Archive for April, 2010|Monthly archive page
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.