Because I don't care if you find me obnoxious

Here are all the things I made for my wedding.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

It's been awhile since we had a linky Monday, so:

Six degrees of Wikipedia. Just what its name would suggest.

Sad/wacky news: Wayward Alzheimer's patients foiled by fake bus stop. I'm not sure if this seems funny, mean, compassionate, or all 3. Plus it reminds me of Ghost World.

A friend sent me this link to an extremely cool card catalogue quilt.

A couple recent ones from McSweeney's: The Opening Act from the Original, Unused Teleplay of LOST's Pilot Episode and Borges teaches self-defence.

I got my iPod, sweet Josephine, back from James. I also have to take the bus for quite a long time (almost an hour) to get to and from my new job. Serendipitous circumstances for podcasts! I know that podcasts have been around for a long time, it's not like I just discovered them, but it suddenly makes sense for me to listen to them when it didn't before. So I've just subscribed to the New Yorker fiction podcast which I am really liking so far. Contemporary fiction writers choose a story from the New Yorker archives, read it, and then there's a short discussion with the magazine's fiction editor. The one I listened to on the way to work this morning was Mary Gaitskill on Nabokov. It's not released that often (monthly I think) so I'll have to make my way through the archives.

Whoa, the Craftster dollar store challenge absolutely rocks my socks today. I think I am most impressed by the woman who made a hoodie out of three fleece scarves and 7 teddie bears, although the mosaic mirror and the doggie yurt are both incredible as well. Oh, and: in case of zombies, break glass. Clever! Crafty people are the best people.

I think someone's got a case of the Mondays

I haven't had a linky Monday in awhile so we'll see how rusty I am...

netgranny is a service whereby you select a grandmother from this website, and she will knit you a pair of socks, sort of like mail-order brides only considerably more wholesome. Oh, and the website is in German (?) so I could be completely lying about its purpose and you would have no way of knowing. Although the English version would suggest that I am telling the truth.

[Note: this would be a fun internet game. Find a foreign-language website and create a funny/strange service for it to provide that matches whatever contextual information you can find.]

Even if you're not crafty, I suggest Craftster's best of 2007 list just to admire the sheer ingenuity and effort that went into these projects. Crafty people are the best people, as these awesome crocheted sushi rolls, knitted wigs, hoodies with giraffe ears, decoupaged tennis shoes, and Nintendo quilts will attest.

Also in the DIY vein, I like these Wikipedia-style [citation needed] stickers that can be used to express disbelief/desire for better bibliographic evidence on almost any flat surface.

Last week the Morale-o-meter got linked from BoingBoing and, as such, the server has been up and down ever since. However, keeping track of your morale every day is fun. Since I set up my account, I have been saying, "This is going to be very good for my morale." Or, alternately, "I'm experiencing a downturn in morale." I like the concept of "morale"--it seems like an abstract concept, as if my own mood is something I have no control over. I suggest you adopt this practice as well. It's very freeing/irresponsible. Here's my graph:

As you can see, morale has taken a downturn recently around deletia HQ, mainly because of (a) stupid IKEA assembly and related hammer injuries and (b) the usual Sunday-afternoon blues. However, Meghan lent me season 3 of Veronica Mars, so I think things are looking up. We'll see what the morale future brings!

Wired has a slideshow of tiny modular dwellings, a particular point of fascination for me. (Anything modular. See Lego, my love/hate relationship with IKEA, armadillos, etc.)

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle inspired me to want to cook more, eat organic free-range meat, eat more vegetables, learn to can and make bread, and above all to EAT LOCAL. Or at least to do some of those things, some of the time. Unfortunately, in Edmonton, eating local more or less means eating bits of dead shrubbery you found beside the freeway. So in this space would appear a link to a great resource for local Alberta eating, if such a resource existed. Damn.

Pictorial update on recent craft madness. All of this was accomplished in 48 hours.

The recycled jean messenger bag I made for my sister's birthday, only 6 months late. Go me. It also has a matching MP3 player cozy (complete with patch), because I am a dork. It also has a zippered pocket in the strap for lip balm, because a girl should never be more than 2 feet from her lip balm. And another zippered pocket in the flap, for pirate booty; because a girl should no sooner be more than 3 feet from her booty.


My first experiment with bleach stenciling. I got impatient and applied too much bleach, and as a result the fabric kind of came apart in a couple of small places. I will have to patch it up a bit with my sewing machine. Still, a worthy effort. And the emo stars remind me of the 80s, in an awesome way. Now that I have figured out how to do this, nothing can stop me from bleaching EVERYTHING. Futon, slippers, fridge, concrete floor of my balcony: you've been warned.


A shirt (which I bought), screenprinted with some screens I already had. It's wrinkly because it got to go on a trip! (This plain white shirt came from Wal-Mart for $4. The hoodie in the picture above came from Superstore for $14. I'm all about the cheap, craftable shirts. You can't really go wrong with 100% cotton.) Actually, this shirt was not finished in the past 48 hours as I dishonestly claimed. It was finished on Friday.


A mysterious package. I am not saying what it is, but I want credit for finishing it, nonetheless.


Fun bonus picture: my living room as it looks at this moment. I like to sit on the floor, with my DVD remote, and have everything I need within arm's reach. My sewing machine and ironing board (necessary for all of these sewing, bleaching, and printing projects) are in the kitchen, set up on the table, which I never eat on because that would never happen. Heh. The Flickr version of this photo has explanations of what everything is, if you're the sort of person who's interested in that sort of thing.

If you want me to make you something, Internets, now's the time to ask. Scarf? iPod cozy? Perhaps a small, knitted beanie of some kind? A handbag? (I won't make any more messenger bags, they take too much work and are only for birthdays.) An 80s shirt? I feel so alone.

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Currently listening to: Lily Allen - Friday Night
via FoxyTunes

I want to have 1,000,000 of Craftster's babies. Just so you know.

From Craftster: Where the Wild Things Are wall mural. I can't believe how great this is. "That night in Max's room a forest grew.... and grew... and grew..." It looks easy in the progress pictures, but I bet it isn't. [Photo originally uploaded by Red fork hippie chick, who did the mural.]

Another project, which is more do-able by virtue of requiring less space and talent, is this vinyl mail organizer from Pink of Perfection. Props. Next week I'm going a-searching for some vinyl I can melt.

A cuff made from an old tie!

Sunday mornin' comin' down

I made these human eyeball pincushions last night, using this flickr tutorial. (There are also some for sale in the Etsy store of the woman who made the tutorial.) It was very easy, and I like how disgusting they look. I even learned a new embroidery stitch for this project, so I would say I've accomplished everything I need to for the weekend. (Plus, I found a way to recycle those plastic 2L pop bottle caps, which are a key structural element!) Everything I do today is just gravy. And I may make actual gravy.

I made a Facebook album of my various craft projects. I know, how self-aggrandizing of me.

(Whoa... in the USA, what size are the big bottles of pop ["soda"]? 2 litres is such an ideal size! I know we have more in common that what divides us [awwww....] but sometimes I am just so disoriented by the idea of living in a world where things are measured differently. Also, I have decided to start refering to the United States as the "USA," or better yet the "US of A," because I think it has a retro, old-timey feel. Anyway...)

Otherwise, though, the weekend has been a bit of a bust so far as I felt bizarrely, unpleasantly ill yesterday due to what was likely one or more of the following illnesses:

• Toxic Shock Syndrome [I regularly become convinced that I have this, in spite of its extreme rarity]
• Sunstroke [Even though I was very sick before I ever went out in the sun]
• Air conditioning malaise [because the air that is breathed into my apartment by the air conditioning system smells and tastes funny]
• hunger [on weekends, I sometimes become so lazy about food that I basically don't eat any of it, and my body rapidly progresses past hunger to a headachey, nauseated, muscle-achey state. Since I do not diagnose this state as hunger, I conclude that eating won't help, and I get sicker. This happens a surprising amount, and yet I just don't learn. I am like a baby bird that cannot care for itself.]
• the flu [when I have flu-like symptoms, generally I only consider a flu diagnosis as a last resort.]

So I spent most of the day indoors, watching Lost (and singing the theme song), and when I ran out of episodes, James drove me to not one but two movie stores to get more.

I am actually being serious here when I say that true love is driving someone around on a Saturday afternoon to rent them more DVDs, because they are feeling sick and sad. Not to mention driving them to Wal-Mart so they can buy felt and embroidery floss to make pincushions shaped like human eyeballs. I have the best boyfriend in the world, internets. Our six-year anniversary is coming up at the end of this month--I may have to write a commemorative poem or something. (I mean, I certainly wouldn't have wanted to date 18-year-old me, so I would say James really took one for the team there.) And despite the impression this website may give, I actually love other things about him besides the fact that he drives me around. I can list some of these other things in the poem, maybe.

I gotta bounce.

Mmmmmmonday. Like Mmmmmmcookies.

It's Monday, so that means it's link time, although the pickins are a little slim today:

the comic book economy-- a set of scans of old comic book ads. Fascinating and compelling. Hosted on flickr.
pacman's skull, a paleontological miracle as envisioned by an artist. Whose name I don't know because je ne comprends pas le website en francais.
Two crafty sites: burdastyle, an open-source sewing site; and u-handblog, a blog all about sewing handbags. That might sound a little too specific, but believe me, to the obsessed (including me) it makes perfect sense.

My Tylenol/Coke cure totally worked, I feel 80% better today. I should totally be, like, a doctor or something. And I get paid tomorrow so I am totally going to be ordering some things from Etsy. Like cute cards, and an emo wallet. (I'm not posting the links because then someone will buy them right out from under me, you bastards! I know you would!)

projects for the lost

books 002, originally uploaded by jocelynb.

This is a little handmade book I created out of pages from the Family Circle Do-It-Yourself Encyclopedia. It is probably not finished although it is hard to say for sure. The project on the cover is a handy-cabinet for wholesome yard storange. I got to use my glitter markers. That is all.

If anyone wants one I will make one for you. I'm not kidding.

Craft!

From five and a half: photo journals
From not martha: marble magnets

I switched conditioners, and now my hair smells like coconuts. You might think that sounds nice, but it is actually confusing. Real-time report of what is going on in my brain, roughly once every three minutes: "Whoa... coconuts. Wait... does that mean I can drink piña coladas now? If you like pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain... Wait, what? Why does my hair smell like that?!?"

I am at school, working. The mountain of work that is paralyzing me is diminishing, although not as fast as I might like. My apologies. Believe me, internet, you are not the only thing I like that I am neglecting.

All the things that disappear

"Because of all the things that disappear. Safety pins, for instance. Factories go on making safety pins, and every day people go on buying safety pins and yet, somehow, there never is a safety pin just when you want one..."

-Mary Norton, The Borrowers, 5

I had to read this book for my children's lit class, adding it to the huge sum of books I read and loved as a child and am now revisiting. Each time I cautiously open one of these books, it is with a combination of anxiety and excitement: what if it's not as good as I remember? What if it is as good as I remember? The Borrowers is as good, and better maybe: careful, artful, seamless, and utterly believable. And also amazingly timeless, since it was written in the early 1950s.

In addition to reading this book from cover to cover, I also made meatballs today, and put them in my freezer. As far as I am concerned this constitutes a very productive day. And it's for school, you see, so it's fine. Well, the meatballs are not for school. Although I could eat them at school. If I wanted.

Also on the subject of books, I finished the fourth Traveling Pants book yesterday as well. (I shudder to write this, but I feel I must: Forever In Blue. Dumb title, I know. Don't judge!) I liked this book somewhat less than the previous ones, but still more than, say, a kick in the head. (As my mother likes to say.) What I like about these young women is that they have real-ish lives and INNER LIVES even, not the stereotypical "Shoes! Boys! School is hard!" mentality of so much fiction aimed at young women. (Or even, for that matter, aimed at older women. ahem Sex in the City ahem.) They deal with the kinds of problems that real people deal with. They have boy problems, yes, but also intellectual and creative aspirations, troubled families, and recurring personality flaws or weaknesses. They travel and learn things and get depressed. Also, in the most recent one, they have sex, and sometimes it is a good thing, and sometimes not; also they sometimes don't have sex, and that is sometimes a good thing too. The books don't talk down to their characters, or to their readers. For writing relatively non-patronizing and sophisticated young adult fiction, Ann Brashares, I salute you.

An interesting kind of art/library/found poetry project, from Nina Katchadourian: sorted books. I wish you could order prints of these photos. I especially love:

On a linky note: The ladies (and gentleman) of knitta are like craft ninjas.

I am in the process of trying to set up a new version of this blog, using blogger. My problem is that the good URLs are taken (one of them by someone named Jocelyn--how weird is that?!?) so I am exploring hosting alternatives. I mention this only so that, if this blog moves in the near future, I don't have a lot of panicked, rioting readers (well, OK, five panicked, rioting readers) feeling alienated and confused. You have been warned. However, the technical obstacles may prove formidable, in which case, you have been warned well in advance. But wouldn't it be nice to have working comments? And tags for entries? And permanent links to individual entries that don't involve hand-tinkering with HTML before and after archiving the page? Gosh, we can dream...