Never reblogged before, but wanted to share this. Why is nice so underrated? Nice is good 🙂 I need to be nicer.

Bluebird Blvd.

 
 

 
 

I was so bummed at my accidental rudeness that when I saw her smiling face at the window, I apologized for not using my best manners and said that my blood sugar was low.

What happened next floored me. This woman— this angel of a woman— said, “Sugar, just hold on one second, I’m going to get you some brownies. And you eat those right away.”

As I was eating the brownies she gave me, she said, “Sugar, here’s a little lemonade with a little iced tea, it should put you to rights, my darling.”

Now, I’m polite. I’m über-polite. I’m turbo-sized polite, in fact, and sometimes, sometimes people even call me sweet. But, I have never, ever in all my days been as warm and good as this woman is on her worst day.

As I was sipping the special drink she made me, I…

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Cat tail moustache

I had a cold last week. Not a particularly bad one, but I had no energy for a few days. Pebble was happy to find me resting in bed so much and decided that what I needed was some facial hair, so she lent me her tail 🙂

Actually it's more of a goatee...

I love the way the tip of her tail curls round like that. Do you think it’ll catch on? Probably not, due to the necessity to carry around the cat, and more problematically, for the cat to co-operate… Still, it was very kind of her 🙂 and certainly cheered me up!

I did manage to get out in the snow before having to take to my bed (possibly contributing to needing a rest, although we didn’t get far, walking in snow uses different muscles and is a bit more tiring than normal walking. I hate having arthritis, it makes me feel pathetic :() But the snow was beautiful 🙂 and I was just glad to be able to still enjoy it at all.

Pretty snow 🙂

On Thursday I felt better enough that we could venture out again, to a little local town where we visited a couple of charity shops and had a fantastic lunch. Smoked salmon and cream cheese hot panini and Italian hot chocolate so thick I ate it with a spoon 😀 Sorry, no photos, too busy eating…

We also called in to a fabric shop along the way where I may or may not have bought a few things. OK, I did buy a few things 🙂 and they are nice things. I have used one already and begun playing with others.

On Friday I chopped up a charity shop skirt with a stain and made a short skirt from it, with enough over for a matching cape. But I haven’t finished the photos for the skirt so I might wait until I’ve made the cape too before I post it. Yesterday I began a new crochet project, using some yarn I had and a ball I bought from the fabric shop, it’s going well. I like to have a crochet project on the go and miss it when I haven’t. I’ve hardly done any this year so far, only one hat, a top and a few flowers. I don’t have photos of those yet either.

Today I did something a little bit mad, but not very. I added what I believe is called a ‘pop of colour’ to my den.

Orange pop. Sunshine 🙂

I think it really cheers up that corner, which is one I look at a lot. Oh yes, do you like my purple Gorm shelf unit? That’s just the top, but that adds another pop. An extra cool thing about the Gorm which I hadn’t realised when I chose it is that it has lots of extra drill holes – perfect for adding hooks or knobs to hang things from! It’s not sorted yet, the boxes are just shoved on to clear space. I need to organise it properly next month, but this month is for playing being creative!

The green bottle was my present to myself as a reward for a successful HBP month. I intend to get more glass for the windowsills as I love how it looks with light shining through it. This one was £5 from another charity shop, a bit of a stretch since I got it home and noticed it’s wonky… but it all adds character and I love the colour and shape! I have a turquoise one it usually sits with, I just moved it for the photo as it also looks great with the orange.

My window before the snow

The mini greenhouse thing is from Ikea, I love it! Not sure if that’s really a great place to store yarn unless I’m sure it’s colourfast, but it won’t take any harm for a few winter weeks and it looks nice. Or it will when I get round to taking off the plastic coating…

The runic glass is also from Ikea, from years ago. I suppose it is supposed to say Runa (Swedish for runes) but they used the wrong rune first. I see why they did it: as well as an ‘r’ rune, there is a rune designated ‘R’, but it is sometimes called ‘z’ and is only found at the end of words, not the beginning. Learning how to pronounce this mysterious rune was one of the highlights of my runic studies at Oslo university. If you can make a rolled ‘r’, you do that at the same time as the sound ‘zh’, a voiced ‘sh’, like the sound in ‘pleasure’. Are you making the sound now? I am 🙂

So that’s what I’ve been up to lately.

Except I missed the stuff out where I got stressed and anxious about silly things and had problems. But that’s not fun to write about and probably not to read about either, so I’ll skip that.

I’m off to look more at my orange pop before all the light goes!

Creative February Project – T-shirt alteration

I have been having fun with Creative February so far – it’s even distracted me from my cold 🙂

Although I made something yesterday which I am pleased with, I haven’t taken photos yet, but I did take some as I went today, so I shall post out of order. That’s more creativity!

I have been collecting projects on Pinterest that I want to try out, among other things… *cough*addictive*cough* and today has been about modifying t-shirts. When I was a teenager, t-shirts were big, baggy, square and really unflattering. For example:

OK so it's draped over the sofa, but is this thing wider than it is long?

I love the colours and the Celtic pattern, and retro is cool again, so this one is crying out to be tweaked. There are loads of possibilities for t-shirt projects on Pinterest, but for this one I was inspired with this pin, from this blog post. However, I like to do things the easy way and take shortcuts and find my own path based on inspiration rather than following precise instructions. So this is how I did it.

The mad thing is, I was thinner when I used to wear this!

Obviously you need to turn the t-shirt inside out unless you want a ruffle hem. First place a t-shirt that fits over the big one. Place it centrally, based on the neckhole and smooth it out.

I turned up the corners to the point I wanted to stop sewing for the waist. This was based on a previous attempt on a different t-shirt where I sewed the whole way down but then went and unpicked that part because it was too tight and emphasised my bulgy tummy, which I prefer to conceal!

I turned up the corners

I should have been working on a table really, not my sofa, but I am so bored with trying to clear stuff away that once I had room for the sewing machine I just left it! Don’t fret, I’ll get to it. You can see I don’t have this quite central. I did figure it out and put it right, but I don’t have a pic of that.

My next step was to pin. I don’t usually pin, but it had to be done really, plus I wanted to try out my new pins! Having decided to add sewing to art journalling in Creative February, I bought some pins the other day, nice ones with big round heads because I don’t like fiddling about with the other ones. Not being much of a one for pins (other than Pinterest ones!) I considered why and realised it was partly that I find them fiddly and thus am more likely to ouch myself. Also my arthritic fingers are less dextrous than they used to be. Also I like to sew freestyle without having to stop and take them out, but sometimes you really do need them, like here.

I pinned the lines I wanted to sew.

The pins don’t show up too well here, but you can see my new pin wheel 🙂 (Edit – I forgot to explain how I got the line, silly me! It’s basically being guided by the t-shirt that fits, pulling it to stretch it and generally not wanting to make the fit too tight, that’s why the line does not follow the guide closely. The line I sewed pretty much began and ended at the end of the relevant pin.)

Here is a closer shot of the pin line:

3 pins to show the curve.

I like the pins, they are indeed easier to use than my old ones. Next step is to sew those two lines. I did this really roughly, being careful to get the line right but not bothering to start and finish neatly or securely, in case I wanted to adjust it. I do love casual sewing 🙂

Can you see the sewn lines?

Then it’s just a matter of turning it inside out

Now it has some shape!

And trying it on!

Not the best picture, poor light, but it looks quite nice now 🙂

I like the effect at the waist.

And now I'm glad I started with such a wide t-shirt!

The width really comes into its own now, being flatteringly loose over the bulgy bits, but not concealing the good bits of my figure 😀

This was the third one I made! Plus I made another into a bag, but I shall share that another day 🙂 It makes me glad I saved all those old t-shirts, which is just as well. I knew I’d get round to doing something with them one day!

In other news, the snow finally arrived. Not a lot, but it looks pretty.

How’s your February so far?

Behind with blog, but not with life :)

Sorry I’ve not updated for over a week, of course I mean to and then it just slips by. I have been excited about several things which I wanted to share, but didn’t get to it and then I wanted to update the HBP and missed that, which meant I felt I ought to do that before a post on a different subject. But now I just decided it’s better to just write something and then fill in the bits I missed later.

It’s a bit like my less than stellar attempts at writing a diary. As a child I would make it my new year resolution, so I have many old diaries with the first week of January filled in and not much else. The fullest one is one I got halfway through the year so I didn’t feel the gradually increasing pressure of the missed days building up. Because there were so many missed days, I just started, went back and put some of what I remembered and didn’t worry if I missed days because it was so patchy anyway.

I intend to do a proper HBP update for what I managed in January, with pictures, but for now I shall just say that I got further than I expected to in the bigger goals of moving furniture around and increasing storage, but didn’t quite get the finish of everything messy put away in the two rooms I was focussing on.

Which meant that my start to February, month of creativity, didn’t get off to a flying start as my creativity spaces were still not cleared 😦 But I did manage to clear enough of my table to make a start today, again, a proper post with pics should follow at some point 🙂

I have a bit of a cold, so I don’t want to be sat here too long, but hopefully now I’ve broken the block I can post at my leisure without feeling guilty for being late or pressured into writing a particular topic.

I’m excited about creativity February – I have lots of ideas and cool stuff to play with! As long as I do so. Between feeling a bit blah with this cold and Tim having less work so he wants to go out which can be fun but makes me tired I expected to have done more. It’s also surprisingly hard to make a start on something new. But that is another post for another day.