Nifty Spools

Does anyone else do this to their spools of thread? I find it particularly useful with the spool of "invisible" thread that I have since I can't exactly see where the end of the thread is all of the time. I also like when I get the chance to use my many sharpies even if it is only one tiny thing.

Crooked Teeth

Meet my dryer. This is a crude approximation of it. I made this happen in my artistic ability.
Isn't it charming?

The latest victim: a beloved Silverstein zip-up hoodie. Fortunately, it wasn't too badly mangled by my monstrosity of large home appliances. The problem was that the zipper slider somehow managed to fly off the end, even with zipper stopper firmly in place! I decided to put to work my 8th grade home ec skillz and fix this.


Here's the zipper stop that needed to come off in order to thread the slide back onto its track.


After some wrestling with an extremely rusty pair of needle nose pliers, I settled on cutting out the offending zipper stop. (See my notes in the background? That's because I should be studying for my final in Human Nutrition. Tangent: I've been eating Nutella out of the jar with a spoon. Something tells me that studying for that exam might be a worthy pursuit. Perhaps I should learn what I should be eating by doing the exact opposite? A tasty proposition.)

The lonely zipper slide. This would be the orientation for putting it back on the track since I have to slide it down from the top.

And, after some minutes of trickery and cajoling, tada! I used a spare jump ring and sewed it in place of the cut out zipper stop.


And here it is all zipped up. I'm inordinately proud of myself right now.

Diamonds in the Rough

Here are a couple gems while I was grading papers today. Apparently, when you give them questions that we haven't learned the material for yet, they come up with some rather creative answers. I'd like to see them draw me pictures next.





Teaching is such a rewarding experience.

What's black and white and round all over?

This guy:
Who looks startlingly like this frog balloon from the original Shrek movie:

Shrek and all associated characters belong to Dreamworks Animation

This is a lesson in "not everything that can be made round, should." Case in point, this penguin started out adorably and with good intentions. However, somewhere along the way he went from chubby to Rubenesque. And from there, it just got worse.

Also, the picture itself vaguely reminds me of those "Dog" photographs/art pieces that were quite popular a few years back. The ones where the dog has its nose shoved curiously into the lens, lending an overall fish eye quality to the image.

In any case, I think this little fella is headed for the charity pile. Or perhaps to be relegated to the closet with the creepy five-legged octopus.

Paper, Embroidered

I was in charge of making up a little thank you card for a guest speaker who came to one of my club's meetings. I thought I'd try a little paper embroidery...this was not a particularly good idea. For many reasons, this was much harder than expected and came out not as pretty as I'd have liked. See my faux "calligraphy" on the envelope there?


Here's how I did it:
-Pushpin to make holes since I was using a blunt-tipped needle

-Weight 4 worsted yarn, stripped down to one strand (in lieu of embroidery floss)

-Chain stitches (I believe they are called) for the loopy petals on the flowers, everything else was straight stitch.

-Dafont.com for a calligraphy-looking font to semi-copy onto the envelope. I'm fancy like that.

Here's why it almost didn't work:

-Paper tears. The small pushpin holes were made bigger by the needle and yarn going through, so the holes were quite visible. Not especially pretty.

-The yarn was finicky. I mean that from pulling the yarn repeatedly through the cardstock-weight paper, it started to pull apart itself so that it was essentially unraveling itself. It's like when you pull putty and it gets really long and skinny in the middle then breaks? Yeah, like that.

-It was a card so of course there was going to be writing on the inside. But the inside was also the ugly backside of the yarn embroidery. Solution? Some pink construction paper glued down over it to hide the backside. Why didn't it work? The yarn was so lumpy in places (from loose ends and whatnot), the paper wouldn't glue down flat. Of course, when your paper isn't flat, glue sticks refuse to stick anything together. So, the inside was unflatteringly taped down with Scotch tape.


All in all, a good product. I probably wouldn't do it again unless I was embroidering with actual floss and on cloth.

A Secret Admirer

So it's not really a secret, but I got a nifty little valentine from a lab coworker/friend.

So sweet and thoughtful! The inside was a Littlest Pet Shop panda. So cute.

As much as I love well thought out, homemade cards, I also love cheesy store-bought valentines (especially if I know they're coming from non-crafty people). I remember when my best friend from high school bought a box of Pokemon valentines to give to our group of 6 friends and ended up giving each of us 3 different ones :)



Many works in progress, currently. Hopefully, I'll finish some of them soon!

Today, I abducted some poor guy's cat. True story.

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Not to worry, he was returned about 5 minutes later.

I was walking home and I saw this cat crouched by the side of a car next to a big canyon. At first, I was thinking "Ooh! Kitty!" and then I thought, "Uh oh, bobcat? That's kind of a big animal." I crouched down, and he came up to be pet, I saw his tags on his collar. His name was Princeton. Naturally, I assumed he had escaped from a nearby house, and his owner must be worried. I figured it was my Good Samaritan duty to call the number and let him know I found his cat outside. [This is mostly because my cat just escaped from my parent's house and she has yet to come back or be returned :( hopefully it wasn't coyotes. but anyways, on with this story.] Had some trouble holding the heavy cat and trying to see the number on his tag since it was pretty dark outside, called the number twice, no answer. I decided to bring the cat back to my place since it was not much further, and I figured I'd keep him there until the owner called. I was almost back to my house when he called and said that he would come get his cat. I thought, "Awesome, I bet this guy is probably happy that I saved his cat from running away, yay me!"

Here's (roughly) how the conversation went:
Him: Oh hey, thanks for finding my cat. When did you find him?
Me: Maybe 10 or 15 minutes ago
Him: Oh, where was he?
Me: Just a little ways up the street from here
Him: Oh cool, yeah, he likes to roam around outside sometimes.
Him [to the cat]: Where were you? I was calling for you :]
Me: Oh sorry, he didn't really look like an outside cat, and I didn't want him to get eaten, soo.. [trail off because now I feel embarrassed]
Him: [in an attempt to make me feel better I assume] Lately, he's been going down into the canyon, and I don't like that, so... thanks!
Me: Ok.....bye!

And that's how I accidentally kidnapped somebody's cat.

Here's some pictures of some kitties to make this post happier.







Edit// To save myself from foot-in-mouth, I think every outdoor cat should wear one of these. Maybe not so snarky, but it's still the right sentiment.

Found via Passive-Agressive Notes