Oh, Hi There

And once again, I'm back to my orphaned blog. In the meantime it's missed manis, spinning stuff, crochet stuff, and all kinds of other creativity. I've been up to quite a bit, really.

Let's start with the crochet. There have been many patterns and many tutorials. I even taught myself Tunisian crochet a while back.  One of my favorite recent creations is here. I ended up needing to write a few tutorials to go with it because getting that effect wasn't as easy as I imagined, so the least I could do was make it easier on everyone else.


As for spinning, I finished the project that wouldn't die and now have some lovely light fingering weight yarn just waiting for the right project.

The Mudpie went on hold after I broke the spindle it was on. The top of the shaft was split, and the cup hook went missing. I actually tried flipping it and using it as low whorl for a while, but I wasn't really feeling it. What I ended up doing was wrapping a too-small wire hook that I made with some spare fiber and gluing it into the hole after I glued the shaft back together.


When it comes to my polish collection, I've actually been good and not bought too much, usually only going for the occasional really good sale (like the time I got a $30 SOPI gold flake top coat at Big Lots for $1.80). I did get some fun stuff, too--metal studs, rhinestones, striping tape, nail art brushes--a while back.

Back from the... Wherever

It's been a while since I've posted, and I've been up to a lot.  There are a lot of manis that never made this blog plus I've been doing some more crochet designing.

If you want to, hop on over to Crochet Spot to see my Open Shell Triangle Scarf (pay pattern) or Open Star Motif (free), or maybe the open Square Earrings (free) are more your style. I've even done a cutesy little Pencil Case (free). Aside from that, I'm also working on a series of tutorials for the techniques I've come up with for increasing and decreasing in foundation rows. The first one is a general increase tutorial that uses the single crochet foundation row for example's sake.

And guess what.

Glitter and Jelly

I finally took pictures of my last mani before I took it off.  I know in the last post, I said it would be a jelly sandwich, but then I decided to use loose glitter, which obviously wasn't going to sandwich well.  Still, I like the mani I ended up with even if taking the picture with the flash on made it look streakier than it actually was.

Triangle Tape Mani

This entry's mani was supposed to showcase some creamy greens, but my main color stole the show and left the accent looking kind of gray.  Even so, the tape mani came out pretty well, and I have to say the main color (Tropical Green by Ruby Kisses) is awesome.  I absolutely love it.

The Return of the Stamp

It's been a while, and I've skipped posting so many manis.  Well recently, my SD card started cooperating with my camera and computer again, so I've been able to take pictures the way I like--snap a bunch now, weed them out later.  And it's a good thing because this mani was hard to capture.

I used two "hair store brand" polishes.  I went out looking for Jordana polishes originally--and I found them, but they didn't have any of the polishes or the topcoat I wanted. However, I did end up picking up a couple of other top coats that I ended up liking, so all's well that ends well.

Lets take a look at the results, shall we?

Another Online Gadget

Today I was liked to another online gadget to play with.  Something that I could spend all hours of the day messing around with. Meet inudge, a music mixer that allows you to share your creations.  Mixers are so much fun!  I used to love Coke Studios for this reason.

Valentine's Day Mani in Plaid

I'm keeping this one short and sweet.  This one is exactly what it says on the box and neater than my previous plaid mani

Read on for the details.

Bad Teenage Poetry: Voldemort

After some joking around on someone's Facebook post, I decided that it might be fun to do bad teenage poetry as written by fictional characters.  Let's see how that goes.  I'm starting off with the original from the Facebook thread.


One Day You'll See
by Thomas Marvolo Riddle

Fun with Foil

Playing around with Matte Me Crazy again, I decided to try using it over a foil. Because, yeah--have I mentioned how much I like matte over glitter? No?  Well, you'll soon find out.

Anyway, I couldn't leave it plain, of course and did a simple inverted V in purple.  Maybe it's lazy, but I'm going to use  an edited version of the phone picture I took. It's about the only way this entry is ever going to go up.  Besides, I'm antsy to do some experimenting.

You can see that there's some shine on the purple because it wasn't mattified. Also, I'm still bad at freehand.

Christmas Mani: Candy Cane Accent Stamp

I'm way behind and should have posted this days ago, but here we go.  This was supposed to be a full stamped mani-- red candy canes on white, white candy canes on red-- but once I did the one stamp, I decided I liked the current look better than the idea of the planned one.

Christmas Mani: Stripes

I've been having more adventures in striping/nail art polish, and this is my latest.  Red and white stripes over a green base.  I had a bit more trouble with the white, due to it being thick and gloppy in the neck of the bottle.  There was also some smudging that waiting ten minutes did  not prevent, contrary to the nail art tip I saw on Facebook.  (Not that I believed it to begin with.  I tend to wait a long time before putting on topcoat, anyway.)

This also marks my first full-on gap mani. Not too bad, I'dsay.

Pink Wednesday: Freehand Swirls

I thought it would be cool to make some little swirls then add some strokes of green and ta-da!  Roses.  That didn't happen.  Instead, I just have some swirls. It's progress.

Plaid Mani

After I got home from my quest to find the other last bottle of Matte Me Crazy, I finished working on my plaid nails.  I'll definitely be more careful next time because these look sloppy.

Adventures in "Oh no You Di-int!"

Hey, guy, remember that mattifying topcoat I was so excited about?  The one that was the only one left at the store?

One of my nieces ruined it by adding nail polish to it.  None of them will admit to it, but the nail polish got put away immediately.  They were just wasting it applying and reapplying anyway.

I then hopped into my car and snagged the last bottle at a different store after having enough trouble finding the NYC display.  Next stop was the liquor store in the same plaza for blue raspberry vodka and tonic water.

At this point, I have one hand done up in plaid. Pictures tomorrow unless it gets messed up by then.

Another Day, Another Post

So I missed yesterday, though technically I did blog, twice even, just not on this blog. The following picture might give you and idea as to what that's all about.

Pink Wednesday: Now in Matte

I said I'd use that top coat for this post, didn't I?  And I did, with a (kind of?) glossy accent nail.  Without further ado...

Excuse the Tip Wear

I just happened upon the NYC Matte Me Crazy mattifying top coat in the store today, and I got so excited, I didn't even bother changing my polish before trying it out.  The mani I had on is this one with two coats of Pure Ice in Rio on top and no topcoat.

To best show this top coat off I have a picture of the original mani:

Casino Run

I did a casino run today with my mom.  It actually went pretty well at one point, then I had to quit while I was ahead, but I learned a few things I should keep in mind for next time.

• Play the maximum number of lines.  Don't be a wimp.
• Pay attention and don't accidentally play the maximum bet.  Oops.
• Some machines just suck.  People don't play them for a reason.
• Winning streaks are very, very fun.

That's about it for today.  I did decide to break up with a certain slot machine, but I think I'll give it another chance.

Just Another Day

Last night, I was thinking about making jewelry today and wondered why I haven't made any in so long when a friend's Facebook post reminded me: the last time I crocheted with wire, I screwed up my nails horribly.  But I figured I could use other methods today except...

... It's my grandmother's birthday and we went out.  It was fun despite the fact that we had to switch restaurants.  The one we originally were going to go to told us the wait would be an hour and a half and then two and a half hours.  The others we checked?  45 minutes to an hour.  By the time we got everyone together and chose a place then got there (not far-- just across the highway), our wait was down to 20 minutes. Great.

And just to you know, garden salad is better than Caesar.

Old Ebooks and Stuff

One of my favorite things to do is trawl through Project Gutenberg looking for things to read.  Plus, now that I have Kindle for PC, I actually download the things I find, which is great for me because I've now added a few references to my library including Bulfinch's Mythology (I still want a hard copy of it.  I'll get around to buying it someday) and some Latin grammar books. The highlighting feature of Kindle for PC has come in handy since there are so many prepositions and conjunctions I keep forgetting--and now I have an easy reference.

Among my little collection (that will probably grow far too big at some point), I also have a Portuguese reader--good for my language studies-- and some novels by people I've never heard of but had interesting tables of contents. I also took a look (if a look entails reading the entire thing) at Wool by Hugh Howey, the ebook that came with Kindle for PC (How many times do I have to type that?), and I really enjoyed it.  For those who want a snack (48 pages, I think) of post-apocalyptic fiction, you should give it a look.

Now it's time for me to go read a book with actual paper.