I love dabbling in other crafts. I have the evidence hiding in my craft closet: a Gocco printer, candle-making supplies, oodles of paper, drawers full of fabric scraps, and a box of acrylic paint. And while I have made some use of the Gocco and my sewing machine, my other supplies rarely see the light of day. When I took the Amy Butler bag holding the Mario Scarf down from a shelf the other day, I instigated an avalanche, and ended up disturbing and array of hidden goodies- cardboard document mailers. I planned on recycling these somehow and never got around to it and it brought to mind all the awesome recycled journals popping up around the Interwebz (see: Glue & Glitter). So I thought, I’m crafty! I could totally do this!

HA!

I present to you my How NOT Tutorial on making a small notebook from a cardboard mailer, complete with pictures and screw-ups. Actually, I really like the little guy, but let’s just say I could never make these for my Etsy shop. It reminds me of the crap I made at Girl Scout camp and called “art.” (Don’t get me wrong- I LOOOOVED Girl Scout camp!) The intentions were good, but the methods were… shoddy.

How NOT To Make a Recycled Notebook

First, you will need to gather your supplies. Put a few extra items that you don’t plan to use in the shot if you’re taking pictures for the tutorial. In fact, include items most people can’t even get, like a girly little glue stick from Korea. Seriously. But make sure most of the things in the shot are items you’ll put to use. And leave out the important items. Like a hammer and nails. You want to entice small children in at the beginning and then get pleasure from dashing all hopes in the middle of the tutorial when they realize they need grown-up assistance.

Isn’t the lighting great? And look how nicely I fanned out the paint cards. If you can’t tell from the photo, I used craft glue, paint cards, an Exacto knife, cardboard mailers, thread, and a needle. (I just love my pincushion, which is why so many needles are featured.) I didn’t use the thumbtacks. I ended up using a hammer and nails to make holes. But onto that later.

Next, take a joke picture about how the document mailers say in red letters, “Do Not Fold or Bend!” and laugh heartily about the irony. I so intend on folding and bending! Shoot, this thing is getting sliced and diced! Ha ha ha!

After that, be sure to drop everything you’re carrying over to your craft table when the cat decides to claw your foot on your trip across the room. Take a picture to show everyone how klutzy you are and remind yourself never to buy IKEA’s Samla boxes again- Public Service Announcement of the day: they DO NOT have a locking lid!

Gather the paper you want to use from the pile on the floor and get started folding and cutting the document mailers (tee hee!). I cut the mailers in half and the folded the biggest side in half. The other side had tabs glued to the edges where the other side was folded over. I’m sure this doesn’t make sense, but trust me.

Flip it over one of the halves to the cardboard side and fold that piece in half. I scored mine down the middle on the white side to make it fold easier. I’m not sure if that was the best thing to do because it has a scary gash down that edge, but it’s freakin’ cardboard and it’s hard to fold. Grab a paint card in the color of your choice (mine happens to be “Peacock Plume” by Kilz), fold the paint card in half- scoring, if you so desire- and apply glue. Oh, you don’t know how to put on glue? I’ll show you what it looks like.

Crap, you can’t really tell there’s glue on it. Well, I strategically placed the craft glue bottle next to everything to signify the use of glue in this photo. Trust me, there’s glue on the back of the paint card. Apply to the cardboard. Now here’s where I made a major mistake. I put scrapbook paper on the inside of the mailer to cover up all the maily-looking signage and measuring it correctly and getting it to stick to the inside of a folded piece of cardboard was a pain in the ass. My friends, do as I say and not as I do- glue the scrapbook paper or whatever you want to use to cover up the inside immediately after cutting out the notebook. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Don’t fold the damn thing or glue on the paint card before attaching the scrapbook paper. Having said that, take a look at what happens if you follow my path:

Yes, your cat will attack your yarn and stare at you in disgust. And you shall be forced to take a picture and bare your pitiful electrical cord mess and spare dinosaur computer. I have been shamed.

Actually, your notebook will look like this:

My Exacto knife is new and just so… stabby. I felt the need to cut EVERYTHING on this project with it (aside from myself and the kitties). In an attempt to make the scrapbook paper fit on the cardboard better, I sliced it down the middle, and made it look like poo. I figured stitching in some pages would make a difference and it did… sort of. It certainly took the focus off my poor cutting skills. I’m surprised they let me out of kindergarten.

Oh, remember that hammer I mentioned?

Bad idea. I have no previous experience hammering nails into paper on a cutting board on a plastic card table. I’ve built a dog house, hung pictures, and Lord knows I’ve constructed my fair share of IKEA furniture, but without a doubt I will not be hammering on my craft table again. Children, put down your hammers and run and find a grown-up.

Anyway, onto the sad looking stitched spine of my notebook.

Yes, I realize the stitches are uneven. And I totally get that they’re not even straight. The last geometry class I took was TEN YEARS AGO. I have a degree in English, not in making straight lines. Shoot, I can barely calculate the tip on meals above $20.

So here we are, at the end of the How Not Tutorial, with my adorable Frankenstein of a notebook. I plan on using it as a check ledger (another tip, print your page design before cutting and sewing) to keep me on the straight and narrow with my budget. Just want until I get hold of ruler and start drawing tables on the pages- gah, scary thought!

Please, use this tutorial to do exactly the opposite of what I did, and create a beautiful masterpiece of your own. By the way, the pictures link to Flickr so you can see more scary pictures.

I wasn’t planning on posting tonight, but while watching the fourth episode of the new Flight of the Conchords season, I had to giggle when they showed Murray’s friend Jim knitting. And lace on circular needles, no less!

Represent!

That was my question to one of the teachers on the sixth grade team I subbed on today. I was (sort of) joking, but she looked at me like I was crazy. Wasn’t the full moon a week ago? What’s in the water over here? I had what I call a “Jekyll and Hyde” day – two classes of angels and two classes of… I’ll let you finish that. And I wore heels. Never wear heels.

The ride home was a test of will- will I fall asleep at the next red light? Let’s just say I didn’t make it to the LYS and I certainly don’t think I’ll be conscious past nine o’clock.

I decided to post about subbing to see if anyone else substitute teaches or has in the past. Let’s swap stories. Or tales of woe. Whatever you call them.

Also, I still want to see pictures of your craft/creating rooms. I need more ideas for table-top organization. I feel like I have a lot of little stuff out and it drives me bonkers.

And just so I don’t leave you empty handed and hankering for a photo, here are some recently spun singles- finished just before Valetine’s Day. I wish it wasn’t inappropriate for me to take a spinning wheel to school.

Today was another sick day for me. I had horrible insomnia last night and woke up late in the day with a slight fever. Most of the day consisted of sitting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn, a huge water bottle, and the cats watching episodes of Clean House. Man, I love that show. Eventually I felt better, enough to actually start tidying the house. Maybe Niecy Nash inspired me to get up and moving or maybe it was the fact that being sick and immobile all day BLOWS. I took care of the usual suspect: dishes, bedroom, bathroom. And then I knew I had to get in the craft after posting the embarrassing pictures. I wanted to prove that I could get it together and I think I did a nice job. I even hung a decorative calendar on the wall.

This colorful calendar is from Jess Gonacha who happens to live in the Atlanta area. Not only is she a fantastic digital artist, she’s also local for me, which made purchasing her calendar all that more enjoyable. We don’t have much art up in the house yet so anything on the walls is exciting and makes the space look fresh. I love it!

And then I got to work on my circular needle binder. For some reason the only clear sleeves I could find at Sam Flax the day I gathered supplies for this binder were photo sleeves divided into quarters. I figured I could make it work, and it sort of did, but when you have two pairs of 60 inch long size US 11 needles to squeeze into a tiny pouch, it isn’t the best fit. When I cleaned out my closet earlier this week I discovered a huge pack of plastic sleeves I had left over from my senior English portfolio. Yay!

So I went from this- with the circular needles stuck in tiny quarter-page pockets-

To a beautifully organized and tabbed binder full of my circs-

I also put my loose paper patterns in sleeves and added them to the back. Now everything is consolidated and easy to find.

I’ve decided to get circular needles to work on my scarf. I knit almost everything with circular needles nowadays and I find straight needles kind of awkward and heavy to handle. If I’m wearing something with long sleeves the ends of the needles get caught up in my sleeves. And with the scarf getting heavier and heavier, any less bulk is a good thing. I may sub tomorrow if I feel better, so I think I’ll reward myself with a trip to Knitch (yay!) if I get a job and make it through the day!

Remember those cardboard boxes in the picture from my last post? Stinky moved into the bottom apartment.

I’ve been on a mission in 2009 to read great books. When I graduated last Spring with my English degree, I was determined not to read anything more in depth than a fashion magazine for awhile and I’m glad I went through that phase, because now I’m ready to get back into some meaty books. I walk through bookstores with desire. With the weather so nice, I took little Harper (baby I nanny for two days a week) into the East Atlanta Village and stopped by Bound to Be Read Books and got two new books.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel and Trailer Trashed by Hollis Gillespie.

I just started Pi and really love Martel’s philosophical style and world influences. World literature fascinates me and I can’t wait to get deeper into this book. Hollis Gillespie’s new book is the third memoir she’s written and she lives in Atlanta. When I worked at WRAS-FM I had the pleasure of interviewing her and Grant Henry. I was high on Sudafed and a sinus infection and had the best time. I still keep in touch with them a few times during the year, but really I love living in my own city vicariously through her books. If you like David Sedaris, give Hollis Gillespie a shot. You might not get all the references to various locales in Atlanta, but her childhood tales bring the laughter and the tears.

I also picked up Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut at Borders the other day. I’ve read Slaughterhouse-Five, Man Without a Country, and “Fates Worse Than Death” from him and love, love, LOVE me some Vonnegut. I hope I don’t get too impatient and start reading all three of these at once. Geeze, it’ll be just like when I start a zillion knitting projects at once… heh.

I just got a call to sub tomorrow from a friend so it is time to end posting and get to sleep! Have a wonderful week. I have plans to recycle some cardboard mailers I found later this week, maybe start blocking the end of the Mario Scarf, and to drink lots and lots of water! No more being sick!

I’ve seen all these awesome pictures of craft rooms floating around the Interwebs lately. Whip Up featured some spectuacular rooms recently that make me pine for a steady income so that I can ravage IKEA and organize to my heart’s content. At the beginning of January I completely cleaned and organized my craft room and posted the pictures on Flickr. I look at those pictures and just sigh. I wish I were the type of person who is able to simply put things away after use. Instead I tend to let things simmer, pile up, and expand until I have a mini-meltdown and clean everything at once.

Things are in another expansion phase right now. I have a feeling that after posting this I’ll be overcome with shame and having major cleaning session tomorrow afternoon. I’m the messiest person I know, but boy do I love to organize!

The left side of the room is obviously the space I occupy and use the most. Definitely could stand some de-cluttering.

This is my spinning corner. I just hung a calendar set from Jess Gonacha, but my arrangment isn't doing so well. The brown boxes used to hold all my yarn.

I did get the chance to reorganize the closet this week. It may not look like it, but things are much easier to reach and my books are better arranged. The yarn is now in clear plastic containers- much better than cardboard boxes.

I love how these clear containers wrangle the yarn and display it so nicely. No more cats in the yarn boxes.

So there it is. The craft room in all its messy glory. I’d love to see pictures of your craft/creating rooms and want to post a few of them. I love finding new inspiration for this room because, in turn, it inspires me!

And since I said the other day that I’d include stuff about my cats, I have a picture for you of Stinky. This cat has the quirkiest personality of any cat I’ve met. She’s such a nut. We’re always finding her making funny faces or odd positions. Here’s a recent pose on our bed:

Lovely, no?

I hope everyone’s had a great Valentine’s weekend. I’ve been battling a slew of various illnesses over the past few days including a stomach virus. The poor boyfriend took me to the Highland Bakery for breakfast and I ate my pancakes and bacon and promptly got sick when we got home. I was so sad because he’d been looking forward to treating me to a Valentine’s breakfast all week and I was looking forward to the Highland Bakery’s super crunchy bacon. Stomach virus aside, it’s been a nice day and I have to share the Valetine from Anenome Letterpress on Etsy I gave Jason- it’s so nerdy!

Brilliant.

Hey Kids!  I’ve got my blog up and running now and I’ve decided to call it Knit 2.0!  The premise will be similar to what I’ve been doing here, there might be more sci-fi and anime involved and probably some more personal stuff from time to time, but still nerdy, still crafty.  So come on by and check out emily-frank.com, I hope to see all of you there!!

Atlanta has seen some funky weather this winter. We had the odd warm days during November and December per the usual, but most of this winter has been dreary, cold, and wet. I get that a lot of places north of us have it much worse and get it every year, but Atlantans just aren’t used to temperatures persistently below freezing and day after day of rain. Last week, we had really cold temperatures and it just wouldn’t stop raining. Finally, this week we got a break and since Tuesday it’s been sunny and warm. We’ve actually seen blue skies more than one day in a row! For the first time in weeks I’ve been able to get out and walk with the four-month-old girl I babysit and enjoy the beautiful day.

Out and about at Joe's Coffee with Harper

The one crafty thing I do on a regular basis involves kids. I do kid-centered crafts every Wednesday with a group of young elementary/pre-school aged children at my church. For me it’s been something of an experiment as I try to plan engaging crafts that encompass many skill levels. Some of the kids can barely hold a pair of scissors while a few of them can fold origami. One thing I know they can all do is paint. I found a link to a great bubble wrap printing project by Daisy Yellow on the Crafty Crow blog and decided to give it a shot. I bought a roll of 3M bubble wrap (a 25 square foot roll did the job for about seven kids), black and white cardstock, and acrylic paint. I wish I’d used paper for acrylic paint, but the kids wouldn’t have known the difference.

The prints came out great on black paper, too.

I made a heart for my print, which ended up inspiring a mom of one of my kids to make all their Valentine’s with bubble wrap prints! I think I’m going to use the same technique to make some for my friends, but probably not with a big giant red heart. I really like the effect on the black paper.

If I don’t have a substitute teaching job tomorrow I plan on getting my craft room totally clean and starting work on the scarf. If I end up subbing, you won’t see the post until mid or late Saturday, but I really want to get some new pictures of my craft room to share.

And here’s a big word I want to share with y’all: triskaidekaphobia. It means “fear of the number 13″. My second grade teacher (who is still teaching!) made us learn that word on some Friday the 13th back in the day and I haven’t forgotten it! And it has 17 letters in it- impress your friends!

Hello, everyone. Cassie here.

Obviously it’s been a long while since I posted on this blog. I want to make a post about something serious (not that geekery isn’t a serious thing), but I want to let you know that by making this post, this is not an attempt to garner your sympathy and make a bunch of excuses for myself. I just really wanted to share my thoughts and feelings about a few things and let you know what’s been going on lately. I also wanted to inform you about the new direction of this blog, hence, the title (clever, huh?)

When I first started this project over a year ago, I was skeptical as to whether or not I could actually pull this thing off. Don’t get me wrong- I was excited about the concept and even more excited about the possibilty of getting an earlier than planned marriage proposal, but I seriously wondered if I could get this scarf to come to fruition. I knew it wouldn’t be an easy task seeing as I was still a novice at intarsia knitting and decided to forego planning and charting. Nonetheless, I embarked on this project skeptical, but optimistic.

As news of my scarf spread across the Internet like wildfire, my energy peaked and working on this scarf was a top priority. I knitted as much as I could each day, even if that was only a couple of inches at a time. I loved figuring things out and enjoyed watching my intarsia skills strenghen. I was even knitting other things like socks and simples scarves for myself and others. Then the economy took a nose dive and everything chaned in our household.

In November, December, and January, I had virtually no substitute teaching work. I decided to take on a part-time nannying job to make enough to pay the bills. My boyfriend started having concerns about paying for law school. Between all these stressors, time to sit down and enjoy knitting became more and more scarce. The stress from working hard and still not having enough money to pay bills was starting to get to us both and the joy I got from knitting began to evaporate as worry began to take its place.

I know many of you are suffering through this recession, too, and often times it’s our hobbies that go first. I’ll be honest- I haven’t touched the scarf in a little over two months. I rarely start any other knitting projects either, and when I do pick up the needles, I start a pointless swatch of garter stitch that only gets ripped out ten minutes later. I think I’ve started the same coffee cup cozy about twenty different times. I haven’t even visited my local yarn store in two months because I just don’t have the money to get new yarn or needles. Times have been tough.

In the past few weeks I’ve been scouring through my budget looking for anything superfluous to cut. When I came to the monthly expense I pay for this blog’s web hosting, I decided to make a decision about what I really want to do with this. I realized that the moping just has to stop. The only thing to do when you feel like you’ve lost control over several areas of life is to find something you can control. Something that can give you a sense of accomplishment and pride when there is so little to go around.

I decided to take control over the Mario Scarf project again and to this blog. I decided to give myself a goal that I really can accomplish in the face of such doubt in my life. I want to be able to get things moving on the scarf again and share the excitement all over aain. This means that I will have to put forth a sincere effort to knitting daily and to posting regularly. I’ve heard that in order to make something a habit, you have to repeat the behavior at least twenty-one times. This means that if I want to post on a regular basis, I will have to have reular content. For me, this means taking the blog in a new direction and making it more personal and opening it up to more of my life. I don’t intend on getting downright diary on y’all, but I’d like to include more of my daily life and crafts. Hopefully by doing this I will jump start my motivation to keep crafting an integral part of my routine and in return, post more often. So in the future, you will see updates about the Mario Scarf, but you will also see more about me, other knitting projects, probably the cats, and other crafty elements of my life.

I realize this may turn many of you off from my blog, but let me say this- I truly appreciate any and all readers of this blog. Your support from the beginning means so much to me and if you stop reading now, thanks for reading at all. There are so many great crafting blogs out there and I don’t know how I can offer material that breaks the mold, but I hope that you’ll continue on this journey with me and see where it heads.

This leads me to thanking the wonderful Emily Frank who has worked so hard to maintain a strong presence on this blog in my absence. Her posts have been just absolutely brilliant and have covered so many facets of geek crafting that it’s so hard to cut back. So, in order to allow Emily to continue posting, I decided to get her own domain name and sponsor her web hosting for the next three months. I definitely want Emily to stay on as a contributor to this blog, but I really feel that Emily deserves her own web identity since she is such a great blogger. In the near future, you’ll be able to find her at www.emily-frank.com and don’t worry- I’ll provide a link on my sidebar and will be promoting the hell out it!

If you’ve gotten this far, thanks. You’ve got a lot of patience. I can’t wait to embark on this semi-new journey and hope that you’ll join me.

Cassie

I’ve been coming across a bunch of Mario Mushroom items lately so I figured I’d share!

From the etsy shop that brought us the Princess Peach scarf, the 1up mushroom scarf!

I keep meaning to make these cute little guys, but I keep never getting around to it

Know your mushrooms!  This afghan is highly educational, and even if you don’t want to make the whole thing, the mushroom charts could prove useful

Not all knitting, but nevertheless a mushroom baby hat!

This DS/PSP cozy is officially awesome, I may need to make one

Remember, don’t touch the poison mushroom!!

-e

After having a not so great day you know what cheers me up?  Cute animals!

Cute Overload

ICHC

Ultra Kawaii

And never to be overlooked, my own cute animals

Naomi (wanting me to let her sleep)

and Smeagol (dressed in drag)

They are watching a bug together!

-e (not a crazy cat lady….. yet)