Beads.

My dolls and fabrics are packed away in storage at the moment, my handspun is at Keeper’s Corner, my knitting needles are somewhere and I needed something to do. Not like that’s an actual excuse for me to take up yet another hobby; especially one involving sparkly things, color, and a good potential for a vacuum cleaner killing mess.

The bead shop in Klamath Falls is stunning. I think I should get a pat on the back for managing to avoid going there for an entire year (even though on more than one occasion appointments downtown forced me to walk right by the store and look longingly into the window.) I really need some kind of adult supervision.

Sometimes I think I’m buying for one envisioned project and another (much cooler) one appears in my head by the time I get home with my new tools and supplies. I also thought it would be better to start with something a little more basic than my original project idea because I’ve never used a bead loom on this scale before (this wide or with beads this small.)

The Decepticon logo seemed to be a natural choice. In the movie (Revenge of the Fallen) Jetfire was hands down my favorite character.

Jetfire: What planet am I on?

Sam Witwicky: Earth.

Jetfire: “Earth?” Terrible name for a planet. Might as well call it “Dirt”. “Planet Dirt.” Tell me, is that robot civil war still going on? Who’s winning?

Sam Witwicky: The Decepticons.

Jetfire: Well, I changed sides to the Autobots.

Sam Witwicky: What do you mean changed sides?

Jetfire: It’s a choice. It’s an intensely personal decision. So much negativity… who wants to live a life full of hate.

It’s still on the loom since I’m not quite sure what I want to do with it. I was thinking of stitching it to a jacket sleeve, but then I had this idea of mounting it onto an embossed velvet purse. Once I decide I may start working on an Autobot version.

Or I may be able to take my stuff out of storage and finish my dolls.

Oh sure, I act like I’m confident, and sometimes that’s enough to allow me to bulldoze my way through. In reality what’s going on inside my head is that I equate the fruits of my labor to my self worth, and since my self worth is usually in the toilet I tend to think just as poorly of the things I produce. So promoting my own skill is a major leap– and I crumple hard sometimes.

And this is where I cringe. Because I don’t always feel brave enough to say “Hey look guys, this is what I made!” Let alone try to say “Hey look guys, this is what I made and want you to exchange money for it!”

Besides I hate shop blogs in general, because sooner or later they turn into “Oooh we just got in a case of three toed glass pickle sharpeners and wouldn’t you know it? Everyone has to have one.”

So fine. Flannel curio bags on eBay and flannel curio bags on Etsy. I made them, the price is good if you need them. There. Happy now?

I’m going to go work on finishing my In the Style of Queen Anne doll and hope no one is judging me too harshly.

My phone; the one I dropped into the sink earlier today.

One thing I didn’t anticipate happening is the deep sense of loss I feel concerning an inanimate object. But it’s not really inanimate is it? My phone Droid did all sorts of things for me besides allow me to make calls, check voicemail, and text. It was my wi-fi hotspot, my jukebox, my photo album, my point and shoot camera, my video game console, my trivia keeper, my stitch counter, my calculator, my speedometer, and my go-to on the go thingie for Google, Gmail, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Twitter. It’s like a little friend that keeps all of my friends in it with all of my stuff and reminds me how awesome things are all the time. It was also my alarm clock.

And now, it might not be the same as it was prior to taking an unintentional bath.

This is so not the way I wanted to start 2012.

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.

Instead, I thought I’d be productive and sleep in late, contemplate my utter ignorance of British history and start reorganizing my sewing/craft room into something that makes sense.

It did make sense before; I’m a very organized person. I’m a very organized person because I have the attention span of a hamster and if things aren’t organized I get lost, then I get distracted, and then: “Oooh something shiny.” It was extremely organized and tidy, to the point where I was accused of having the craft room of a serious killer. It certainly looks that way when I’m working on dolls, all those little dismembered bodies and loose limbs.

The problem is that the room in question is terribly small and in the smallness I lose things, and when I lose something I look for it with a terrible ferocity and the result is that I leave behind a glorious trail of chaos. The smaller the space; the more glorious the chaos.

There was a point in time where I would actually give up, put things back in order, shrug it off and buy a new whatever-it-was-that-I-lost; but then I started finding things I’d lost and wondering why I owned so many duplicate tools and thinking that all these duplicates were putting me dangerously close to being a hoarder.

Obviously, I haven’t found a balance between extremes. I know (from watching A&E) that there’s the possibility that hoarding has a genetic link. In that light my fear of one day being a hoarder isn’t completely unreasonable.

Today I’m sorting things out by utility. Since I really hate chasing down all the packing and shipping stuff, I’ve made myself a sweet little station for all of it. The labels are upstairs with the printer, everything else like the boxes, packing material, tissue, tape, and scale are down in the craft room where I keep my inventory so it won’t get messed with before I put it in my booth or mail it out to a customer. I even have a little dedicated counter space– very exciting.

The rest of the cabinet still contains brushes, paints, sculpting material, paper maché supplies and stamps that I’ll have to revisit later.

Then I cleared off my shelf and started stacking my uncut fabric flat folded. Because I really do have OCD I unfolded the fabric, shook it out, ironed it and refolded it so all folds are all nine inches wide. Nine inches are good because those make for easy counting of actual yardage from the ends. I’m planning on getting some large bull-clips for the ends to keep the silkier materials from shifting.

Now I’m working on figuring out the best place to set up a photography area that I won’t have to move out of the way for other things. Once I figure that out I’ll make another lightbox and get my lights figured out for product shots. I made a backdrop curtain that I’ll also have to hang near over a table surface, which complicates things a little, but shouldn’t be too much of a concern.

After that, it’s a draw between making some kind of system for yarn and yarn related pursuits or figuring out a better storage system for my patterns.

During my convalescence I revamped Cutemojo with a completely new look, new theme and re-installed the shopping cart that I took offline when I moved last year. I have to build another light box and start taking photos of my inventory now but the shop is otherwise ready for business.

Last night I started painting my Queen Anne doll. It was really difficult to make myself cut the joints and get started on her, because painting is where I will inevitably screw things up. Obviously I know gesso exists and if I really mess things up, it’s here for me to apply over and start again. Worst case scenerio: I have to cut, sew and stuff a new part. I would just rather get things right the first time.

I also know that this is a tendency that hangs me up on a lot of things, since I would much rather not try than risk failure. I’m excellent at not trying. I don’t usually think about it, but being sick tends to punctuate certain habits of mine that I don’t like very much. I cringe when I think of wasting supplies and materials and it takes some mental flexibility for me to see that my making mistakes and redoing bits is not really a waste.

After cutting the joints and setting the loose beads aside, I applied a thin layer of gesso directly to the linen where I planned on painting. Once the gesso dried I used antique white as the base coat.

Next I mixed a little instant coffee into clear sealer, not a smooth blend– only mixing enough to wet the granules without incorporating them into the varnish. If I’d been thinking I would have taken an in progress picture, because as the coffee/sealer is applied with the brush the granules do dissolve leaving sharp grains behind.

Then I followed with crackle finish and the same antique white that I started with. Since it’s a little paler and more uniform than I would like I’m going to do one more very light coat with the coffee/sealer blend, diluting it with a little more sealer to grunge up the finish a little before applying clear varnish and painting her features.

This is my progress so far. I deviated by embiggening the nose, leaving the hair bun off (for now at least, I’m still contemplating hair) and needle sculpting the face. I couldn’t find the right sized wooden beads in my craft stash but I happened to have the right sized glass pearls on hand.

I think the glass pearls work well for the joints. There’s something very compelling about the way they peek out from the muslin.

Tomorrow there will be (in theory at least) gesso and paint and the making of clothes, but tonight I’m just going to revel a little in my progress.

That’s right, relax and revel.

With vague patterns, I’ve found the best way to decide if I want to invest time is to approximate the required yarn and needles, then knit some small part, for instance starting at the cuff of a guernsey instead of around the body. The cuff is usually a good indicator and easy enough to tear out and adjust the gauge by changing wool or needles, it takes a little guessing and a little math but if the pattern is worthy the effort eventually pays off.

With a person who is utterly vague, I have no solution. Guessing doesn’t work, one of the advantages of being completely absent of specifics is that no matter what other people might take away from a conversation the non-specificity lends enough confusion that no matter what. The vague person always (and I mean always) claims everyone else misinterpreted what he or she means. Patiently waiting for context doesn’t work, because that’s never going to happen– if you think it’s happened, too bad, because whatever you took from the context you thought you got: You’re still wrong.

Which leads me to think that maybe, when dealing with such a person, that they mean for me to treat them like a Victorian knitter would her latest magazine pattern, that I should gather the necessities and be obedient to the instructions and hope to heaven that whatever comes out of it fits someone in the situation.The author, having carefully constructed this knit pattern with much thought towards the fashioning of this garment has clearly more insight than the lady subscriber.

This isn’t to say that being unwilling to be specific is meant to be evil or manipulative, but when it’s continual it has the effect of keeping the target of all that vagueness off balance. The finished garment then resembles a canvas jacket with very long sleeves, lots of straps and buckles, and fastens in the back.

I’m going to assume that breeding conditions are less than ideal in the craft room because it stopped reproducing.

The timing was great though, because I usually don’t think that much about stuffing, and there are tons of people that know far more about what to use and how to use it that were willing to point me in the right direction. And as it turns out there are a lot of stuffings available at Christmas time sold as snow decoration that really aren’t readily available during the rest of the year.

I was also pointed to an awesome video for learning how to properly stuff a doll using hemostats.

The bunnies above were filled with Silky Soft, produced by Fairfield (the very same makers of regular poly-fil) it’s super bouncy and feels baby fine in comparison to the normal stuff. It doesn’t pack tightly, so when I overstuffed a tiny head and left it on the table, I’d return to find white polyester brain matter oozing out the neck hole. I bought this stuff before I had the the sense to ask the experts, but fortunately it’s perfectly appropriate for my squishy little toys.

Then there’s poly-fil, it looks loftier but packs densely. Using the hemostat technique I attempted Mikey from Beautiful Animal Dolls by Miriam Gourley. My Mikey’s skin is just cotton flannel, since JoAnn’s is all I really have for a fabric store there’s no proper wool felt to be had offline, but the thinner skin made a great test for the stuffing and technique. The hemostats really did make all the difference in the world and he’s not nearly as lumpy I feared he would be.

And he stands!

I also picked up a 50/50 rayon (from extruded bamboo) and polyester fiber (Nature-fil by Fairfield) and I guess I’ll be grabbing some of the Eco(-fil? I can’t remember) made from Ingeo (extruded corn) fibers when it goes on sale after Christmas but I have yet to try those out.

Mod Podge is miracle stuff. Especially since I’m convinced that somewhere encoded in my dna is an imperative to never throw away a wooden box. I’m pretty sure that since this box had an ugly fish (now obscured by gesso) design on the top that it bore dried and horribly out of date smoked salmon from my mom (sometimes she gives Christmas gifts a little late, not good from a culinary point of view but makes for awesome funny food poisoning stories.) Before doing anything to it I removed the hinges and set them aside so they won’t get gummed up with my creative impulses.

Sanding only improves soft woods so far, so I took off the rough edges with a medium grit sanding sponge and primed with a few coats of gesso but I wasn’t especially concerned with perfection.

Decoupage isn’t necessarily a speedy process, especially when using tissue paper and especially when going for a deeper varigated finish. The first layer consists mostly of the light blue tissue paper and a few bits of the violet, the second and third layers are almost all violet paper cut into slightly smaller diamondish shapes.

Now I’m going to tattle on myself.

Here’s one of my first boxes from a few years back, although I still like the general idea of the box, I really keep it because I made so many mistakes with it. My first mistake was not putting down a base coat, so in some of the thinner spots the wood shows right through the tissue (which could be cool if done intentionally, but very uncool in this context. Also, dust was a serious issue, so while I started with a nice clear clean pink, you can see what went wrong on first glance right around the edges where the lid and box meet.

On the inside things went a little (but not much) better. That bit of gold haze is from the judicious application of Perfect Pearls dust when the final coat was slightly tacky. I did wise up and apply more layers of paper, but did not have enough wisdom to let the layers dry out between applications, so it looks okay, but not great and doesn’t reflect the effort I put into it.

Everything has a learning curve.