20/20 Hindsight

Extreme closeup of a work in progress. This one is taking a moderately ridiculous number of hours to finish, but it's so pretty! (Not that I honestly know what my plans for it are).

Taking a decent picture of your wrist with an SLR lens whose macro setting only works at full zoom (90mm) is harder than you'd think...

This one came out okay but for another I resorted to using my other camera - it still takes a good shot, and doesn't require any zoom to be used until using "super macro". No manual focus but I managed to make it work.

:D the rose on this bracelet is one of my favourite op-shop finds. I bought quite a few of these in packs, but sadly some of them are not in terribly good condition. This one, however, is great. I'm looking forward to thinking up different projects for the other rose buttons. I love that part :D

I think I have to agree that my lego skeleton horse is indeed a thestral. That said, I was a bit concerned to find this tonight. What should I make of it?

P.S. To those on here and not on facebook... I made my first etsy sale today - one of my handmade bracelets. I'm thrilled to bits. It's a fantastic step forward for me.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/GeekishCrafts?ref=pr_shop_more

The above link is to my etsy store. It's up and going with some earrings again, and the bracelet above is one of three I have fully photographed and ready to be uploaded. I've got others made too, I will keep them trickling up to etsy... and will keep you informed.

I also intend on getting twitter and facebook page stuff running, just have to work out how I'll go about that.

I had no work today (don't worry, the weekend's more than making up for it) so I got some crafting done. Pretty well everything I worked on is a gift - though there was one repair that's not really photo material - so I figured the gift for the yet unborn (unless anything's happened very, very recently) is the safest option.

This will be a baby ball made with the requested 'geeky' theme. I decided to go with co-ordinated fabrics this time, and I think robots (sometimes in space) ought to be suitably geeky :). I made good progress today, I'd say it's a little under half done, but it won't take twice the time put into it so far, as I experimented with a different technique that I thought might yield great results, however partway in I threw it down on the table in frustration - though the results at that point were looking good the paper sections that, at this point, are very necessary, were all coming loose, and the only way of ensuring they would stay put meant using a more traditional technique... which I'm doing now. Without the paper pieces the stitching quickly got nasty. Having made a ball with this more traditional technique before I know it'll be fine, I'll experiment with variations on the technique another time, maybe on a hexagon pattern which sits FLAT. As the not-flatness is where I came unstuck.

Enormous thanks to Mum for helping me when the frustration almost got too much... her patience far eclipses my own and she re-tacked the paper pieces, allowing me to get back on track with the stitching.

All of the stitching that's visible at the moment will be removed by the time this is finished, the real structural stitching is almost invisible.

Pardon me if this is semi-coherent and babbly, I'm not feeling very competent with words tonight.

Most people were on the right track with yesterday's photo - it was indeed the spine of an old book. It's a leatherbound book, the text block has been marbled. It was a book of attendance for a closed branch of an organisation that Dad is involved in. The first entry in the book is dated 1953.

Today Mum and Dad returned from Tasmania. It sounds like they had a great time! They bought me chocolate... and buttons! Some of them are shown above. I think my favourites are the set of three dark blue buttons that are all a bit different, yet clearly belong together.

I picked out these fabrics from my collection for a project that I'd better get cracking on! Progress and/or finished shots will follow. I bought these fabrics a while ago simply because I thought they were fantastic... now I've found them a purpose (or at least, bits of them)

Also, I watched Good Morning Vietnam tonight. Well worth the watching. I love how Robin Williams can mix the serious and hilarious so effectively.

This is something else I'm working on... it's time consuming but watching the progress is great. To give an idea of scale, the squares on the board measure an inch.

Tomorrow I'll be past the halfway point in this photo-a-day challenge. I'm not sure what to do to mark the occasion. I've got a double shift so I won't have a great deal of time. I guess I'll have to think of something - I'm happy to take suggestions too!

This isn't actually my work, Mum's been making these lately, both using traditional designs and those of her own making. I imagine a great big enormous pile of cushions that I could just about get lost in. It'd be so comfortable! Mmm...

An Abyssal Fish from "The Modern Reference Encyclopaedia Illustrated" Published by The Advertiser in 1939. I have begun to embroider this picture. Possibly to be part of a much larger project. We'll see. This Encyclopedia really is a fantastic and quite fascinating book, it gives quite a lot of insight into the time - it's interesting to see how much subjectivity of the day comes through. And how far we've come...

Take this rather vile little passage in the section on Australia 'The aborigines, of many tribes, of primitive habits, and a low order of intelligence, are disappearing." The Maoris fare fare better, having an article all to themselves and the description of "well-developed, intelligent and brave".

There is much more, of course, but I'm sure you don't want the whole book quoted to you. And it'd be nice if there was still no entry for 'Atomic Bomb'.