Crafty Pants!

A lot has happened in the past few weeks! I graduated college (with honors no less), moved out of my beloved yellow house, and moved back in to my parents house (temporarily I swear!). I am leaving for France in just three days, and I will be there for a month! I am so very excited, as this will be my first trip out of North America. After returning from France, I am moving down to San Francisco, to pursue a career in Software Engineering, and live with my college sweetheart. I am applying for jobs right now, and my future looks so bright!

When I was younger, I was scared of everything. I was scared to go anywhere and talk to anyone.  New experiences were far to frightening, and so I opted to stay home. That is why I became so crafty; I used it as a safe haven.  My, how things have changed! I don’t fear life anymore, and I am ‘chomping at the bit’ just waiting for new things to do and discover.

I feel that I owe this change within to my Alma Mater, my two best friends I made there, and my sweetie. They have inspired and encouraged me to really become the person I want to be.

PS. I’m still frantically trying to craft right now! I’m trying to finish my Light ‘n Lively before my trip:D

Today was such a wonderful day. I wish I had been taking pictures but it was one of those days that you just don’t think about taking pictures. I can only manage pictures on holidays, if that.

Why was my day so wonderful? Well, I live in a big yellow house (really, we even call it the “big yellow house” when discussing it) and it has a porch. A real, live, southern colonial style porch.  We have a big comfy couch, and the railings are really benches. So it is just begging to have people lounge about. We also have a fancy-pants grill on this porch. Since it has been nice, my roommates and I have been having barbecues every day.  We’ve taken to saying that our life is, “one big, long barbecue”. Usually we raid the massive amount of meat our guy roommates left when they moved out, but today we went gourmet. 

We had:

• Fresh caught salmon straight from Alaska.
• Fresh salad with herbs from our wee herb garden.
• Homemade basil hummus with carrot sticks.
• Homemade lemon pudding topped with fresh strawberries.

Everything was phenomenal. Making the pudding and hummus from scratch was well worth it. I can’t believe how easy both are to make, and the difference in taste from store bought is well worth the extra effort.

All four of us girls spent the entire afternoon eating, laughing and soaking up the sun on our beloved porch. I wish every day of my life could be so wonderful!

I don’t really discuss my shop often because I consider it more of my art than my crafts. But I do have to share the new wood that we bought. It’s called Mozambique, and it has a stunning wavy grain. It’s really hard to get a picture that really does it justice…

Etsy :: Exotic Mozambique Wood Ring

This wood is what inspired us to find a good food-grade polyurethane to use on our rings, because the wax really hid the gorgeous grain. We made samples of all our previous rings with the poly finish, and posted them. They really turned out quite nice if I do say so myself:P

We also bought one more kind of wood, but the samples are still in progress. I’d count all these in with my 50 in 2007, but that would feel like cheating!

My roomate is just getting over strep throat, and I’m in the throes of a virus. I almost wish I had gotten strep, because once she took her antibiotics she was healthy in three days!

My joints hurt so bad, I can barely crochet, but I did finish my wee amigurumi bear, pictures later today!

As usual, I am avoiding what I should be doing, and instead doing what I want. Now that I can create my own themes, I have been daydreaming about what I might want to do. To start, I want to create a beautiful hand crafted header (like this or this). I’m not very skilled with the needle but I can crochet, so inspired by these I’ve begun crocheting “Crafty Pants.” It’s quite nice to pick up the hook after a few weeks, and it turns out letters are quite simple!

As usual, I don’t have my camera (’extended’ loan) but I attempted to get a decent shot with my camera phone. Mind you, the letters are meant to be sewn down, so they are a bit out of shape. Now for the ‘pants!’

Welcome to the new CraftyPants! If you see anything broken or out of the ordinary, please leave a comments and I will fix it. I think I am going to enjoy having more control over my website, and fun playing with PHP/wordpress!

Don’t forget to update your bookmarks! 

I have less than 24 hours to write a paper on ethics in computing. I chose software patents, although I wish I would have chosen something a bit more… exciting. But is there ever any thing exciting about ethics in computing?

So, what have I been doing for the past six hours? Not working on my paper! Here is what I have done instead:

• Watched two shows on my TiVo (Heroes and Uncommon Threads).
• Made a fabulous pasta dinner.
• Surfed crochet blogs (ripple along = yum).
• Sorted though stash for possible ripple ideas.
• Picked up my friend for a sundae at DQ.
• Ate the entire sundae.
• Talked on the phone.
• Planned my spring break trip to San Francisco.
• Read for fun and not for school (a rare occurrence!).
• Played with my kitty.
• Folded some laundry.
• Hung out with my roomie.

None of which got my any closer to writing my paper. I better brew some strong coffee (or yummy spicy tea) because I’ll be up all night!

I’m at home right now, celebrating the new year with my family. I came down with a bug yesterday, and have been laying under an electric blanket for the past four hours. To kill time, I picked up a pair of knitting needles. Yes, knitting needles. So this year my resolution is:

Learn to knit

Well, again… I tried ‘American’ style and it did not work for me. Now I’m learning continental style, because I heard it’s easier for crocheters to learn. I’ve got about four rows of shoddy garter stitch, and I think I’m catching on! I still love crocheting so much more, and the switching needles from hand to hand really bugs me. It ruins the flow of creating. I guess it takes time to get used to…

Here’s to hoping I can learn to knit!

Is that I have been busy crafting for my local craft fair. I had been working my fingers to the bone trying to make enough stuff to sell! I did it to help out a school club I’m in, called Roteract. Roteract is a community service club on campus, and does many wonderful things to help out the community. The leftover items are being posted (slowly but surely) to my new store, Chali.etsy.com.

‘Chali’ is the combination of our two pet’s names, Chewie and Ali. After a while, we got lazy and just started combining them! Since my brother, sister-in-law and I all created items for the booth, we felt that Chali was a fitting name. It sure sounded better than “Jaronate” or “Arojesate!”

Our main item are these wonderful handcrafted wooden rings. We spent over four months just perfecting the technique for creating these. They are very durable, and really a joy to wear. They are finished with beeswax, which makes them water resistant and gives them a soft, natural sheen. We are working on finding the perfect lacquer also, but since it will be resting against your skin all day, we don’t want anything unnatural or with irritating additives.

I will also be adding the remaining scarves, jewelry and handmade greeting cards. A portion of the profits will go to continue to support Roteract!