The Apron Day 2: Root Beer-less

Day 1 was cut short when I discovered I had cut my apron too short, but no big deal, I can just buy more of the same fabric.  I went to Jo-Ann's on a Sunday, which is apparently when the people who actually enjoy sewing shop.  This turns into a most frightening experience as I crawl through exuberant crafters in a frantic search for my fabric.  But it's gone.  In the two weeks between buying my fabric to botching the project, that pattern has become extremely popular and evaporated.  Jo-Ann stores are less common than I expected, so I wait for a chance to get to Katy  (45mins away) and wonder of wonders, there is just enough of my fabric left for the apron.  Whew!

With this fabric, I can do anything!

A few weeks later I make it back to my sister's, but after work, so it's a later start.  It's nervous-making, knowing that this is the last of the fabric, but at least I'm confident of my measurements this time.  A few slices later my apron is apron-shaped.  Success!

Turns out it's quite difficult to take this kind of picture

I'm a master cutter by this point, but now I have to face a bigger fear: sewing.  First the pocket:

A pocket in its natural state

Then the hem, which thanks to my sister's nifty tool it's not too hard to fold, "press", and stitch.  There are a few oddities in my sewing -- the seam on the pocket is further from the edge than I intended and one of the hems is a bit wavy -- but I call it character and press on.  This kind of sewing is rhythmic, in a way, and fairly easy to follow.

Here I am!  Sewing!

With the hems complete, it's time to make the straps.  By now it's after 10:00 and I'm operating without root beer, so when my sister and I try to use math to determine the hem, I'm completely lost.  I choose a fraction at random and begin the measuring/pressing routine.  A long seam later, I have one strap and zero energy.  Time to call it a night before I destroy something!  Not finished yet, but a good, productive day :)

All in a day's work

The Apron Day 1: Short Changed

Some weeks back I began the biggest project of my new arts and crafts phase: The Apron.

I hate sewing, but I decided to tackle this because:
a) $36 is a bit much for a square of fabric with straps
b) the cheaper ones are generally ugly
and
c) it's a square of fabric with straps -- how hard can that be?

Patterns are too restrictive, so I opted to work from instructions instead.  My sister has a set printed out (I never could find the actual website), but they are long winded and assume I already know how to sew.  I dug up a more concise set of instructions, Apron Making for Dummies if you will.  The two are essentially the same, and I figured between them I just might understand what to do.  But why keep the confusing one at all?  Wordy Print Out has something Concise Website does not, and that is dimensions.  I assumed I wouldn't need a second opinion on something as straightforward as measurements.  Little did I know that seemingly innocuous belief would cause such an ordeal.  But more on that later.

With all the preparations in place, I arrive at my sister's house one morning with a sack of fabric and the hopeful, if unrealistic expectation that I might complete the apron that day.  First I learn that fabric cutting ladies don't cut straight lines and the factory edge is not necessarily straight either.  Also, the pattern has been printed slightly off kilter, so we can't use the design to our advantage when squaring the edges.  Why I Prefer Carpentry #1: wood may not be flawless, but the factory edge is reliable.  My sister takes the first cut because I'm wimping out, then I steel my nerves and take a slice.

Hooray!  My first incision!

It's slow going after this, each cut requiring about three minutes of deep concentration and a fairly constant stream of chatter.  I'm not talking to anyone in particular, but my sister is there, so a few of my quotes end up on Twitter.  One of these, "I will not be defeated by my own stupidity!" becomes my sewing mantra.  Maybe I should make that into a banner...

Trimming takes a loooong time, but it's just the beginning.  Time to make some real cuts.  I have a faint, but persistent memory that something is wrong with the way sewing mats are designed, but I can't place my finger on it, so I ignore my doubts and dive in.  Two good slices and I have a rectangle of fabric that matches the dimensions on my sister's instruction sheet.

Action shot!

Next step is to cut the slanty sides for the top of the apron.  But what is this?  I have all the measurements except for where slant should end?  Why I Prefer Carpentry #2: if a dimension is missing, I can usually talk to the drafter/designer directly.  This leads to a good half hour of head scratching, squinting at the paper, and taking random measurements in an attempt to supply the missing information.  But it's apparent that the drawing on the instructions are not in scale, so we're on our own.  Why I Prefer Carpentry #3: drawings are to scale.

Finally, inspiration hits and I ask my sister if she owns any aprons.  Duh.  Took us long enough to think of that.  She comes back with two aprons which are quite different lengths, but the other measurements are identical.  Problem solved; time to make the cut.  And yet... 

Even with the correct figures it still looks way wrong.  I measure the full length of my fabric and it's 25", when the instructions said 26".  Remember the something's-wrong-with-the-cutting-board feeling?  Turns out that the point on the cutting board which appears to be a zero mark is actually the 1" mark.  So when you put the fabric at the logical place and cut to exact measurement you want, you're actually losing an inch.  Why I Prefer Carpentry #4: the "zero" is clearly marked.  Now, 26" always seemed a bit short and looking at a normal sized apron, it's obvious that 25" is not nearly long enough.  My theory is that 26" was a typo and they meant 36" instead.  So the instructions have left off one measurement and made another 10" too short, leaving me with a completely useless piece of fabric.  This necessitated another trip to Jo-Ann's, but I couldn't go just then.  And what I in my wishful thinking had intended to be a good, long day of sewing was cut short by a careless instructor.  Moral of the story? Always get a second opinion.

To be continued...

Getting Crafty

I am not an arts and crafts person, but this theatre major has spent almost a year without any projects.  All retail, all the time makes a girl restless, so in the absence of theatre I have started (and even completed) a few projects.

Project #1: The Banner
The idea sprung from Rachel's birthday banner.  She discovered this Flickr account, which has a collection of pictures for every letter and even punctuation, and used them to give a birthday greeting for her family members.  I liked the idea of an everyday banner to fill up a blank wall.  This is what I came up with:

Not long after I took this picture the bottom of the letters began to curl because I printed them on regular paper.  Rachel uses cardstock for her letters and laminates them using contact paper.  I plan to do the same eventually and will probably use craft clothespins to attach the letters rather than thread the ribbon through like I did here.  But overall it was incredibly easy to do and is a cheerful addition to my room.

Project #2: The Journals

At the read-thru for The Seagull the director gave each of us a Moleskin journal which she had personalized for us using stamps.  Here's what she made for me (front and back):

With the final pages of the journal approaching, I decided to customize some of my own to carry on the set.  I wanted to stay with the ink theme, so here are the two I made:

The journals came three in a pack, so there's still one left for me to decorate.  I don't really know how else to build on the theme, so I'm planning to recreate River Song's diary from Doctor Who.  But that's a much bigger fish to fry.

Project #3: Paper Flowers

I'm usually pretty terrible when it comes to cut paper projects -- I can never wrap my head around them!  But I stumbled upon instructions for these and thought they were right up my alley.  No complicated folding patterns that turn into a masterpiece with a single snip, rather a few clicks of the paper punch and some very simple folds.  And the instructions are so clear!  Here's the first flower I made:

This one I made the hard way, that is without a paper punch.  I printed out a nice vintage map I found online and backed it with some black cardstock I had on hand.  After this successful trial run, I splurged on a paper punch and some real scrapbooking paper.  With the punch, I had seven sets of petals ready in the same time it took to cut out a single flower's worth by hand.  

Now, gluing became a bit of an issue.  The instructions recommend rubber cement, which I agree is a good choice to start with, but the petals tend to slide off.  I haven't tested the theory, but I think a combination of rubber cement and hot glue would be best -- rubber cement on the bottom and a dollop of hot glue in the center to hold them in place.  Here are a mess of petals waiting for the glue troubles to be resolved and the two I managed to complete:

 

Project #4 is much more complicated and will have it's own series of posts.  But if you're looking for a bit of "Creativity for Dummies" I would recommend any one of these projects.  They require virtually no skill, which is exactly my kind of style.  

At Long Last

After passing the 50,000 word NaNoWriMo finish line, all of my motivation evaporated.  Big time.  I said, "Oh it would be cool to finish by December anyway."  Then, "Oh it would be cool to finish by Christmas."  Then, "Oh it would be cool to finish soon."  But I only piddled and I never sat down for some serious writing.  Finally, I decided to ditch the wimpy goals and make myself a firm deadline: Finish the novel by my birthday.  Or else.

Please note that even in that firm statement, the definition was still a little fuzzy.  Is that "by my birthday" as in before the day or "by my birthday" as in by the end of the day?  By default, I chose the second definition and geared up my energies to finish the novel before midnight on the day of my birthday.

I can proudly say, that at 11:57 pm the day of my birthday I wrote the final sentence of my NaNoWriMo novel.

Final word count?  61,647

Other statistics?  27 days to write 50,010 words.  77 days to write 11,637 words.

(There are a lot of sevens in this post)

I am proud to have completed Step 1.

The Toils and Delights of the Interweb

Sometimes I really love the Interweb.  Sometimes I despise it.  And I both love and hate it for pretty much the same reasons.  Here's an example of why it's wonderful:

2-3 months ago someone posted a link on Twitter -->
I followed this link -->
I read the page, enjoyed the page, left the tab open for 2-3 months so I wouldn't lose the link-->
Last week I showed my sister the page -->
She read the page, enjoyed the page, asked me to send her the link -->
Yesterday I sent her the link AND I posted the link on Facebook -->
Last night a friend starting chatting to me about the link-->
This morning I had feedback on Facebook about the link AND I saw on Twitter that my sister had pinned the link on Pinterest

It's exhausting; all the in-and-outs and back-and-forth and the mess of social media sites can just run you in circles.  But this story is about someone bringing a fun site to my attention, which I passed on, and this morning I smiled because my sister had passed it on even further.  That's pretty cool.

By the same token, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to keep things separate on the Interweb.  I learned today that in order to sign up for Pinterest you absolutely must link it to your Twitter or Facebook profile.  That means anything you like on Pinterest will be posted to Twitter and/or Facebook whether you want to share that news with everyone or not.  This was not the case two weeks ago.

I regret signing up for Google+.  I thought it was a nice enough design, and Facebook could stand to have some real competition, but it's not worth it.  Google+ is a parasite that wraps itself around your heart and sends its tentacles into your bloodstream (Fringe fans, you should have a pretty clear image of this).  I can't get rid of it without destroying my pre-exisiting Gmail account and I'm pretty sure it messes with this Blogger account.  Maybe I'd like to have a little more anonymity here than there.  That should be my choice.  And maybe I'm exaggerating, but maybe I'm not because it's so difficult to see what my site looks like on the outside.  A few places have a "view as so-and-so" feature, but it's not widespread enough to be of much use.

I want to see all the sites I use from the outside, not just the inside.

I want to set up a different profile on every site, even if they're owned by the same people.

On that note, I want a comprehensive list of who's in business with whom.  (I'm sure it exists, but where?)

In regards to the Pinterest example, I want to choose the particular items I post to Facebook or Twitter.  Maybe I will post everything, but even if that's the case, I want to push the button each time.

So, that's just a little rant that's been on my mind.  I've never been a fan of watching my back and sleeping with one eye open, but it seems we're heading that way.  The Interweb can provide many magical moments, but I don't like the idea of wild magic.  I prefer to wield the magic myself rather than hand my wand to someone else.

All right, enough metaphors.  Here is the aforementioned link that had traversed so far http://www.box.com/shared/static/a6omcl2la0ivlxsn3o8m.jpg.  It's a highly entertaining flow chart that helps you choose a fantasy or science fiction book to read.

Validated

I tell you what, I saw that finish line and I took off.  Two days ago (we're pretending it's still the 27th, so on the 25th I had 8,751 words remaining.  Even though that's pretty close to 9,000 which is pretty close to 10,000 if you divide it in half it doesn't look so bad.  I decided that I would LOVE to push for the over 4,000 a day and finish today (the 27th).  Distractions come and hot water heaters break, but my resolve never faltered.  I pushed through and passed the 50,000 mark just before midnight.  Unfortunately, it took me longer than those ten minutes to figure out where the validation button was hiding, so NaNoWriMo thinks I finished on the 28th.

But we know the truth!!!

I wrote 50,021 words in 27 days.  Really it took me right around 42 hours of actual writing time (let's not talk about procrastinating, I mean, contemplating time).  For the final day, my stats:

Your Average Per Day: 1,853
Words Written Today: 4681
Target Word Count: 50,000
Target Average Words Per Day: 1,667
Total Words Written: 50,021*
Words Remaining: 0
Current Day: 27
Days Remaining: 4
At This Rate You Will Finish On: November 27, 2011
Words Per Day To Finish On Time: 0

*I feel I must mention that even though I "won" NaNoWriMo, I haven't actually finished the story.  I do have a few more scenes left to go, even though I can feel it winding down.  If I'm really good, I will push myself to finish the actual story by the end of the month.  If not, I know I need to finish it soon.  Even so, I am fully celebrating crossing the hurdle of 50,000 words, especially since this is my first year attempt.

Sighting the Finish Line

I know I updated yesterday, but I have to comment about today's success.  Today, I needed 38,333 in order to be on par.  At one of my stopping places, I was at 38,333 precisely.  Yes, I wanted to add "he said" to the end of the sentence, but I left it 38,333 for a couple of hours just for fun.  Tomorrow's par is 40,000, but I planned to take Thanksgiving off, so I preferred to pull ahead rather than behind.  Happily, my stats tonight are these:

Your Average Per Day: 1,754
Target Average Words Per Day: 1,667
Words Written Today: 3,529
Target Word Count: 50,000
Total Words Written: 40,356  
Words Remaining: 9,644 
Current Day: 23
Days Remaining: 8
At This Rate You Will Finish On: November 28, 2011


That's right.  I now have less than 10,000 words to finish NaNoWriMo.  Now I think I am going pass 50,000 words before I run out of novel, but that's okay.  I would rather have that problem than try to write 10,000 words of fluff.


I would love to validate my novel early, and I have a pretty packed work schedule until into December, so here's hoping I stay ahead of the curve.

Happy Thanksgiving to all & to all a good night!