Thing-a-day.com

Just to prove that I have not been completely slacking on Thing-a-Day, here is what I’ve got so far of the baby blanket that started here. More than 60 percent completed! (It’ll be 7 x 7 squares.) Of course, there’s that small matter of the blue square that needs to be ripped and reknit in the correct blue, and then there’s the hours and hours of seaming, but I have to finish all this soon, because the wretched beastie is due sometime in March.

Anyway, I have not been idle. I’ve also been toiling at another public domain clip-art set, which I haven’t yet posted on Flickr.

And on 2/28 I made another pretty good dinner for my mom, a combination of these two recipes—Pork Chops with Mustard Sauce and Pork Chops with Mustard-Cornichon Sauce—but with the addition of mushrooms, and with capers in place of cornichons and white wine in place of chicken stock. Spinach salad and rice on the side.

I also made a couple of decent illustrations for work: on 2/12, I made a sort of homebrew tritone; on 2/18, I tried out a new technique for turning a flat shot into something that looks more lively; and on 2/28 I made the collage that appears on this page, which wasn’t that much Photoshop work in the end, but which did require a surprising amount of image research.

Was this flimsy output what I wanted to achieve during Thing-a-Day 2008? No, but I did make a few things that I would not otherwise have made, and I did discover several other people whose work I really liked, thefabricator and Jason Das, in particular.

It’s been fun. I’ll see you next year.

9 giant snowflakes,

6 are double sided.  they’re decoupaged and decorated , almost ready for their new homes.  all they need are thier ties to hang them!  i’ll finish that part up now, and the girls and i will deliver them this a.m.!

This is not a new thing, but it’s a follow-up to the unfired plate I posted about last week:

I hate it.

Can any experienced potters out there give me a hint about some way to do this design that would not have come out a gloppy, uneven mess? Laying down a solid orange ground under the brown (except where the blue is) would have helped, I’m thinking, but how can you tell where you’ve already painted, when you’re trying to get a deep color? I’ve clearly got four layers of glaze in some places and one in others. (It only looks blotchy on the unfired photo because the last coat hadn’t yet fully dried; once it’s dry, it all looks the same.)

Valentine’s Day is almost here! I made a batch of cupcake for work, complete with handmade toppers.

Yesterday I started a colored pencil drawing and painted some paper that I’ll use in a collage later. But the only thing I finished was this guy:

It’s a Shrunken Head catnip toy for my Etsy shop.

I had these two styrofoam balls left over from my halloween costume. I thought “what can I do with them?” I also found a pair of 3d movie glasses. And a sharpie. The rest is history:

Yesterday as part of my friend Sarah’s bridal shower festivities, I went with a bunch of friends to a paint-your-own-pottery studio. I picked out a large square plate, not coincidentally of a size suitable for displaying a cake. For the design, I knew I wanted it to be very simple, but what? Well, I really like the print on the dress I was wearing, so . . .
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Between the upcoming Valentine’s Day and JT’s 8th birthday, there is a great demand for homemade cards around my house. So I got started on some this afternoon and I expect to be in heavy production mode all weekend long.

Here’s the first completed strip of the baby blanket I’m making. Six more of these (each knitted in the same sequence but starting with a different color), and then a whole lot of clumsy seaming, and poof! that is one overheated baby!

Each square is about 5 x 5 inches, unblocked. (And it’s superwash wool, so presumably it won’t shrink.) The finished blanket will therefore measure about 35 inches square.

The nice thing about this project is that knitting row after row of garter stitch is so easy that even a feckless, mistake-prone pseudoknitter like me can manage to read while knitting, without screwing anything up. I’ve been catching up on a lot of unperused browser tabs, therefore, and picking up my knitting while I wait for my sloooooow computer to process commands.

I haven’t made one of these since grade school, but my partner promised me he’s going to wear this to work tomorrow.

I joined a swap for polymer clay bookmarks and today’s thing was some prototypes of one of the bookmarks. These use some bits from my glass bead stash - the ones for the clay swap will use my clay beads.

Maybe even thread a few flattish beads on the thong or in the middle of it? The jury is still out.

The first square of a forty-nine-square baby blanket I’m knitting for my brother’s forthcoming sprog.

The whole blanket will be knitted in Knit Picks Swish DK, on Denise interchangeable needles. The pattern is the Circle of Friends Garter Stitch Blanket (except that I don’t have any friends helping me) from Joelle Hoverson’s Last-Minute Knitted Gifts.

Yes, I realize that it’s kind of sad that I have to follow a pattern for something this simple, but there you have it—I am a follower of patterns. I measure most of the ingredients when I cook, too. At least I changed the yarn and colors. This square is in Moss (as in The IT Crowd). Next up: Storm (as in X-Men). I will try as hard as I can to encourage this kid to be a geek.

I bought one of these fancy schmancy ikea hanging lights in the clearance section- it was 4 dollars! So I found this fantastic fabric from reprodepot.com (highly suggest it if you love clothe!)- and lined the bottom of the light with it. It seemed like a perfect hanging light for my art corner of the living room

Thing a day is very much inspiring me to get to the projects I’ve been meaning to start!

although i’m not a football fan, i made a football stuffie in honor of superbowl sunday:

it’s the first time i’ve ever made a stuffie before (i’ve been wanting to start), and it was much more challenging than i realized it would be. i had a hard time visualizing the correct shapes to cut that, when sewn together would form a football. i’d originally intended it to be much rounder than a regular football even, but it turned out to be flatter. still, i’m happy with the final result. the face reminds me of an eel somehow, i’m not sure why (my husband says it doesn’t). it was also kind of inspired by uglydolls, so i guess i can call it an uglyball?

here are some preliminary drawings that i made:

For day two I took a few slices of my cane from Day 1 and placed them on a pearl coloured heart. The heart will get baked and drilled a pendant bead for me to wear for a Valentines choker.

This is my first creation for my first Thing-A-Day ever:

They’re some food-themed marble magnets (click through to the Flickr page for details/notes on each magnet).

In the late hours of the last day of January, I jotted down some quick ideas for the month. I don’t feel entirely prepared, but I am excited to be exercising a bit of creativity every day outside of my regular job (I am a graphic designer by trade). Happy to jump into it and get my hands dirty!

Happy February!
This will be fun :)

I’m not sure where thing-a-day will take me, so I guess we’ll see. I can’t say I have weekly themes planned or anything, so I guess I’ll just take each day as it comes.

Starting off the month with some heart-shaped crayons.

I started off with the easy clay stuff - I made a rose cane from alizarin crimson, my favourite rose shade. Here it is, before reducing, about 4 1/2 ounces. I’ll reduce and stick on a bead for tomorrow.

Someone posted the Thing-a-day site to the Polymer Clay Central forum and I figured - what better way to get me back into the making-tons-of-stuff habit! So, look for a lot of polymer clay related things: canes, beads, squished messes, perhaps more canes (sorry, production period right now), some finished jewelry.

I’ll stuff bigger details into my blog or flickr as I go!

Any other clayers going to keep me company?

Looking forward to my first year participating : )

QZ