Ring a Ling and Boo Humbug

I've been into rings lately. I'm not sure why...maybe it's the changing of the season and my need in cold weather to always have some sort of fabric wrapped around my neck that stops me from wearing necklaces. I recently purchased this fabulous ring from twiststyle at etsy and received lots of promo cards with the delivery that led me to this crafty lady. I love the thought of finding a new way to wear chunky and funky vintage buttons. This ring has me particularly wanty, but really they are all wonderful. Oh, the echo ring is loverly as well.
On a scarier note, I went to school today like this:
It's from a pattern that I purchased here and MY NINTH GRADERS DIDN'T KNOW WHO I WAS. OK, in all fairness, SOME of them did, but still. One girl asked if I was someone from the Lord of the Rings. Another kid realized who I was but then said "wait, didn't she have blonde hair?"

AAAHHHHH!!!!

For the love of childhood, people: expose your kids to Star Wars BEFORE they hit high school. Actually, before they hit middle school. Once they are old enough to have seen all of the amazing technology in video games and movies, Star Wars is going to look mighty pointless to them. I realize that we are facing such generational concerns as what will happen to social security? and what will 'business casual' look like when today's youth grow up and want to wear their suit pants below their butts? - - but honestly, folks. Have we considered what the world will look like if we have a generation of kids who don't know who the freak Princess Leia is??!! And as if big, giant side buns weren't enough of a clue, I was wearing this around my neck:

(yes, that's my vintage necklace with movable arms....my Chewbacca version has movable arms and legs...I'm just sayin'). Oy. Well, thank goodness for my seniors, because THEY got it. I guess I should also say that most of my kids really appreciated the fact that I'd made my costume, so I suppose all hope is not lost for this generation.

So I'm trying to get over the trauma of the day by getting psyched about trick-or-treaters. I'm just not feelin' it though. I think part of the problem is that I let Andrew get the candy and so we're giving out....Airheads....yeah, so this year I'm one of Those Houses that gives out lame-o candy. Not that I'm knockin' Airheads, but we all know that Peanut Butter Cups are where it's at on Halloween.

Tragedy Tommorow,

Comedy Tonight. Or more like: Tragedy Yesterday, Comedy Yesterday. Last night was the fourth meeting of Shakefeast, our shakespeare-reading club. We pick a play, bring lots of food and wine to someone's house, and read round-robin style. Last night the plan was to read Comedy of Errors at Megan's new house (no, I'm no longer bitter that she moved to the next town over...honest!) We purposely picked the shortest play for our first Friday night meeting - - we're mostly all teachers which means Friday night is all about crashing at 9pm. But we were brave and made it out to Megan's house, only to realize that expecting her to host us in her house on a Friday was particularly cruel. Oh well, at least we were reading a comedy. But just before we were ready to begin, Megan went upstairs and found the family's pet guinea pig in an eternal slumber in its cage. This is the same guinea pig you may remember from a previous post...he showed up at my house and took very good care of it during Megan's move. Oh, the loss of a first pet for a child. I tried in vain to close Joe's eyelid's before the kids could see him...I'm pretty sure now that guinea pigs don't have eyelids. Good to know. Joe was lovingly given a cozy box to rest in with bedding and food and a candle was lit in his honor. And such was the passing of The Best Guinea Pig Ever.

In other, happier news, tonight is a girls' night out to celebrate a colleague's birthday. She is the choral teacher at our school and so she's getting this lovely ring from Foundandmade (my new favorite etsy shop):

and this super-cool necklace of hers that I have always admired and which broke into a hundred tinkling beads the other day while we were talking in front of school (I offered to restring it for her.)

The beads are organic and vintage. Kate thinks they have something to do with apple core...I'm not sure, but let's just say that she's lucky she's getting this necklace back;)

Nesting

I don't know where it came from, but Matryoshka dolls have been on my brain lately. I had a set when I was a kid and still haven't figured out why it's so darn satisfying to take them apart (always surprised at the tiniest one in the center) and then put them together again. Most be an OCD tic or something. But I loved my Matryoshka dolls. So I found some blanks over here and they've finally arrived, all bare and ready to be painted. With lots of ideas swimming in my mind, I did a quick google search to find some additional (or at least focused) inspiration. And lookee at what I found! Holy cow.

Go here to see more Matryoshka outside-the-box (doll?) thinking. I think I'll be spending some more time pondering now...

I'm still working on my Cobblestone Pullover from Interweave Fall '07 for Andrew. I've got the main part of the body done, and just finished the second sleeve, but somehow each sleeve ended up two stitches short. Doesn't that seem fishy? Alas, there's no errata to be found so I'm beginning to accept the fact that the problem lies with me. I might just stick a little increase in at the end to bring the stitch count up and hope that I don't end up with a puckered, lumpy mess of a sleeve. Upon further inspection it's been determined that I can't follow directions....repeat 9 MORE times means I'll have a total of 10 increase rows NOT that I'll repeat the increases until I have 9 of them. Reading directions...yep...the same thing I harass my 9th graders about...

Oh, and word on the street is that Interweave's holiday giftie issue is out. I still think that mag should come out in July so I can start planning a little earlier. Or I could manage to actually get to the store when it hits the shelves. Either way:)

Minty Fresh

Here's my latest creation just up in the shop. I was commissioned to do a few pieces at the rummage sale and so I was up and about in my craft room looking at my beads again. I tend to flit from craft to craft and lately I've been in a sewing/knitting mood. I love going back to a craft I haven't thought about for a little while and opening up my stash and remembering what I have. When I buy materials, I usually go with my gut. I really feel like certain items speak to me and sometimes they don't seem to match up what I usually get. But if I leave stuff to sit in my craft room for a few months and then discover them again, I almost always find connections between materials that seem to create their own design. Anyway, here's the lastest example of this method of crafting:) I think this unseasonably warm weather still has me thinking in spring colors!

Craft Show and Photos

I brought my shop to a craft show at my school today. The theatre kids are raising money to take their spring production to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer and they held a gigantic rummage sale as their first big fundraiser. They invited the crafty folks in our community to bring our stuff and donate whatever proceeds we were comfortable with. Since I didn't have to stress about putting money into buying a table, I set up my goods in the middle of a sea of....well....junk. Not the best place to put expensiveish jewelry, but worth a shot. I did make a few sales and really enjoyed seeing how my students reacted to my stuff. They know that I make things because I often wear my jewelry or clothing to school, but seeing it all set out nice and fancy made it seem more official, I guess. Truth be told, I was a little nervous about putting my crafts out in front of the people that I spend most of my waking hours with. I don't know about anyone else who makes things, but I always feel a little naked as I set everything out and then sit around and watch while people pick it up, try it on, put it down, consider it. Not surprisingly, the items my kids felt the strongest connection to involved shrinky dinks:) Who doesn't love that stuff? And spending the day with my students surrounded by tons of random crap that we could play with was not bad at all (Hello?! Robotic dinosaurs = hours of entertainment.)

I spent the rest of the afternoon retaking photos for my critter hair pins which I had all lumped together in my shop and were really bugging me. So now I don't have them all listed, but I'll slowly reintroduce them back into the shop.

I do believe this was the most boring post ever. My sincere apologies.

Scrapbooking from Coast to Coast

The finished scrapbooks of our trip to San Francisco have arrived safely and can therefore be blogged about! Actually, there's nothing much to tell except that they were fun and a little sad to create. I made two of essentially the same book - - one will stay with our friends on the West Coast, the other will stay with us here on the East Coast. Here's a shot of the West Coast cover page. And some details of the Bonus Photo Albums that I blogged about before.
I spent the day home sick today, trying to not feel bad about missing work. It's terrible knowing that my colleagues might have to take time out of their busy class schedules to cover my classes, and it causes lots of folks to go to work when they should be keeping themselves and their germs at home. I think I could have suffered through a day at work today, but after 11 years of teaching, I've finally decided that I'm better off nipping a cold in the bud and not risking passing something on to others. After all, if the first person with the cold had done that, perhaps it wouldn't be flying around the school right now. If I ever write a book about teaching, it will include an entire chapter on allowing yourself to be sick. Hrpmh...I think I still feel a little guilty.

Well, I spent the entire day resting in bed and teaching myself to crochet. That's right, that's right. I'm a KNITTER and I"m going to try my hand at CROCHET, OK? I've accepted the fact that I'm only going to be using one needle, that if you want to you can make it sound like a really silly craft just by emphasizing the word "CROTCH" when you say it, and that the stitches look totally different than their knitted cousins, so it's a whole new world. But I found these insanely great patterns over here on etsy, and I had to have them. Hello?! Crocheted sea life? I'm all over it. I'd like to say that I took to crocheting as quickly as I did to knitting, but then I'd be lying. The truth of the matter is that it's currently 7 pm. I intended to have something worthwhile done before dark so that I could photograph it and blog about it. There is no photograph of a crocheted item in this blog post. 'nuff said.

But don't fret, my crocheting friends. I haven't given up on the craft. Indeed, after about 8 straight hours at it (with a small break for an equally frustrating stint with some bias tape) I finally figured out that the entire time I thought I was doing the basic single crochet, I was actually doing what's known as a slip stitch. Let's just say it helps to read the directions carefully. And to learn to crochet when you're home with a sore throat...it helps that yelling too much hurts.