Knit vrs. Crochet

So when I first started with fiber arts I picked up knitting because my mom only knew how to knit and she taught me what she knew.  I took those skills, hit Youtube and learned more.  But it took so long to knit something that I only would knit small things like doll clothing.  In watching crochet videos I felt crochet would go come together faster.  So I wanted to learn crochet and finally self taught myself how to do it.  I’m still working out some kinks, but I grew to love crochet.  I wanted to learn how to do it to create amigurumi.  Which so far I am doing pretty well.  I want to make some patterns to sell soon, and felt I would put knitting on the back burner because I hadn’t seen many nice looking knit amigurumi so I would put off knitting for a while and focus on crochet.  Then I found some cute knit patterns and saw some amigurumi patterns were nicer looking in knit than crochet and then decided I wanted to do both knit and crochet patterns for amigurumi.  But this still left me not using the full potential of knitting and crochet.

So after reading some awesome blogs were people knit nice looking things for themselves that didn’t look like big sacks on them, I decided to relook at knitting and crocheting for myself and one of the patterns that came across my way was the Bernat Wrap-ghan.  It’s a free pattern on the website that you can download.  It’s just basically a knit or crochet Snuggie.  Now, with crochet I imagine that it would come together pretty fast, while with knit it would take longer.  But knit looks better than crochet in my book.  Take a look below.  The blue one is knit and red one is crochet.

It just looks nicer to me in knit.  But the crochet has a nice quilted look.  So I was trying to think which one would I do if I chose to do one?  I have a Snuggie that I got for free by playing games on Bing.  I LOVE my Snuggie.  I was thinking maybe I should make one of each and call it a day.  I would like to try them both to see how fast each one comes together and see how strong they are structurally.  It is interesting to see how different the two look from each other.  Which do you like better?  Knit or crochet?  I’m still on the fence.  But I am having awesome visions of lush yarns being made into a warm and snuggly Snuggie.    Can’t wait to do some yarn shopping for that.    A girl can dream. 

Loves ya,
Mouse

Steampunk done the right way.

So I’ve been meaning to post about this for a couple of days now and kept forgetting.  A friend of mine showed me this link and I had to share it with you all here since I know some of you like steampunk and some of your like furniture and décor, and some of you like all the above. 

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So, what is this a picture of?  If I am guessing right, it’s a steampunk USB Flash Drive.  Now what would it go to?  Well their steampunk computer of course.  Check out the awesomeness here.  I’ll talk to you all later.  Must go do my 10 miles before the day is out.  Take care and be good until next we meet.    Bye for now.

Loves ya,
Mouse

One Man Disney Movie

Ok, one last one for tonight.  I was watching Jackson Pearce’s live show tonight and she mentioned the One Man Disney Movie and someone put a link in the chat and I went to go watch it.  Awesome, awesome, awesomeeeeee.  If you like Disney movies or just great singing from a very entertaining guy then this is a must see!  Enjoy!

Ok, now seriously, I’m off to watch that movie.  Night. 

Loves ya,
Mouse

Rest In Peace Dame Elizabeth Taylor

So if you haven’t heard already, famed actress Elizabeth Taylor died today at 79 years of age from congestive heart failure.  She was surrounded by her kids when she passed away, which I imagine would have been the way she wanted to go.  I was shocked to hear of her passing.  Ever since I was a kid I’d always hear about Elizabeth Taylor in one way or another.  Either a movie my mom saw that she’d think I like, or in her White Diamonds commercials, or that she was a good friend of Michael Jackson.  She kind of one of those icons you think will never die.  But in the end, I guess we are all human and we all face the same sad end. 

I feel sad that I didn’t look more into Elizabeth’s career when she was alive.  Now seeing the news talk about her past movies, it makes me want to watch them.  Of course I watched Cleopatra, but other movies I haven’t, but I plan to watch them.  I’m hoping Netfilx has some of them to watch.

In high school I had a teacher who loved her.  He’d told his wife if Elizabeth Taylor came to the door and asked him to leave his wife for her, he would.  I was thinking this morning if Mr. Bryant is still alive I wonder how he is handling the news of her passing.  I say if he is still alive because he was about Elizabeth Taylor’s age at the time I was in school, he was a very large man, and well yeah.  So I just wonder what he is thinking today.

Ok, this post is getting super sad.  I guess I just wanted to post to say I was sad to hear of her passing.  There really are no more iconic people any more besides Betty White left to be amazed by.  And I guess it just shows that I’m getting older because so many people I remember from my youth are slowly passing away, and well yeah.   There is just no avoiding the unavoidable and we all need to live life to it’s fullest.  Whatever the fullest is to you live your life to achieve that so you can look back as you lay on your deathbed and say you have no regrets because you accomplished a lot, you lived happily, and you leave this world a better place because you were here.  I think Elizabeth did that, and I hope one day I will too.    Talk to you guys later.  Bye for now.

Loves ya,
Mouse

Matting my matte spray.

So I think I may have found a solution to my matte spray glossiness.  Still in the middle of my face-up, but once I am done I will see how my idea works and if it does work I’ll let you in on my secret.  It would be nice if I did solve this issue.  Fingers crossed tight.    Talk to you all later today and I hope to have pictures for you. 

Loves ya,
Mouse

Happy Spring!!!

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Nope, not a fan of Spring, but it’s here for the next three months so let’s make the most of it.    Here’s hoping your first day of Spring was awesome. 

Loves ya,
Mouse

Matte spray is not created equal.

So I am working on a face-up of a doll started back in during Dizzy’s Place days.  It’s a My Scene Chelsea and well, it’s going ok-ish except for one problem, the matte spray I am using is more satin than matte.    If you are going to sell a matte spray then make sure it’s matte.

The spray I am using is the Krylon Matte Finish spray.  It dries quickly, outside you don’t smell the odor when you spray, and it has it’s own built in way of keeping the nozzle clean.  You can start working on it again after about 10 minutes of drying and depending on if you followed the directions there is minimal to zero tackiness.  It’s awesome except for the fact that it makes it look like the doll is sweating like crazy.    I am hoping that maybe it just needs to dry fully over night, but something tells me that isn’t the case.  I settled on that one because everything else was glossy at the store I was buying it from.  I might have to try Hobby Lobby for another spray.  I was looking for the ones suggested in the Monster High tutorial I showed you guys a few posts back.  I didn’t want to get MSC since I’d have to wait on shipping and I wanted to try some stuff now.    Oh well, I will see how it looks in the morning and decide what to do then.  The layers are helping with the face up, but she looks like summer is here and thriving and I don’t like that.  I’ll update you on her look tomorrow.

Also I am working on rerooting a Liv doll wig.  I cut out the hair, which had to be the easiest hair to remove.  Since it’s done with the loop rooting method, all you have to do is loosen up and pull out a root or two from the part or thatch and then cut the hair short as possible the you can pull out each row easily from the inside of the wig to remove the little bits.  I flipped the cap inside out and just scratched the little hairs off with my nail.  Was done in no time.  So now I have a cap ready to go.  I also decided to prep my hair by cutting it into the length I wanted.  I’ve had this pink Volks hair I won off of Ebay for years now and decided it was time to use it.  It was so hard to make that first cut but once I did the rest went smoothly and now I have 4 bunches of hair ready to be rooted.  Can’t wait to get started on that tomorrow too.  It feels nice to be crafting with dolls again.  I missed it.  I’ll have pictures tomorrow for you to see of my current status.  Until then be good.   Bye for now.

Loves ya,
Mouse

Let’s Hoop it out!

So remember that package for my sister I mentioned yesterday?  Well it came in today.  What was it?  An adult size weighted hula hoop.  I had talked to her about how hula hoops help a lot of people lose weight and she decided to get one.  I had planned to get one before the breathlessness started, but decided against it when it did.  But I watched my sister try it and where she couldn’t hula hoop with a child’s hoop she took fairly easily to the adult one.  She got it swinging within the first few tries.  She still needs some practice but it’s awesome to see her do it.  She let me try it and yeah, a bust because I refused to take off my jacket and I was worried about getting winded.  I got it to go around once and the movement hurt my stomach, so yeah, not sure if I will be trying again any time soon.  But I do want to get a hoop one day.  I’ve been researching “hooping” for exercise for about a year now and really want to try it.  And I have just enough room in my room…when it’s clean…to be able to do it indoors.  So I will be looking into getting a hoop one day.

But I still wasn’t sure how to get the thing started, so I went in search of how to actually hula hoop and I found I was doing my hips wrong.  You go back and forth instead of chasing the hoop with your hips.  Now I know, and knowing is half the battle.    But in my search I of course found some awesome “hoopers” and had to show you this one that I just thought was so cool and awesome.  I want to be like her one day. 

I know she’s just doing the basic swing around, but damnit I can’t even do that.  So yeah, I want to get to that level and then see where “hooping” takes me.    And well that was about the only highlight of my day.  It was mostly a mellow day.  A little breathlessness from some acid forming over night and no serious high, but not a bad day really.  Cleaned some and see some organization happening.  But that’s about it.  And I just noticed this video is three minutes and thirty-three seconds long.  And here I was wondering if I should change my shop name from 333 Designs.  Nope, this is a sign, I shall keep it.  LOL!  Ok, talk to you all later.    Be good until then.  Bye for now.

Loves ya,
Mouse

Partly Cloudy

Hey guys!  So I wanted to pop on and say hi and tell you a bit about my morning.  Ok, so I live in a military town.  And what some of you may not know about military town living is that you have to put up with military games.  So if the info I got was right, it seems we had some marines visiting us this past weekend and the military base had military games going on.  Now at any given time you will hear or see results of the military doing practice.  You hear booming, you hear the machine guns, you feel your house shaking, you see glass panes bending back and forth from the pressure of bombs dropping.  And that, like I said, is on any given day.  But during military games?  OMGGGGGG!!!  The other day the house was shaking non-stop and vibrating from the bombs they were dropping.  And it wasn’t every few minutes either.  It was a constant drop of bombs for a good couple of minutes.  Well that was about as bad as it got this weekend, but they still had bombing throughout the past couple of days.  And if there is one thing one of my dogs hates more than anything, it’s loud unexplained booms.  Oh heck, he hates loud explained booms too.  This lead to a rather interesting morning for me.

 

Avenue Q

So if you can’t tell I’ve been spending a lot of time watching stuff online.  Today I decided to tackle a recording of Avenue Q.  Not the best recording of it, but you get the idea of what’s going on.  So I thought I’d share it with you all.  Enjoy.

Talk to you all soon.  I have some interesting posts coming up soon.  Just need to sit down to write them.  Stay tuned.    Be good until then and bye for now. 

Loves ya,
Mouse

One more for you.

I don’t know why I am on such a movie posting kick as of late, but I wanted to share with you guys one more movie I have watched recently.  1984’s “Night of the Comet”.  I found it on Youtube and it’s still as awesome as it was back then, just a little less scary.  It’s about a comet flying over the Earth and the crazy stuff that happens after it passes by.   Enjoy.

 

Georgy Girl

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So I have “known” of Georgy Girl since I was child.  My mom has had this album by The Seekers for forever.  She would let me borrow her records and along with the Mamas and Papas this record always came to my room with me.  I don’t recall many of the other songs on this album except maybe one or two others, but Georgy Girl I would listen to over and over again.  I would sing and dance along with this song and at my young age feel they were talking about me.  Can you tell who didn’t have high self esteem as a kid?  LOL!  Here’s the song if you are interested.

Well when I grew older I learned from my mom the song was for a movie called Georgy Girl, that I found out when I grew even older was based off of a book called Georgy Girl.  My mom told me about the movie and well, I had to watch it.  It was from the 1960s, it was British, and it was that corny camp kind of movie I love, so I HAD to watch it.  Speaking of watching, and totally off the topic, the other day I watched a video online of Soleil Moon Frye dressed up as Punky Brewster…as in at her age now, to say thanks to her million Twitter followers.  It was a bit corny and camp as well.  Don’t know why that came to mind.  But moving back to Georgy Girl.

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*Warning, I am going to talk about the movie so there are spoilers ahead.*  So in short this movie is a about a girl named Georgy, third person to the right in the picture, who lives with her best friend Meredith, second person to the right.  Meredith dates Jos, first person on the left.  Georgy’s parents work for James, guy on the right, because basically they fell on hard times and he hired them as help in his mansion, oh did I mention James was rich, and he helped raise Georgy by paying for schooling for her and making a studio for her in his house so she can give dance classes to children.  So the going thing in the movie is Georgy is a fat ugly nobody while Meredith is a thin sexy somebody.  Jos comes over to pick Meredith up for dates and sometimes has to wait while Meredith is out on another date.  During this time Georgy keeps him company.  They are friends even though he calls her names like Fat Face and constantly remarks on her large body…which is easily a 12-14 in US sizing.  Well while all that is going on, James…the rich guy, is dealing with the fact that not only is his wife ill and refusing to go to the doctor for help but try to heal herself on her own but he also is seeing he cares for Georgy in more than a fatherly way.  One night when she shows up for a party he gives her a shocking proposal that she avoids giving her answer on for a while.  She avoids James as much as possible while she deals with new issues popping up in her life with a pregnancy, a marriage, a divorce, an adoption, a death, and then another marriage.  Whew, girl is busy.  In the end Georgy ends up kind of where she wanted.   I feel she would have preferred a different outcome but it gave her what she wanted…kind of.

I know I left out some of the bits and pieces, but I figured I would just in case you want to watch the movie.  And since I aim to please, here’s the movie.  You can either watch it down below or click here for a slightly bigger screen or so you can watch it full screen.  It’s a little over an hour and half.  Enjoy.    If you like old movies, British movies, or old British movies you’ll love Georgy Girl.

Yeah, I know the video window is big, but I didn’t want to mess up the viewing of the movie if you decided to watch it on my blog.  So I sacrifice for all of you.    Talk to you guys soon.  Be good until then. 

Loves ya,
Mouse

Thanks a lot John.

Ok, so the wonderful John who writes “From the Brain of John”, drew the coolest comic that was based around the song “So Much Better” from the Broadway musical “Legally Blonde – The Musical”.  Well I surfed around Youtube to find out more about the musical and found out that MTV aired the whole play back in 2007.  Well you know it had to be online, right?  Well I went and searched it out and found it and watched it last night even though I was dead tired.  I enjoyed it and plan to watch it again.  So in a way to share with you and have a place to store the link for each viewing, I give you “Legally Blonde – The Musicial”.  Thank John for this awesomeness because without him I doubt I would have searched out the play and found this awesomeness.  So enjoy and sing along! 

Part 1-

 

Part 2-

Now I think I will watch Avenue Q and an old movie I want to watch first before I post about it.  Enjoy Elle Woods and her friends. 

Loves ya,
Mouse

Cat sings Bohemian Rhapsody!

That is what my sister wondered about today before she left for work.  She wondered what would happen if you searched for that on Youtube.  Well she peaked my curiosity and I had to find out, and you’ll be happy to know that this time around curiosity did not kill that cat.  In fact, if gave me a cat, several of them, that were trying hard to rock out to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.  But it was a lovely bunch of furballs trying to get their friend to come out and play with that got my seal of awesome approval.  So of course I had to come share it with you guys.  So check out the most awesome rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody.    Enjoy!

Loves ya,
Mouse

Lookie what I finally got!!!

So this little gem finally made it into my excited little hands in the past week and I couldn’t be happier!  I bought Twinkie Chan’s crochet book and was so excited to get it, and then when I read about her book signings I was super sad I couldn’t go to one.  I got even sadder when I heard about the booklet she was giving away at the book signings.  So when I heard she was giving them away in her shop I got happy again…until they sold out!!!  Well when I recently saw it back in the shop I decided to pop my Etsy cherry and buy it.    So now I am the new owner of this cute booklet and have already slipped it inside of her crochet pattern book.  Woot!  So yeah, just wanted to share that with you guys.  If you are interested in purchasing your own booklet or the pdf of the pattern, click on over.  Also if you are interested in her pattern book click on over to check that out also.  Have fun and happy crocheting.

Loves ya,
Mouse