swappy swappy

a long while ago an old swap friend and i decided to do a crafty fun garland swap. it took me forever to eke out the time to finish it but i did and it was super fun! lookie:

first off, i made this happy garland in red, aqua, yellow, and green. i love the wonky scallops with this color combo. i have extra scallops so i may whip up another smaller garland for myself.

my swap partner was crocheting me a doily garland and told me she preferred cotton yarn. how cool is it that i found these wee little bits of happy cotton yarn. yay! i popped them into a small metal tin with a minty green top. double yay!

keeping with the color theme i found a trio of happy washi tape to snuggle inside a second tin just like the one holding the yarn.

the rest of the bits and bobs did not exactly fit in with the color scheme so i wrapped them up to match. i think this little package is full of an awesome earl grey tea.

one of these little packs is hiding a locally made bar of soap that smells of chocolate and lavender while the other hides a lively pair of socks covered in teacups from our local shop sock, The Sock Drawer.

i have no idea what i wrapped inside here. it was a longer package...huh. i am getting old and cannot remember anything.

and here is the happy pile of wrapped up goodies. ooh, maybe the garland is in that red package up above. there was a lot of fun packed inside...tea, soap, tape, yarn, socks, cookie cutters, and the garland plus more that i cannot remember. either way it was super fun but i think my swap partner went cute crazy and sent me the much better package. photos coming soon! yay for swaps!

a wee proposal {second title}

I am certain there were things I wanted to write about. Things that may have involved cooking or shopping or sad racooning. And now, since I waited sooooo long I cannot think of anything to share. At least anything remotely interesting to anyone other than those involved. Oh wait! I remember....I need to re-title this hold on a second...

A few weeks ago a was working on the february bed and fretting over the artwork when I found a thrifted granny square in pink, white mad grey! I found two more but they were of the grey variety and I thought...

"Drats! If only I had more to choose from..."

Okay, now I have an idea. My birthday is in six days and I was thinking about how much I love a granny square and how inept I am at needle arts. I've already got a partner for a granny square/garland swap but I was wondering if anyone else out there would be up for sending me a square or two or three. Anyone?

 

I would love to have a basket full of gloriously artful grannies to hang over the bed or place about the craft room for splashes of pretty. Some may even make an appearance in a photo shoot. What I can offer you up in exchange is a set of six dillydelicious pom-poms made by me or perhaps a painted newspaper garland/papel picado?

 

I do love making pom-poms even if they aggravate my allergies (while wearing a filter mask even) but there is only so much room in the-room-that-shall-one-day-be-cleaned to store them. So what do ya think? Is it time for a swap?

Procrastination Creation!

So, the five things bird swap was due to be mailed on June 2. I had oodles and oodles of ideas running the gammut from embroidery to quilting to collage pieces but I simply could not decide! Then I got this idea. A hummingbird egg of an idea culled from something I made when I was playing with Nervousness and I went to my kitchen and got some supplies. I stood there looking at what I had and thought, this won't work so I went online to see if I could order something better and I found a lot of somethings but they were all on poorly designed websites and they did not accept paypal. Drats! What to do? What to do...

I decide to sit on the idea and let the world inspire me and then the Queen of Coffee an I were at Marukai where I found exactly what I was looking for in two different styles and they were only $1.50 each! Whoo-hoo! I swooped, I sntached, I soared! And when I got home I put it off...I had to mail my birdies in two days. I decided Friday I would start.

Friday arrives and I am woken up by the linnets' song around 5am. I pop out of bed and do three loads of laundry, hit the market and do something else, I forget what. Eventually I get to my birdie project and it was one of those ideas you have the looks oh so much better in you head! Aack! Now what was I going to do?

I walk around the tiny casa and do little bits of other projects. I decide finally on what to make and though I am not thrilled, it will do. It was almost the same idea but using a different vessel. I finish up after a frantic mad crafting frenzy and now I need to package it all up but how? How can I make it look all purdy-like? Then, as if a mockingbird pecked me in the head I get it! I will use what I bought for the original idea as the packaging! I try it, it works and now I need to prettify it...I search high and low in the tiny casa and uncover a box of vintage lace so pretty you would weep if you happenend upon it, which is exactlty what I did! I then wrapped each one up in a plain brown bag and sent them off to the bird master...do you think they are acceptable?

Oh and in case you are dying to know, the secret ingredient is unbleached tea bags! Click here for a close-up...

The sky is falling!

I'm working feverishly away on my big paper for my Children's Lit class and I am stuck stuck stuck! I'm not quite clear on the directions and I can;t find any of my contacts for the class so I am feeling major doom right now but I will go forth and do my best to present the best chicken anthology ever! I need to do a ten minute presentation on a collection of folktales within a theme. I picked chickens and roosters because, well ya know I've had chickens on the brain lately. I've got 7 stories, 2 of which are the same story just one of them is toned down and all PC for todays "sensitive kiddies" (snort!). I need to write my introduction still. I have been but it, well it sucks so I need to rewrite it and I need to annotate all the stories fancy like and then I need to arrange them in a "meaningful way" and I get ot transcribe them. Don't you wish you were me? Actually, it is fun, I'm just stressed because the assignment feels a bit vague. I had 16 chicken and rooster stories originally and I have finally narrowed it down to 7 with oodles of help from Mr.A-go-go who has a much better brain for thinking laterally and specifically. For my presentation I am going to do a flannel story of Chicken Little because really, I want to spend my Sunday making Foxey Loxey and Cocky Locky and Henny Penny, really, I do! I envision this awesome set of quilty flannel board fun! I hope it works. Sooo back to my paper, I needed a mini vent so that I can get it out. Mr.A-go-go will be back in a couple of hours and I need to have a good portion of it done otherwise I am in BIG TROUBLE! Soooo...check out the prettiness I sent to my person for the May Coloriffic Swaporama. I am super duper proud of these pictures. Thanks for looking!

Slow like molasses

I woke up before 7am and promptly made a pot of coffee. I'm not much of a coffee drinker but for some reason a hot pot on a dreary day makes everything seem a little brighter. Tea I love but tea makes me want to bake and have friends come over to craft, talk and watch old movies. I have a long long list of things to do for this week and yest all I feel like doing is stand at the kitchen window and spy on all the birds haging out in the garden. Mr. A-go-go rigged up bird bath and so far we haven't had any takers. I can't wait until they find it. I am such a bird watcing dork. Speaking of birds we saw some pretty nifty birds in Joshua tree. We saw red tailed hawks, giant ravens, a couple of cactus wrens(they hopped right up to us, the little sneakers) and some scott's orioles in all their yellow funkiness. Yesterday we saw an interesting wren like birdie with yellow on it's underside and we also have a visiting hummingbird that has a lot of rust on it's back. See? Bird dorks.

I recently took part in Jenny Holiday's Vintage Kitchen Swap. I had a much harder time than I imagined finding vintage and/or retro goodies for my partner, Jennifer. Sigh. You just can find fun vintage in Los Angeles anymore. I did score some adorable salt & pepper shakers out in Ventura and manged to wrestle up some more goodies. I'm lucky that my mamos was a collector and that granyn never threw anything away so I was able to round it all out. Up above is a picture of some lanterns I sent along. The pretty paper flower lantern on the right was granny's. I had two of them and thought to send one along as it is so so so pretty, methinks. I also made up some retro marble magnets and a batch of chocolate lavender shortbread. You can see more of the items I sent here if ya like and I'll post all the awesomeness I received soon.

Today I will clean a little, update the shop a little, laze a bout a bit and craft away. I will also work on my paper and some scholarship essays. I will. I promise!

Oh, if you are in Los Angels or the San Fernando Valley and in need of a cupcake or two, check out Unforgettable Cakes! They are super duper yummy and the staff is oh so friendly. They serve sandwiches also. My gal the witch-lady and I spent a good two hours there partaking of sweets and coffee. You can read what I yelped about here. Happy Day!

Sometimes I surprise myself

 I just packaged up my package for the April Swap-o-rama and I had the darnedest time coming up with something for the handmade part. The colors were lavender, cream and black and quite pretty. Delicate even and I thought I should make something suitably sweet. I finally decided on a trio of lavender scented satchets and to tweak them a bit while making them harmonious with all three of the colors I decided to make wee patchworked pillows. They came out so darn pretty, I am tickled! Who knew I could pull off pretty? Click here to see another angle. Oooh and check out the fabulous ensemble Jennifer put together for her person! Awesome!

Today, Mr. A-go-go, Sister A-go-go and I hit the subway and checked out the Cherry Blossom Festival in downtown Los Angeles. Meh. It was kind of like a glorified farmer's market without the fresh produce. They did have japanese drummers and kettle corn though. Oh and we saw these amazing hand crafted insects made from palm leaves! They were amazing! The Sister A-go-go bought two of them and I did manage to take some pics but they are still on the disk in the camera so I will have to show y'all later. We had a nice lunch at a japanese place and then trekked on over to the Marukai Market where I picked up some green tea soy milk, paprika & allspice in adorable wee glass bottles, my favorite shortbread cookies & a package of chocolate peanut clusters with rice and spiced soy something...the package was just really nifty. It was orange with a Mr. Peanut character and a Mr. Kakinotane character! I love me some nifty packaging!

When we got home we sat on our back stoop and watched the bees in the garden. Everything is blooming right now and oh so pretty! When we got tired of the bees we picked two oranges off the tree and ate them...yum! Sitting in our garden enjoying the sun is so nice. We need a good hammock to nap in. We even spotted the skink we rescued from the neighbor kitty the other day. Love our creepy crawly life. After a nice rest we jumped in Rodney (the car) and went off to visit with granny who was already lounging in bed. she had decided she was hungry and thought if she went to bed earlier she would get dinner earlier. Lucky for her we brought peanut butter and crackers. She requested them last week. Peanut butter, crackers and um...sardines...gotta love the lady!

Happy last day of March! Happy Birthday Big Sister and Happy Birthday to the Sister A-go-go!

The week in review: january 22-28

A crafty and productive week that included tart baking, tea drinking, wardrobe remixing, scrumdill-do penning and oh so much more. We walked walked walked all over the neighborhood right early yesterday morning and my legs are still whining about it. We visited with granny and we visited with friends and this week we are prepping for a visit from a new never before met firend and I can't wait to drag her all over Los Angeles. Birthday wishes go out today to the ever aging young Dapper Dan who is 17 this day. I wish you well clear thoughts and calm nerves until you get to see the Ivy girl this Friday! Next week is gonna be a doozy!

Today is market day and library day. I also need to clean up a bit and get ready for THE VISIT. Today I will take pictures of my February Swaporama package and send it off inot the world and I will finish a long long overdue birthday present. I will work on my Pink Things for the next 5 things swap and I will finish up my 6 things for Heart Day...at least, this is the goal for today...and later, after it isall done, I will set the VCR to record my mindless T.V. (Heroes!) and then possibly, Mr.A-go-go & I will go for a nighttime walk.

Don't forget to eat some Oatmeal this week as January is almost over and then so will Oatmeal month be over.