• My sister sent me an e-mail to say thanks for the Gryffindor scarf. It’s the funniest thing ever. An excerpt:

    I F***ING LOVE THE SCARF! It is the gorgeous fruit of your labors. It is the manifestation of all that is good about crafts. It is a work of art. I can’t even tell you how much I just KNOW others covet it. They must. I wore it shopping all day yesterday at the mall, and though it was hot as hell and I got all sweaty, I caught smiling glances of recognition from many a potter-loving geek, mom and child. (Jim here at work thought it was a USC scarf! I set his ass straight.) I now feel I must strive to
    live up to Gryffindor standards when I wear TS. I must be honorable and true – and brave and loyal. I am a Gryffindor. I rock.

    How great is that? I hope the others I’m making are so appreciated!


  • My First Sock Monkey

    Sock Monkey“Ehhh, monkey!”
    Yeah, it’s yet another craft. For some reason the other day I decided I wanted to make the Snook a sock monkey. It was a really quick project and I finished it in just a couple hours. I found the original instructions, but I ended up using this page more. As you can see, it turned out all wonky. (His arms, for example, are clearly not lined up.) The Snook likes it though, and he’s named him “Johnny Vegas” (after the comedian that did the On Digital ads with the sock monkey in the UK).


  • Carpenters Record Album Purse

    Carpenters Album Cover Bag

    I am so going to Hell. The big thing on the Glitter discussion boards lately has been album cover purses. Basically you buy an old record album, cut up the sleeve, and fashion a bag out of it. I’ve been keeping my eyes open for suitable albums ever since. Friday I hit the jackpot. It’s the Carpenters’ “Now and Then” album. Saturday I collected all the other supplies and today I made my bag. Is it morbid to carry a fashion accessory emblazoned with the picture of pop music’s most celebrated anorexic? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

    Album cover

    Okay, before you vinyl purists get all up in arms about the wanton destruction of this album, rest assured that it was a bargain basement, scratched-as-hell, one dollar piece of junk. (I plan to turn the record itself into a bowl, but more on that later.) Here’s what the front of the album looked like. As you can see, it was one of the big folded-type ones, not simply a cardboard sleeve. This was nice because it meant I had plenty of cover to work with. A lot of people make small handbag-type things, but I wanted a full-size messenger bag so I planned to use the whole thing.

    Inside

    So the car image is nice, but it was the inside that sold me. Check out this surreal image of Karen Carpenter. It looks even weirder in real life. She’s all Photoshopped and color blocked. I like it.

    Inside

    And of course, on the opposite side we have Richard. Who looks like a vampire. He’s got really pointy eyeteeth!

    Cutting the cover apart

    The first thing to do is cut all the pieces apart. I discovered that two of the trifold sections (the parts that weren’t the record sleeve) were actually glued along a couple sides. So I had to use a knife to carefully separate them. Once I had all six pieces (the other inside piece was the song list), I planned how I wanted the bag to look. I decided to use the front cover (the car) as the front of the bag, and have the side panels continue the image and sort of “wrap around”. Then for the back, I’d use Scary Karen. Inside, I backed the front with the song list, Karen with Dick, and the side panels with some remaining cardboard. I also used a double thickness for the bottom. (The point of doubling the sides up is just to make sure it’s sturdy enough not to fall apart.)

    Laminating Dick

    The next step is to laminate all the boards. I glued the double-thicknesses together and took them up to my local copy shop, but the woman there said they were too thick to go through her machine. So I went with my backup plan, which involved clear Contact paper (the kind kids use to cover their books). Basically I just wanted to waterproof and protect it. So here’s me carefully laminating Dick. I didn’t care so much about the pieces facing the inside, but I made sure that the outsides were perfect and air bubble-free.

    Don't buy these! They suck!

    Okay, so to fasten all the sides together we need to insert “grommets”, which are little round metal eyelet thingies. I bought this package at my local hardware store. It even comes with a tool. (You push them through the hole from the right side and then bash the end down to keep it from pulling through.) Unfortunately this tool sucks. Don’t buy it. It broke within minutes and even when it worked it did a crappy job. So I went to the craft store and found another package that came with little metal bits that you pound with a hammer. These worked much, much better.

    Snook pounding grommets

    Here’s the Snook demonstrating the right way to pound some grommets. I spaced them so that they’d be staggered along each edge and therefore the lacing would cross and look cool. At least, that was the idea. I messed it up on the back side, but you can’t really tell. Anyway, punching holes and inserting the grommets is the worst part of the whole job. But if you get good grommets from the start, it’s much easier.

    Side view

    Here’s a side view so you can see the lacing that holds it together. I used some cheap (like twenty-five cents a meter) vinyl lacing that I found at my craft store. You could also use leather or ribbon or even fishing line. Whatever floats your boat. I went over every edge twice so that the lacing would be criss-crossed. It worked pretty well. Here you can also see that I’ve put one big grommet in the top of each side panel. This is where I hooked my handle, which was just a basic black nylon strap that I pulled off an old bag I had.

    Front view

    Here’s the completed bag from the front. Neat, huh?

    Back view

    And here’s the back, with Scary Karen grinning at you.

    That’s it! As you can see, this made for a really big bag. It’s as wide and tall as a record and the side panels (and thus the depth) are about one-fourth of that. It’s really more like a cereal box than a purse. I like it though. Now it just remains to be seen whether I’ll actually have the nerve to carry the thing… 🙂


  • Photo Roundup

    Amy and Joey

    Isn’t this adorable? It’s my sister Amy and little brother Joey, both wearing the Christmas gifts I knitted them this year. (Yeah, that’s the Gryffindor scarf.) Joey’s even playing with one of the chickens I made him! Isn’t he a sweetie?

    Here are a couple other random photos I’ve been meaning to post…

    The first is my new Venus Fly Trap, which I bought at the hardware store last week. Isn’t he cute? I’ve put him on top of the worm farm, thinking he might feast on some of the gnats that hang around there.

    Venus Fly Trap

    Second is the Snook’s latest brewing invention, a “heat exchange”. As I understand it, the biggest problem for Australian brewers is chilling the stuff quickly enough after you’ve brewed it. He came up with this system, which involves a coil of copper pipe with plastic tubing on either end. The coil goes down in the big pot of brew, and one end of the hose is hooked on the cold water tap. The other end runs into a bucket. Turn it on, and voila! Heat exchange. It worked really well. (And don’t worry, fellow Greenies, I made him save the water to use in the garden.)

    Heat Exchanger


  • SWEEEET. Bob Dylan and Ani Difranco are playing Sydney together in February! I am so there.


  • DAMMIT. I stumbled out of bed this morning and fired up OmniWeb to check the site. My home page is My Yahoo. What’s the first thing I see? Who won friggin’ Survivor. It’s twelve hours to the damn episode and now it’s ruined. I don’t know why I even bother.


  • Festive CouchCam! Wow, with one string of lights I decorated both my house and my weblog! That’s what I call efficiency.

    Later: Apologies. Unbeknownst to me, the Snook turned them off when we went to bed, and during the day the light from the window is too bright to see them. Rest assured, you’ll see them tonight.


  • Holy crap. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you every sketch from The State (MTV’s brilliant but lamentably cancelled sketch show from the 90’s). Now the Snook will finally get my references to eating Muppets and sitting in $240 worth of pudding. Awwww yeeaaaahhhhh…


  • Modern men prefer skinny women. Oh, WHAT. EVER. If that’s the case, you all suck. I’m just glad I found one of the few men who evidently still likes his woman womanly.


  • Secret confession: Not only have I been watching Scrubs… I have a total crush on John McGinley. Yeah, he played Bob Slydell in Office Space (the Micheal Bolton fan). I can’t help it! He’s really, like, muscular and funny and stuff! And he’s constantly ripping on the main character, who I find annoying and odd-looking. Yes, I am a John McGinley fan.



ABOUT

My name is Kris. I’ve been blogging since the 90’s. I live in Sydney, Australia, and I spent most of my career in the tech industry.

No AI used in writing this blog, ever. 100% human-generated.


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