Mustache Mayhem

People at work won't know what hit them....

"Bonfires burning bright
Pumpkin faces in the night
I remember Halloween
Dead cats hanging from poles
Little dead are out in droves
I remember Halloween!"
~ Misfits

Another weekend, almost gone

I haven't done anything creative recently to post about.  My weekend was filled with social activities so I didn't get a chance to make anything.  Tomorrow I'm planning to making a new type of cookie for Atticus (it includes ground turkey), but otherwise, nada.

Gonna go raid the fridge now...

"Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit." ~ R.E. Shay

Too much work

I'm working too much.  I can admit that.  Too much overtime.  Not enough time at home.  I really pity the fool who tries to cross me because I'm feeling particularly vicious from too much caffeine, not enough sleep, and frustration with my week peppered liberally on top. 

Wiped.

"Some folks should just sit down and shut up. Every time they start talking, they demonstrate why the gene pool could use a little chlorine." ~ Jim Amundsen

A flower rug

I saw this idea, and thought it would be cool to make my brother, Jonathan, a rug like that.

So I hunted through Goodwill, and in very short order, found a sheet:

Perfect.

What was not perfect was the next 10-odd hours of rug making process.  Cutting into strips and braiding it was okay - that just took watching The Office for awhile.  Not a hardship.  The problem came when I first went to sew the rug down.  I broke 7 needles (I think that was the final count).  And when I finally pulled the rug away from the machine, it looked like a giant bowl.  I was ready to throw the whole thing out.  Instead, I ripped up what can only be described as a ghastly amount of thread, pinned the rug together this time, and re-sewed.

Its still a little curvy but it is no longer a big bowl.

And upclose...

Jonathan called this morning and said something to the effect of "Thanks for my batman flower rug".  Hmmm...whoops.  Didn't mean for it to resemble a flower, but now that I look at it...

Oh, yeah, and here's his card.  This is getting to be my favorite part of any project - making a card from the leftover scraps.

Happy belated birthday, brother!

Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring. ~ Edward Gorey

Wordless Friday

Only wordless cause I'm laughing too much...

Carry laughter with you wherever you go. ~ Hugh Sidey

Something for me

My friend Sarah gave me two oversize red quilted pillow shams with the question, "Can you use these?"

Why of course I can! 

While I'm not really a red quilted bag kind of girl, here's a look at a bag I made for myself yesterday....I used the general idea from when I made Katie's leather purse, but tweaked it a bit. 

With an up-close look at the Moda fabric interior (clearance from fabric.com!)

Its a bit too big to be just a purse, so I turned it into my new work bag/purse.  It satisfies my need for variety.

p.s.  Mom - another big button!!!!

"I've neutered almost all the males in my family." ~ m.s.

New life

Its nice when I realize I can still do some things right...

African Violet babies.  :)

Finishing up my homemade watermelon wine before I head to bed.  (My coworker makes it.  And to answer your next question - it is 10 shades beyond delicious, but highly potent!)

"Gus, there are no rules against having a seance.  Anyone can have one.  It's like a garage sale.  Or plastic surgery." ~ Shawn Spencer, Psych

Maleficient

Here's some griping. 

I have one line of a Shel Silverstein poem playing on repeat in my head.  The poem goes like this: "I do not want to go to school today, said little Peggy Ann Mckay..."

The line in my head is going: "I do not want to go to work today..."

Same old same old. 

I know a lot of it is me - I need to learn to work with some people and I need to figure out a way to overcome MY shortcomings in working with them so I can help them deal with THEIR shortcomings as below-par coworkers.  Man, if that isn't passive aggressive.  But its true.  Unfortunately, with my job, their shortcomings fall on my shoulders, and then the fact that I can't be perfect and deal with their shortcomings in a perfect way falls on my shoulders too.  No wonder I have no patience.  Because I know: every misstep, every mess-up big or small.  My fault.  Doesn't matter who did it.  Its my fault.  Its starting to get on my nerves.  I told my supervisor I was starting to dread coming to work.  He told me thats something else I need to work on. 

Blargh Blah Hiss

I have all this advice roaring around in my head, so I really don't need any more.  I'm trying to walk in other people's shoes, get in their heads, see life from their direction, trying to bring them up to "my level", trying this trying that etc.  And it always falls down to one moment when I just snap and say the wrong thing the right way or the right thing the wrong way etc.  Then all the past hours of me being patient, grinding my teeth over petty annoyances, and the effort I made to help my coworker all gets flushed away.  And I end up metaphorically banging my head on my keyboard because I know I have to start all over, and do this again day after day after day.  AFTER being contacted by my supervisor who tells me everything I'm doing wrong.

And thats just on my regular shift.  Heaven help me if I work partially on another shift.  Thats a whole other can of worms.

I was told that I need to be myself while being a better version of myself.  Yes, I know.  I'm getting head-pains from all my internal eye rolls.

Wonder why I don't want to go to work?

Anyways, I'm running about 4 hours behind today because of a 12 hour shift yesterday.  Late start, and I'm already feeling blargh-ish.  GREAT!

So, here's a picture of Atticus I took with another special effects camera - Warhol style.

"Sometimes we don't do things we want to do so that others won't know we want to do them." ~ Ivy Walker, The Village

For Emily

For my sweet little niece, Emily...

Happy Birthday!

Her very own apron...with Candyland fabric.  I couldn't help it.....

Up close details....

Atticus helping to showcase the other side (yes, its reversible!)...

She also gets a matching placemat....this side has a Shel Silverstein poem on it...stamped on with fabric paint and rubber alphabet stencils.  You can tell towards the end the letters were getting gunked up.  I should have washed them out halfway through....

The other side.  Its hard to see, but there's a thread sketch of a fork/knife/spoon/plate on there.

The fork up close...

The knife & spoon...

Its all boxed up...waiting for my lazy bum to go to the post office!!

I was going to have PF Changs for dinner.

Maybe not.

p.s.  Thanks for the smile, Michelle.  :)

"I will not play at tug o' war

I'd rather play at hug o' war

Where everyone hugs

Instead of tugs

Where everyone giggles

And rolls on the rug

Where everyone kisses

And everyone grins

And everyone cuddles

And everyone wins."

~ Hug O' War by Shel Silverstein

The weekend

I had a poopy weekend.  Not in the bathroom sense, just in the sense that nothing went right and my mood was in the crapper.  It continually got worse with just about every contact I had with people both in person or via email.  I was about ready to picket the apartment office where I live.  That kind of thing. 

Even poor Atticus didn't know what to do and just about everything he did ticked me off.  Of course his list of accomplishments includes a destroyed stuffed pumpkin that he stole and muddy footprints on my bed, but still.  I couldn't seem to shake anything off. 

The only thing that went right?  My niece's birthday present.  Her mother suggested something along the lines of a backpack, so that was my goal.

I'm discovering more and more that if I have an actual picture pattern (even if I'm the one who draws it), including dimensions, and take my time, I can make just about anything by myself.  I was going to follow someone else's pattern for this, but I didn't really like anything I saw.  So, taking a good look at my old Eastpak, and a little imagination, this is what I came up with for my niece, Eden...

I used pear fabric I got last year before Christmas....I can't remember what I used it for before.  The blue fabric is from a stash I found with my mom while yard-saleing in Pennsylvania this summer.  I think it was an old pair of polyester-blend pants.  :)  

Here's another view...

The back....

A closer look at the straps.  I thought ahead and made them slightly padded.

As always, the next step will be getting it to the post office.  It will join my brother Jonathan's present, which has been sitting in a box just inside my front door for over a week now.  It will also join my niece Emily's present, which I have yet to box up.  Both of those things I will show you another day. 

Sadly enough, I'm looking foward to work tomorrow, only so it might break up my bad mood.  Likely?  Not really.  But one can hope.

"If I can do better, should I?" ~ Jim Rohn

Some weeks

There's just some weeks that put you in a funk.  And you wish would end.  I'm in the middle of one of those.  There's nothing specific that makes it blah, but it just is. 

I've had to psych myself up to go into work this week.  I think I'm just tired of being a target.  Many times I've wondered if getting the promotion is worth all the political and social struggle I'm dealing with now.  My answer to that question is still up in the air. 

I DID however get my first promotional paycheck, and that, along with some overtime money, I was able to buy my plane tickets for my December vacation.  This is a record early for me.  Which is a nice load off my shoulders and to-do list.

So, the spiders are out in Washington.  Have been for awhile, but they tend to make Attie and my walks more interesting.   We encounter the following a lot, especially in the mornings:

No, its not a picture of Atticus, although I would like to point out hes patiently waiting for me to take my picture.  Its the hanging leaf in the right of the picture.  Its kind of hard to tell what it is, so I took a second picture, like "look at this magic leaf thats floating without any help", but it didn't quite turn out and then someone came along and I felt a little dumb for taking pictures of a leaf that was literally hanging by a spider thread.

If you're wondering why the pictures are so big, I just found out if I size them "extra large", then I dont have to bother formatting any of my typing.  Which is the main  thing that annoys me about this new blogger.  Plus, why wouldn't you want to see a leaf and my wierdly wrinkly digits in extra-large size?

In other news, I finally got a cut bad enough to use some of my pickle bandages.  Thats been cool.  Unfortunately, it happened to my index finger that accidentally got mangled by the sewing machine, but oh well.  I've been excited to show off my bandages. 

One 12 hour shift to go.  I can do it.

"When by now and tree by leaf
She laughed his joy
She cried his grief
Bird by snow and stir by still
Anyone's any was all to her."
~e.e. Cummings

Did you ever...

...just want to sit and create something?  Its tough when you don't have inspiration or direction or any ideas.

This is why I like to make cards.  Nothing has to match.  Thread, scraps, etc.  Its all a heaping load of mis-matched colors and textures etc. 

But it always just looks so neat!

Don't be surprised if everyone I know gets cards for Christmas...



Off to take a walk in the rain with my roommate.

"Do you share the same sense of defeat?

Have you realized all the things you'll never be?
Ideals turn to resentment, open minds close up with cynicism
I've got no judgement for you
Come on and ache with me."
~ Against Me!

Something went right

So I saw this idea the other day.  For those of you who don't click the links, its an idea for a reusable muslin coffee filter.  I even showed it to my brother, Andre', who recently wrote back and asked if I had made it yet.

Well, Andre'....here it is!!!!

It doesn't look like much, I know.  And although it looks a little wonky and unstraight, it actually is pretty darn symmetrical.

In my coffee pot....

I brewed water as a trial run...just because I didn't want a coffee fiasco on my hands.

During the coffee trial...

And done!!!!!

MMM....coffeee....



For all of you who were wondering - it works awesomely!  No difference in the taste to the coffee either.  Next time I make one it will fit more to my actual pot.  I modeled this one based on the filters I was using, and I don't think I ever realized that the filters are more of a SUGGESTION of what the inside of your coffee pot is shaped like than anything else.  If that makes sense.  To get rid of the grounds, I'll just wash them into my garbage disposal.  (Sorry, brother, I don't have a compost bin.  If coffee is even compostable).

Oh, and a sneak peak of my niece Emily's birthday present... (yes, I AM one of those people)....

Attie and I are currently munching on cream cheese garlic biscuits that I made last night (I added more garlic than called for, which made them pretty darn delicious).  Then its off to create something else before I start my 50 hour work-week. 

"I woke today, suddenly nothing happened.  But in my dream, I slew the dragon." ~ Colin Hay

Time

Its time to make some biscuits!

"All's quiet, except for this song.
So maybe while I'm not together I can feel like I'm not alone.
And somewhere off in the distance, rapidly advancing, is an onslaught of sorts.
Young sirens wail in a skewed sense of glory.
And the lions in the cages roar at the memory of fight.
And there's a joy, a joy in all I can see.
A joy, in every possibility."
~ Against Me!

Possibilities

A stack of freshly-washed new and new-to-me fabric.

Thirteen inches to be exact.

"I don't wanna defeat you

I don't wanna be sad

I don't wanna forgive you

I don't wanna be mad
'cause it's always say what you wanted to say
as you're walking away
and I can't take this disappointment again
and i'm waiting..."
~ Lagwagon

Torture

There's nothing quite as peaceful and relaxing after a tough week at work than torturing your dog...

"The moon hides behind the clouds

The foothills don’t make a sound

The clocks tired arms continue to spin round

I hold my breath under this ocean of silence

Until I put an end to this mind of violence"

~ The Briggs

A weekend with a friend

My friend Katie came from Pennsylvania to visit me this past weekend.  You seriously can't know how cool I feel this summer, with friends actually paying to see ME.  Its astounding and humbling, really.

We went to Pike Place.  Now that I know how to get there, I'll go anytime I can. 

That's Katie on the left, ordering a bracelet for her daughter.

Our view at lunchtime.

The mean streets of Seattle.

A bakery in Poulsbo

The only picture in which she's not turning from the camera.  Don't hate me, Katie!

Back to reality and work now.  I'm going to have a super-long work week.  And I'm fighting a stomach-bug.  Oi.

But I just received another Fabric.com purchase, plus, my mom sent me all the fabric I aquired in July in Pennsylvania.  I need to pull out the sewing machine and get busy on my niece's birthday present projects.  And Christmas isn't too far off.

Have I mentioned how much I dislike this new blogger?  Another oi.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson