button heaven

Well. The week kind of got away from me there. I blame the sun. The sun! The last few days have been absolutely lovely, and I've spent lots of time outside away from the hopeless little screen. (But probably not enough.) Glorious. This is our summer, so I should enjoy it, since it'll be proper Scottish weather once again soon.

Ahem. Anyway, I did go to Duttons for Buttons when I was in York. How could I not?



The ground floor is where the buttons are. It's small - there's enough room for a few people to turn around in, provided nobody is flailing excitedly. The small size adds to the impact of the button-covered walls, however.



Since each box has a tiny compartments filled with each of the button varieties shown on the outside, the actual number of individual buttons in this shop is staggering. SO MANY BUTTONS. It was great fun poking around in there.

The rickety stairs up to the other floors beckoned, so up we went. Since it was pointed out on my last post about York, I feel a bit bad about how many of my adventures require decidedly unaccessible locations for those with mobility issues. I'm very very lucky that I am able to walk extensively and climb stairs, and in my situation of privilege I don't automatically think of those who have different abilities. The fact that I can do these things while others can't is sad and unfortunate. There is obviously work to be done - however, in some cases I'm not sure what can be done. Installing a lift in an tiny old medieval house like Duttons for Buttons? Yikes. The whole place might tumble down! Get on it, engineering.

In any case. The other floors of the shop have needlework supplies and yarn, and the very top floor has this gorgeous roof. Between this and York Minster, I was sufficiently humbled by medieval engineering. Built to last, indeed.



My mom is a crafty-type as well, with several overflowing boxes of fun old buttons at home. I grew up rummaging through them happily, and probably developed my button-love as a result. I don't recall ever specifically going button shopping with my mother before this, but given the circumstances it could have been disastrous. As it was, she walked away with a grab-bag of miscellaneous buttons to add to that collection. I goggled over them all and settled for two blue buttons. Perhaps not that exciting by themselves.... but check out what I made with them.



I have my button studs at last! I decided that I didn't want the shiny earring post base showing through the button holes, so I cut a bit off the base and positioned it slightly off-centre like so:



Tada!



The perfect souvenir from my day in York. I don't think I'm entirely finished with button earrings, though. Now I want them in every colour. Naturally.

Happy bug earrings

Trawling the internet one fine day, I found some stud earrings with buttons on them. I was seized with earring-love. I thought, I can make something like these!

Button-shopping followed, but without a clear idea of what I wanted, I ended up walking away with some adorable lady bug buttons, rather than the standard round, two or four hole kind I initially considered. I soon acquired some earring posts, and I was on my way.

A few hours later, I had these:



Because I used buttons that have a loop at the back, rather than a flat surface with holes, I engaged in some cutting and slicing. The red and black parts are separate pieces of plastic that can be taken apart and snapped back together. The loop in the back was part of the red piece, and it held the two parts together snuggly. Once I had removed the plastic loop with some wire cutters, the two pieces slipped apart easier, so I glued them together with superglue. Then I glued the whole lot to a gold-filled earring post. Here I balked slightly while trying not to glue myself / any of the bits to anything, and ended up enlisting the help of DH who is a superglue pro. I've mentioned before that we're both makers, and in this case I'm proud to say he had a hand in my excellent earrings!

Tada!



They are a bit larger than I generally go for in earrings with posts, but I do love them. Next time I try this with a button this size, I may get posts with a larger platform. I'm not convinced there is enough contact between the two surfaces, and I keep expecting the lady bugs to snap off.

I still want something like those other button studs, though. Good thing I have loads of earring posts left, and plenty of button-finding opportunities ahead.

something to show

I've regressed into hermitude since my Christmas job ended a month ago, and have been unable or unwilling to come up with some kind of constructive routine. Basically, I've been sleeping, playing with GoodReads, reading, knitting, eating, watching Sherlock, washing and de-pilling my handknits, and spending enough time on Pinterest that I learned how to make a sock bun. Is it any wonder society finds me unemployable? Perhaps not. So I did have two days of casual work, which is better than none. And I have a job interview tomorrow that I've been studying for. If I think about it, I have been doing things - but imagine what I could have accomplished if I actually kept myself busy. My goal this week will be to do more than one productive thing every day :P

As it turns out, now is the time to do all the wedding things, so I've been working on that. Meeting the caterers, tasting food, ordering rings, tracking down essential bits of important paperwork in various languages - sounds more complicated than it was, thankfully. In addition to my shawl, which I'm knitting away at slowly, I've made some flowers for my hair. They need attachment to clips of some variety, but I'll figure it out. I followed this tutorial, and I'm pleased with how they turned out.



I also bought some wedding shoes, finally. I think they are kind of cute.



So. Progress.

A joint effort

We aren't traveling to see family for the holidays this year, so this will be our first Christmas at home in our flat together. That meant coming up with some kind of Christmas tree.

Lucky for us, we both like to make things. My dude came up with a crazy scheme to build a Christmas tree out of dowels and garden wire - and it worked! He did most of it, but I helped. When the modern, minimalist tree was finished, it sat bare for a few days while we thought about how to decorate it. The branches are fairly flexible, and the whole thing is rather small. Then, another brilliant idea from the dude...



Hexipuffs as ornaments! They are very light and small, plus I have them in a crazy range of colours. I put some thread through a corner of each one, knotted it, and then attempted to hide the knot back inside the puffs. When it comes time to put the blanket together, I can always cut the thread and remove it.



I'm sure this isn't an original idea - on ravelry I can find people using hexipuffs for all kinds of things, including ornaments and a hexitree. However, my dear FH doesn't spend all his free time browsing ravelry, so the idea coming from him is somewhat original.

Fun stuff

Some things I'm excited about right now, in no particular order.

1. Shetland Trader Book 1
I've put it on my Christmas list, insofar as I have one, but I'll definitely buy it myself otherwise.

2. Loads of blog give-aways

3. This colourwork chart tutorial by Marnie McLean

4. Arctida's etsy shop

5. Nicholas and Felice's etsy shop.

Generally a very materialistic list of inspirations this time. Hm.

I forgot about these

Back in August/September when I was participating in the Blog Hub swap, I made some stitch markers for my swap partner. I liked the beads a lot, so I bought two extra and made earrings for me.



It amused me to make one have a smiley moon and the other a frowny moon. I want to go bead shopping again soon... Beads are like buttons that way. A good rummage is good fun.

Button button (button)

Last night there was a yarn/crafty materials swap at the knitting group. I had forgotten about it, so shamefully brought nothing to add and I feel guilty about that. I'll be sure to make up for it next time, though. Over the course of the evening, I acquired buttons. Oh, the universal love of rummaging in a box / bag full of buttons.



I tried to stick to buttons in quantities that might be useful, and I picked up these light green ones thinking of a cardigan. Maybe a gray one.



These would look good with gray as well. Hrm. The beginning of a gray obsession?



Just enough cute little red ones to add as details on something. Mittens?

resting the thumbs

"The covers are rugged hand-laid paper of rice chaff, bamboo tailings, free-range hemp, and crystalline glacial meltwater made by wizened artisans operating out of a mist-shrouded temple hewn from living volcanic rock on some island known only to aerobically gifted, Spandex-sheathed Left Coast travel bores. An impressionistic map of the South China Sea has been dashed across these covers by molecularly reconstructed Ming Dynasty calligraphers using brushes of combed unicorn mane dipped into ink made of grinding down charcoal slabs fashioned by blind stylite monks from hand-charred fragments of the True Cross."

~Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

This doesn't really apply to the photo, in fact it doesn't apply in the least to my latest crafting endeavor, but I love the passage. Neal Stephenson once more blows my mind with a thoroughly absorbing, complex, and full novel. Augh, it's fun to read. I'm just over halfway through, and I am not anxious for it to end. It makes me wish I understood math, though maybe that would make it all less magical.

Anyway. While resting my hands which have reacted badly to the frantic knitting that accompanies warm weather and the home stretch of a wintery cardigan, I made a book. (No unicorns were harmed in the making.)



The covers are cuts of an Emily Carr print from an old calendar of Canadian paintings. The inside pages are kind of uneven and edged with pencil marks - cutting out lots of identical pages quickly turned into cutting out enough vaguely similar sized pages. It's roughly based on the chain stitch bound blank book from Alisa Golden's Creating Handmade Books (1998). I've made this kind of book a few times before: the binding is flexible and lays flat, so the format is good for journals.



The covers are a little ripply despite intensive action by the bone-folder and several days compression under a stack of songbooks, but I don't really mind. It fits with the texture of the painting.



I'm a little worried about the condition of my thumbs - they seem to get sore after only a few rows of sleeve knitting, lately - so finishing Basic Black will have to wait for a little while. But I'm so close! Just sleeve-cap shaping, button-band knitting, and other finishing details left.

Just in time for July, maybe. Weather being how it is, I may get some use out of it even then: the other day it hailed, and about half an hour later I saw my first hummingbird of the year.

Halloween

Halloween happened! And ever since I've been consuming large amounts of tiny chocolate bars and other terrible candy in a seemingly compulsive fashion. The appeal of tiny chocolate is inexplicable and only seems to occur for me around Halloween. Ah well, we will finish it up soon enough and maybe I'll go for a run tomorrow.



But Halloween is one of my favourite events, commercialized candy peddling aside. I especially like carving pumpkins. Perhaps perversely. In a fit of the absurd, I carved my pumpkin as a pineapple in first year uni. I am inordinately proud of that pumpkin, even if that makes me extra weird. Eh, I don't mind being extra weird. When I was younger, we'd usually take a family trip out to pick pumpkins off huge piles out at a market where we'd also buy lots of apples. This year we only had the one pumpkin, but I had fun carving it.

I went to a party and hung out with lots of hum friends in various states of (geeky) costume. It was pretty great. Only at a hums party will you find Medea, Medusa (me), St Augustine, and various other clergy represented... Heh. I'm graduating next weekend (WOOOOO), and I've been pretty caught up in the relief of finally pulling off my bachelor's degree, but I know I will miss a lot of things about Hums. Geeky costume parties being only one.

Now that I'm not in school, I'm taking the opportunity this November to participate in NaNoWriMo, something I've meant to do for years, but could never justify - there was so much procrastinating for essays to be done instead! My cousin is also writing, so we got together last night to kick off our novels with a bit of competition. It's good fun. We'll see how far I get. I'm not aiming for brilliance, as I'm told this is ill-advised. Mediocrity will suffice for now!

shame and needles

Tomorrow I have a job interview. I thought I'd never get that far, so I should be happy and excited, but I'm mostly a little ashamed. Whatever, I'll go and it will be a good experience whatever happens - I've never had a face-to-face interview because I'm apparently incompetent at job-finding. Anyway, I lowered my standards and suddenly I have an interview! What does THAT say about me? Could this end with me employed at last? Ha. We shall see.

The interview is relatively near a yarn store, so I'm planning to pick up some DPNS for Liesl afterwards. Hopefully it will go well and I won't feel depressed and tempted to splurge on lovely yarn goodness... / I won't be so joyful that I'll be tempted to reward myself with expensive yarn purchases. Either way. I don't need to buy any yarn right now because I have lots in my queue that I have yarn for. I WANT to buy, though. :P That's probably pretty typical. I'm probably a little too obsessed with requiring self-discipline of myself. If that makes any sense.

Been feeling particularly crafty of late, and I've been experimenting with combining some crafts I enjoy: polymer clay and decoupage. I dug the sculpey out recently after years of neglect, and luckily most of it is still usable.The combination arose entirely from spatial placement of my craft materials. The polymer clay lives in an old cookie tin on a shelf next to a stack of old Cooking Light magazines. I love the colours in magazine ad photos, and I've always liked combining them through collage; I don't feel guilty slashing and chopping apart ads like I would cannibalizing a National Geographic. So far I've made a few disastrous pendants with polymer clay as a base, but with each mishap I think I'm getting closer to something workable. Often I'm not so persistent, hehe. Anyway, I'm having fun. Photos to follow eventually. I need to acquire some kind of sealant/varnish/terrible spray.

adventure in recycling

We went to see EcoEquitable today. They are a group that creates and sells bags made from fabric swatches, vinyl banners, rice bags, and umbrellas among other things. I went with my mom, who brought them some discontinued drapery swatch books from a friend of hers. I'd read about them in the newspaper a while back, and it was really interesting to see where they work. Their website is rather incomplete at the moment, but the boutique section gives a good survey of what they make. It's very inspiring.

While there, my mother revealed that I too was a crafter, and pointed out my homemade earrings. They were enthusiastic and urged me to sell jewelry; though they were probably being too kind, I was flattered. Haha. When I told them I'm not enough of a perfectionist to produce anything that other people might buy, they said imperfections are part of the charm of handmade goods. Which is fair enough, I guess.

While I have no immediate intention of setting up shop, I'm feeling pleased with my latest earrings, so I'll show them.



It's thundery and dark this evening, so I wasn't able to get a brilliant picture, but there it is. The whitish-yellow wire is guitar string, and the beads are run of the mill plastic seed beads. I was going for a Charles Rennie Mackintosh-esque look/feel. I love the shapes and motifs in his work, and I find myself particularly drawn to his roses over and over again. So here I tried to scribble with wire something that reminded me a little of the rose motifs.

Guitar string is tough to bend precisely. I've used it before as the base cord for necklaces, but here is my first attempt to bend it into small shapes. I'll readily admit these earrings are just asymmetrical enough to look like a mistake, and not asymmetrical enough to look intentional, but I don't mind too much. Next time I'll try to find a better solution to guitar wire logistics - I'm not too fond of the join at the top.

some productivity

Here's what I made today:


Granted, all it took was stringing an already-gorgeous glass bead onto a piece of ribbon and tying some knots... so this barely qualifies as craftiness. I have had this glass bead for ages; my mom picked it up a festival a few years ago, and I have looked at it occasionally but never known quite what to do with it. Serendipitously, today the bead met some navy-blue ribbon that I have also had lying around for an undetermined length of time, and I said, "Aha!" Or something.

It's hard to capture the glass in a photograph since it sparkles and shines and is translucent in places. I like it a lot. I don't know if I'll wear it, though.
To be quite honest, I think the ribbon is slightly too thick for this sort of necklace. It hangs a little awkwardly, and it's a little too long, despite my careful (snort) measuring. I can cut it off any time, but since I sewed on some jumprings to facilitate easy fastening, I'm reluctant to do so right away. Tiny tiny stitches. Still, it gave me a sense of accomplishment for about 5 minutes, so that's something, right?

Now, on to Knotions. Not a bad start for a new magazine, I say with all my nonexistent expertise in these matters. I like the format, and I think the techniques section will come in handy, though I know there are plenty of places to find tutorials. I don't think I'll rush out to make any of the patterns in the fall issue immediately, but there are some I quite like.
Oak Leaf socks look like fun.
False modesty is very pretty, though I'd need to go out to more fancy events to justify it.
Edgy is something I could see myself making once I feel like lace again, though it could end up looking a bit too much like a doily if one is not careful. Hmmm.

I'm knitting away on my Tiger Eye scarf - almost halfway finished. I don't think I'll bother knitting two halves and grafting them in the middle. I don't mind an asymmetrical scarf. I won't bother anyone's eyes with more unblocked lace, though.

Knitting in public and Octopi

Today I knit it public. It was my first knitting meet-up of any kind. I'm a bit antisocial. I plan on attending local knit nights in the future. Maybe. Sort of. Eventually. Knowing me I'll never get around to it. This time a friend and I showed up together. Anyway, it was fun and cool to meet other knitters. The weather wasn't stellar and kept changing its mind. We ended up knitting in Bridgehead, but apparently some others did stick it out in a park. Whatever, spreading the public knitting love is all good. We probably got some quizzical looks, though I wasn't really paying attention so I can't say for sure. A woman told us we were cute, though, and asked if we had a particular cause we were knitting for. I worked on my long-suffering vest more today than I have in weeks. Good thing I'm not in a hurry, since I can't possibly use it until fall.

Instead, I have been working on this:


Okay, so I'm largely self-taught at embroidery, and I made quite a few misguided decisions in this creature, but I like it anyway. It doesn't look as furry as I was afraid it would, so that's cool. Yay for hairless octopi. The picture doesn't get the colours right even with significant photoshop tweaking: most of the octopus is bright, intense blue, while three of the tentacles are more periwinkle (meant to be peeking out from behind). Fun, learning experience, now I have some awesome long shorts just in time for my trip to England. Yay.

I also made a pear-rhubarb crisp and went to a chamber music concert. Busy busy busy. Tomorrow: packing, finishing an essay, and trying not to jitter myself to death from giddiness. England! Soon! So excited.

Found

The other day I finally put some of my found jewelry to use.



I found the chain on the ground at a pub in Plymouth, and the beaten up fake pearl, silvery-plastic bead,the button, and a few others in various forms on the ground in Exeter. I still have a few lone earrings, including several huge hoops that I found in Exeter, but they didn't fit this project. The stone chips are also recycled from an old barrette that I made years ago but have no use for now.



I like colour. That should be obvious. What I enjoyed most about this project, other than the 'found' aspect, was sorting through my miscellaneous beads collecting blues and whites that fit. I am drawn to chromatic colours with slight variation that all merge into and play off each other. Sometimes I feel limited by my need to pair blues with blues. I wonder if I'm over-matching. That said, I didn't feel limited here, and I'm pleased with this necklace, though chains aren't generally my thing. I like the possibilities of chains - I may have to invest in some more. It doesn't always hang quite right, which is something to work on for next time, but all in all I'm pleased!

I like flowers, yay - gratuitous photos

The backyard is carpeted in violets and dandelions at the moment, and the forget-me-nots are starting to emerge in the front. The tulips are on the wane, but I had forgotten how many different kinds we have. When I was a kid we had tiny red ones and tiny yellow/white ones, and those are the ones I always remember, but the others always surprise me.





On the crafty front, I'm slogging away at the vest - it's going more quickly than I had expected for smallish gauge stockinette stitch. I'd been embroidering some jeans, since I am always more attracted to that in the warm weather, but my embroidery hoop broke, plus my octopus looks more like cookie monster. (as in, blue and hairy with yellow eyes.) Oops. I'll remedy that eventually.

Knit scavenging

Okay, so false alarm about the alpaca blend basement yarn. I kept knitting, and it no longer bothers me, so I'm going to stick with this Gilmore vest.



I am slowing making my way... I haven't knit anything flat in a long time.

Note the mismatched needles:


These needles were scavenged from second hand stores over the years, or dumped, partnerless, in my basement by a relative. Or something. In any case, they are the same size, so they work fine. They amuse me.

Mismatchedness, scavenging, reusing... I think these are features of my crafting style, if I have such a thing. I like working with found objects: I pick broken jewelry up off the ground with every intention to make something new out of it (I will someday, I swear). I use found basement needles and found basement yarn. Part of my love-hate relationship with the clutter of handicraft seems to mellow with found crafts, since at least I can use something that someone else might have thrown away. I'm not sure if it gets me anywhere; maybe the effect is purely psychological.