Category Archives: crafts

for our surreal 6-yr anniversary, I gifted mr. matt with something he can REALLY use:

a foosball bowling-style shirt!

the back of the shirt (I printed out a b&w copy of a photoI’d taken earlier):

and a detail of the pocket:

here’s my Dear, with bug eyes and a curled mustache. This guy seriously needs to start waxing those handlebars!

I haven’t posted about my father’s poor health for the last few weeks. Probably because this forum is so public, and I was too scared/neurotic/superstitious that something bad would happen. I’m still nervous, but I’m about 10zillion times better than I was. And, well, so is he.

three and one half weeks ago my dad was having a reguarly scheduled stress test on a week in which he’d had some chest pains and they emergency ambulanced him to the hospital for immediate artery rotorootering. He’d had another heart attack, 6 years after the one he had in the spring of 1998. I drove to albany to see him that friday night in order to reassure myself he was really and truely ok. The next day I then went to PGH to help michelle move, leaving at 5:30 in the morning to be sure to get there before our just ducky tour. He did very well in the hospital, and they sent him home on saturday.

Tuesday morning he woke up in the wee hours with pains again, and maggie took him back to the hospital. and he stayed there for another week and a half while they tried to figure out what was going on. he had these pains every few days, and one time it might have been another heart attack, but they didn’t know how to treat the other ones except to give him morphine for the pain. It was incredibly stressful. While I was in florida for paulina and nestor’s wedding I found out how frequent the “episodes” were and how lacking the long term plans for treatment were. I was very upset. we all were.

And then… the pains stopped. They think maybe after his myocardial infarction and the rotorootering the debris could be bothering the smaller arteries around his heart and causing pain. They weren’t heart attacks, which is excellent, but because they didn’t know WHAT they were and they felt like heart attacks, well, it was a scary week or so, and the only good side to him being in the hospital was that there, at least someone would be able to tell if he WAS having another heart attack. They sent daddy home last weekend, and he’s spent a relaxing time convelesing.

So for father’s day I made dad a gift of marginally questionable taste: an embroidered anatomical heart dish towel. I would have made a tshirt, but couldn’t find one in his size in time. I am so thankful I was able to spend another father’s day with my daddy. Oh, my heart, indeed.

Lady Friends (and gentlebum friends):

If any of you get knocked up (or knock someone up) I have a standing offer/threat on the table to make one of these DEEVINE OUTFITS for the little sweet pea. I mean, kernel of love.

I’m just saying. It’s the LEAST I can do…

Good news! there are instructions for how to unshrink a wool sweater! This is v. important, because even I, the person so tall that she’s terrified to dry ANY of her clothes in the dryer, occasionally shrinks a sweater.

and also, how super is it that NJ has a Bureau of Sustainable Communities and Innovative Technologies? I ought to quit my silly empire state nonsense and really learn to love the garden state. Even if there’s about a zillion people there it really looks like they’re trying to do the right thing.

Last weekend I went to a Crafty Retreat in the Catskills. I don’t have a lot of pictures yet (not like the last time but there is this one gem, us in height order:

We had so much fun. We ate and crafted and cooked and made smores and crafted and chatted and crafted. I am a fool, and brought 3 projects and didn’t finish any. My socks? still working hard on them. If by working hard you mean “occasionally during lunch or while watching tv.” I also started a lace project using a yarn that contains chinchilla fur! It’s the hearts and rosebuds scarf. Because you know what’s smart? starting a new project before you’ve finished an old one. riiiight.

It snowed Sunday night late, and it was tough to get out of the Catskills. But it was beautiful. I had a great time with my girlfriends!

So sometimes I do a little internet stalking, you know, trying to keep tabs on my name and where it’s getting. It’s a morbid kind of fascination, to plug your real name or your internet alias or a nickname into a search engine and see what comes out. There’s some records with my real name up on the interweb from different schools I’ve attended, or jobs I’ve worked at, and there’s a couple of searches that lead you here.

Someone keeps finding my site by searching for “pixelicious!” But you know, my handspring flaked out hardcore just when I started to think about taking more pictures. And even though the mister gave me his handspring, which he apparently not taking full advantage of in its wonderfulness, well, I just haven’t gotten out the eyecam. So sorry, pixelicious-searching-dude. I don’t have what you’re looking for. Maybe one day I’ll be pixelicious again, but now, well, I’m just not.

And apparently, if you do a msn search for k a r i I’m number 316. sweet. Another weird thing! Person who looked through 316 webpages before you found mine, was I who you were looking for?

So last entry I raved about fontifier.com. I just found out they’re CHARGING. Man. I just snuck in on the tail end of that free service! I didn’t pay for my font, and now that they’re charging I’m not going to go beef up my old one. I’ll just stick with it as it is, and write everything VERY LARGE in points greater than 26.

I started cutting out the orange felt for my sparkly skirt. I am having a hard time, because while I do have a nice a-line skirt to follow it’s kind of tough getting the felt to hang the way I want it to. Plus, when I pin it together inside out and slip it on the pinned edges stick straight out and it’s hard to see what it looks like. I’m excited about it anyway, though, because it’s going to be nice and stiff and I’ve got some snap tape to fasten it with. It’ll be really cool if I ever get it cut right. I saw a classmate wearing a very sweet skirt that changed every preconception I had about what I was going to make out of the orange felt: her skirt was longer, non-orange, and had the coolest pockets I’ve ever seen. I might have to try to make up the orange skirt like that.

February is turning out to be a very busy month. I wanted to clean out one box/bag/flat surface in my room each week but I haven’t done that for quite some time. It’s a shame, really. I have so many good intentions and instead I’m going to musical concerts and field trips to brownfield sites and having out of town guests and looking forward to parties and fun at the end of the month. And now I’m working very late on some homework, and I have an interview tomorrow. Because, you know, I’m graduating. In May. And my new motto is non-student loan debt free in 2005! So I actually have to get a steady source of income, and you know, practice my trade.

Oh yeah, that’s me. I’m a big fattypants slacker. I am not big on the writing lately apparently. But if you ask me what I’ve been doing for, oh, the last MONTH, I don’t know that I could tell you!

I hit kind of a grouchy patch today. See, besides the rainy cold nasty spring weather we’ve been having, I have developed some Crafter’s Anxiety. Lately have been very so insecure that the crafty things I make (when I make things, which hasn’t been often lately) are not seen as creative work, or as something that is really difficult to do sometimes, but as just some crafts hobby that anyone could pick up at one of the Crafty SuperStores and crank out on their own. It’s the difference between bohemian intelligent artist and bourgeois crafty lady with lots of cats and possibly a chain smoking habit.

It’s not external pressures that I’m dealing with here. My family is very crafty. My dad, mom, gramma, other family members, a whole lotta people are crafters in my immediate circle of family and friends. I have a big group of supportive crafty friends and we get together and make stuff and talk about our differing approaches and work out any problems we might be having. I am not a lone crafter in an island of artists or non-creative types. I don’t actually accomplish much but when I do and give it away I’ve been really lucky that I don’t run into the damning-with-faint-praise thanks that I hear some crafters (and especially knitters) do. But somewhere inside of me is my nasty inner critic, the one who sneaks up on me and says: “Hey, you know, ANYONE can do what you’re doing. You’re not such hot stuff. C’mon, now.â€? That little guy keeps trying to convince me that I’m nothing special. That my holiday cards aren’t fantastic, they’re simple and too easy to make. That my knitting is of the simplistic and unappealing variety. That my clothing ideas are too difficult for me to actually sew. I am angry and sad that I feel so inhibited by my own inner critic that I don’t write more. That’s my number 2 excuse for having this webpage, you know, is to get me writing regularly (see how that worked last month? Yeah. At least I used the number 1 excuse [my very own email address] often).

But then I see people doing things, and even if I don’t like what they’ve done, I have to admire them for doing it, for risking it all and putting themselves out there. I even admire authors who are terrible writers because somewhere in them they have an incredible amount of inner quiet and strength, that they believe in themselves enough to put what they love out there and risk the scathing eyes of other people. I don’t know how people ignore their inner critics. Is mine worse than others? Do I just listen harder? What about all of those people who are such terrible singers, yet tried out for American Idol? Don’t they know? Oh, that’s another rhetorical question entirely. (These self doubts apply also to topics such as “but I’m an engineer, so what do I know about art?� and “oh, sure, I like and know a lot about xyz, but I can’t really be an arbiter of good taste. That’s just my opinion.�)

I was out with some crafty friends and the topic of Arts vs. Crafts came up. Someone (an artist no less!) said “oh, but art is always pretty much just masturbation.� So that makes crafts mutual masturbation, because usually you don’t make something just for yourself, but for someone else. I need to remember that analogy – it makes everything seem so much simpler, and much less complicated. It makes my inner critic seem silly and just one of those grouchy people who yells petulantly at inanimate objects.