Want want want

I think I have too many hobbies. It all started with jewellery, and that was about 4 years ago. Now I knit (badly), crochet (even worse), am trying to play the violin (haven't got around to fitting the new strings yet so "play" is a bit of an overstatement), am learning Japanese (even though I have forgotten most of what I spent a year learning last year) and now am sewing. It used to be tough enough to just fit in making jewellery every day. But with all these new things I'm finding myself with an unfinished project here there and everywhere. I think it's time to take things back to basics, concentrating on one thing at a time, or allocating certain days to certain things. My life doesn't seem to have enough hours spare.

Crafting isn't the only thing that needs to go back to basics. It's probably one of the lowest cost hobbies you could find, especially when you get something out of the other end that you can actually use or enjoy - a finished product. But there's something else I love that saps up a lot of my resources. And that thing is called cute. If it's cute I can't resist. But as I pointed out in my last post, I'm starting to appreciate things less - I'm starting to miss that buzz of childhood when you have to save your £2 a week pocket money to buy something you'll really love, and at Christmas or on a birthday when you'd get something to really treasure for years. I'd like to recapture that, so here's my mission. I've seen a journal I'd really love to have, with the ultimate for cute on the cover.
This is a journal by Meomi which ticks all the boxes. If you know me at all you'd know I love books. Especially hard back books. With lines preferably but still, this book is beyond cute. It's only £7.65 but I think I should take the time to evaluate whether or not I'll still love and want this. So I'm not allowed to buy it until next pay day, that's 13th February. Agh the willpower will have to be strong.

RIP Cybershot

The inevitable happened today, my camera broke. It's something that's never happened to me before, I've always been very psychotic about keeping my things safe and neat and in perfect working condition. My old Game Gear doesn't even have a scratch on it. But it comes with having more money and thus being able to buy more stuff - you start to take things for granted, take less care of your things and become careless. Which is what happened to my camera. I left it close to the edge of an already crowded table and it took a dive for the floor, leaving a little crack on the screen enough to render it useless as a digital camera, all it's good for now is looking through the peephole and shooting, and slowly transferring the images to the computer. So, time to get a new one! It's a sad day, I'd grown quite attached to it actually and will be sad to see it gathering dust in a drawer. On the upside, this is the new one I'm getting.
Very pretty, and much functional. Apparently it has face recognition, you can set it up to recognise and automatically take photos when people smile or laugh! And it also has super- dooper anti shake, which to be honest I will believe when I see. There is no camera known to man that can evade my shaky picture taking. I tend to have to lean on things to keep everything sharp!

Yay for ebay

I finally borrowed some knitting needles as I was given some wool to practise with. I was convinced that there was at least one crochet hook lurking around the house somewhere but I still can't seem to find it. I'm not one to sit on supplies though so I've been trying to knit instead. My first attempt was as to be expected, riddled with mistakes, the biggest of which were two little holes. It's hard for someone like me to knit - I'm used to being able to take apart a necklace and fix the bit in the middle before putting it back together again - which isn't really something you can do when you're knitting especially if like me you don't know how to undo your stitches and put the rest back on the needles. My second attempt somehow ended up in a rainbow shape. The third attempt was a impressive squarish shape with only one imperfect row. So now I consider myself able to knit, well, in one stitch at least!

On the more successful side of life, I've been busy making glass pendants with the chiyogami paper I'm so obsessed with. I love how no matter how many different ways I try to position it, and decide on the best look, the bit of scrap I put on the back for extra detail is always the nicest pattern, and just where nobody will ever see it.

I also received 8 porcelain manekineko beads in the post today. I'm not sure exactly where they are from, I'm beginning to think they are from Japan because they are of such beautiful high quality whereas all the Chinese beads I have seen have been poorly made and painted. They're so cute and so perfect that I actually spent around an hour and a half making one into a necklace, making and remaking links so that the necklace is as perfect and fault free as I can get it. I usually don't spend too long dwelling on minor mistakes. As long as it's nothing that's going to compromise the design or function I simply move on and learn for next time I make something. I actually used a chain making method that I haven't used for about 3 or 4 years, where the wire is wrapped around the link next to each bead. It's a really time consuming method and can be rather painful and frustrating. But somehow I didn't care how long it took or how much wire I wasted redoing it until it was as perfect as I could get it. It's nice to have that kind of love for the craft again, rather than being too business minded.

Stratford and lucky stars

Well, I just got back from Stratford (the Upon-Avon variety). If you didn't know, Stratford is the little town where Shakespeare lived. It has a picturesque river running through it and tons of old old Shakespeare-esque buildings lining the streets, including strangely enough Shakespeare's house. I've been to the town millions of times but somehow I've never managed to actually visit the house, probably something to do with how creepy it feels just standing across the street looking at it.

My new found urge to knit and crochet means that I'm now on the hunt for wool and needles and everything else. Being a small town you'd expect Stratford to be full of strange shops that you wouldn't find everywhere else. It's actually quite weird to walk down a shopping street now, there are so many vacant units because of the current economic situation. It's no wonder online retail is taking off, it seems like it's helped to kill the stores, but the stores' demise has only helped make it stronger as we have no option but to shop online. I can't even seem to find somewhere to go to buy wool to make amigurumi zombies.
Speaking of which I ordered a copy of Creepy Cute Crochet by Christen Haden which I hoped would help me get off the ground with crocheting. I was kinda disappointed to find that there's no guide for beginners for crocheting, you actually have to buy some other book with techniques for beginners before you can start using this book. So I guess I'll be cruising YouTube and other places for some tutorials but I suppose the book will be an incentive to keep pushing forward with learning. I'm famous for my lack of drive, I can pick something up and just drop it when it becomes too challenging or too monotonous only to pick it up months later.

To keep myself occupied while I wait to perfect crochet I've been churning out origami stars which are stupidly simple to make but kind of really addictive. I'm not great at it yet, but as they say practise makes perfect. They'd be perfect as little free gifts to send with Etsy sales, although maybe not these ones I made out of misprints and the Lego catalogue!

Blogging!

It's so easy to spend hours and hours reading over the blogs of complete strangers. If you know me, you'll know I love to make things, especially jewellery but more recently anything at all "crafty". Notice the " around that word? It always somehow conjures up images of old ladies, or tabletop sales in smelly old churches where people are selling doilies and bookmarks made of lace clippings. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that it's not an image I'd necessarily like to be associated with. So what's going on? Crafting has become fashionable again! Maybe that's in my own little world, maybe you're reading this and your jaw is dropping to the floor, because it's just not the same as drinking binges or... something else that is the thing to do right now. I digress. You'll probably notice that will happen a lot, it's like a talent of mine or something. Anyway, how is crafting suddenly cool? Well, people have started to throw a few more things into the mix...

Sackboy Amigurumi anyone?
For those of you living under a rock Sackboy is something of a Sony icon, being the foundation of the uber-fun game Little Big Planet. Which funnily enough is like crafting for gamergeeks, you create your own levels out of materials so that they look like they have been made from random bits of junk from around your house. It's hard to explain, I guess you have to play it to understand. This little guy below was found in RugRats at Etsy but you can pretty much find Sackboys everywhere at Etsy.


I told you I'd manage to wander off-point. Reading crafter blogs is even more fun than just reading any old blog because you get to pick up new techniques, find inspiration to do something different or just oooh and aaah at the things people are making and doing. This is exactly how I stumbled across the technique for making glass tile pendants, which is my latest obsession. The first crafty blog I ever read was Kawaii~neh, a blog by a girl in Malaysia who is to be fair more obsessed with Tokidoki bags than me, which is rather impressive. Glass tile pendants are pretty common on Etsy alongside scrabble tile pendants, and are usually decorated with Japanese floral patterns. The girl at Kawaii~neh (still not too sure of her name) did a twist on this and cut up little Japanese cartoon characters to make something that I'd never seen done before. So I decided to take inspiration and make my own.

I'm obsessed with all things cute, especially from the center of cute - Japan. Of course this means that I find in my possession a small mountain of cute cartoon memo pads, especially from San-X which is a branch of the company that is responsible for our favourite Kitty-chan, Hello Kitty. It was only natural that I made good use of the resources at my disposal.

On another note it's a brand new year give or take a couple of weeks and everyone's out making their new years resolutions. But this year I decided to try something a little different, instead of just doing something new to improve myself because it's a new year, I'm going to do something new just to improve myself. Because it's always good to have improvement in your life. Whilst having nosey-time around various blogs, I found something that really spoke to me. It was a piece of advice from someone I'd never heard of, but still:
It's almost like in that little bit of text, there's not a single wasted word, not a single misplaced comma, like poetry, aaaaahhhh it's good. It's advice about blogging. But it's kinda true to everyday life too. Apart from the explaining to one person you respect thing, because I only know so many people, and I think it would become annoying if I had to re-explain over and over wouldn't it? Sound advice.

It's been a while.

It really has been a while hasn't it? August was quite a few months ago wasn't it? Well, what's happened since then? No more cookie adventures that's for sure, there's a box of pre-mix shortbread sitting dormant in the cupboard somewhere, but I can't seem to lift my fingers to bake anything. I have all these different flavourings I wanted to try too... like is strawberry shortcake an actual possibility? We shall find out one day. But for now the culinary obsession is bento. I now find myself in possession of 3 bento boxes, 1 octopus hot dog shaper, 1 sushi rice block shaper, several pairs of kawaii chopsticks, 1 packet of sushi rice, mirin (!!), mini hot dogs and sake. Although, the sake's not mine. I shall thieve some nonetheless. Pictures to follow. It sounds like it might be messy.

What else have I been up to? Well, I am now engaged actually, as of 22nd October. *Big cheesy grin*. He's everything I ever wanted. Since I was 17. Very much. Love.

I have mastered the art of glass tile aanraku bail crafty pendant fun, which is really making my day, since it's so very straight lines and symmetry, which if you know me you'll know is the basis of my existence. Or something like that. Only thing is, it's rather 'spensive, so I'm currently draining my bank account for glass pendant fundings....

It's really late... zzz... 'til next time...