oh well

I promised a while back that I would post pictures of what I made for Christmas, not everything has gone according to plan though. Long story short, I ran out of time to make a knit hat for my sister, so I got her a book on digital photography. My parent got her a camera that she is in love with but doesn't fully grasp the technical aspects of it, here's hoping she'll crack it open and learn from it. My mom's present I managed to finish the night before going to visit, however in all the craziness of wrapping and packing, I forgot to take pictures (as well as to bring my camera for the visit itself). The only finished picture I have is that from my camera phone, and I'm not paying 50 cents to post some crappy camera phone image on my blog. My sister took some pictures, but I don't know when those will be sent to me (if they're sent to me), so for now here are a few in progress pictures. The finished embroidery was about 7 inches long, and about 5 1/2 inches tall, its a portrait of our family's animal companion, a welsh corgi named Dylan. Please excuse the blue markings, its just water soluble pen that I used to sketch out the outline.

{Close up}

{From a distance, ignore the pink flower I was experimenting}

As for my dad (AKA: the hardest person to shop/craft for on earth) I was quite fortunate one night while trolling around on etsy to come upon the greatest t-shirt ever for my father the ex-utica resident. I figured, at least its something handmade that he'll really enjoy, rather than the typical store bought gadgets that he might use. Of course I decide to order it like two days before my trip, no way on earth could it have gotten here in time, but when I showed my mom a picture she broke out in a fit of laughter. Dad decided he would rather wait and be surprised. I'm not sure what the legalities of posting a picture of the item is so I'm just going to leave links for now. The seller was great, I highly recommend GossipGossip, my order was here within four days, and it looked great, lets hope dad enjoys it as much as I do.

Introspection

With my birthday fast approaching (and a chance stumbling across Abraham Maslow's idea of self actualization) I've been doing a great deal of introspection on my life. With my introspection came a number of things that I want to try, that I feel will help promote my own personal growth, and/or might just be fun. I was able to narrow my list down to a few things that I feel comfortable enough sharing with people I don't really know. So here it is, my short bullet format of things to try/accomplish eventually:

Things to Accomplish

• Join a roller derby team- I figured I'd post my most "outrageous" personal goal first. What can I say? I've never personally seen a roller derby match, but I feel that it would be a cathartic experience for myself.
• Write my own ZOMBIE movie/novel- I've had one in the works for a while now, my personal goal at the moment for this project is to be finished with writing and editing by December 2009.
  
• Continue to reduce, recycle, reuse my wardrobe- I'm definitely going to sign up for wardrobe refashion again...maybe go for four months this time around. I would like to take this opportunity to say that the shirts I got for work were purchased from Goodwill (yay!).
• Make my own tofu- enough said
• Try to be more active in my community- I've noticed in the area where I've recently moved that there seems to be a lot more social outreach and activism(probably due to all the colleges in the area). It seems like a no-brainer, volunteer my time to make my new home a better place over all, make some new friends.
  

That is all for now, I hope to add updates eventually as to the progress of some of my own personal goals. As always I will be updating with more crafty good-ness as well...just not now.

Toodles