Heart Shaped Potatoes

Potato, originally uploaded by s saldan.

There's a group on Flickr dedicated to heart shaped potatoes. Seriously.
I think I may join.

mix tape stitchin'

I stitched a mix tape. I like it.

First I drew it, then I taped it to the window to trace onto calicao. Then I watched back-to-back scrubs and stitched it.

Juniper helped. Bit tricky to stitch with a pair of green eyes watching every tremble of the thread.

I was thinking of adding some tape spooling from the bottom and into a love heart- too cheesy? Or just right?

Now thinking of all the things with lines, cords, ropes etc. to spool into words. More to come.

But what shall I do with this one now? Turn it into- a card? a just-for-show piece on the wall? a tiny eeny cushion? I'm open to a vote..

Because Everyone Wrote Bad Poetry In Highschool Part 1

I spent some time cross-legged on my bedroom floor this afternoon, re-reading old journals and notebooks I keep in an old bax under my bed. I came across a bunch of 'poetry'- and I use the term loosely-from my (turbulent) teenage years. Some of it is very funny. Some is very sad. All of it made me think about what I was going through, and stuff I haven't thought about for years (including my first bf, travelling around australia in a van with complete strangers, and what it's like to live in a tiny room on less than $20 a week). Here's one for your reading pleasure..

if I lie very still

I feel myself, taking up space

pushing air away breathe dissolving

if I lie very still

I can feel the warmth quietly radiate

off my skin

hear myself living, feel my existence

taste my disquiet

if I lie very still

I can sense the vibration

to the edges of my skin

that is me

Moleskine ... the legendary notebook of Van Gogh, Chatwin, Hemingway, Matisse and Céline~, originally uploaded by Tja'Sha ♥.

Join in and post one of yours (I know you wrote some) I dare you.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White

today I..

Unwrapped beads I ordered last week and wondered what they will become. I particularly like the tiny wings, and tiny fishing squirrel and miss piggy profile. A ring methinks?

Took photos of random things (and turned them into polaroids)

Painted my toe nails black for whatcha wearin wednesday. Makes me feel a bit rebellious. (I know it's not quite wednesday. Let's pretend, m-kay?)

Went for a run. (well, I went for a fast walk slow jog with sporadic running chucked in.) I've been goin every day for over a week now and have discovered muscles in my legs I forgot I had.

I also drank a lot of tea, and started a new stitchin'. Can't wait to show you.

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what did you do today?

little things

IF: Little things by Amy.Ng

Pip’s ‘Words and Pictures’ is continuing with this week’s theme ‘Little Things’. It made me think of all the little things that can add up to make your day. The unexpected pleasures. I love the little things.

Train luck; when you run down the stairs and straight onto a train before the doors slide closed. Also refer to ‘taxi luck’ and ‘bus luck’.

Rain luck; when you have forgotten your umbrella and the clouds are grey and dark, but somehow you get indoors before it buckets down. Also refers to when you are caught in the rain on a summer weekend and dance.

Song luck; when you’re in your own world and a great song plays that breaks you out of your bubble and makes you smile and start shakin’ your booty. Also when you’re woken up by your favourite song on your alarm radio. Awesome.

Warm Glow: waves across the street, compliments from strangers, kisses goodbye. Also see ‘running into friends luck’

Entertainment Luck; when you have forgotten that your favourite show is on but accidentally end up with it on anyway (me, last night + scrubs = yay) see also ‘book luck’ and ‘movie luck’

‘Sweet as’ Luck; when things come together; the lighting for your photo, you find the perfect fabric for your project, any sequence of small fortunate events.

They all turned out to be luck, but I guess the little things are. If I caught the train because of my own punctuality and the impeccable City Trains service, well that would just take the magic out of it, wouldn’t it (as well as being incredibly unlikely!)

Also Laughter; when you stumble across an email, blog, or hear a joke etc. that leaves you doubled up with tears streaming down your face.

Note: try not to say the word ‘luck’ too many times in a row. I just have, it sounds weird and kinda creepy.

Lucky me!

Firstly, I won a giveaway! My very first blog give-away.

(I'd like to thank my big sister, who introduced me to the lovely world of crafty blogs, and my mum, who taught me to sew, my highschool home-ec teacher, who would breath deeply and manage to smile whenever I made a mistake and called it 'rustic'. And of course I'd like to thank my readers and followers, you guys rock!)

Ok a bit much maybe? But I am excited!

The giveaway is from Amy at Badskirt. I've picked out these lovely badges to pin to my favourite sweaters, and I hope noone else has snapped them up first!

Amy makes lots of ultra-cute stuff, check out her online store, and her lovely blog.

Secondly, Pip from meet me at mikes left me a comment! (She also used one of my pictures from felt-along!) Being a new blogger, I was just stoked! She is amazing and inspiring and just such a nice crafty lass with such a nice crafty blog with many admirers that I can't help but feel a honoured to hear from her. (I won't say I didn't jump up and down a wee bit. just a wee bit.) Thanks Pip!

this is how I roll

I know I haven't posted anything crafty for ages and ages, but I have been doin' a few things quietly.

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Workin' on the scarf I started a while ago. 'Cept I misjudged the width, and it is now more akin to a small blanket. It shall be my airplane snuggle shawl scarf. Just gonna take longer, is all. This picture doesn't do the colour justice.

I was inspired to do some stitching after reading a post by my sister (hers was also the first blog I ever read, and it is beautiful.) I really like embroidering. Only done a few so far, and I tried out a few new stitches in this one.

again, this pic doesn't quite do it justice! Maybe I should turn them into polaroids...

everything looks better as a polaroid

courtesy of this application found over here at doe-c-doe. (She's postin' one every week for fakin' friday, I might too.)
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Turns your photos into polaroid-looky-ones. Highly addictive. Also makes cool whirring camera sound. Try it out.

cosy

apple tart, originally uploaded by C.Mariani ( vacation ).

Pip has started a words and pictures blog-along, and this week (or was it last?) the theme is 'cosy'. Anything it means to you.
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At first I was like, yep, cups of tea, rain on the windows, sleeping cats, ugg boots, quilts, lamplight, snuggles. (All the great winter stuff that's coming around again! yay!)
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But then my mind snagged on pie. Pie is very cosy. And for dinner tonight I had tortellini. I love food wrapped in other food. It's comforting and cosy indeed!
cheese and spinach triangles
spring rolls
pasties and sausage rolls
ravioli
tortellini
dumplings
apple pie and cherry pie and all the other kinds of pie
strudel (that one's fun to say too)

can you think of any others?
When the weather is cold I foresee friends and flour in a cosy kitchen for a bakeoff or two.. or three. yum.

p.s. I found a recipe for peanut butter pie last week. Oh yeah.

reading is cool

(print from this etsy shop)

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damn straight. I'm goin' to the library.

I want them all

I've just come across this picture on this lovely blog.

When I was a little girl I had this book on tape, and reading it invokes memories of a warm rich voice washing over me with adventurous tales and tantrums and friendship. I love it. I used to make rice mixed with butter and pepper; or apple, honey and cheese cubes (don't ask) and curl up with a book and a cushion behind the chair in the sunroom, where the 70's orange glass walls would turn everything warm and yellow. I bought a copy a few years ago, but it was not as gorgeous as this beautifully bound one. Look at those blossoms!

You can see it here, along with other gorgeous books. I want to run my fingertips over the fabric and embossed letters. I want them all.

in totally unrelated but strangely fascinating news, this fish has a transparent head.

everyone needs cute miniature stamps

So I went to the shops yesterday with one goal. Buy a new purse. (I was going to make one, being thrifty and crafty and all, and found a bunch of helpful tutorials, but couldn't decide on fabric. And seeing as going to the fabric store was a) very tempting but b) very dangerous for my finances, I kinda figured I'd buy one for now.) A nice one, long with lots of little pockets for my cards, and change, and some secret ones where you hide money from yourself and pretend to forget about it.

I came back with these.


So practical. 'Cause everyone needs cute miniature Korean stamps. yep.

I showed them to my friend, and she told me that in Korea you collect them, and write whole letters without a word, just rows of stamps. They say things like 'cheer up!' 'congratulations' 'I'm gloomy', 'grow up like a machine', 'best wishes' and 'I love you, friend'.

I'm not so good & in the garden

I am not-so-good today. My voice is fading, but I don't really need to talk anyway. My nose is running, but not too badly. My body is sore, but I can go back to bed whenever I like. My head aches, but I am reading all my favourite blogs and every now and then forget that it does. So while I am not so bad, I'm not so good either.

I went to the corner shop to pick up the weekend paper this morning, and glanced in the garden on the way back in to the sanctuary of home. I'm a sporadic gardener (like most things I do) and am always a little surprised to see things growing, even when I know I planted them weeks ago! On closer inspection these little, well rather big actually, cucumbers greeted me. There's quite a few. Does anyone have a recipe that uses multiple cucumbers?

craftastic

found this at craftastrophe, 'because handmade isn't always pretty'. Check it out, a funny blog about the funny/weird/just plain wrong bits from crafty blogs everywhere... 'cause we've all seen a craft and gone WTF?
it made me laugh, and cringe and puzzle and laugh again!

Craig needs a friend

These posters were found around a suburb in Sydney.

Have a look at them here. If you'd like to reply, I think he's a friend of a friend. I'll pass it on.

i heart sushi

I love sushi very much, but only the boring stuff. You know, tuna, veges, chicken, avocado. None of that sushimi business. Now you may argue that I am not a true sushi lover, (I wouldn't do too well in Japan), but I stand by my conviction that seeing as I love it very much, it makes up for the boring part.

This afternoon I met my friend for sushi dinner at my local sushi train. (some of my friends, knowing how much I like sushi, got me a sushi gift card for my birthday. Yay.)

she is funny and caring and wise and sweet and a lot of fun. We talked and laughed and shared, and I came away feeling blessed and sweet.

Around her I feel I can totally be myself. To prove it I held chopsticks in my mouth like a walrus. She laughed and did it too.

(apologies for no image credits)

Then I looked in flickr and it seems everybodys done it. hee hee

Luckily, Pepper..

As Pip pointed out, if you're going to do an 'unfortunately', a 'luckily' would be nice too! Much more positive! This is what I found..

Luckily, Pepper is equal to the task of getting him lined out and making him act right. AND she wins the Queen-of-the-mountain competition every time.
Luckily, Pepper recovered.
Luckily Pepper was brought here by a policeman
Luckily, Pepper has a small arsenal of excellent sounding, catchy tunes

new ink

Today is Wednesday, so I was about to post a 'whatcha wearin Wednesday' post, but I gots new ink today, and I'm wearing it, so that's what I took pics of to show you.

It's around my inner arm (the pictures make it a bit hard to see) and you can't see wear it ends in two leaves on my upper arm, but you get the drift. It is much darker than I hoped (i pictured grey branches but forgot.to.say), but I am NOT. panicking... the colours lighten as it heals, and when I go in next I'll ask if she can add some white to the branches to make them light brownish grey. yeah.

It's supposed to be apple blossom, but turned out looking suspiciously like cherry-blossom.. I may add a little apple coming off the branch, and whiten the blossoms a wee bit.

It started off okay, but the shading was not-so-comfy. It hurt like the dickens in some places, and tickled in others. Some places it hurt AND tickled, so I just took the benefit of the doubt and giggled.

I have another appointment in 2 weeks, so my thoughts turn to all the empty patches of skin, and what I would like to put on them. Thinking about what I love in my life, music and craftiness came up, so I'm looking into something representing those. Looking around I've seen some incredible work on crafty lasses, check these out..

(image credits: sewing tattoos flickr pool , Chloe crossland, Imeanhoneybee, Softsarah)

Embroidered deer

I am in complete awe. You might remember my first attempts at embroidery.

it was stitched by Merry Calliope, but I found it on Feeling Stitchy, one of my fav blogs.

eye-spy

I'm joining in on eye-spy, a cute meme where you post a blog about a theme each week. This week the theme is colour...

I like all colours, I like 'em for different things. I like my clothes some colours and I prefer to craft in others but my favourite colour, if I had to choose.. is green.

(from I wish I was the royal Trux)

I found these cute things in green at jars of cute. Heapsa cute things of all colours over there..

these are cute too...


and I found this picture looking at cute wall decals on etsy from this lovely blog.

Mmmm green..

i heart park

I've been for a run for the past few days (I know! sshh! I'm trying to keep it quite so I don't lose my momentum by realising what I'm doing!) and in the last bit of the loop I take a rest on the corner of the park. I know I've talked about this park before, but I. love. it.

Every morning I ride along the path across a corner of it, just cruising past the morning trees and everything looks greener in the morning I'm sure. In the afternoons I cruise back the other way on the way home form work, past couples under the trees and businessman strolling along. If I'm going home earlier than usual there's mums and blankets and prams strewn around the playground.

A bit later on, the west side fills with all kinds of dogs. Dogs are just so gosh darn happy, you know? When I'm chilling and watching them, it's during their favourite time of day. Runnin', catchin', sniffin' waggin'. They make me smile. (and want to borrow one, just for a little while)

On the weekends, as you know, I love to lie on the grass and read the paper, watch the clouds, chat with friends. Big groups congregate to celebrate birthdays or just catch up. People kick a ball around, throw a frisbee, fly a kite. With a beer in hand and a smile. Love it. And then there's the festivals and markets. When I die, I want to come back as a park.

hello lovely readers!

I'm sorry I've been away! I've missed you.

I've been a bit down (the *sigh* post may have been a clue) and refrained from blogging whingey woe-is-me material and waited until my head has cleared. I'm feeling much better now, thank you. And so, with thoughts bubbling away I may make up for lost time and post away!

each day too short

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.
John Burroughs

Unfortunately...

this is a cute meme from The Lark, though I saw it first on Pip's blog.
you google 'unfortunately *insert name here*' and list your favourite sentences when they bounce back from all over ze place..

Unfortunately Pepper isn't an obvious note - but it's the most unisex/spicy plum I've come across myself
Unfortunately Pepper also ends up stinking the place out, much to Puddle’s consternation: “But I gave you no command to stink”.
Unfortunately, Pepper has bonded to us very strongly and the "guard dog" in her is showing
Unfortunately, Pepper's Ghost has a couple of problems for me.

tee hee hee

sigh, sighed, sighing, sighs

v.intr.
1 a. To exhale audibly in a long deep breath, as in weariness or relief.
1 b. To emit a similar sound: willows sighing in the wind.
2. To feel longing or grief; yearn: sighing for their lost youth.
v.tr.
1. To express with or as if with an audible exhalation.
2. Archaic To lament.
n.
The act or sound of sighing.

Influence on nearby people
It is generally admitted that if one person sighs, surrounding people will soon feel the need to sigh as well. Many people claim that they can feel this wish to sigh without actually hearing or seeing the other person sighing, something that modern science finds difficult to prove.

from wikipedia and yourdictionary.com..

sigh.

animal figurines

My friend brought me home some little glass animals from the 50's. They cheered me up. The elephant is my favourite.

Aah giant cat!
So I took a picture of my other random little animal pairs. The bunnies look shy and shocked. Like there's a story behind the missing ears we don't know about..

Little ducks I found in a tiny secondhand store last year, with random goods stacked to the ceiling, including unopened coke cans from the 1970's. It was run by an asian man who would try to sell obscure porn to any guy who walked in (they told me later) but never said a word to me.

Happy week everyone x

I haven't made anything all weekend.

I don't feel like creating. anything.
This is not very like me.

The universe is trying to teach me something lately. I wish I knew what it was. I feel that if I just concentrate hard enough I'll figure out what the lesson is, and this may stop happening to me. *concentrating with furrowed brow*
The turbulence of the last few months have got to be so damn character building, or I don't know what.

"What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?" Jacques Lacan

art

How to be extra thrifty: lose your purse, with all your cash, bank details & credit cards. When a kind employer gives you a pay advancement, spend it all on beer. Be back where you started.

my birthday soon

3/52 ADAW, originally uploaded by I.G. (Sirenita).

It's my birthday soon. Very soon. I keep reminding myself so I see it coming. My birthday has a way of sneaking up on me. Last year I was so ready for it bythe time it came I confused myself and for a few months thought I was a year older than I am.

I would like for my birthday..
Johnny Depp. slightly younger, a little taller, and desperately in love with me
enough wisdom to know a little more and hurt a little less, but not too much
my metabolism to suddenly quadruple with no side effects
something charitable, now I feel quite selfish with the above wishes.
or maybe..
ukulele lessons
a pirate themed party
some crafty supplies and buttons
a knitting machine
a lovely tattoo
a secondhand book
my own weight in chocolate
I would be happy with..
a beer at the pub
a room of balloons. lots of 'em.
kind words from friends
hugs

(edit) or Johnny

Record Bowls

pick some records you never listen to.

pop them in the oven and make some pretty bowls. Be sure to wear very pretty Christmas present oven mitts. Also be sure to burn a few on the tray and fill the house with melted plastic fumes. Mmmm.. Admire one and take a photo.

Wander around the house with the camera and take random photos to show the usefulness of a record bowl.

Make many many bowls of different sizes. Collate them into sets and put them on Pepperstitches store for all your friends and crafty fellows.

Try to think of other uses for old records. Fold an edge of a record and stick to your wall as a handy pattern holder. Yep, funky and functional!

Realise that you've spent an entire night melting plastic and taking photos of it. Be ok with that.