July goals - wrap up

My July goals...

Rolled over. In their entirety.

End message.

Currently Creative - July 30

It's time for another linkup from Kellie Winnell's blog!

The main thing I've been working on this week has been a Kobo cover for M.  I'm using the same yarn and same basic pattern as for the one I made for myself last year, but with a larger hook and the original ribbed cuff from the pattern instead of the flap I did for mine. The ribbing is a challenge, and I had to rip it out once completely, but although it's not perfect this time, I'm okay-ish with it. I still plan to do some glasses cases for a couple of friends for Christmas presents this year.

In poppy-making news, I tried my own pattern with bobbles!

Week 30 at Chez Stutters (and Catterday)

Unusually, I was ready to print out my my Project Life photos for the previous *on Monday*, which is my general goal, but rarely ever met.  But it's indicative of this week that my problem wasn't sorting *through* photos, but picking up photos from random places on the internet (well, not actually random: I knew I wanted things about La Course and the Commonwealth Games and Lior) to supplement not many photos at all.

It was a mostly non-eventful week in Chez-Stutters-land.  Work (for me) sucked, which meant a lot of nights of coming home, whinging, crocheting poppies and baby blankets, patting the cats and watching the Tour de France.

On Friday night we went from my work out for dinner and then to a Lior concert.  The support act was Domini Forster, who was incredibly awesome.  Not that Lior wasn't, because he was.  His very first song I thought would be brilliant for use in worship, and that was well before he sang Avinu Malekeinu and told us about the recording of "Compassion" with Nigel Westlake.

Photo not taken by me: The Cube staff with Lior, Domini Forster, and Phoebe who supports Domini.

The rest of the weekend was very blah.  Chores, cleaning, Tour-watching, laying around watching the cats, etc. 

It was *so* blah that I forgot to write my Catterday post.

So here you go, two for the price of one.

It's another edition of who's the king of the castle.  The boys have gotten more used to the cat tree/cat gym in the last couple weeks, to the point that there are now spirited arguments as to who gets to sleep up the top.  The top, by the way, is the only decent part of it: none of the rest seems to count at all.

I couldn't believe how beautifully they posed for this photo!

Friday poppy pattern review - Remembrance Poppy

There's a poppy counter on the left-hand sidebar now.  As I write this post, I'm working on my 19th poppy - almost 20% to my goal!  I'd love to extend it (150, perhaps?) but at the same time, I've got a ripple blanket and multiple Christmas presents to finish as well.  Perhaps it should be 100 in time for the November 11 event, and another 100 before April 25 next year...

This week's pattern review is the Remembrance Poppy pattern.  (Link is to pinterest, clicking on the pin will get you to the .pdf) 

This is probably the pattern closest to the "official" distributed patterns that I've tried so far, but it's a fiddly two piece pattern in that it gives you the red part and tells you to just randomly add a button or etc. A crocheted center is just plain fiddly and OMG. 

So, minus points for that.

On the other hand, the shape of the resulting poppy is quite pretty.  There's some body to it, and as long as you don't muck up the centre trying to be interesting (see poppy #1) it looks really nice.  

Plus points there.

Honestly, it's only the two-part fiddliness that means this probably won't be a go-to pattern over the next few weeks.  I like to be able to sit down in the evening, pick up my black yarn, join my red yarn, and bang, done.  One poppy.  This just has too many stages.  (On the other hand, if I manage to raid my mother's button jar for some black buttons, I might change my tune.)

Currently creative - 23 July

It's Currently Creative linkup time again! 

Last week I finally began to work on poppies.  I've been working on the Poppy Project at work since we first found about it.  But this is the first time I've actually started working on my own contribution to the project.  

I've also been working on the Project life blog posts, and consequently on my PL layouts. Like my HtTyD2 cards :-). During the first week of the school holidays we went to see it, and then the GF found the dioramas at - would you believe - McDonald's. But I had a great time turning them into PL cards: almost as much fun as I had watching the movie.

Monday night was the first day in more than a week that I didn't work on poppies: I got back into working on writing!  I've begun to develop a new idea for a middle grades novel, have opened a new file on Scrivener for the research on it (the amount of information available via the Australian National Archives is kind of amazing), and although my 'voice' just isn't right yet (far too sophisticated), I've even written some scraps that - because of their over-sophistication, just won't be usable.

Of course, I still have some other writing projects I should be working on. 

Project Life - designing layouts

So, you all enjoyed my two part look at Week 26?

This week I started looking at Week 28, and immediately realised that it had some interesting aspects to the very beginning stages: choosing photos and designing layouts.

For the second half of Week 27, I used Design D.  That suited my photos for the week, and it provides a little bit of variety to the layouts.  But it does make the following week ... interesting... in terms of design.

The back of my RHS for Week 27 - which becomes the LHS (Title side) for Week 28

Obviously, this means that the LHS for Week 28 has to be at least half portrait photos (or landscape photos in 3x4).

So I went off to Picasa to take a look at what was in my PL folder for week 28.

Seven landscape shots and one portrait.  Huh.

This led me back to my full week 28 folder, re-evaluating the photos from scratch.  I try to do my PL somewhat chronologically (ie left side, then right; week, then weekend), although it doesn't always work.  I used A Beautiful Mess (the app) to combine landscape photos into 4x6 portrait collages. 

And in a couple days time, I'll show you how it turned out:-)

Week 29 (I know) at Chez Stutters

So, I muddled up the week numbers again.

This week just past is week 29, no matter what I said last week.

It was the week that Term Three commenced for the GF. The second week of the Tour de France, which means I stay up watching Tour as long as I can every night.  The week I began making poppies.

The umbrella tree appeared; a friend of Shell's opened her Curiousity Shop, we bought me a new Pandora charm, and we finished watching season five of Parks and Recreation.

On Sunday we went on an adventure: We went to Myrtleford in order to have lunch at the Butter Factory, only to discover that they no longer do lunches.  So we went to Cafe Fez, about which I have heard mixed reports (generally at the extremes) but which we loved.  Then off to Gapsted Wines, which was the other reason for our visit to Myrtleford.  We tasted a few, bought five, and then headed back home to the kittyboys.

Oh, and it was also the week when the leaking tap began to leak ridiculously, and we spent the week trying to organise a plumber.