Color Me Flustered

So, I designed a TARDISy fabric on Spoonflower because I am a big fan of all things TARDIS for my home. Doctor Who, and the lovable TARDIS are probably some of the best things ever developed by the BBC (which owns all of the concepts, I'm just a fan artist who loves creating things that make people's lives a little geekier).

But, here's the problem, I have this The Doctor's Ditsy fabric which I love. It's dark and full of stars, and looks cute as just about everything. My friend over at Brooke Van Gory Designs, who makes super spiffy custom bags, clutches, diaper bags, wet bags, and sundries,  even turned it into a clutch for a really happy owner, but that's when it was brought to my attention that for some prints, Spoonflower's  Old Color Profile and the New Color Profile DO NOT TRANSFER WELL.

I never dreamed that such a simple design with so few colors would have been drastically affected in this manner, but nonetheless, check it out.

The OLD COLOR PROFILE

THE NEW COLOR PROFILE

See the difference? Yep, the background. The one printed in the OLD COLOR PROFILE is a nice strong dark blue, the one printed in the NEW COLOR PROFILE printed up a funky dusty purple color.

So, long story short, I'm working with Spoonflower to find the best replacement colors, and until that date, always pick the OLD COLOR PROFILE until it's all straightened out. 

Stalking his Stocking: 42 Ideas for Him

1. Socks.  Come on, stockings in the stocking, it's a pun that makes itself. I hear Gold Toe are still made in the USA, as are those from the Fox River Mills, which makes the iconic Red Heel socks. As a Sock Monkey maker, I'm partial to those.
2. Chocolate. Men love it too.  He probably has a favorite, you probably know what it is.
3. Batteries. Not just any batteries, but the ones he's always looking for, like AAA for the remote.
4. Solar Powered cell phone charger. Not even joking. They're small and useful.
5. Memory card/ flash drive. Bonus points if it's a rad modified one like you find on Etsy or Artfire.
6. A pocket monkey or other ridiculous tiny toy he can squeeze or toss at will.
7. Paperback book of his favorite genre. Mystery? Adventure? Suspense? Science Fiction? Go for it.
8. A new belt.
9. A tie like no one else at his work has. I love this one.
10. Rad, yet masculine soap.  My spouse rocks the Stonehenge from Burnt Mill.
11. One of the t-shirts dejour from a site like TeeFury, RiptApparel, Shirt.Woot, ShirtPunch, or the Yetee.  Just you know, don't opt for the slow boat shipping. Watching them all for about a week tends to lead to finding something that will scream his name.
12. Sunglasses
13. Sonic Screwdriver Flashlight (or boring pocket flashlight if he's not that cool)
14. Gloves
15. Wallet preloaded with gift cards to his favorite coffee and or breakfast joint.
16.  Those gift cards to his favorite coffee and or breakfast joint.
17. A new scarf. Bonus points if you knit it yourself. Double bonus if it's a Doctor Who scarf and you fit the whole thing in his stocking, you know, if he likes that sort of thing.
18. Gift cards to your local theater wrapped in that day's movie times. Just add a babysitter (if necessary) and you've got something fun to do this afternoon together.
19. Cufflinks
20. A rad new ear ring, if he rolls that way.
21.  GC to his favorite ink shop to make it a holiday to remember til both of your eyesight is shot.  Just remember, a great tattoo is priceless, and a bad one is hard to cover, so be sure it's really his favorite place.
22. A new watch. Preferably an unusual one.
23. Measuring Tape.
24. Universal Network Cable. Seriously, how cool is this?
25. Small notebooks to jot things down in, you know, with penmanship.
26. Pens, nice ones. or Pencils even.
27. Dare I say duct tape?
28. Two words: Titanium Spork
29. Caffeinated breath mints. I'm not even joking. They exist.
30. They also make bacon mints, but I don't think I'd personally go this direction.
31. Freeze dried "astronaut" ice cream.
32. Membership to nearby museum he actually digs. For spouse, that's the Sciencey one.  For my dad it'd be the Natural History one.
33. One of those remote controls that do ALL. I personally like the wand one, but it just does SOME.
34. A nice well balanced pizza cutter, you know, for when he cooks dinner.
35. Dare I say a new game controller?
36.  iTunes gift card
37. Electronics cleaning putty.
38. Cable organizers for all his new electronics, maybe like the cable monkey, because they're cute.
39. A small book on surviving the zombie apocalypse.
40. Ammunition, for the zombie apocalypse.
41. Polyhedrals.  (If you don't know what this is, it's probably not for your guy)
42. Giant Plush Microbes. Come on, what says love like Malaria?

Okay, I guess I went off on a geeky tangent on some of these, but I hope you forgive me.  A few of these might need to be compressed to fit, especially if he has a tiny stocking, but why have a tiny stocking? If he does, then I highly recommend a new one. ;-)

When in doubt, buy handmade, and have the happiest of holidays.

My Favorite Fiction, on Fabric!

TARDIS Paisley

A while ago I got to give away fabric from a site that allows you to design your own fabric, but I'd been pretty lazy and hadn't bothered to create my own.  However, I've had too much Doctor Who on the brain lately, and have been doodling things like TARDIS and Dalek paisleys.  So of course, this led me to photographing them and photoediting them into a fabric design.  Isn't it nifty?
I've been having a lot of fun with it. Sure, it's a bit pricey, but I think that I'm going to save up and get myself some for Christmas. Even if it's just enough to make a pillow case for the JabberWalky or Mongoosine's bedroom.

I even made one just with Daleks.  

Dalek Paisley

Maybe this one for Mongoosine and the TARDIS one for JabberWalky?

The paisley designs themselves were actually done in sharpie on shrink plastic, and will soon get holes punched in them and be shrunk down into necklaces.  I make a lot of necklaces based on my favorite fandoms.

Nifty Eye of Jupiter Mandala shrink plastic necklace inspired by Battlestar Galactica. 

Yes, I'm a Science Ficton kind of girl.  

How does your favorite fiction influence your craftier side? I'd love to know.

UFOs

Just before my son was born, I was working on a quilt for my daughter.
Here I had it all laid out on the bed, trying to decide just which colors would flow nicely into the others.

Sadly, I was placed on bedrest and I put it away.

Then, when my son was born, I became bizarrely paranoid about ironing with him in the room. What if there was a freak accident with the iron and he got burned? Well, certainly I can only quilt while he's sleeping then, right?

But laying out a whole quilt takes up a lot of space, and what if I accidentally make a mess? What if I loose a piece?

Well, maybe if I just work on it in parts while he's napping.

But he sleeps so much better if I nurse him down.... and then I want to lay there and cuddle.

You get the idea. The reasons compound.

Since then I've made more than 20 sock monkeys,

 bunnies, 

bears, 

elephants, 

and other creatures,

 upwards of 15 dolls,

 at least 2 purses, 

one complicated hexagon quilt, 

eight blankets, 

three slings,

one pillowcase, 

and a couple hats, 

And some other odd projects of which I seem to lack photographs...

but I still have this UFO staring me down.

What sorts of projects do you have on hold, and what *really good reasons* are you using to convince yourself not to finish?

Conversations

Me: Do you want to watch a Movie?
Toddler: Yes! Mowee!
Me: Which movie would you like to watch?
Toddler: Docda Who! Mowee Docda Who pleeez."

Yeah, my geekling mama heart just melted.

Lanolin on my Dalek

For his birthday, my delightful friend Vilate over at Nifty Nappy sent Jabberwalky the cutest wool cover in the history of time.  Well, in the history of the Time War. It's so cute I think it just may exterminate me.

Of course, I've never done the initial lanolin wash on a wool cover, so I'm wondering if maybe you have a great method for lanolizing wool covers.

As is I usually use the nice smelling lanolin wash my friend Melinda  from Buddha Bunz, but since this is the all important initial lanolination, I wanted your input first!

Ooh, and isn't that the cutest alien bent on the destruction of all mankind you ever saw?

Gettin' down the with artists

I'm the artsy craftsy type, and although I hear that Etsy and Artfire have message boardy networky functions, I haven't checked them out yet, and I'm kind of glad, because that gave me a chance to see the awesome going on over at Attack of the Craft.  Better still? One of the very first items I ever fell in love with on Etsy was by the artist who runs the Clay Pony shop.  But then, at some point, though she continues to stock her shop with awesome jewelry, the specific pieces I love the most were gone.  I know that around the time they disappeared Etsy was cracking down on fan art pretty hard, and since they were Whovian pieces of goodness and wonderment, I was sad that I'd never have a chance to buy them without contacting the artist and being all "please please pretty please can you make me one of those things you used to list?" and that comes off as a little stalkerly to me.
Fast forward to ...

She's selling there now!!!!!

Go look at the magical TARDISy goodness the Clay Pony makes.

Did you go? Did you look?  Do you see why I'm excited to have found this new crafty forum?
It's wonderful.
So go check it out, because it's radness is unparalelled.

Impulse Shopping

Have I mentioned that I am not much of a shopping type?
But I have a problem.
Sometimes, I am online, and someone says something along the lines of "hey, while I was on TeeFury, I saw this t-shirt that made me think of you."
Great, because as you know (and if you don't, now you do) TeeFury only sells one design every day. So then it's all "buy now, or forever hold your peace."
Doh.
Did I mention, I have another weakness?
Doctor Who.
So yeah... today's The Whos with four Doctors jammin' out?  Gotta have that.
But that would be impulsive, so I decided that I'd not do it. I'd hold out.
Well, I'd hold out until I got home from rehearsal, and if I had the energy, I'd buy it.
Now I'm home an hour early because I passed out in the middle of rehearsal *super embarrassing* and had to have spouse come pick me up.  So...... now I'm feeling wretched and bad and wanting to indulge in some really cheap retail therapy....
So now that I'm done telling you about the impulse shopping I'm about to do, I'm going to go do it.

Fan Girl Friday- Five Geeky Things

Five geeky things you might not know about me.

1. I seriously considered naming my poor offspring River Thrace.  (Serenity/Doctor Who/Battlestar Galactica much?)
2. When I have to choose, I always pick the TARDIS blue one.
3. My favorite TV show as a kid was Star Trek.
4. When I was 4 I was obsessed with the idea of faster than light travel and it's implications for time travel.
5. My daughter told me that there were 10 kinds of people- those who understand binary, and those who don't. It was one of the proudest parental moments of the year.

Pink Saturday: Kids at the dairy

Halfway between Indianapolis and Chicago on I-65 there is a dairy called Fair Oaks Farms. It is perfectly situated to stop for the toddler's patience when traveling between the two.  There are times we've tried to skip the stop, but alas, it leads to immediate waking and crying.  It seems he's learned to schedule his naps around watching the brine room and snacking on samples of Gouda and Emmentaller Swiss.
The tween likes it too.  She likes to peruse their hilarious gift shop (Moo Shoe Pork stuffed animals for the win!)
It's a great chance to sit down, enjoy the moo, I mean, view, sip some hormone and antibiotic free chocolate milk (except the toddler, chocolate milk gives him diaper rash) and enjoy a few calm minutes in a community collective, talking about the economics of cooperatives, how the holes get into the Swiss cheese, or you know, whether the Doctor could go back in time with some fresh cheese, drop it off, and have it be perfectly aged when he wanted it.  Because we geek that hard.
The toddler likes it because he gets to nurse. Spouse thinks the dairy should have a problem with that because I'm competing by bringing another milk source in.  I'm pretty sure they like the family business more than they care about where the toddler's getting his milk.  The toddler also loves watching the films on how they make the cheese. One of these days I'm hoping we'll get a chance to take the full tour, including stopping by the birthing barn to see a calf born.

Long story short, stopping off tickles us pink. :-)

For more Pink Saturday, head on over to How Sweet the Sound.

A Very Doctor Christmas Carol- Abagail's Song.

So, um, if you know where I can get sheet music for this.... I'd be much obliged.

And for those of you who want the lyrics, the lyrics to the whole thing, and not just this bit, are (the first two lines are cut from everything I can find on youtube, probably because the Doctor is talking over them.):

When you’re alone, silence is all you know.
When you’re alone, silence is all you know.

When you’re alone, silence is all you see,
When you’re alone, silent is all you’ll be.
Give me your heart, come to me.
When you are here, music is all around.
When you are near, music is all around.
Open your eyes, don’t make a sound.
Meet in the shadow, meet in the shadow.
Meet in the light of your bright shadow….

Fan Girl Friday - Fabric Rosettes of Whovian Goodness

I made a pretty TARDIS blue fabric rosette headband to wear.  I took this picture at about 1AM, so don't hate on me for lookin' all tired n stuff. K?

But it's TARDIS blue, and I love TARDIS blue. Because they're rosettes, they're all spirally, like a time vortex, and you know I love me a time vortex.  

I got the idea from BabyBabyLemon on twitter when I asked what I should get my aunt for her upcoming birthday. She said she was in love with the designs by AlloraHandmade (whom you should follow on twitter, because she's got a giveaway at 1k followers), and I checked them out and found them to be radtastic.  Sadly, not quite up my aunt's alley, but right up mine.  

Of course, if it's not TARDIS blue, and none of hers are, I need to make one that is, right?  So I said to myself, "self, that is something you so can rock, especially since your paypal account is in the middle of the tedious verification process, you can't just up and say "aqua is close enough."  Also, I don't know about you, but I get a certain amount of giddy out of making something myself.

So, I googled "fabric rosette tutorial" and found these gems, though none were exactly what I was looking for.

Freckled Laundry Rosette Tutorial

Little Birdie Secrets Rosette Tutorial

MamaMonster Frayed Rosettes

 Ultimately, I pooled what I'd learned from reading them and from years of playing with scrap fabrics and started making rosettes.  I also made some radtastic black jewelry out of some, but that's not very fangirl, now is it?

Now to try to do a great big Eye of Jupiter one. Ah, Battlestar Galactica, how I miss you.  Ooh, maybe a cylon inspired necklace too. ;-)

But yeah, I'm still thinking of buying some from the woman who inspired it all anyway, just because sometimes it's nice to have something someone else put love into. 

Fan Girl Friday

That's not really a carnival, but it should be.
I want to show you my geeky fangirl stuff today, because that's just the sort of mood I'm in.

I made a Whovian Sock Punky. I suppose you could call it "Socktor Who" even. I even made him out of a pair of BLUE Rockford Red Heel Socks.

I know he's kind of dorky, but I heart heart him.

Isn't he cute?

I gave him two hears and a bow tie because I'm a nerd like that.  On the one hand, I hope someone buys him, but on the other hand, I don't mind him hanging around with his radtastic bi-cardialness.

He's not my first Socktor. I made this one for my daughter's birthday.

See?  Just red outlined embroidered hearts.  But the idea was still newly formed, and I'm sure will continue to evolve over time.

What? Are we really that Doctor Who geeky?  Yes, yes we are.

I even tried to make myself a mid-sized diaper bag this summer with a TARDIS on one side and a crack in the universe on the other.

No really, a crack in the universe on the back. I am very geeky.

See? I am vastly geeky.

My next project on the geeky fandom horizon? I'm learning to knit because I want to make a scarf like Tom Baker wore as the fourth doctor, preferably the season 12 scarf, since it's the most iconic and least lengthy.

Must have one.

In any case, that's how I've been geeking it up around here.

What about you?

My Hero(ine)

Yesterday started out pretty normal.  Mongoosine fought the heat off by lazing around the house until the pool opened, and then gave her customary half question half statement "Pool?" accompanied by eyes darting toward the door, right before her feet followed pursuit.  It helped that a friend had just shown up on the porch.

I hollered "Sunscreen!" after her as she was dashing off the porch, waving a hand holding said sunscreen toward me as she and her friend rushed down the sidewalk toward the pool in that huddled way that girls do when they have secrets to share.  

I smiled, sighed, and went back to doing my mom-stuff, figuring she'd probably come home around 3:30 for adult swim, so I was somewhat surprised when at 2:14 a drippy wet daughter of mine was standing at the door asking if she and her friend could take snacks to the park.

I heard my husband ask why they'd left the pool.

"Pool's closed."

I admit, my eavesdropping mommy-sense kicked in.

I'll spare you the tween speak two word answers through which the rest of the story unfolded and sum it up.

Basically, my daughter made them close the pool. That picture up there? That's of the fire department draining the pool in the most summer-fun way they could think of.  They eventually got tired of doing it that way and got a few fire hoses to spray at ground level so no one had to hold anything.

Mongoosine had a lot of fun dancing in the spray while I verified her story with the pool managers.

Snapdragon even enjoyed the mist at the edge of the spray.

WHAT HAPPENED. (I'm sure she'll correct me and that I have the story ENTIRELY wrong - insert eye roll)

While swimming in the shallow end with her friends, doing underwater stunts like handstands and sitting on the floor of the pool, Mongoosine noticed something tickled her feet.  Upon further sub-aquatic investigation, she discovered the source of the "tickle" was a crack that was creating suction and pulling water through it.  Upon even closer examination she discovered a crack perhaps a foot long, and straight.  No, it was NOT shaped like this.  

She checked.  Twice.

Alas, it was merely a very normal not-two-moments-in-time-which-never-should-have-touched-creating-a-crack-in-the-universe run of the mill kind of crack.  But, she decided that it did have quite a bit of suction for a crack in the pool, especially in the shallow end where the not-so-great swimmers swim.  Therefore, she told a lifeguard. 

And the lifeguards had to get everyone out of the pool so they could investigate the boring normal not-Doctor-call-worthy crack in the bottom of the pool.  The crack was deemed a safety hazard, the pool was closed, and immediately drained.

The fire department had the pool drained in about 2 hours while the pool manager called the swimming lessons kids to cancel their morning lessons.  

Mongoosine was sad that she wouldn't get to swim for a few days while they fixed the pool.

Empty pool. *sigh*

See here the people working in the far away pool as the sun began to sink low?  Well, they did their job and did it well. Spouse tells me there is a patch welded into the bottom of the pool now, a bit over a foot square.  I didn't have a chance to see it because my sundown they were already refilling the pool.  Much to my surprise, it reopened at 1:00 this afternoon, right on schedule.  I imagine my little heroine who had the bravery to report a problem will be back soaking up the sun and splashing in the pool as soon as she finishes her leisurely lunch.

I'm proud of her. I don't know if I'd have said anything when I was her age.  I'm proud that she has the confidence to say something when she sees something she doesn't think is right.  I'm proud that she has ability to recognize an unrecognized problem.  

I'm just proud of her.  She's my hero.