Tutorial: How to take in jeans at the side seams. Brilliant! I have a pair of “boyfriend-style” jeans that gape horribly at the waist. I’m definitely going to do this.
Category: Crafts
Craft projects of mine
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FeltedArctic tapestry
Aww, Martha made an adorable Arctic needle-felted tapestry for her new granddaughter, Jude. So cute!
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Knitted Royal Wedding
I am going to go on the record as LOVING the knitted royal wedding. I think it’s adorable, and billion times more clever than Jean Greenhowe clowns. Of course, I am the type of person that makes crazy ballerina sock monkeys for fun.
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Shared today on Google Reader
- How to Make a Franken-Blanket – I’ve been toying with doing something similar for years.
- I still love you, Sarah Silverman, by Mayim Bialik, PhD
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Shared today on Google Reader
- How do you transport pavlova? And do you pre-assemble it or not?
- Inventor Makes Fuel Out Of Brewery Waste
- Giant Knitted Squid – Amusing. I tend to prefer knit graffiti that involves actual skill and creativity, like this.
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Sock Monkeys
For those of you who don’t know, back in 2004 I actually posted a photo tutorial for making your own sock monkey. So even if you don’t win this year’s Oscar Contest, you can always make your own!
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The 9th Annual webgoddess Oscar Contest
My annual Oscar Contest is now open! I have added an additional category this year (“Best Cinematography”) to hopefully help avoid ties. If you pick the most correct answers, you’ll win the big prize: a pair of custom-made, one-of-a-kind Black Swan and White Swan ballerina sock monkeys! One is beautiful, pure, and repressed; the other is totes sexy-crazy. They might just be my best sock creations yet. (However, I disclaim all responsibility if you use them to act out the movie and then it drives you insane.)
SPOILER ALERT!
Once upon a time, there was a young ballerina named Nina. She was beautiful and pure and kinda repressed, and her greatest dream was to dance the lead in Swan Lake. She lived with her demanding mother in a tiny womb-like apartment and didn’t have any friends. She was a little weird.
Through a series of events that may or may not have involved a pilfered lipstick and a stolen kiss, Nina got her wish and got picked to play the Swan Queen. As rehearsal wore on though, Nina started to get paranoid. She began to fixate on the new dancer Lily. Was someone following her? Who was that lurking in the shadows and behind mirrors?
Nina was perfect as the White Swan, but she couldn’t embody the sexuality and ecstasy of the Black Swan. She tried everything, but mostly her creepy Mom kept thwarting her. It really started to get to her. She spent a lot of time looking in mirrors. She got a weird rash on her shoulder.
On a night of reckless abandon, Nina goes to a club with Lily, drops Ecstasy, and makes out with a random dude. Then in the taxi, Lily makes a move…
They spend the night together – OR DO THEY? – and it pretty much facilitates Nina’s full psychotic break. She freaks out on her Mom and has some more avian hallucinations. On opening night, she wrestles with Lily in the dressing room and dramatically stabs her. Nina’s Black Swan persona finally emerges.
Exhilarated, Nina dances the third act as the Swan Queen passionately and sensually. As she dances, her arms sprout feathers and become full black wings. She loses herself and transforms into the Black Swan, earning a standing ovation. The whole audience wonders what the hell just happened.
But what becomes of the White Swan? Pretty much just what we all expected. OR DOES IT?
THE END
Actually, I’ve got some more photos so you can see the details of the prizes. First, the White Swan. She features a white dress with feather detail, white tutu, pink ballet shoes, and white feathered headpieces. She has a mysterious rash on her left shoulder.
Next, the Black Swan. She features a black dress with feather detail, black tutu, pink ballet shoes, and a black crown (of pipe cleaners). She has red button eyes and hand-painted makeup on her face and hands. She also features velcro down the back of each arm so you can attach a pair of black feathered wings.
Massive thanks go to Kunaal and Josh for all their help, especially with the fantastic photos. And as always, thanks to the Snook for inspiration and assistance.
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Opera in the Domain 2011
This was the fifth year in a row for our unofficial knitting meetup at Sydney’s Opera in the Domain. We had about twenty people in our group in the end, all gathered together under the stars listening to Bizet’s Carmen. I’d never seen that opera before, but the music was instantly familiar from hundreds of movies and commercials. I thought Carmen and Escamillo were great, but I just couldn’t buy Don Jose as a romantic lead. (I whispered to Rodd that the actor reminded me of this.) There were sound problems throughout the night, especially with Don Jose’s microphone. I have no idea how the people at the back of the Domain were able to hear anything! But the dancing was great, and I was bopping along in my seat to a lot of music. Too bad the story has such unlikeable characters!Anyway, the day actually started long before that. I was the first one from the group to get to the Domain at about 12:40pm, and I could see that the field was going to fill up faster than usual. Reecie arrived not long after and we quickly set to work defining our area with blankets and shade tents. Within half an hour we were already having to defend our spot from invaders! Luckily reinforcements arrived soon and we mostly managed to fight off encroachers. (The nerve of some people! Turning up right before the show and thinking they could plop down right in front of us.) We picnicked and drank wine and knitted and got interviewed by some local news cameramen. It was a lot of fun!
Reecie had an extremely cool little pop-up sun tent. She also specially ordered an inflatable pink flamingo for our camp. HOW AWESOME IS THAT?
Me and Reecie, trying to stay in the shade as much as we could. We faithfully reapplied sunscreen every two hours.
The cavalry have arrived! There’s Sally huddled under a tent, while Issy and Derek guard the eastern frontier.
Tia was the mum of the group for the day, making sure we didn’t get sunburnt and handing round all the yummy food she’d made.
These cameramen came around from Channel 7 news. They interviewed Sally first, then did a shot of several of us toasting the camera. Then they went back to interview Issy and Derek.
None of our interviews actually made it onto the news footage, but they did show us all saying “Cheers!” (Thanks to Daniel for the photo.)
Self-portrait looking towards the opera stage.
It’s the Bazinga Twins! Me and Issy wore the same shirt (on purpose).
Here’s me and a new friend – Amanda (aka Ptinutz on Ravelry). She came in the afternoon and her boyfriend came later. It was great to meet her!
By 6pm it was really starting to fill up and they asked us all to take down our sun shades. Here’s a shot of the crowd. It was really getting difficult to keep people from shoving into our area!
As usual, Mazda was going nuts with the corporate branding. They handed out fortune cookies that contained lousy ads instead of real fortunes!
Just before the opera started, here’s Reecie and Lucas having a little rest.
And that’s it for the photos! Snookums turned up just before the show with my dinner (Oporto and beer – he is awesome). When the show finished, we packed quickly and joined the crowds streaming to the city. Luckily it didn’t take us too long to catch a bus home.
Thanks to everyone who came along!
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Shur’tugal Socks
This was the first pattern scheduled for the “Super Special Six Pattern Sock Club” I’m participating in. The idea is that the group (which is now up to 200 members!) chose six sock patterns via a vote and throughout the year we’ll be knitting them with wool from our stashes. (You can read more here, here, and here.) I have plenty of sock wool in my stash, so in December I tucked away six special skeins for this series. On New Year’s Eve, I pulled one out at random: the Shibui Sock in “Pagoda” (a beautiful burnt orange) that I bought at my Mom’s LYS in Goshen. I wound the two skeins together into a center-pull ball and then I was off!The problem is that I hated this pattern. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s really well-written. I’ve just found historically that I get really, really bored with tiny allover repeating patterns, especially those involving two-stitch cables. (Remember Conwy?) Plus I just could NOT memorise the pattern. Twice I picked it up at the wrong spot and had to frog back. I knitted both socks at the same time on 2.75mm circulars, and I did the larger size. It just seemed to take FOREVER. I was so thrilled to finally cast them off today and be done with it! They are pretty though. More details are over on Ravelry.
I will also admit to some irrational irritation with the pattern just because of the name. Apparently it has something to do with “dragon riders” and it’s from that book I hated.
