In Heaven There is No Beer

That's why we drink it here
And when we're all gone from here
Our friends will be drinking all the beer

You may have noticed I mention beer quite a bit in this blog, it's not because I'm an alcoholic. I barely drink actually, but when I do I really do (my parents taught me never to do a half assed job at anything. Thanks mom, thanks dad, love you!) And it doesn't hurt that my boyfriend is a home brewer and thus there is much talk of this tasty adult beverage.

So in home brewing you use what is called a Carboy, basically it is a 5 gallon glass bottle. These things get heavy when they are full of beer in the making. We have seen things called a Carboy Caddy, it is a bit of webbing and some buckles that give you handles to lift the Carboy with (very handy, if you ask me... get it? Handles...handy... *ahem*) So I set out to make one, because the ones we saw at the store are not the bestest ever and I knew I could improve it.

And so I did.

I started with 5 yards of webbing, 2 buckles, and the handles off of an old workout band

The very first thing I did (after measuring everything) was burn the ends of the webbing to keep it from fraying while I worked on it and for the life of the caddy.

(yes, my nails are blue. Very blue, in fact. It's to off set the magenta hair)

Then I made the bands that went around the carboy.

getting the length right was a pain in the @$$, the buckles are flat and didn't like buckling snugly around the curve of the Carboy.
Then came the cross straps. I figured it would be stronger if it was 1 solid piece of webbing; after playing with it for a good long while I got it to lay like I wanted and pinned everything down, ran it through my sewing machine and it was solid. Somehow between picking it up off the floor and sewing it a strap got twisted, after much swearing and saying of unladylike words I picked the stitches out and tried again (I should mention it is approaching 11pm at this point and normally I have a 9 or 10pm cut off for sewing, but I wanted to get this done)

Then it was time to figure out where the straps overlapped to mark and sew them down. After I tried twice to get the first strap sewn down properly and failing both times I called it for the evening (I have a 2 rip rule, if I have to rip out stitches twice on one part of a project, it's time to be done with that project for the evening) and finished it the next day.

For the sake of getting this post up today (although late in the day) I am going to not finish Spartan #10 before posting, but I will be editing the post tomorrow, adding a picture of the first double digit Spartan. He is almost finished

That's all for now, g'night!

***EDIT***
Here he is ladies and gentlemen! Spartan number 10, the first double digit, putting me at 1/30th of the way finished (it is an encouraging thing...no really it is...) Delios with Heroic Wind action (trademark Sir Daniel Raptus)

proof that he's #10

Good night my dears!

Do Or Do Not, There Is No Try

I've always loved this line, it has a lot of weight behind it
Yoda was wise indeed.

Since I have been saying "next week I'll have a Spartan" for several weeks now... I give you Spartan #9!
His name is Enia (pronounced like enya; points to the person who figures out what it means) he is nothing spectacular, no fun stories about making him other than it took me too long because of lack of time to work on him (and he did get to go to work with me) but here he is!

Now in relation to the title (there is a connection I swear) I am occasionally contacted by people to make things, usually odd things, because my business card says "Costumes" on it, so people think I can make ANYTHING (which is generally true, but I might look at what you want, laugh a little, then tell you no... Seriously Capt. Kitty wanted a scary scary thing...) So this one guy contacted me about making a Luke Skywalker costume.
This specific costume...

which doesn't look hard until you start zooming in on the costume and you realize what kind of detail there is in it...
I did a bit of research and found the perfect base pattern and with a little tweeking and manipulating I made a damn fine replica (if I do say so my self... and I do)

I wish I could remember the guy's name, he was really sweet and thanked me a lot for my work and told me how much he loved it. I kind of feel bad that I have no idea what his name was...hmmm, I'm sure I have it somewhere.

In other news, I have decided to make my post day Sunday. It will give me all week to craft and write the post so that I might actually be able to get them out early in the day instead of right before bed or (like this one) a day late.
This will begin on the 24th, not this Sunday (I'm not a slacker I swear...besides, you're getting a post on Friday, you don't get one Sunday too, that's just not how it works)

See you next Sunday!

Beer stole my time

I really don't have anything worth posting about today, so I'm just going to ramble on a bit until I get enough words on the page to pretend it's a post.

I did not get a Spartan done for you today, I'm sorry, but beer stole my time this past weekend, so it's not my fault. Blame my boyfriend for buying tasty beer.
I do have nifty crafty things to talk about. As a birthday gift my friend Lynette took me crafty stuff shopping, so I could pick out what I wanted. I got my first "practical" crochet pattern book (I can't wait to try out quite a few of the patterns) it has sweaters and hats and hand warmers, seriously squeeful about starting a pair of hand warmers, I also got some wonderful, soft, green yarn to make said hand warmers. Love it!

oh yea! Yesterday I picked up a commission, nothing exciting, just hemming some pants and making rice filled bags that have something to do with hunting (I really don't know what, but something)

well I think I'm going to go crochet and fume about my day.
I'll have something better next week

Midsummer Geisha

She's finished! The darling little geisha is finished and she is so cute!
Her name is Uzume (oo-zoo-may) and here she is in all her cuteness...

Now to return you to your regularly scheduled Spartans. Hopefully I will have one for you next week.




We have just passed the Summer Solstice (June 21) I was going to talk about it last week but didn't get to because of things outside my control. So you get a piece on it today! *grin*
The Summer Solstice (also known as Midsummer and Litha) marks the astronomical beginning of Summer and being in an apartment, Matt and I decided to forgo the bonfire (Apartment complexes tend to frown on that) and we decided to make a few God's Eyes instead.
"Midsummer focuses on the Sun God and the sun itself. God's Eyes are probably the most well known craft associated with Midsummer. South American in origin, they were made by the natives for both protection and decoration. They are actually decorative amulets made of two sticks placed to form an equilateral cross. Colored yarn or twine is wound around the cross, in alternating colors, to form an ‘eye’, and its four points symbolize the two solstices (summer and winter) and equinoxes (spring and fall)"
Thank you to this website for the info (gotta love copy paste)


We chose a sun like color for ours (I was hoping for variegated yarn, but alas, none was to be found) and got to figuring out how it was supposed to work (seriously, who needs instructions) after a few false starts I got mine finished and added a Buckeye we found in Ireland, attached with copper wire. This first one was all one color, mainly because I didn't have any other colors I could use.

I decided to take pictures of the process the second time around and now I had a second color I could use too.
I started with the orange and then added in the white, alternating the colors every few wraps to get the lovely pattern you see.

 Adding the white in was tedious, if you caught your hand on it it would pull right out and then you'd have to unwrap a little to reset it.

(I know it looks like the Texas Longhorn colors, just ignore that fact please)

Well that is all I have for you today, the link I posted has good instructions on how to make a God's Eye of your own if you like. Have a good week everyone!

The Yarn Lies!

As I mentioned in my last post, I am currently working on a crocheted geisha for a friend of mine (she will need a name by the way, you should start working on that) and I was hoping to have it finished for today's post. I thought it would make for a nice easy little post in the midst of a busy week, but noooooooo, it just couldn't be that easy, could it? Of course not, nothing has been easy this week, NOTHING I TELL YOU!!!!
*ahem*

So the yarn I bought for the dress/body portion of the geisha is this beautiful soft dark dusty lavender color and I bought it because 1: my friend loves purple (I briefly thought about doing it in bright pank... very briefly) and because the package claimed it was the correct weight for the project, it is a brand I have not gotten before (I usually stick to the cheap stuff since these are not wearable items) and I thought, with it being a tiny bit more pricey than my normal yarn (don't worry, I bought this one on sale) it would all be ok since the package SAID it was the correct weight.

Oh how wrong I was...  

I started with the geisha's hair because I had that yarn first and then I made the geisha's head and put them together (so cute!) and I started on the body after that because I needed a break from the black yarn (black yarn is a bitch to crochet! especially with a small hook) I decided to do the dress/body, I was rocking along on it and had gotten pretty far into the pattern when I thought to myself
'self, that looks really small, you should check that against the head'
so I listened to myself and checked and, yea, it was way too small. OOOOokay, we'll try this again with a larger hook because obviously the yarn LIED about what weight it is.
*finds larger hook* (stupidly put smaller hook away)

I started once again on the dress/body and got not quite as far along and thought to myself
'self, that still looks kind of small, check it again'
so I did and it was still too small (THIS WILL NOT BE A BOBBLE HEAD GEISHA DAMMIT!) OOOokay, now what?
I'm so glad you asked...

It's now time to fly by the seat of my pants! (looooooohohoooong paaaaaannnnnttsss) (Homestar reference, I'm not crazy I swear) (yea right) I've been doing this crochet thing for... uh... 5 months now. I can TOTALLY figure this out.

okay, uh, start it the same then just keep adding til it's the size I need, okay then start making it a cylinder and decrease aaaaaaaannnnd TADA! I now have a proper size dress/body for the size of the head.
But remaking it 3 times means it ate up the only time I had to finish it before the blog today. Which is why you got this ridiculously long narrative/rant about the weight of the yarn being wrong.

Hopefully I'll have some pictures for you next week and maybe even a Spartan! (don't hold your breath kids) it just depends on how busy life gets... hopefully, not very.

See you next week!

Oh Hey Look! It's a Post!

Hello all! So sorry for my absence, the last few months have been crazy busy and I was doing good to just make it through each day.
I didn't have the time or energy to be crafty and I didn't have access to most of my craft supplies (which is kind of important to crafting) Matt and I have just moved into a new apartment, yay! Where we will be for a long long time, yay! That's on the 3rd floor, yay?
I really am happy with the 3rd floor, no really, I am. No upstairs neighbors. I have a great view of the dog park. It's a great workout every time I get home. (my legs and ass are going to look amazing after living here for a while) So yay 3rd floor!
And since we're going to be here a while I can set up my sewing and craft area and not have to worry about packing it up again in 3 months, WOOHOO! Which also means more posts here, WOOHOO!  Which might mean more people following and commenting, WOOHOO!

SO the one thing I have been making time for lately is cross stitch, more specifically the Hello Cthulhu cross stitch for Natalie (which I mailed this morning, btw) It took me longer than I had hoped, but I think with all the stuff I had going on I got it done pretty damn quick.
Here it is finished!

If you love this and want your own, you can commission me to make it, comment with your email and we can work it out.

Unfortunately I have no Spartans for you today and likely won't next week either, I have been working on a crochet geisha for a friend since finishing the cross stitch, so I will be getting back to the Spartans ASAP.

What I do have for you today is a fun and funky necklace I made last night.
I found these beads on clearance at Joann's, I liked how large they were and black and white are the colors I wear most, so it seemed perfect (also I needed a new shiny that I made myself, it's way more satisfying than always purchasing) I found them in a box last night and decided to put together a necklace, because they really are too big to do much else with

Once I shuffled them around a bit I decided on an order and then found some leather cord to string them on.
I used figure 8 knots (Boy Scout skillz FTW) on either side of the beads, because it is a larger knot and it's a little more fancy than just tying a knot.

TADA!
I'd have a picture of me wearing it for you, but circumstances outside of my control have prevented me from doing so...

And in other news... My hair is magenta, it was MAGENTA, but has calmed down some after a few washings.

That's all for today, I hope to have a bit more for you next time
Until then, craft on.

well damn...

I fully intended to write up a post for today and just can't see to get there. Exhaustion is not fun.

I'm hoping in the next week or so I will be on a regular enough schedule to get back to posting more frequently.

<3