doodleblog.kaliane.com

in between fiddling with madame moccha and um, whatever else it was I was doing, I dyed my hair today. The girlchild is not impressed, but we can’t have everything. She wasn’t happy when I got it cut a few weeks ago either, but I am – I defy even the MOST shortsighted old dear to confuse me with my mother now :p~

running out of time to get my challenge for our show done. SIGH. Would help if I knew what I was doing. Messed around on the embellisher to see if one nebulous idea would work, but I’m not fussed on the result. Crappy sample to left – the glittery tulle part worked to give a hint of stars behind the other layers, but what I thought would work for misty moonlight didn’t. At all, and neither did the other couple of things I tried: the embellisher just makes it too solid. So, don’t know. May still end up using it to felt some insubstantial tree trunks, but I think I’m back to fusibles & stitch for the primary portion (in which case I’d better pull the finger out pronto heh).

and here’s the psychedelic dollikin finished, and madame moccha ready for the quilted skirt I decided she needs. And hands, whatever I end up doing there. I’ve never built a doll like this; I usually draft a pattern & go from there (then again, I usually make dolls the size of toddlers lol).

laughed my overlarge arse off.

dollikin #2, some sort of caffeine queen. No idea what form her body will take yet. See, I knew I’d need that coffee bean fabric one day. And I HAD to have the “coffee bean” glass beads.

Tonight I decided to do something useful while watching my nightly dose of murder & mayhem (tonight: Criminal Minds. Hush now, I like it) on the teev. Well not useful, exactly, but kind of killing two birds with one stone: making a little dollykin from the fabric & yarn that demanded to come home with me and become something girly, and avoiding feeling guilty for sitting down watching tv when there’s so much other stuff to do. I guess could have tidied my workroom a bit instead, but I shovelled out underneath my desk already today & that’s enough virtue for one day.

Anyway, WIP. She’s got some beading left to be done. I used the frouffy long pompom-maker gizmo to give her a mane. I’m really not sure I like the gizmo, to be honest. I think I need to stitch some ribbon or something down the centre & see if that makes me happier. Part of my difficulty with it might be my tension, which I suspect is too tight. Same with “knittenin” (what my daughter calls it); I take after me dad, although I’m not quite as bad as him (last time he tried knitting, true story, the yarn had to be sliced off the needles with a razor. Control freak much? heh). It’s probably fine if stitched directly onto something, but it’s a bit of a shit to handsew. ANYWAY. Sorry, the valerian is kicking in (you know you really want some sleep when you’re willing to swallow something that smells like that. Definitely on the list of stuff that makes me think ok, what on god’s green earth made anybody decide to try eating THAT? “Hey, it smells like boiled goat toejam, I’ll bet that’s good for insomnia!”

yawn anyway. She is actually standing on her own flat bottom, JFTR. Not sure how I managed to make it look like she’s propped against the beads. Oh well. Next I want to make something sunny with one of the gold faces. Then I really want to make the goddess with the coffeebean beads I knew I had to have. I think I’m going to sew up a bunch of little things like this so I’ve got something to do when I’d otherwise just be sitting around. My son & his fiance are visiting for a week or so and I daresay there’ll be a bit of sitting around yacking over at mum & dad’s (he’s staying there, no room here). I have things I need to do on the puter as well, but I’m kind of over sitting on bum at desk to be honest. Ok bedtime for me.

always worth a visit, but I just love this typeface. Not a font, but she’s offering the vector free (non-commercial use) before the end of July, so if you’ve got CorelDraw or Illustrator or Freehand or similar you can play to your heart’s content.

I’m going to try something new with regard to comments, & respond in the next post for a while. Let’s see if it’s annoying or eh or awesome … feel free to vote heh. Here we go:

************** comments **************

thanks Tanya! Yes Erica, already! Later the same day I apparently ruined her computer’s life (I’m really not sure how). I’m sure my son was in his teens – maybe even late teens – before he decided I’d ruined his life, & even then he didn’t serve official notice. I’m obviously getting better with age …

Thought of that re a border, Andrea, but mum vetoed it. I’m rather tempted to make a few pieces around that size with proper framing (as in borders) and non-potholderish binding & see if they’ll sell. Well at least one, just to get the potholdery taste out of my mouth heh. I think next time I need to do a binding I’ll let mum do it, too – HERS is all perfect and crisp and square, I must pull things tight on the corners or something. Stupid size to be trying to do a regular binding on anyway, should have seen me trying to join the binding strip – I usually leave at least 10″ to play with, but there was only about 5″ on this.

with a bit of shading:

with a bit of stitching:

and with a bit of binding … Binding not my choice, just for the record. Note the additions I had to make when I finally figured out what the instructions re block sizes actually meant & rang mum to confirm. Why didn’t I query before I went & followed the 6″ pattern/decoration area so slavishly, leaving harshly chopped-off branches and leaves – and worse, tension tests etc – floating in what would be a visible margin? Who knows. I liked the way it looked before I had to add bits, but we can’t have everything. It’s done!

One small thing crossed off my scary to-do list. Dudes, every accomplishment counts. Even if it does look like a potholder :/

My daughter has a cold, requiring lots of tissues. We have 2 boxes of tissues, one with Pooh bear & one boring no-name box that usually lives in my room but which she took out to the tv room yesterday because she didn’t realise the pooh box was out there. So at some point this morning she gets out of bed, goes & gets the pooh tissues & brings them back & wipes her nose. I said “oh, I brought these ones back in here, you didn’t need to go get those ones” & pointed to the no-name box. Her reply?

“ohH! I wanted THOSE ones out THERE, now you’ve RUINED my LIFE!”

Already? Cool.

I’m working on my quiltlet for the mosaic quilt hanging thing my club uses at shows and zone get-togethers and stuff. I’ve only had the kit for something like 18 months; can’t rush these things. I was going to do a flying fox, but I ended up deciding that it probably fell into the category of “contrary for the sake of being difficult”. I hemmed & hawed for a while & then decided to use the figs I’d made for the shadowboxes that weren’t used on Sentinel. Then I decided they were pretty boring by themselves, proud as I am of the little buggers, & that I should make the endangered (ie, probably extinct but maybe not according to people who have research grants but still don’t have a single photo) Coxen’s Fig Parrot. So that’s what I’ve been doing tonight, both before & after the lying-in-bed-praying-for-sleep thing: making a parrot & some leaves. Taking longer than usual because Daughter has a cold; sneezed all day & her poor little eyes are all runny & red, and while she was happy enough all day she got really shat off with the post nasal goop in the middle of the night & it was all china syndrome for an hour or so.

stuff El & I made with that sculpey we bought a few weeks ago. I just gold-leafed my faces, we’ll see if they end up as dolls or what. See the two starfish? I love hers, much more interesting. There are some moulds I made there too – make a face, make a mould from it, press a face from the mould, marvel at how different they are heh. One of the little hands I spent forever making is missing, which doesn’t please me very much.

Very cool thing I bought at the art supply shop on Thursday. It’s called a sketchboard, it’s huge, it’s light, and it was all of $11. It’s unsealed, so I may paint it or maybe even do some funky decoupage or something on it, or guaranteed I’ll spill coffee or something all over it.

Note roll of funky paper I bought to do some stitching experiments with. Very large sheet of something Japanese but I don’t recall the name. Softer & thicker than most rice paper I’ve met, but far more even-textured than the average mulberry paper.

from the sketchbook. Original insomnia-o’clock sketch for the vessel idea, and something else that woke me up around the same time. Funny how fakey NA it looks when I was actually thinking more like Siberian or something. Not sure if it’ll ever become anything, but I keep being surprised by it in my sketchbook so I thought I’d share.

The vessel, btw, has been waxed. Soy with a little crayon to add some colour – I’d have preferred beeswax, but we just won’t go into how much difficulty I’ve had finding anything lately (let’s not discuss the ~4 hours it took me tonight to find the rassafrassin gold leaf, for eg). After I applied it all I hit it with the heat gun to smooth things out & force it into the fabric, which worked well. I kind of wish I hadn’t waxed all the fringey stuff, but too late to do much about it now. It stands up properly now, which is good since I’d been a bit worried about its self-supporting abilities. I think in future I’ll use wadding between the layers, which will help with several issues I had. Anyroad – bit more fiddling and we might call it finished (good grief, we can’t have that …).

I fell kind of in love with a house today. The rent’s a bit more than I’d prefer to pay, but it’s big, it’s freshly renovated (new paint, new carpet, new lino, etc), and it’s exactly my style and perfect IF they’ll let us finish the fence in the back yard.

Huge sunroom/family room (workroom!) …

… with big windows overlooking cowpaddocks & a creek.

Four entrances, two of which are via a side porch – one set of french doors into the main bedroom, another door into a sunroom & then into a tiny office. Huge kitchen – not that many cupboards, but lots of room and so LIGHT. I do love a house with lots of light. Plenty of room for work AND visitors, even if said visitors are my privacy-mad son & his fiance. Trying not to get my hopes up too much. There’s even a weird little room under the house that I would have KILLED for as a cubby house when I was a kid.

OTOH, the house on the opposite corner has the biggest goddamn canine creature I ever saw. It was up on the 2nd floor balcony, standing up with its front feet on the rail, and its bloody head was nearly touching the roof. I’m basically a cat person, much as I’ve loved individuals who happen to be dogs, and this monster gave me a hell of a start when mum pointed it out to me. What if it wants to eat us???