30 January 2007

a gradual process

I've already posted images of this in my LiveJournal, but then today I realized I'd never updated blogger with any of it. So this morning's entry is a backtrack of last week's plush endeavors.






The body fabric is a natural-tone muslin, the eyes and mouth are black thread. This week I'm in the process of making a nicer version of the body out of velour fabric. I cut all the pieces on Sunday night with a few minor differences from the original (thumbs on the hands, a slightly different dart for the front of the head), sewed and stuffed the body yesterday, and today I'll hopefully finish the head.

Well, maybe finish the head. I'm thinking of purchasing some flat-black buttons for the eyes rather than messing around with the satin-stitch again; because it was hard enough to make an even satin-stitch on muslin, never mind piled fabric.

I also still need to make ears (the first prototype didn't have any). And, for this particular plushie, ears will be necessary, since a major part of his defining accessories is wearing funky earrings.

After I'm done with the body, the real tricky part will begin--hair, clothing, accessories. My experience with making doll clothes is so limited, it could be written on the back of a postage stamp in its entirety.

And Strife's clothes are kind of detail-oriented: the boots and gauntlets, fingerless gloves (good thing the new plushie has thumbs), and a nonsensically pieced-together [leather or pleather?] jump-suit with tiny metal rings and belts and such. For a better explanation of what I mean, I include photos:





Yeah, he's a skinny god. I don't care. He's going to make an adorable plushie.

But I get the sinking feeling I'll be hand-sewing Strife into his complicated getup.

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29 January 2007

pure morning

Oh, this past weekend ... ~_~

And now for a more-detailed account of the weekend's events, adventures in Providence, and terrorists on skis.

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24 January 2007

for my next trick

I think I'm going to make an owl. There's a very simple pattern for one that I copied from Craftster that has very few pieces, and I don't think it should take me too long to put it all together.

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23 January 2007

nuigurumi, continued

I finished making Farsil the Cat last night.



I'm not sure what I'll turn out next, but I really like making plushies, so probably another one of those (though, not likely to be another cat--not for a while anyway).

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22 January 2007

tableware you know you want to use

The title, you'll soon understand, is sarcastic.




"Poisoned drink" and "poisoned food" (respectively). It's like Hello Kitty from Hell. Awesome.

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nuigurumi

This past weekend I rewarded the leaps and bounds I had made in organizing my desk by finally pulling out my sewing machine and using it (after a hibernation period of how long?), temporarily relocating the laptop to my bed. I also cleared out a nook for the sewing machine on one of the lower shelves of the desk for when I'm not using it; having it there will make it easier to take out whenever I want.



Sunday I took the trip from South Station out to Framingham. I had about half an hour to wait for my train, so I stopped at one of the food stalls in the station for a sandwich. There's a new one called Cosi, and I recommend it to anyone who happens to wind up in South Station. Their melts are awesome.

My purpose of the day was to visit The Fabric Place and get whatever I needed to finish my project--and browse too, since it is, according to their advertisements, the biggest Fabric Place in New England. I bought more than I needed to: a 50-pack of hand-sewing needles, more fat quarters from the quilting department, felt squares, poly-fill (no more lumpy stuffed creatures), and poly pellets (no more top-heavy stuffed creatures either).

I arrived home around twilight, and finished sewing the cat's pieces together before dinner arrived while watching the second (and last) disc of Arrested Development, season three. He still needs a face (as I'm using pins to mark where I'm thinking it should go), but this is what he looks like now:



Somewhere between Framingham and South Station, on the trip home from The Fabric Place, I decided that his name is Farsil Redleaf. The "Redleaf" part is fairly understandable (the maple pattern fabric that makes up his front, tail, and inner-ears); but don't ask me about "Farsil," because I don't know or remember why I arrived at that. I was always bad at naming pets. I'm equally bad at naming stuffed animals.

Other changes I would consider making to the process:

1. Perhaps determine a more stable way of attaching the head to the body (or, indeed, a way of attaching all pieces to the body before stuffing). I just feel like the hand-sewing bits were the least uniform, and maybe the whole design could be machine sewn if slightly altered. Maybe the tail, like the arms, could be pre-stuffed and sewn into the seam.

* In lieu of that, do some trial-stitching on spare fabric and try to recall that old secret of "the hidden stitch."

2. Stitch the face (with whatever) before sewing the head together, because I can already tell that any attempt at satin-stitching the face is going to be rather difficult.

3. Make use of the poly-pellets in the bottom (and maybe the feet too) so that it's not so top-heavy. Otherwise, it really can't sit up by itself.

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18 January 2007

Tarzan, much?

There are certain notions that I would tend to immediately dismiss as fiction. This was one of them:

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pride cometh before ...

I've got a memory like an elephant... that's lost its memory.

- Mrs. Letitia Cropley (Liz Smith), The Vicar of Dibley

... a nasty fall up the front steps in the freezing cold. Or something to that effect. I could blame it on pride or my over-large slippers that I happened to be wearing at the time, and in which I have a hard enough time while walking on level surfaces, never mind brick stairs.

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16 January 2007

snow!?

I was just checking on weather.com, and read this:



I know it seems like nothing if you don't live in the Boston area, but we've not had proper snow since ... November? December? And even then it wasn't anything that actually stuck to horizontal surfaces.

It's been a sad, sad winter season for Boston.

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digging for the truth

It's a slogan that The History Channel has pasted all over the MBTA Green Line trains (I can't speak for the other lines, as I don't see them very often). It's a sentiment that would seem to express serious scholastic interest, but none of the accompanying images really match up.



While there, I [finally] bought Christmas presents for my flat-mates at a shop on Derby St. called Witch Ways: a sun-and-moon themed wind-chime for Michelle and an opalescent "witch ball" for Stephanie (they call it that because it's meant to protect a home from malevolent forces, but to me it looks like a pretty glass-blown Christmas ornament). After that, I went farther down to Ye Olde Pepper Candy Companie, the oldest candy company in America (open since 1806), and bought truffles--because I really like their truffles and thought they would be nice to accompany the gifts.



Christmas crises over with, I walked back toward Pickering Wharf, and stopped in at Cafe Jaho for a cappuccino and some writing--and, though I hadn't really expected much of myself, I got a fair amount of writing done. It needs editing, as the characterization of my main character is a little off for the scene (though I haven't dealt with him in 50,000 words, so that's not very surprising); but I like what I've done with the secondary character, so it wasn't a wasted or fruitless effort.

I didn't leave Salem until nearly 6:00 PM, and walked around taking pictures in the dark until the next inbound train was due to arrive.




Some of them turned out better than others.

Yesterday morning, as I was getting ready to go out into the rain again, the doorbell rang. It was the postman with my purchases from Amazon.co.uk--the three new books based on the Torchwood series. I unwrapped them, enjoyed the sight of them for a few minutes (when you line up the three separate book spines they make a picture of the whole team), and put Another Life in my bag for T reading material.



I spent the afternoon at the CambridgeSide Galleria, and bought a new protective case for my iPod (a black and red leather folio that I saw at the Apple Store in Raleigh, NC over Christmas break and had been coveting ever since, regardless of the U2-connection).

Shopping confession two, I feel, requires preamble to justify the purchase--one that the majority of my friends will still feel is not an adequate justification; but if they're really my friends they'll forgive the rather "preppy" vanity involved. I don't generally shop at Abercrombie & Fitch; it's usually out of my price range, and, quite frankly, most of the clothing is poorly crafted and overpriced for its quality (or lack thereof). I've only shopped their clearance, because that's when I feel that the clothing is actual worth what you're paying.

All that being said, I really like the way Abercrombie & Fitch clothing smells--you know, before the first time you wash it. And, while looking for clothing deals with my mother in the post-Christmas madness, we went into an Abercrombie & Fitch. I ended up buying a sweater and a pair of greenish-gray khakis; and again, I was struck by the fragrance on all of the clothes.

Waiting in line, there was a table beside the check-out counter with bottles of multiple scents, and I picked up the test-bottle of "Classic" on a hunch and spritzed it on a test-strip. Sure enough, "Classic" is what all their clothes smell like. And I wanted it, but I didn't buy it; it seemed like overkill at the time (and I'm sure still seems like overkill to you, dear readers, now).

With that long introduction to the fact, the shorter story is that I went and bought a bottle yesterday at the Galleria. Because I was there, and alone, and had no one in tow to give me judgmental glares about the silliness of such a purchase (you know who you are--yes, all of you, most likely). No, I'm only leaving myself open to criticism after the fact by mentioning it in my blog; but at least this way no one can attempt to talk me out of it.

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12 January 2007

stick that in your Liberty Bell and ring it

Jack of All Trades - President Thomas Jefferson dispatches spy Jack Stiles (Bruce Campbell) to the tiny isle of Palau-Palau to block the advance of Napoleon Bonaparte (aptly played by Verne Troyer) in this offbeat adventure series. Masquerading as a manservant, Jack and his partner -- winsome British agent Emilia Rothschild (Angela Dotchin) -- aim to thwart Napoleon while also combating the corrupt colonial governor (Stuart Devenie).

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11 January 2007

could be more sonic

I start where nightmares end.

- The Damned "Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde"

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10 January 2007

... entertain us

I'm glad that the next few DVDs in the Netflix line-up are comedies. Last night, watching Vicar of Dibley and Arrested Development, I laughed more within the span of a few hours than I usually do in a whole day.

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09 January 2007

on the wampage

Sometimes you find the best things accidentally.

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And now for something completely different (no, not Monty Python's Flying Circus). I was looking for images of Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) of Torchwood--no special reason, I just felt like it--and one of my searches led me to a blog with this:



Consequently, the blog had this too, which also pleased me (since it was what I was looking for in the first place):


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08 January 2007

moral courage?

Trust has nothing to do with moral courage. It occurs when we have nowhere else to turn, when we reach the end of our need to control.

- Rodney Smith, "Lessons from the Dying"

I think our eyes occasionally read and interpret what we expect to read, rather than what is actually there. For example, this quote--for me--makes trust look like a last resort. When I first read the second sentence, my mind definitely saw, It occurs when we have nowhere else to run, when we reach the end of our rope. I apparently link trust with desperation. And words beginning with the letter 'r'.

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05 January 2007

in your frequency

I bought it over break, and have been listening to Placebo's Meds album a lot lately; and I've found a weird video for the title-track.

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Christmas, continued

I have more pictures of presents from my friends.




An origami box that is too nice to part with and a bar of lavender-vanilla-scented soap--from Melly.


Likely, more pictures will follow, as there are still some things I've not yet captured.

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