Idea theft, Procrastination and Monotonous Monday

It appears that my blogging attempts are as unoriginal as the crafts I blog about.  I was reading the Globe and Mail the other day and came across this article: a more humorous and well-written version of my insights, published in a national paper.  Sigh.  At least I don’t plan on taking up knitting anytime soon.

All my well-laid plans to write two blog posts last week failed abominably– I don’t even have an excuse.  I do have a simple craft idea for you, though, which I learned from my grandmother when I was a kid.

Some years ago, when I lived on a very restricted budget, I didn’t have money for things like embroidery, cross-stitching and baking.  What I did have was time between split shifts, a notebook I found in the bargain bin at the stationery store and some felt pens and pencil crayons (I believe L would call these markers and coloured pencils).  This is the most relaxing activity ever.

Here is what you do.  Take a pencil or a pen, and draw a squiggle over the whole page, joining the beginning and end of the squiggle after awhile.  For a simple pattern do wide, curving loops that only overlap a few times.  If you want to spend the next several hours/days colouring, do a crazy squiggle that overlaps itself all over the place.

Go over your squiggle with a black felt or black pencil crayon (or some other darkish colour).

Then pick some colours out of your felts/pencil crayons.  I usually choose coordinating colours or rainbow colours, but I’m sure you have more imaginative suggestions.  Then colour in all the little bubbles your squiggle created.  I always try to make it so that the same colour isn’t inside of two adjacent bubbles.  Here are some examples of past work:

Has anyone made these before?  I actually really love how they look when they are finished

Finally, here is the monotonous Monday update.  Can you spot what  is new this week?

 

Monotonous Monday plus cookies.

Good morning, happy Monday to you!

I have temporarily scaled back my crafting due to an overwhelming and super-mandatory online course with an approaching deadline.  Boo.  I promise to create some hideous/uninspired art work for you all to enjoy as soon as that is done.

Here’s this week’s Monotonous Monday cross-stitching update:

You’ll recall that I warned you against false hope last week.  This is my I-told-you-so moment.  Incremental progress at best.  Wait till I have a long weekend.. then you will see some actual growth.

In the meantime, I did manage to make some oatmeal raisin cookies with the recipe from Annie’s Eats.  Yes, I am essentially a parasitic blog for her lovely, useful site.  I’m not even going to feign symbiosis.

Oatmeal raisin is my favourite kind of cookie and these ones are delicious.  Too bad I can only give you a picture and not pass them out through virtual land.  I know you want one.

I also spent WAAAY  too long making chicken chili verde this weekend.  While chopping peppers, I got jalapeño pepper juice in a little hangnail-type cut on my finger- ouch!  I didn’t think it would be anything terrible, but it got all hot and pulsy and took three soakings in milk (including one this morning!) to cure.  Typical me.

Anyways, that recipe in the Joy of Cooking takes 2.5 hours.  I’m so glad I doubled it and had lots to freeze because it doesn’t matter how good a dinner tastes, no single dinner is worth spending 2.5 hours of my weekend slaving over a hot stove.  Literally. I was so exhausted by the end of it, I had no appetite and didn’t even bother tasting it.  I’d show you a picture but it looked kind of icky and watery.  I’m assured by my husband that it was in fact edible…

Despite the crafting dearth around these parts, I have a simple one to tell you about later in the week.  Something to look forward to in these January-and-online-course-induced-dark days.

 

Successes and the launch of Monotonous Mondays

Occasionally, all mediocre would-be creators emerge from a glue gun, sewing machine or flour and sugar induced haze to see a moderately successful project staring back at them.  Although this is a rare experience in my crafting life, I thought I would share a few of these successes (Read: I am building myself up for a later post about failures).

Once upon a time, my bestest friend L stumbled (I just typed stumpled there.. maybe this should be a new word?) upon a pattern for making sock monkeys.  We made an elaborate plan to make sock monkeys for our friend S, who had never heard of sock monkeys and thought the entire concept was absurd.  (S is male, can you tell??).  Although we never got around to gifting them (oops), the sock monkeys were a success.  Charles (right) and Geoffrey (left) got to take a short car ride around the neighbourhood.

When I am not sewing children’s toys for my adult friends/childless existence, I am baking stuff from Annie’s Eats.  Her recipes always turn out, so I cannot really take any credit for those successes.  However, I managed to add, however slightly, to her genius this fall.

After shopping for candy *cough* flour and rice at bulk barn (Oh how I love thee) and selecting a chunk of white chocolate peppermint bark the size of my hand, I realized how good Annie’s favourite chocolate cupcake recipe (which is really a Hershey’s recipe) would taste with white chocolate peppermint ganache icing.  I made up the recipe myself and this food is seriously the best thing I have ever made.  Ever.  I’ve made it 4 or 5 times since November.  I don’t have any pictures because we always eat it…  Next time I make it, I will post the icing recipe and some pics.

My go-to craft is cross-stitching, and I finished a GIANT cross-stitch pattern this year.  I had it framed and gave it to my parents.  They liked it.

Speaking of cross-stitching, this brings me to introduce a proposed weekly feature on “stupid crafts”– the introduction of something to spice up the worst day of the week, which I like to call the Monotonous Monday Update! When I finished that big cross-stitching project above, I started a new one.  This one is even bigger, so it should keep me going for the next two years or so.  I work on it frequently, and N suggested I update everyone on the week’s infinitesimal progress.  Here’s what I have done so far.

This might seem like a lot, but don’t be fooled.  I have been working on this since mid-October.  You’ll see next week why this special feature is called “monotonous.”   I’m not describing the day.