Crafts ‘N Such

Work done by you with unconditional love and pure devotion goes straight in the category of divine and immortal craft.
— Seema Brain Openers

Crafting is like meditation, it allows you to focus your mind and release your stress.
— Unknown

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
— Maya Angelou

My son-in-law’s shift changed last week, so I had the pleasure of my granddaughter’s company. The weather turned cool and rainy, so we didn’t use the pool once. But who needs a pool to have a good time?

We started by making some jewelry. I have a large supply of jewelry supplies, and the granddaughter was more than happy to help me use some up. ;-) First up, we have her jewelry:

Two necklaces and a . . . um . . . decoration to hang on stuff. LOL The pink and blue necklace was the most difficult of all the pieces we made. Not because it was hard to do, on the contrary, the beads were strung on wire so it was pretty easy to do. Except I had the idea of using seed beads as spacers between the larger beads, but they were too small. Then I thought to use bugle beads, but the holes in the larger beads were so big that the smaller beads slipped right into them. Third time was the charm though and I found a larger glass bead that worked fine.

You might notice the granddaughter really liked the mermaid scale charms. She made a necklace with just the charm on it, and put one on either end of her decoration. And then she decided her mom needed mermaid scale earrings to go with the necklace we made her.

I thought that was a pretty good idea, so I made myself a mermaid scale necklace to go with my earrings.

I like the fact that all the mermaid scale charms are different, although we were able to find a matching pair for the earrings. I still have a few of them left – we’ll have to figure out something different to do with them.

Next we tried a craft that I promised her in the spring we’d do in the summer. The dreaded tie dye. Well, it wasn’t nearly as messy as I thought it would be, and we didn’t have to take everything outside to do it.

The kit I got used powdered dye and ice. You basically tie up whatever you’re dyeing, sprinkle the powder over it, and then cover it with ice. Weird, or what? I was kind of skeptical that it would work. But it did. sort of.

Of the two items we dyed, I think the back pack turned out best. We actually had four colours in the kit, but because I figured we should use all of the powder, the dark dye kind of took right over. Oh, well. Better luck next time.

I have to admit, it pays to have a vivid imagination. When we weren’t doing crafts or watching TV, the granddaughter was happy to invent her own games. Like “store,” where she set up a table and was selling cats and cat toys.

Only one of the cats pictured is a real cat. The beauty of her set-up was that it was our stuff we were buying, and we had to give it back when the store closed. And she got to keep the money. LOL

She also set up a restaurant in the living room, but that was strictly for the squishmallows to enjoy. And, apparently, Khaos, who helped herself.

There was also a brief real estate game, where she took pillows from the living room upstairs and re-decorated the bedrooms to become condos. There was one for each of us, and they included a free cat. Fortunately, we never got around to discussing prices.

We also enjoyed a girls road trip to the Michaels Craft store in Peterborough, and while we were there, we naturally had to stop at Spirit Halloween, which just opened in the mall.

The granddaughter was a little disappointed that they didn’t have much in the way of Stranger Things merchandise (her current obsession – she wants to be a demigorgon for Halloween), but they did have a lot of Beetlejuice stuff (a close second).

All in all, we had a fun-filled week. We’ll have to see if we can do as well this week.

Magnetograph Monday

magnetograph ~ instrument for recording measurements of magnetic fields

A funny thing happened to that sweater I was knitting for the grandbaby. The contrast yarn I bought was a lighter weight than the main yarn. The colour was good, but the yoke is kind of . . . stretchy. And the collar (which is made from the heavier, main colour yarn) looked kind of small. And I didn’t notice how bad the overall effect was until I’d completely tied up loose ends and finished it up right.

*sigh*

At the very least I plan to unravel the collar and re-do it in a larger size. At best I’m hoping that if I get the collar off I might be able to unravel the rest of the yoke and re-do it in a different, heavier yarn. But no rush. Spring appears to be here so it won’t be needed until next winter anyway.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

The annual Vintage Clothing Show was on this weekend, and the daughter and I made the pilgrimage up to Toronto to see what treasures they had to offer. This is the second time we’ve gone and it’s turning into kind of a nice mother/daughter tradition.

We got there a lot earlier than the last time, and were glad we did – by the time we broke for lunch it was getting really people-y in there. I found the price discrepancies from vendor to vendor very interesting. Some places seemed reasonable, others bordered on ludicrous.

And speaking of ludicrous, lunch was insane. Our choice was a $7 hotdog or a $9 bagel sandwich. A bottle of water was $4.50. If we had realized how little we had left to see, we would have skipped lunch at the show and walked over to the nearby Starbucks afterwards.

Still, we managed to come away happy. The daughter snagged a gorgeous poufy skirt for a song – apparently the guy selling it couldn’t read his own hand writing. I found a matching jacket and skirt with lots of beadwork and appliqué for a less modest price. They’re a little too fancy to be worn together, in my opinion, but they'll look great with other stuff.

The picture above was taken at the show. The doll heads looked a lot creepier in person than they do in the picture. And yes, those are real ducklings on the bottom left – not live, of course, which made them also creepy.

We came away from our excursion with money left over, so we stopped at the Oshawa Costco on the way home. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this Costco before, it’s the one I found annoying because everything is backwards to the one I’m used to, and the customers are really mean.

Well, now I have a witness. The daughter didn’t like it either. It kind of sucked all the fun out of going to Costco for us. And why go to Costco if you can’t have fun?

All in all, despite Costco, we had a really great day.

Monology Monday

monology ~ habit of offering soliloquies or monologues

The picture above shows what I got to do last week. My girls invited me to go with them to the local Crock-A-Doodle and of course I said yes. Time with my girls doing something creative? No brainer!

The idea was for the grandbaby to work on a Christmas present, with a little help from mom and grandma of course, but we’d never been to Crock-A-Doodle before and we may have gone just a wee bit crazy.

What is Crock-A-Doodle you ask? It’s a pottery studio where you go and have a ball painting pottery. Once you’re done you don’t even have to clean up your own mess, just leave it on the table with your pottery. They’ll fire your piece(s) and you pick them up a week later.

The down side to this is that it’s a little pricy. I’m not going to say exactly how much, but put it this way. I wouldn’t pay that much for one of the finished pieces if I saw it in a store. But it seems worth it when you make it yourself.

We weren’t very well organized. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing, and we didn’t have anything planned other than it sounded like fun. It was that, but we didn’t count on how time consuming it would be. And because we’d never been there before we didn’t think to research designs for painting, so mine ended up kind of plain. I have my eye on a piece for next time though, and that one I will plan ahead.

As well as the present the grandbaby painted, she and her mom did matching mugs that look like whales (for hot chocolate) and I did a pair of mugs for myself. They’re big, and hopefully will replace a couple of large, chipped tea mugs I have in the cupboard. If I change my mind about their size and shape (I waffled for a good 15 minutes before settling on them), they may end up as Christmas presents. LOL

A lot of the fun comes in not know exactly how your piece will look until it’s been fired. The paint looks a lot different when you’re applying it than after it’s been baked. And it depends on how many coats you’ve applied.

Can’t wait until Wednesday to see how they turned out!

Malversation Monday

malversation ~ corruption in office; corrupt administration; misconduct

Well I don’t know about you, but I had a fun weekend. I got to go to Boo at the Zoo with the grandbaby and her parents. Admission was half price and kids wearing costumes got in free, so as you can imagine, it was pretty busy. The zoo was gussied up with Halloween decorations like these inflatable dragons near the front entrance.

Unfortunately, it was pretty cold (for October) and only got colder as the day went on. Some of the animals with outdoor enclosures chose to stay hidden inside. One of the first animals we saw were this momma and baby rhino:

The orangutans were one of the animals who were having their habitat revamped, but the grandbaby still got to pose with one outside:

The zoo has changed a lot since I last visited – I’m not even sure how long ago it was. The elephants were gone and a lot of the animals were in little buildings of their own. The giraffes we saw were inside, but at least they had a fitting backdrop for pictures:

We didn’t get to see a live hippo, but the grandbaby and her friend Griffy got to ride on one:

I was kind of disappointed that the tiger didn’t come close enough for a decent picture, but at least the lions knew how to strike a pose:

We were cold and tired and in my case a little foot sore by the time we were done, but I think I’m safe in saying a good time was had by all.