Showing Off? Who, Me?

This episode is just some of the things I've made lately that I'm prouder of.  Note: Pictures were taken on my phone so I can't guarantee quality.

So first of all, I signed up for one of those "Pay It Forward" deals on Facebook.  I tried that last year but didn't actually make anyone anything... my bad.  So this year, I told people they needed to remind me, told them I'd make stuff out of yarn, and for them to give me ideas so I didn't delay by thinking "Well, what should I make anyway?"

And then one of my friends told me she wanted me to make her one of her characters, a centaur.

I've made a few dolls before, but... wow.  I've never tried something quite so... ambitious.  So I told her I wasn't going to make it out of yarn.  But then I thought, well, why not?  I mean, all I really need to do is make a horse body - four legs and a cylinder, not so hard - and half a person, which I know there are patterns for online.

She gave me quite a description of this character and all of the stuff she carries and her personality and so forth and I had ideas of how I could put this together, but as I went through, I gave up and just did the body.  Said body description: Black Clydesdale body with white feathered feet, tan skin, purple stripes in hair and tail and purple eyes.

The body part, as I'd suspected, was not so hard.  Easiest part, in fact.  Then I started adding a body.  I wanted to give it something of a ribcage so I decreased stitching and then panicked that it was getting too small and too long and the body ended up looking really strange and bulbous.  But that was fixed later by nestling the human half into the blobby front part and making the back legs go all the way up the body to fill out the hindquarters.

Then came the tedious part - hair.  I may have been overly ambitious at this point, as I decided to tie crochet string on to give her an actual head of hair.  The tail was not so bad, but the head... that took forever.  This is where a lot of the accessories I'd thought of adding dropped off the table because I just wanted to get finished.  And for the longest time, since I was working from the bottom of the head upwards, she looked like some Chinese kung fu master with serious male pattern baldness.

But in the end, it turned out looking pretty good, I think.

The other thing I wanted to show off was the baby gym I made.  For those who weren't aware, I am in fact having a baby.  Soon.  Anytime.  Get out now please.  :)  At some point in the past little while I decided that I wanted to make a baby gym.  You know, one of those things that you put them down in to keep them entertained with little dangly toys and things to play with and excite neural functions or something.  

My original thought was to just make a rectangular-ish pad with maybe a pool noodle across the top for hanging toys.  But as I was looking up ideas online, there was someone who'd already made one (why am I not surprised?) and she said she'd tried the pool noodle thing and it didn't work.  I think it probably could, but I'd need to make adjustments.  However, it doesn't matter, because I liked her alternative solution - hula hoops.  Of course, that also necessitated a circular mat.  Which wasn't much harder.  (Credit to http://thoughtsandthimbles.blogspot.com/2012/10/frugal-baby-activity-gym-tutorial.html)

The only challenges I really ran into were:

 1) The fabric I wanted on the back wasn't big enough, so I cut it into strips and made it trim instead; 

2) By the time I was putting together 2 pieces of heavy fabric, a batting interior, and an extra strip on top to hold the batting solidly in place, my sewing machine foot was having trouble getting over everything, but I'm stubborn enough to make it work; 

3) I tried to make the loops to hold the toys on the hula hoop covers out of the heavy cover fabric which ended up being really thick and trying to sew it together caused problems of the not-sewing-together nature so I ended up hand-sewing it tighter after putting them on the hula hoops; 

4) I'd planned on using regular snaps but ended up not having any so I just got the diaper snaps she'd suggested in the first place; 

5) the exterior lining didn't quite match up on the back so I sewed around the outside in 3 different places to make sure it stayed on well; 

6) the strips of fabric I'd made had to be sewn together to make them the proper lengths; and 

7) I ran out of ideas and fabric for making toys so there are only 4 at this point, with 5 empty loops waiting to be filled.

This is the base mat, pinned together.  It was sitting on the floor like this and Bryan walks past and says "That looks unsafe for a baby - maybe you should make something with fewer pins."

Sewn together and put on - observe loop issues.

Mat and both hula hoop arches

Loops for the hula hoop cover, pre-sewing into a tube.

Okay, so I could have actually measured and made the lines straighter, but still...
I sewed the cross lines on before sewing the border on so I could get those inner bits under the outer lining.
Glad I thought of that before going forward.

The mostly finished product.

The toys I made to put on it are a little "rattle," which I made by cutting down one of the plastic tubes of sugar-free drink mixes and throwing some pinto beans in, then sewing that inside a tube of fabric; a mirror because I hear those are good for mental development and I have a few small craft mirrors, sewn into a fabric backing, which was tougher than I thought it would be; a crocheted square with bells on the corners; and a crocheted sea turtle.  They're mostly also green and white although the square and the turtle have some blue so Bryan's happy.

My Gray-Green Thumb

There are times I really want to grow plants.  It gives me this feeling of accomplishment to turn bare earth into green things even though the plants are really doing all the work and I'm just watering them.  Last year, I tried to grow a tiny garden in the small amount of yard we had.  I also put some flowers along the walk in front of our door.

...Nothing really grew.

I mean, I got a few sprouts, but that was pretty much it.

And this year, I don't have a yard.  So I decided to do something else with the space I have.  Growing things in pots!  Yay!

To that end, I started looking for good plants to grow in pots.  I have a basil plant that my friend Nicole started for me last summer ish, which is a good several inches tall now, but still hasn't been branching enough to actually provide me with all that much usable fresh basil.  Nicole and I also got a few seeds at a garden shop a while ago - I picked up some lavender and some rosemary - and those are starting in little toilet paper tubes on my kitchen counter.  So far, there's a good many sprouts in one and two or three in the other.  I wish I remembered which was which.  And that I knew when to transfer them to their bigger pot.

The other thing I decided to do was get some already-started plants, and these were going to be bigger.  I have, for a long time (since my mom used to get gardening catalogues a long time ago), wanted to grow a mini fruit tree.  A pomegranate or apple or orange tree would be awesome.  However, looking at the options I had on the nursery site I chose, I decided to go with a Tophat Blueberry bush.  They're bred for indoor/patio growth, and get to be about 2 ft. in any direction max.  I also decided to get a bunch of strawberry starts and grow them in the kitchen.

So I prepped everything for the time that they'd come.  I got pots from Home Depot and potting soil to go with it; I got a wire shower caddy to strap to my wire shelves in the kitchen for the purpose of holding strawberry pots; I ordered plant food and starter (from the nursery because they had a money-back deal that meant it cost about as much to add strawberry fertilizer and blueberry soil as to just get the plants) and then I waited.  (Meanwhile my nephew came over one Sunday and enjoyed playing with the big 5-gallon pot destined to hold a blueberry bush.  I wish I had pictures or video of that - it was adorable.)

Finally, about 2 weeks ago, my plants arrived!  Hooray!  I planted them in the prepared pots, put them where I thought they'd get sufficient sun, tried to water them enough, and... waited more.

This is what it looked like when it came.
Not so much anymore.

Well, this is where the gray part of my thumb comes in.  The strawberries started off promisingly, but the blueberry bush began to wilt almost immediately.  I thought, probably just shock from moving.  It'll get over it soon.  It didn't.  Well, maybe it needs more water.  Nope.  It was pretty well saturated.  So... should I stop watering it?  Maybe more light?  I'd had the windows open to give it light and the overhead light on a lot, but it just wouldn't stop wilting.  Move it outside?  Yes!  Wait, no, temperatures are freezing at night.  Meanwhile, half of the strawberries, even the ones that had been growing well, began to collapse and shrivel.  Plus the potting soil I chose seems to be the "Outdoor/Indoor if you don't mind it stinking" variety so our kitchen smells like there's something going bad.  Which makes it hard to detect if something else is going bad.

I finally moved the blueberry bush to our back room which is by far the sunniest in the house and its leaves have stopped turning brown at quite such an alarming rate, and I put a few of the worst-looking strawberries in the kitchen window in the hopes that more sun will perk them up.  But I think this apartment is also not the best one for a garden.


One day I'm going to get a house.  With a real yard.



Update 4/9:  The blueberry bush hasn't lost any more leaves, so I think it appreciates the sunnier locale. Which leaves only the question of what I'm going to do with it when I need that room?  As for the strawberries, well, I finally got sick of the flies that seemed to come with the manure-smelling potting soil (very very peeved about that stuff) and I moved them outside.  Two of the six were still green-ish when I did that, three were looking pretty terrible, and one was about 6 times as large as the others mostly because I cheated and picked up one strawberry plant from the grocery store.  But I wanted one that made me feel like not a complete plant killer.

Update 8/4:
I am a horrible plant nurturer.  I think my buying plants basically dooms them to a short, miserable life.

My Word! Rather, my startling lack thereof.

Okay, okay, I'm a horrible blogger.  It's been over a year since my last post which was way way later than when it was supposed to have been posted.  But I do think things are going to be getting interesting around here and perhaps I should post here.  If for no other reason than to have some record for myself. 

I have a few friends who have been getting on the blogwagon, as they wanted to build their audience and reach and establish themselves before publishing.  And in Julia's case, posting cool pictures of stuff she's been making.  And I keep thinking, "Yeah, that'd be cool.  I can write and sound interesting, maybe even make people want to come back for more." But then I look at this blog and realize that no, I'm pretty horrible at it.  So I'm not going to start that kind of blog until I can update this consistently. 

With that in mind, I intend to start posting here more regularly.  I'll try to put something up either weekly or monthly.  No clue what they'll be about - they may be life, they may be writing, they may be crafts, they may even be my opinions - but I intend to make them at the very least the most fascinating things you'll read online.  Absolutely.  *nodnod*

That's it for today.  Mostly this post is to say "I live!  Check back later and make sure I'm still alive!"

See you later.

Exam Week? I laugh at thee.

Okay, how's this for an exam.  Write an essay, on your own, of what you think about what you learned.  Oh, and share your artwork you've spent the last while making.

Seriously, this exam period was the easiest and lowest stress I have ever had.

On the 3rd of December I got up early and joined the group of girls and John and Chris who spent Saturday mornings playing soccer-- I had previously been too lazy to wake up on time to join.  However, I managed to get quite an adrenaline rush that time, playing soc...football in Hyde Park.

The next day would be my last at the London Center, so I started packing my stuff.  Technically, I knew I'd be back, so it wasn't the last day, but close enough.  That just basically let me leave a bit of stuff there to have lighter loads whilst traipsing across Wales.  I also practiced piano for the sake of my primary class.

Sunday was the next day (also my Dad's birthday) and a Fast Sunday.  We spent the day at church getting ready for the primary program.  After, I helped out with dinner and packed up the rest of my stuff, then we had carol singing and hot chocolate to celebrate the end of the semester and say goodbye.  People were already trailing out, and some had been gone for a while.  My time to leave came shortly after carol singing, and I found my way to a train station and hopped on a little train to Wales.

Slightly Different Buildings

The day after Canterbury saw us going to the London Temple.  Of the two, Canterbury Cathedral is larger, more ornate, older, more spiky, and I prefer the London Temple.  Even if the architecture makes it look a bit like a box with a spire.  We went in and all the people with limited-use recommends (all of us but maybe 2 of the girls and the leaders) did baptisms.  We sat in a waiting room as they were taking us in groups and sang hymns until it was our turn.  After that, we spent time wandering the grounds, which were quite nice, and some time in the visitor's center, where I watched Mr Kreuger's Christmas with Eve, our art professor's daughter. 

We all re-boarded the bus after that and returned to the London Center.  This trip may have been a bit shorter, but I very much enjoyed it.  (I actually got the pens for my aforementioned art project after returning home that day.  Incidentally, this was Dec. 1.)

Pictures pending.

The Hooly Blisful Martir For to Seke

Yes, to Canterbury I wende.  And let me tell you, it's amazing.

This was a 2-day trip for us.  We started out by going to the cathedral--but of course--which, I have to say, is the most beautiful cathedral I've seen.  Or at least my favorite.  And yes, it beats out Notre Dame and all the rest.  Even with some construction.  And the acoustics are amazing! Which made it rough when someone dropped a pipe, but otherwise it was fantastic.

The outside was pretty itself, but for me, the real beauty was inside.  The stained glass was really impressive, too; it was all painted with saints and biblical characters and kings and so forth.  

We got the tour around the whole thing.  You all know the story of Thomas a Becket, I hope.  If not, watch this movie.  Even if you have, watch this movie.  Ha, tricked you, they're completely different movies.  And the long documentary is here.  Long story short, Henry II was an idiot, who had some idiot knights who tried to gain favor, and they beat a very good man, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to death in the cathedral.  

Wish I'd gotten my own picture of this, but I didn't.  There are four swords here for the four knights, because the light is carefully done here.  I believe the intent was to keep it more simple and elegant.  Of course, Canterbury was a holy place before this, and the seat of the Archbishop of the entire Church of England. 

They also had a very pretty creche out front.  Everywhere was starting to look like Christmas.

After this, we went walking around the city.  There was an open-air market (unfortunately just closing down) with some fascinating books and gizmos and toys and so forth.  We also found a beautiful old ruined castle.  It was a bit smaller than some of the others I'd seen, but still nice.  What there was of it, anyway.

We also ended up in thrift stores and I believe that's where I got a few old books, including Nineteen Eighty-Four, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Twelfth Night, and a book of Norse legends.  (They were 2 for 1, so I got all four for a pound twenty.)  I also noticed this on the way out of town:

Also, reading Nineteen Eighty-Four that day made me feel like the Thought Police were going to get me for just looking at the thing.  I was almost looking over my shoulder, expecting them to pop out of nowhere.

Anyway, we went to the Evensong at Canterbury Cathedral that night.  I think I'd learned to like it better, or at least to appreciate it more.  The first Evensong we went to threw me off because it was so different, but now, listening to the songs and feeling the spirit they're given in was really very nice.  Different still, yes, but not so much strange.

A Few Projects and a Bit of Christmas

This covers the 28th and 29th of November.  Our last religion class was on the 28th.  I really enjoyed that class--our teacher was engaging and enthusiastic about the subject, which was itself fascinating.  Most of our grade for that class was a project of something about the history of the LDS church in England or the UK.
For my project, I decided to use some skills learned previously and translate some hymns into Welsh.  If I recall correctly, they were Mae Ysbryd Duw, Prynwyr Israel, and Si Gallwch Fynd y Golob.  Or, for the non-Cymraeg, The Spirit of God, Redeemer of Israel, and If You Could Hie to Kolob.  To translate these, I used a mix of a list of rhyming Welsh words, a dictionary, a lexicon, my knowledge of Welsh, and Google Translate.  Before anyone gets off on me, I want to tell you something about that list of rhyming Welsh words.  It was a list, and there were Welsh words, and there was nothing else.  So what I'd normally do is translate a line how I wanted it, in rhythm, take a list of the words that rhymed, stick the whole thing in Google Translate, see if I could find a word that rhymed and made sense, check it with the dictionary, and put that in rhythm.  If I couldn't find anything, I re-did the verse.  It may seem time-consuming but it was really exciting.  For my class presentation, I sang my translation of The Spirit of God.

     Mae Ysbryd Duw'n llosgi fel tan cadarn dros y byd
     Y dyddiau diwethab yn dod yn llachar
     Y brudia o hen yn caelu dychwelyd
     Ac angelion yn dod i ymweld ar ddaear

     Mae'r Duw yn ymestyn doethineb seintau
     Adfer eu barnwyr a phob un mor ar y dechrau
     Y ddaear yn derbyn gogoniant Duw a phwerau
     Y llen dros ei dechrau godi gwarchae

Cytgan:
     Canu a gweddi gyda byddinoedd y Nefoedd
     Hosanna, Hosanna, i Dduw a'r Oen
     Gadewch i ni ogoniant i'r rhai ar uchel
     O hyn ymlaen yn ac am byth amen a amen

Roughly translated, that's:
The Spirit of God burns like a fire over the earth
The last days become bright
The divinity of before has returned
And angels are coming to visit the earth

The wisdom of God is extended to the saints
Restoring their judges and all as at first
The earth receives the glory of God and its powers
The curtain over the earth no longer besieges it

Chorus:
Sing and shout with the armies of Heaven
Hosanna, Hosanna to God and the Lam
Let us give glory to those on high
From now and on forever amen and amen

Oh, and quick not-at-all-complete guide:  u=e, f=v, y=u (not always but just run with it), dd=soft th, like father, and ll=*blowing spit on you*

I was proud of that.  Don't take my Welsh grammar as 100%, but I think it's pretty good.  Also, the chorus was easy because it doesn't rhyme.  The hardest part was "The veil o'er the earth is beginning to burst."

Well, enough of that.  My other project was making negative space, I've mentioned it before.  I put five boxes on a large sheet of paper, in an arrangement approximating this > shape, and on the 29th, I walked with it strapped to a huge board, along with my pencils, to the Museum of Natural History, or whichever way those words were, but it's awesome and I'd go back in a heartbeat, to sketch a skeleton.  After wandering, I decided on a related-to-a-mammoth skeleton, because it had big bones, cool spaces, and most importantly, places I could rest my board and still see it.  This did require standing most of the time.  I ended up vaguely relating the body parts to their general positions on the actual skeleton (ribs in the middle, hip on the end, head in front) and took each box from a slightly different position (I did the head looking down from above) and amused myself watching the elementary school kids run all over the place.  In case you're wondering, kids are indeed the same everywhere, even if a few of the kids I saw were dressed positively nattily.

When I got it home, I eventually inked it all in with a brief hiatus to get more pens, and I liked how it turned out.  It happened that another girl did a negative-space fossil, but hers was an entire brontosaurus.  I liked mine, though, because it was different and inked in the background rather than pencilled, so the lines and negative space were sharper.  The hard part with that was delineating the boxes, as I decided not to draw lines around them, and walking through Hyde Park with a huge board in the wind.

Anyway, on to the Christmas!  And by on, I mean back, because it happened between the one project and the other on the evening of the 28th.  We all found our way to St. Paul's to watch an advent program, which was very interesting.  Not too much Christmas music, and much like the Evensongs.  But I'll get to more of that later.  I say not Christmas, but that's because it's not my experience of Christmas.  (As I sit here listening to Mannheim Steamroller holiday music which wouldn't be allowed anywhere near a Church of England/Catholic advent.)  It was focused aroud Christ, as Christmas should be, but not the birth, which I'd assume would be at a later Advent.  It started with the Old Testament, I believe.  I remember something about Adam and Eve.  This has a lot to do with the fact that I was sketching something like that in my program.  It was a lot bigger than an Evensong, actually.  They had a huge procession that made its way slowly down the aisle.  By slowly, I mean they moved forward a bit, stopped to speak and sing, moved forward while speaking and singing, stopped again to do the same...you get the idea.  It really was beautiful; not something I'd do every day, but the ceremony of the whole thing was very impressive.  Lots of smoke and incense and candles and old formal garb and so forth.  Although I did allow myself a little laugh at the "The House of the Lord shall be built upon the tops of the mountains" bit.  Overall a very pleasant evening.