Waking Up From Hibernation

It’s been 3 months to the day since I last wrote. It was never my intention to go so long without writing, but it happened all the same. But I’ll attempt to make it up to you.

While in the blogosphere it may appear that I haven’t been up to much, the complete opposite is true. I’ve been making life changes, starting a new business venture, making more time for the things I love (like people and books) and spent a whopping 4 weeks in the homeland. I’ve discovered new talents – such as making the world’s best smoothie, and brushed off old ones – did you know I’m an extraordinary dancer? Ask AR, she’s seen it in action…it’s intimidating.

Along the way I often reflected about music, and thought in blog (the term I’ve created for when you think about something as if you were sharing it). I thought many times of writing about Christmas music, for example, but that’s going to have to wait until next year. So many favorites to share, and memories to retell. I did make one interesting observation though – my least favorite Christmas songs are Baby It’s Cold Outside and Santa Baby. That led to deeper rooted opinion/discovery – I have a general disdain for the use of the word baby unless it is actually referring to a small infant. Suitors take note.

Anyways, here are some highlights of things to come from me in the near future.

WE SELL JEWELRY!

The Crafty Audiophile and Friends now sell jewelry. By “friends”, I mean my wonderfully talented Mom, and by “jewelry” I mean absolutely awesome accessories that you will absolutely love. What? A good business woman always believes in her product. Formal announcement, links, etc to come soon. In the meantime here is a teaser pic.

NEW YEAR, NEW LOOK

With some assistance from my graphic design friends, this blog might actually start to look like what I’ve always envisioned for it. Get excited and stay tuned!

THING-A-DAY

I’ve once again pledged to participate in this year’s Thing-A-Day, where for the entire month of February I will be creative for at least 30 minutes a day and document the process. Here’s hoping I can keep the trips to the local crafty dispencary to a minimum this year. They start to look at you really crazy like after awhile. Once again I’m participating with the very talented Meagan – it’s fun to have someone going through the project with you. I can’t wait to see what amazing things she’ll make.

AND SO MUCH MUSIC

We have BIG things to talk about related to music. I have a lot of songs and memories to share, and musical adventures yet to document. Similar to last year, I promise to keep up with the music blogs during the TAD crafting madness, as I know many of you are not crafters. I’ll do my best to balance the two.

Thank you for your continued support and for going on this journey with me.

Thing-A-Day #28 – Wrapping Up

It’s a blizzardy evening here in Crafty Audiophileland – and while a blanket of freshly fallen snow makes sleeping snug in bed appealing to most, I can’t turn my brain off long enough to fall asleep. Common problem these days.

Pretty snow!

I’ve been listening to a lot of Mumford & Sons lately.  I can’t decide if they make me happy or break my heart.  It’s very confusing.  But that’s an entry for another day.  Seems I owe you one or two of those at this point.

February 28 – the last day of Thing-A-Day 2011.  I made it!  It was an intimidating task at first, but I’m proud of all that I’ve accomplished.  And it reminded me how much I love to craft.  I hope to do it more often, but I’m excited to not be crafting by “obligation” going forth.  It’s like reading for class – never as enjoyable.

I did love the sense of community amongst the TADers though and all the amazing support I received from my friends, family and readers.  Thank you for your investment in my quest and for sticking with me through it.

For the last day I made the three remaining magazine holders.  Since I’ve done nothing but purge since I moved here, I’m not sure I even have enough magazines to put in all of them…but I’ll make it work.  There’s any number of less glamorous items that I can hide in them.

The final three:

It's blue day!

I’m actually pretty proud of the set as a whole.  I hope at some point to attach metal nameplates similar to the ones on the boxes, but haven’t looked into locating them yet.

The whole set:

Oh, the glue sticks that sacrificed their lives for this project...along with a couple of my finger tips.

With a couple of their box counterparts:

They are going to look fantastic on my bookshelves.

It is a wonderful feeling to finish a project that I planned years ago.  One step closer to perfect organization.

But, that’s not all!  I wanted to finish Thing-A-Day in style, so I also completed the second coaster for my Grandparents.  Well, mostly.  Let’s just pretend that it’s a seedless watermelon.

Stark contrast to the winter reality...

So concludes Thing-A-Day 2011.  It’s hard to imagine where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing a year from now, but I hope that I’m able to participate again.  I wish I had the skill set to make one of those awesome photo collages of all the projects I did like some of the participants.  Goals for next year – higher quality photos and summary collage.

Thanks everyone!

Note: A bit of context.  This was written at 2am last night, but pictures wouldn’t load.  That’s why it is being posted late.

Thing-A-Day #27

Only one more day to go!  I truly can’t believe that it has gone so quickly, and that I’ve accomplished so few of the crafts from my original January brainstorm.  But I’m still happy with my progress, and look forward to continued crafting without the pressure of having to do it everyday.  First post February to-do will be to return my living room to an inhabitable form.  Right now it’s so full of scraps of fabric, yarn, glue, foil, and feathers that I’m a little concerned that all the crafting misfits will band together and attack me in my sleep.

Today was full of sleep, snow, watching old episodes of Chuck, the Academy Awards, and A LOT of crafting.  It also meant another trip to the craft store.  My $1.99 plastic canvas needles cost me $25 in other items.  I’m looking forward to avoiding that place for awhile after this.  I could feel the manager judging me today.

I know I have made a practice of taking photos with my phone lately, which is less than ideal most days but resulted in especially poor photos today.  My apologies.

First I perfected my little shamrocks, with a more Paddy worthy green.

Then I decided to make a set of coasters for my grandparents.  I only got one done, but started on the second.

Watermelon!

Close up

My Grandpa is kind of a freak about coasters and watermelons make me think of my Grandma because her birthday is in the summer.  I hope they like them.  I wish the photos would have done the colors justice, as they are beautiful shades of pink and green.

I also cut the fabric for three more magazine holders, so will finish them tomorrow.  I think I might have messed up on my measurements for one piece, so that 3 might become a 2.

Apparently it was hazy in my living room.

Two of those patterns directly match photo boxes.  I wanted to have a couple tie in without it being too matchy matchy.

I’ve been drafting up an entry about music in film and hope to be able to finish it for you all tomorrow.  Be thinking about your favorite scores, because I’ll be seeking input.

Thing-A-Day #25 & 26

Admittedly, I did not actually craft yesterday thanks to a massive headache and general feel crapiness.  But I definitely employed creativity throughout the day – writing reference letters for wonderful students and generally plotting to take over the world with one of my best friends.  Though, to be truthful – that is a creative endeavor that occurs most days.

I tried to kick it into overdrive today to make up for yesterday, but a giant nap resulted in that surge being tardy.  But here it is –

Two more magazine holders!  I’m happy to report that they are getting easier, but I altered one of my finger prints with a really severe hot glue gun burn today.  Don’t you worry, I’m alright.

The two new ones.

They are starting to come together to form a nice set.  I’m not sure how many I planned on making originally, as I keep finding more and more fabric – but I think just a couple more will suffice for now.  The set so far:

The one on the left might be my favorite. Can't decide.

Also, decided to extend my practice of my crocheting skills by moving on to the next holiday – St. Paddy’s!  My Mom found this pattern for me and this is the first one I produced.

Love everything Irish!

One thing I appreciate about my TAD experience is that it’s given me a opportunity to practice crocheting.  Still prefer knitting, but it’s definitely growing on me.  Pretty happy with my clover for a first attempt.  Unfortunately, all I have in the way of green yarn has a metallic thread running through it.  I’m hoping to secure some more shamrocky green this week to produce more.

I wanted to do some plastic canvas work, as I thought it would be fun to do something different – but I can’t for the life of me find a needle.  Might have to venture out tomorrow to buy one.

Only a couple of days left!

Thing-A-Day #24

Covered another magazine holder this evening.  It’s going to be a boring couple of days for you all if I just keep on this same project.  Not so exciting on my side either, so I might have to cook something new up for tomorrow.

That's brown material - though it looks black in the pic.

More excitement promised soon!

Thing-A-Day #23 – Magazines!

Wow – I’m making real progress on a project that I started FOREVER ago, which is a great feeling.  I finished one magazine holder and am headed on to the next.  Bit of a learning curve on this one – in a very literal way after covering those boxes with all the 90 degree angles.  But hopefully I’ll get better and quicker as I go.

In related news, progress will stall soon if I can’t get my car out of the drive to pick up more glue sticks…

Here’s #1 –

LOVE this fabric

Can I finish them all by the end of the month?  Here’s hoping!

Thing-A-Day #22 – Organize!

Got a late start on the crafting this evening due to a late night at my real job, but managed to finish covering the rest of the photo boxes.  Of course like most things of that nature, I finally figured out the perfect method on the last one.  So it goes.  I also started covering my first magazine holder.  As you can see in the picture, none of the ends are tucked in yet.

I think they look swell

With as much time and energy I’ve put into these, I better like this color scheme for the rest of my life.

Thing-A-Day #20 & 21

Sorry for my tardy posting.  My home internet proved too slow for posting this weekend.

On Sunday I simply painted a canvas frame I had laying around, added some owl ribbon (naturally) and the world “laugh” at the top.  I had a particular picture in mind of my fellow staff members in which we are all laughing, and I think it will be a cute addition to my office.

Thanks for making me buy this ribbon, Meagan!

Yesterday I went and picked up an Easter themed felt package.  Similar to the owl mirror I made earlier this month, I stitched where the make believe printed on stitches were.  Not as cute as the owl, but it will do.

Easter's my favorite.

About three years ago I decided it would be swell to have matching storage containers and magazine holders – and started the process of covering photo boxes at that time.  The effort was abandoned, as I was not perfectly happy with how the fabric was laying on the boxes.  Decided to pick back up the effort last night.  The nameplate still needs to be reattached:

So, I have been crafting.  Sorry for the delay.  Only a couple more days!

Thing-A-Day #11 – Valentine’s Prep

After a long and trying week, I look forward to a good craft binge this weekend.  I have to get working tomorrow out of the way first, and then it’s craft, sleep, craft, sleep for the rest of it.

I have big things in store for the weekend – but not much time tonight to kick those projects off.  Instead I put together this cute little birdie’s house – because as has been clearly established – kid’s crafts are awesome.

He got a Valentine in the mail!

Also, many folks over at Thing-A-Day have been producing little crocheted hearts.  While I’ve been knitting since childhood (the first thing I ever made was a blue “bedspread” for Barbie’s bed), I didn’t try my hand at crocheting until a year and a half ago.   And I really haven’t had a reason to try it since.

When I asked my Mom how to make them, she was able to find me this wonderful video.  Seriously, you can learn anything on YouTube.

My first attempt, well – it wasn’t great.

Wee bit lopsided

But I’m pretty happy with my second attempt.

Much smaller and more appropriate yarn choice

I would love to mass produce these this weekend to give to folks on Monday, but I might be busy making pieces of a cupid costume.  Yep, you read that right.

See my entry at thing-a-day.com here.

Thing-A-Day #10 – Finished Calendar

Today I pasted the remaining months from the calendar I was working on two days ago.

Ignore January - it's crooked and the month's over.

They are not as perfect as I would like them to be, and that’s partially due to the fact that my paper cutter is inexplicably on the fritz.  I don’t know if something that isn’t mechanical can go on the fritz, but it definitely isn’t functioning properly.

I also realized that I didn’t mention the previous time that I rounded all the corners.  I love rounded corners.  The corner rounder is the best thing I ever “borrowed*” from my Mom.

(*the kind of borrow you don’t ever intend to give back.  Thanks, Mom!)

To finish off the calendar I just punched holes in the corners, strung ribbon, and topped it off with a bow.

I’m much happier with the results than I expected to be.  A very simple but cute project.

See my original entry on thing-a-day here.