Sooki is the main character in The Saggy Baggy Elephant, he’s happy with himself and life in general until a parrot starts making fun of him.

Parrots can be such dicks.

Sooki then tries ways to make his skin fit better, mostly by asking predators for advice and putting himself in harms way. Each time he tries and fails the parrot is there to make sure that Sooki feels the sting of public humiliation.

Really depressed, Sooki hides in a cave (an obvious metaphor for eating a gallon of Cherry Garcia and wearing dirty sweatpants) and a hungry lion finds him there. Sooki cries out as loud as he can when the lion goes after him and his terror is rewarded– he is saved by a herd of elephants that not only chase off the lion but affirm that there’s nothing wrong with Sooki, he’s a fine looking little elephant sags and wrinkles and all. Then they go stampede through the jungle in a rage (okay, the book says they all dance through the jungle, but I’ve watched a lot of National Geographic specials on elephants and dancing was not even mentioned in passing.)

It’s probably too sad to recount that the elephants’  joy stampede destroyed several small villages and took many innocent lives so it ends with them “dancing” in the jungle. Not to mention that graphic depictions of death and destruction could have been problematic for the illustrator of a children’s book. I can respect editorial discretion and I still love this story even though the intended moral of the story is “You’re okay as you.” and I’m pretty sure the real moral of the story is “Yell loud enough and an angry mob of adults will eventually come and save you.”

Also: “Parrots are dicks.”

The truth is no angry mob is going to save anyone from deeply seated self loathing caused by the taunting of parrots with borderline personality disorder or lions that may or may not be suffering from a serious eating disorder.

Still, it’s a lovely story and I couldn’t pass by the little handmade elephant in Keeper’s Corner without thinking of the book, so I bought the elephant and Matt gave me the book.

My re-organizing of the craft room is going well. I took a little time out to deal with a pressing case of yarn vomit. Yarn vomit is when a skein of yarn expels the loose inner core of yarn in a one or several large clumps which will then tangle if left to their own devices. Yarn vomit is the bane of knitters and a single skein of yarn suffering from yarn vomit is capable of infecting the whole herd.

Somehow winding new neat and tidy balls of yarn just isn’t giving me my crafty fix for the day. I think I’m going to make a push to finish painting my Queen Anne doll later and start working on hearts for Valentine’s day.

I get a little kick out of watching my flock increase.

Like a crow to shiny.

Like this six-20 Eastman Kodak camera from the 40′s. I absolutely loathe the idea of changing rolls of film in a closet or by touch alone hands and camera concealed in a bag– still, I love larger film sizes and that the camera itself has an aesthetic appeal just makes it that much more captivating.

The fact that I have a half bath downstairs at my disposal with just enough room to set up a darkroom has absolutely nothing to do with the acquisition of this camera and the potential future purchase of an enlarger that I just shopped out last night (for the fun of it, after purchasing a few rolls of 120 film pre-rewound onto 620 spools online.) Totally coincidental.

Vintage Universal Travel Iron

On that note, I also found a sweet little vintage travel iron. The vinyl case is pristine, the thread wrapped around the little card looks untouched and brand new, even the case inserts are present and barely touched by age. The only hint of rust is on the little sewing scissors and it’s just a hint.

I really hate being here in Klamath Falls while most of my stuff is still in storage, in Stayton. I really like Klamath Falls, I just hate not having access to my books and tools and furniture. Furniture is nice, not that I actually own a lot of it, but I can see the convenience in it.

Cutest nightmare fuel ever.

Candy + Sushi = candy sushi.

I’ve wanted to do this since spotting this Make: How to.

I made the rice crispy treat base, but everything else was a group effort with the kids right down to the roe eggs and oddly placed jelly & marshmallow frogs on the board. Lexi even added her own chopsticks next to the ‘ginger.’

Clean up was a breeze (it mostly involved the phrase “Eat the extras and put the wrappers in the garbage”– there were no complaints.)

This is one of my purchases (and my absolute favorite!)

Visit RemiRings and check out the beauty!

It was a pleasure to meet Dana, her rings are not only beautiful, but absolute originals and very affordable, she also has pendants and other jewelry.

I think if I were to reknit this I’d add at least 3 more inches in length. Maybe just a squidge more.

The finishing was super easy, I snipped a small hole in the top to let the lid button through, and sliced holes to let through the spout and handle.

I’m going to mount googly eyes on it and make it my friend.

No major problems but the files that control putting fresh batteries into the camera after he’s used it seem to be completely corrupted.

I’ve been working on making more canes. Geometric and simple flowers seem to be the most forgiving. I read yesterday that I’m not supposed to be able to use the clay brands that I have for cane work because they are too soft. I sort of figured that was the case and compensated by putting parts in the freezer between sessions.

I decided to take a bit of a risk and try for a more complex shape, and made a skull cane. I built from the teeth and bottom jaw upwards, the most difficult part seemed to be the nose holes. I think next time I’ll the jaw more substantial, but all in all I’m happy with the result. I cut off part of the cane and reduced it to make the smaller skull, and the flower was supposed to be a daisy from yesterday’s experiments but ended up looking sort of skeletal so it fits well with the skulls.

Without my regular soothing activities to keep me occupied and with the general disruption of my wood turning activities I’m going certifiably bonkers. Discovering that you’ve developed severe allergies to certain woods when you are a wood turner is, to put it mildly, rather depressing. I would be more depressed, however; the migraines that were daily kicking my ass have been reduced to the weekly kicking of my ass, it’s hard to feel deeply bad when I feel better physically. Bonkers, but not depressed.

Case in point: Polymer clay.

My relationship with this medium has been iffy. In high school the technique for making a gradient mix from one color to another was to make five g’zillion tiny balls of both colors and work from one end to the other in tenths. So if the gradient was blue to yellow, you’d start with 10 blue balls (mixed together), then 9 blue balls plus one yellow, then 8 blue plus 2 yellow, and working that way until you had 10 yellow balls. God help you if you made a mistake or didn’t mix the clays completely because they then had to be shaped into tiles, baked and then labeled and stacked.

As you can imagine, for someone like me (who tends to have the attention span of a hamster on caffeine) sitting around blending balls of clay and making squares was not my favorite thing.

After that experience, I was in awe (and I still am) of people who can really work polymer clays. Not to say that I completely avoided the stuff, I’ve used it for dolls and small distorted and freakishly crispy charms, and I’ve read books about working it but it just didn’t click for me.

However, as of late, without knitting to keep me sane and happy and armed with new books on this mysterious subject, I ventured gently into that colorful realm.

First, I learned the Skinner blend, which sounds like a dangerous dance move but is actually a way to make a smooth gradient without five g’zillion little balls of colored clay. The technique is named after Judith Skinner who is– apparently– a freakin’ genius and my new personal hero. Judith Skinner is saving the world from blending five g’zillion freakin’ balls of clay and for that contribution to humanity we cannot thank her enough.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit (so of course I need to tattle on myself and be done with it) but I think I own more polymer clay and clay tools than most people who use the stuff on a regular basis. A few things I had for other purposes, but most of it was given to me by friends and family for the express purpose of enticing me to work with it.

As it is with all things crafty I tend to sit on art supplies until I’m either inspired or in dire need of a particular something. Usually the latter. I may sound like I’m joking when I say that I could open a craft store using only what I have on hand; I assure you, it’s no joke. I am capable of giving away boxes and bags and purging the house of unwanted clutter in every conceivable way, however art supplies have a way of reproducing in my presence.
Next I read up on making canes from polymer clay. The technique is fascinating, you start by making a thick coin shaped picture, in the same way that you’d put together tessellating tiles to make a mosaic image, filling in the negative spaces with a background color. When that part is done it’s time for what’s officially called “reducing” but I like to think of as “controlled smooshing”. This makes a long shape with the image submerged only to be revealed with by cutting a cross section. So far I’ve done a few flowers, a somewhat failed honey comb pattern, and a random pink pattern made by extruding clay through a square disk.

I don’t know how to describe the process other than it’s completely magical. I am now eyeballing everything that can withstand the curing temperatures as a potential object to be embellished this way. I have designs on making stitch markers, needle protectors, and buttons. I could probably manage to work on canes well into old age without ever learning a new technique and still be endlessly entertained by the potentials.

There are so many other techniques, like knitting and woodworking, 15 minutes is all it takes to learn to make something presentable but because of all the applications it would take a few lifetimes to really master the medium. And like knitting and woodworking the devil is in the details. All the tickle points, all the techniques and details are really stimulating and curious.