How Cool Is This?

I was absolutely thrilled to get my wax seal in the mail yesterday. And even more thrilled to try it out this morning! All the talk of wax seals in A Game of Thrones made me want one, so the search was on!

At a local stationary store I found initial ones, but the font used was Papyrus, which, like Comic Sans, is considered a terribly overused font. Online searching fared better and I found a place called Seasons Creations which did not want an arm and a leg for Canadian shipping.

The seal is just the cutest little thing. The instructions were easy to follow - moisten the seal on an ice cube or cold water and light the wick and hold at a 45 degree angle to get wax flowing. It was hard to guess how much wax would be too much or too little, but a spot about half the size of a penny did the trick.

I think next time I will use cold water instead of an ice cube. When it came time to stamp, the seal was stuck to it! But it was handy to put the wick out. Now I can't wait - just imagine all the ACEOs and whatnot I can send out bearing my own purple pony seal!

To My Crafty Valentines!

I was in a tizzy last night because it suddenly came to me what I could do for a Valentine's post. And it almost never happened too! Years ago I made a bunch of little cross-stitch patterns using a free program. I found the files and to my horror, the program spit out "Error reading file". Nooooooo! I scoured my back ups and breathed a sigh of relief when I found a GIF of this little teddy bear! It never hurts to make back ups in different formats sometimes. I made the bear into a few pins on plastic cross-stitch canvas, such as dark brown, light brown and white, but they were hard sells for some reason, so I didn't make any more. Have a happy Valentine's and happy stitching!

A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings

Part of the fun of coming to a series late is not having to wait in agonizing anticipation for the sequels to arrive. This happened with Harry Potter and now it has happened with George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. Somehow this series was totally off my radar until it gained more publicity with the HBO TV series, so it was a huge surprise to me that the first book was published in 1996. I worked at the public library then, so I'm sure it must have gone through my hands at some point!

On a whim I bought the four book eBook bundle at Christmas time and started reading when I came down with a wicked cold last month. It was a good thing too, because I could literally not stop reading. I probably would have taken a day off just to finish it. I was expecting a typical, cliched fantasy saga, so I was amazed that it is more about political intrigue, mystery and deception instead.

To be honest, I didn't think there was anything exceptional about Martin's writing style. In fact there is something flat and repetitive about it - I noticed certain word pairs used over and over again which always kinds of grates on me. His descriptions of meals are always insanely detailed. But there is still some great craft going on as he divides the saga by the view points of different characters which allows parts of the story to be revealed in a very cunning way. It lets him avoid going the route of the info dump so common in science fiction and fantasy. And the cliffhangers! Wow!

I almost feel that describing any little part of the book would give away too many spoilers. It would be hard to condense the thick tomes, but basically the peace of the Seven Kingdoms is threatened in many ways and finally comes undone as characters are executed, kidnapped or accused of crimes. In the second book, A Clash of Kings, focuses on the conflicts between the many who declare themselves king of all the realm. There were some very exciting action scenes in the sequel and now I can't wait to get started on the third one, but I really do need a break from the series! Martin is unflinching in his depictions of medieval life and after a while all the killing and maiming and destruction does become onerous. I could almost pick up a romance novel before getting around to the third one.

Time for Tea

I missed class and work this week because cold germs finally caught up with me! Blah! I'm just not one to sit around lying on the couch, and neither is Muffin. The idea for a tea cozy made on the Knifty Knitter has been brewing in my mind for some time, so there was no better time to give it a try. Two tries actually. I was shocked when the first one ended up being too short. I guess there's no accounting for the shape of some things. Hopefully the pattern for it will be on my website when I get better. The dummy is sewn for my fibre homework project, but I don't trust my judgement right now to further cut up my husband's sweater :-)

Monday This and Monday That

I'm finding the pace of this semester to be pretty leisurely. There are a lot of readings in my English class, but that's OK, because I love reading. It seems like I haven't had time to read in the past five or so months. We're reading mostly short stories, but have three novels to go through. The dummy for my stuffed animal is sewn and I'm going to take apart the sweater tonight. It's due February 9th and I'm just enjoying using my sewing machine to piece things together. I should haul it out more! One of my classmates was smart and is converting a pair of boy's lederhosen that she found at a garage sale into a purse, so she's practically done. It's surprising how heavy it was! I splurged on a $25 beef roast and we had it for dinner last night. Tonight I made a beef casserole with mushroom soup and spiral noodles for dinner. There's still lots of beef left, but it's in the freezer now lest we get tired of beef pretty fast. Ah! Cooking is another thing I sorely missed. It seems nice to just do normal people stuff! The Crafter's Devotional is coming along pretty good. I have been able to do most things, such as "Make something from old photos" (I finally got our wedding photos into an album), looked up Greek and Polish folklore and reflected on why I made art. This book is such a winner! Oh, and I also decorated a sketchbook with leftover cardstock:

First Fibre Project!

Today was really fun. After a brief meeting, I headed to Fabricland to buy supplies for the first homework project in my fibre class.

We have to take a garment and transform it into something new. After much negotiating, my husband gave me one of his old sweaters. He looooves his sweaters and once he found out I would be cutting one up, my selection dwindled :) I'm going to be making a stuffed animal out of the sweater. Stay tuned!!

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Happy New Year!

The first day of 2012 is a bright and sunny one here. Most people would probably not guess it, but Calgary is one of the sunniest places in Canada with an average of 333 sunny days a year. We spent New Year's Eve with friends watching movies and playing games, and a birthday dinner for my mom. Yup, she narrowly missed out being a New Year's baby! I imagine that many people are eagerly beginning new Painting/Drawing/Whatever A Day today. I tried to do this once and I don't think I got past February. I'm not sure how successful I'll be either as I go back to school next week. But I'm going to give it a good try with a book I bought a couple of years ago called The Crafter's Devotional by Barbara R. Call. It's a bumper book of 365 creative ideas that are coded in different ways such as Monday-Sunday, 1-365 and by category such as ideas, journalling and collaborating. In fact day #1 is journalling. I do keep a paper journal, but I often prefer the online ones. I buy cute little notebooks and then usually they get misplaced around the house :-D Maybe I'm just an idea squirrel at heart. Sometimes I find half-filled journals from when I was younger and it makes me glad the Internet wasn't around back then. We don't really get a feel for how we grow and change. Don't rely on your memory either, because even after five years things can get fuzzy. I was only laid off a year ago and have trouble remembering the name of some co-workers.

The activities are pretty free-form and a variety of genres and techniques are represented, which must have been hard to do. Beads, wire, collage, stamping and mark making are just some of the things to be explored. Sometimes it's easier to just have an "assignment" to try instead of thinking up something on your own. The inclusion of personal and family history was interesting to me because I took several unsuccessful stabs at genealogy a long time ago. This book will definitely keep crafty types busy all year long!