make results!

Though long overdue, it’s time for me to present the fruit of my labors from Make-a-long 2010!  I had three main projects going: hemp jewelry in honor of summer, attempting a new recipe, and the cream of the crop: my amazing screenprint.

Like leethal, I started my day by making coffee.  (About a year ago I finally got a french press, and it is glorious.  Plus, I just feel so cool when I pour my coffee into a cup with my hand on the lid just-so.)  I made a playlist of creativity-inducing tunes and settled in on my first project, jewelry:

 

 Hemp bracelets

I have hemp and beads left over from when I lived in Seattle, and I’ve been lugging them around with me for over a year without actually making them into something.  Cue the April stash-bust!  Time to actually get it out of the bag and turn it into pretties.

 

Secondly, the gnocchi:

Dough and bench scraper

On New Year’s Eve I had an some amazing gnocchi in sage butter sauce, and I wanted to recreate that magic.  Gnocchi isn’t that difficult to make; or so I thought.

Gnocchi dough

I made the potato dumplings the day before, froze them, and anticipated my lovely dinner the next day.  I set my water to boil, tossed in the tiny packets of delicious, and… they disintegrated.  I didn’t have the heart to take pictures of the disaster my kitchen became; I ended up eating potstickers instead.  I didn’t make those; but I’ll give myself a pat on the back for making an attempt.

My favorite part of make-a-long?  My very own silkscreen.  I recently attended a tutorial on this at a local women’s group, and I’d come across craftgrrl’s online tutorial a while ago, but I figured this was a perfect time to give it a go.

I went to the craft store and bought a cheap embroidery hoop, Mod Podge, paintbrushes, fabric paint, and fabric.  The fabric was tricky; the only silk I found was incredibly thick, so I took a gamble and went with a cheap costume-making fabric that had a better weave.

Beer and my in-process silkscreen

If you recognize the icon on my screen, a thousand points to you!  If not, I’m afraid I must inform you, the cake is a lie.

I printed out my image and traced it onto the screen with pencil, and filled in all of the negative space with Mod Podge.  I put at least 4 coats of Podge on my screen, which is probably overkill but I had a lot of emotional investment in this project… I’ve been wanting to express my love for my companion cube for ages.  I decided to let it set, so I didn’t actually print with my screen until later in the week.  The result:

Beautifully printed shirt!

Given the givens, I declare my make-a-long was a success.  Now I have to find more things to print on. 

(I would like to mention that beer is a great addition to a make-a-long, if you’re so inclined.  It definitely helped when my gnocchi fell apart.)

to that dude I almost hit in the parking lot last night

Sorry about that.  My bad.

24-hour make-a-long!

Last night, I blew another 2 hours watching Hulu (fine, 3 if you add all of the youtube-d blooper videos I watched, because I love it when people fail to keep their shit together).  I sit at a computer all day at work, subscribe to way too many blogs and fail to read them all, and with this new-fangled blogging dream I have, I spend the majority of my life staring at a computer screen.

This is my only major complaint when it comes to techmologies, especially when I look at the pitiful amount of free space I have left in my Google calendar.  There is no way on this earth that I can read everything I want to online, compose thoughtful replies to it (online), amuse myself with random internet detritus, keep 3 jobs, stay in touch with friends, visit family, and possibly have any time to myself.

So in short my complaint is this: there’s too much internetz.   Stop being so prolific, people.  It could very easily suck all of my time away.  This means I have to institute some boundaries: including (but not limited to) allowing myself to click on the “mark all items as read” button, even if I haven’t read all items.  Because, I can read all of the sweet tutorials I want to, but if I don’t allow myself time to actually do the projects, what the hell good is it?

At this point, I have to give myself explicit permission to stay away from the computer, because there are so many things I could be doing (job hunting, finally weeding through my mp3s, learning how to format this blog, actually finishing my LinkedIn profile, et cetera…)

Which brings me to my point: Lee, over at her blog leethal, is hosting a 24-hour make-a-long, the goal of which is to get yourself away from the computer and make stuff. That’s it!  She’s coupling it with the April Stash-Bust, which I think is fabulous, and therefore I am going to copycat.

Banner for April Stash Bust

But, I really want to do this.   I suppose I have to use up at least one of those stray skeins of yarn I have lying around first.

So, march’s Saturday, April 10th:  it’s MAKIN’ time.