Feeling accomplished

Yep, you heard me.  I actually feel like I accomplished something last night and this morning.  I finished my first infinity scarf!  Of course, I had to have pink in it…

I’m not really sure what yarn this is.  I’m thinking it’s Loops and Threads Impeccable…what happened was I came across this afghan I’d started but never finished.  I don’t even know what pattern I was using.  So I decided to tear it out and reuse the yarn.  Then, when I decided to make a scarf, I figured why not use this yarn…hey, it’s got pink in it, right?

I like that you can wear these scarves in a variety of ways…long, wrapped, cowl, tied…whatever.  I think I may make a little tie to match it with some beads on it…what do you think?

This was so easy to make…finished it in less than three hours…chain stitch, single crochet, and double crochet…that’s it.  Oh, and I found the free pattern on ravelry.com.  I can’t believe I waited so long to check out that site (thanks for bringing it to my attention, Donna).

So now, after not working for a month, I finally feel like I’ve accomplished one small thing.  I suppose now would be a good time to start making scarves for charity, wouldn’t it?

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Oh no, I’ve been Pinterested

Pinterest (Photo credit: stevegarfield)

How could I have allowed this to happen?  I kept hearing all of the chatter surrounding Pinterest, but I resisted…until just a few days ago…and now I find myself pinning everything…creating my own boards…looking thru all of the latest pins, then getting sidetracked into viewing other people’s boards…and then repinning some of their pins…does it ever end?

Did I really need something else to occupy my time?  No, no, no…but there’s so much inspiration out there…motivating quotes (you know, for that fitness journey I’m still on), style and decorating ideas, gardening and birds, funny kitty antics, healthy eating, crockpot recipes, and on and on and on…

Are you pinning on Pinterest?  Care to share?

New DIY gardening crafts

I’m a big fan of garden themed decor (think plants, birdhouses, birds, decorative pots…)  So I was thrilled to see some of the new garden themed products in our new expanded wood set…

multi dwelling birdhouse

 

kind of a cut out scroll work birdhouse

I will definitely be buying one of these for myself!

 

planter

 

I can just see this painted to match my decor.

 

rusted tin decor

 

How about this cute little watering can?

 

rusted tin birdhouse

 

Another birdhouse I’m just going to have to have…oh who am I kidding?  I’ll take one of everything!

 

 

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Martha Stewart…love her or hate her?

I have to admit, I’m not a huge Martha Stewart fan, but…I don’t hate her either…I respect the huge business she’s built, I respect that she took the blame for the whole insider trading thing and did time in prison (how many men have done the same thing with the insider trading and never done any kind of time for their crime?  Hmm…something to think about…)

What brought Martha Stewart to mind today was me watching Swagbucks TV (at home, sick) and catching several snippets of her crafting shows…the one I was watching (thinking why didn’t I think of that?) was where they were making mittens from old sweaters.  They simply traced around their hands on a piece of paper, cut it out a little larger, then used that as a pattern to cut the mittens from a sweater.  Sew it up, trim the seams, and turn…oh so cute…really…can you imagine all of the different mittens you could make from sweaters you (or the people in your family) no longer wear?

This is something I really, really want to do…we’ll see how it goes on my next weekend off work…I have lots of sweaters that I never wear…mittens for every coat is what I’m thinking!

 

red sky in the morning...uh oh...

Digital scrapbooking…who knew?

As I mentioned the other day, I’ve kind of gotten into this whole digital scrapbooking, photo card thing in the past week or so…

I mean, seriously, is this not just too cute?  This is what I’m using as my Halloween desktop wallpaper.

This is the Christmas card I designed and ordered.

This is the card I designed for the contest.  I like the card I designed for my Christmas cards better, but I was on a deadline with this one.

Scrapbook page…I didn’t add a lot of embellishments to this one, but I kind of like it.

So, have you done any kind of digital scrapbooking or card making?  I know it’s big, but I didn’t realize how easy it was.  I’m sure I’ll be doing some more later.

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Creativity…so many roads, so little time

It just dawned on me today…if I didn’t have to have a real job (you know, that thing that helps me keep a roof over my head and food in Spooky’s belly)  I could spend a lot more time being creative.  I have so many creative interests, some long-term (sewing, cross stitch,making jewelry, crocheting) and some that I’ve done for  a short period of time (card making, collage).  I would love to have more time to devote to crafting creatively, but I work full-time (and then some), exercise almost every day, do basic housekeeping chores daily and spend at least an hour a day writing (this blog as well as a book I’m working on).  So when exactly am I supposed to find the time to do things that I enjoy doing, but that aren’t what I feel most passionate about?  Do I need to schedule time for creativity?  You know, from 3-5 pm every other Wednesday?  Would that even work?

Some of the things I created came about totally spontaneously…

This is a collage I did when I was just fooling around with some pictures from magazines…it might be just a tad strange, but I sure had a good time working on it.  This is something that really takes a lot of time…each little piece of the picture is cut from a separate magazine picture then all arranged to form the picture.  How do you like the giant frog?  Fun…and the freedom to make the picture be exactly what you want it to be.

This gardening doll, on the other hand, took only about two hours to make.  At one point in time, I was really into making dolls, then I got away from it.  I could see myself getting back into doll making…maybe more along the lines of original, kind of different dolls….not so much the cutesy ones any more.

This cross stitch picture took me several weeks to finish.  But it’s one of those pieces that I feel good about every time I see it (which is pretty much every day).

This is the one and only crewel piece I’ve done.  I can’t even remember how long it took me to finish this, but I’m sure it took me more than a month.

The pink crocheted afghan that Goldie is sleeping on took me a long time to finish.  I really like the pattern on it and it wasn’t that difficult to do, just time-consuming.  And now that I spend more time on the computer than watching tv, I can’t even begin to imagine how long something like this would take me to complete.

While I find myself spending a lot of time writing these days, I do  feel the need to create something tangible with my own hands.  So maybe that scheduled block of time every other Wednesday might just be the way to go…I’ll let you know!

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