Ted and Tiny

This is just a quick update. My family tried to tempt me into visiting them by getting another dog, and it worked.

Look at those little faces.

We've had Ted, the scruffy thing on the right, for a fair few years now. My aunty and uncle breed Border Terriers so we got him as a Christmas present. Tiny, on the left, has finished having puppies and is now going into retirement with us. She's lived outside her whole life and thinks the sofa is the best thing ever.

The funny thing is, I remember meeting her as a puppy. She was the littlest one and bullied everyone else. Sort of like me, really!

Puppies and parents,

L

"Alice: Madness Returns" Cross-Stitch

I will start by saying that every time I see this hanging on my boyfriend's wall I feel immensely satisfied. It's the first big cross-stitch project that I've finished and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. 

It's an A4 piece of Alice Liddell and the Cheshire cat from American McGee's game "Alice: Madness Returns" and I used a free program called cstitch to get the pattern. The backstitches, border, and text are all made up (it's surprisingly difficult to find a pattern for suits of cards.) The whole thing took about a month to do in the odd hours of me being alone and it was finished just in time to give away for Christmas (as in, I think I wrapped it up on the 24th.) The boyfriend loves this game and actually has a tattoo of Chesh so I think I did good. Here's a huge picture of it:

I framed it before giving it away, of course; I'm not some kind of monster.

Some close-ups of Chesh, the writing, and the backstitches used for Alice's face:

The text reads "How fine you look when dressed in rage. Your enemies are fortunate that your condition is not permanent." Because Chesh is pretty bad-ass.

However, the only problem is... what if I have to match this level of effort every time?

Sew long, suckers.
L

Cardmaking Take One

(If you're stuck on the mobile version of this page (thanks Pinterest!) please click here for the web-friendly page.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you today a few homemade cards that have made the cut recently. I had a little stock-up of crafty things just after christmas. Such things I have never owned before, like stamps and various pretty papers.

Firstly something that's not technically a card but an envelope. When you undo the bow and pull the two heart halves apart, it opens out like a box! It doesn't have to be a heart of course, you could cut the flaps into any shape you like. Inside is a list for the mister: "52 reasons why (insert name here) is actually quite good." Because, you know, if you've just given someone a heart envelope then you can't make the title too soppy.

Here is the YouTube tutorial that I used to make this. 

Just add extra frontal card pieces, trim down the flaps, and add the ribbon at the end!

My uni friends and I don't usually exchange cards, but my favourite couple gave me and the mister one so I had to fix the slight awkwardness. I'm very proud of this little card and I got to use my stamps for the first time. There's a Sharpie dinosaur because what's more Christmas-y than that? Also we used to doodle them all over each other's paper.

Next we have a card I sent to my mum in the hope of receiving some post back to make me feel all special. She'd sent me a flip calendar with pictures from my childhood on that was very sweet. It also doubled as a "thanks for feeding me so much free food over christmas" card.

And finally a couple of birthday cards:

A cute collage panda, googly eyes, what more could you ask for?

I'm sure hippos would eat cake.

Well that's all for now!

Scissors and snippets,

L

Welcome to my Lair!

Hi, I’m very pleased to meet you. It’s a Friday and I had samosas for a late breakfast so I suppose you could say I’m fairly happy.

Or rather, my stormtrooper alarm clock had samosas for breakfast. Heh.

For various reasons I’m in need of some sort of timetable for my week, so I figured what better way is there than to update my life on the internet? Hopefully I’ll have a regular stream of little crafty projects to share since I’m fed up of being a physicist for the moment.

The past year has been both the best and worst year of my life.

Reasons it was the best:

1. I met the absolute love of my life, like after two days we couldn’t be without each other. YUCK, I know. But as someone who didn’t particularly believe in love, just some sort of mutually beneficial sex friendship, I am enjoying it very much indeed.
2. I got back in touch with my crafty side, and a sewing machine for Christmas! Art was my favourite back in school and I’ve just grown out of it. Got all caught up doing a physics degree and what-not, so I’d forgotten how fun it was.
3. Kung fu! I did jiu-jitsu when growing up but I didn’t particularly like the club at the university, so I tried out all the other martial arts clubs and settled on this one. It’s run by a terrifying northern man with a ponytail and he’s just the best.
4. I have recently discovered ebay, despite it being literally as old as I am. Having collections of pretty paper and little googly eyes makes me happy.

Reasons it was the worst:

1. Since I’m going to be honest here, I’ve been struggling with depression over the past year. It’s mostly related to my degree. Physics is really really hard, and I’m not used to being bad at it. I’m taking a year away from university to get better, find a job (hopefully an interesting physics related one,) and just generally get back into a routine.
2. The love of my life came with a very spiteful ex who he unfortunately has to live with until March. Silly house contracts.

Well, there seem to be more good things than bad. Maybe last year was the best after all.

This little limpet is determined to get better, and live a wholesome life which keeps her busy and offers lots of distractions. Feel free to join me on this journey, and I will see you later!

Yours,

L