. I haven't fully explored this site yet, but it sure looks neat.

As always you can find me there as ekobor .