friends of craftster swap, revealed!

well, my partner from the friends of craftster swap (round 3) got her reveal today!!! i'm so happy to have been crafting for kittykill (AKA pam) 'cause she's a sweetie. the crafty packages were supposed to include something small, something big, a surprise, and a bought thing. here are pics of some of the things I sent her!

first, i sent her a frida khalo shrine, and it was my very first experience in shrine-making! i think it came out ok. for the first packet i also sent her some sushi earrings with some beads i got from another swap.

for the second packet, i sent her some page pebble hairclips, some clear stone earrings, a felted cake (for her birthday!), and an amigurumi pam! i have never ever crocheted anything more than a scarf and the amigurumi doll was a first for me :) i was quite proud of myself!

for the surprise packet (#3), i sent her a stress relief kit including a wooden massage roller, a gel eyemask, a massage book, some tea, and a little dammit doll! what is a dammit doll, you ask? here is your answer:

When you want to kick the desk or
throw the phone and shout.
Here's a little damnit doll
you cannot do without.

Just grasp it firmly by the legs,
and find a place to slam it.
And as you whack it's stuffing out,
yell, "damnit, damnit, damnit!"

i also sewed together my first real pouch in this swap! i'm so proud of it too. for the fourth package, i sent her a cuff i bought on etsy, some jack russell terrier notecards (she has jrt's), and some turquoise earrings... i bought those things, so i have no pics, but she said she loved them too!

kittykill really liked everything, and i'm so glad to finally share my creations!

the cute rejected!

ok so i sent in a few pics of rusty and forrest (as a teeny baby) to cute overload, which, if you've never seen it, is just a collection of incredibly adorable little animals (mainly animal, but also cute products, cute drawings, etc.). as you can see here, the pics i sent in are EXTREMELY CUTE (EC). i mean, a little dog with his tongue out? mr. winkle couldn't have done any better! and a quarter sized turtle? c'mon, she's like a little miniature of a real turtle (or was, 'cause now she's a monster). however, whether it be by accident (co has been having email problems) or by snubbery, i never got an answer back! there was a long thread of people who said they were never answered, and i went to one person's website to see the pic he claimed made you go awwwwwwwww.
AND IT DID MAKE ME GO AWWWW! geez people, these are the types of pictures that make me coo at my monitor! the kitty is soooo cute! thanks so much to joel, who let me take the pic of his little buddy from his website. joel too appreciates that which is cute, so he's been taking our cute overload rejected photos in a series he likes to call Even CO was speechless! looks like there's going to be more people sending him pics, so check out his blog of cute overload's overload :)

and more stuff

so yesterday i started classes for the summer. i'm also working on my thesis stuff so i went to meet some friends at the library and we started talking about our topics and hopefully, we helped each other some. sign ups for the thesis are this friday, and i'm hoping i get a time slot somewhere in the middle to the end.

in other news i have finally started using the gocco marco bought for my birthday last NOVEMBER!!! at first, i was kind of put off by having to learn how to use it, 'cause frankly, i didn't want to learn, i just wanted to use it. but it being father's day last weekend, and me being without a gift for my grandfather, i put the gocco to good use and i made some notecards he had been asking me for for ages now. he had forgotten all about them but i think he likes them! i'm not big on god-based crafts, but he wanted a serenity prayer on the front, so there it was! this small taste of the gocco has made me hunger for more, so today i ordered some speedball inks for fabric and some additional gocco screens in order to start the maddness!

and what's more, we now have squash and cucumbers in our summer garden! well, ok, marco's summer garden. just in case you don't know, marco is an avid vegetable gardener and he grows all kinds of stuff out on our balcony. this year we're doing tomatoes, squash, cucumber, strawberries (finally!!!), our ever growing pear tree, lemons, basil, oregano, mint, rosemary, and a bunch of other stuff. he's even got this whole setup where he can test the levels of water in each pot through a tube. oh he's so inventive!

okey, here's more stuff i made

so here are a couple of new things i have made: a little fawn (in new colors) which signals the very first time I have completed a sewn thing on my own! i'm getting to be friends with my sewing machine :) i also made a couple of pins for another swap, i like the black and white one 'cause it's a new way i'm doing them. honestly i feel like i keep making the same thing over and over again for swaps. i need to be more adventurous. also, i might be wrapping up my last swaps 'cause i'm putting a lot of money into them and i really gotta concentrate that money for school stuff :(

i feel like i should post more

but honestly not much is going on right now. i am taking it easy, taking it slow, doing some crafty stuff, but am in a bit of a knitting slump. also working on my thesis. but reluctantly. sigh. what to write, what to write.

headgear :)

i made some shocking pink coifs for ms. bambikhantastic, who made me a gorgeous handpainted koi hoodie! well, only one is shocking pink and the other is shocking blue. i also made her a panta as well. i'm so glad she liked everything! i looooove my hoodie!

as for those of you on the edge of your seat wondering what i'm doing these days, i just gotta say this: i'm not doing much ;) actually besides relaxing and swapping, i've been really trying to work on my thesis stuff since i'm going to have to present it in july. i'm hoping to get a full pass but a conditional pass (where i have to make minor changes and resubmit) would be ok too. keep your fingers crossed for me!

for an instant swap

i made this little fawn for the instant swap 8 for my partner rackycoo! she's completely handsewn and she's tiny... she's from a japanese book called palm-sized stuffies :) i don't actually read japanese, but the instructions are also in picture form, so it's not too hard to figure out. she was so cute i almost kept her! i also made my partner a little flower pin (a crocheted mum!) so i hope she liked everything :)